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CERLAC and MiningWatch Canada
announce

A Conference on

May 9 – 11, 2002
York University, Toronto, Canada
 

Panels to include case studies on:
Mining in Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Nicaragua, and Mexico
Oil extraction in Colombia and Ecuador
Canadian Foreign Policy on Mining Investment

This conference will convene a gathering of academics, NGO workers, and social activists from both Latin America and Canada - together with representatives from the Canadian Government - to critically debate the role of Canadian mining companies in the region. The Conference will seek to explore the known and possible future impacts of Canadian investment on the economic, social, and ecological sustainability of local communities.

A central debate will focus on different approaches to establishing and enforcing industry standards, from efforts to establish voluntary, industry-driven guidelines for corporate social responsibility (such as those reflected in the MMSD project), to those that emphasize the empowerment of local communities to exercise control over their resources. We will also discuss the role of the Canadian government in an effort to assess how well it has balanced support for Canadian investment with concerns for sustainability and local community needs.

The event will take place just before the commencement of a large industry-organized meeting at the Toronto Convention Centre scheduled for May 12-15 and entitled: “Resourcing the Future: Mining, Minerals and Metals for Sustainable Development.” The organizers plan to release on this occasion the results of the Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development Study Project (MMSD), headed by the International Institute for Environment and Development.

Canadian NGOs and other independent voices have expressed serious concerns about the Toronto meeting and the MMSD project, decrying an apparent lack of genuine intention to reorient the industry along a more sustainable and responsible path. Hence, with the major industry stakeholders converging in Toronto to present their formal position, it seems an opportune and important moment for an open and informed debate on these issues involving a broader range of relevant actors.

No admission fee. Open to the public.
Registration not required, but please inform us of your intention to attend: cerlac@yorku.ca

A SELECTION OF ON-LINE BACKGROUND READINGS

The organizers gratefully acknowledge the support of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC); the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW); the Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA); and, all from York University: the Office of the VP Research & Innovation, the Office of the VP Academic, Hospitality York, The Centre for Research on Work & Society (CRWS), and the Departments of Political Science, Social Science, and Sociology.

CERLAC and MiningWatch Canada
invite you to
 

A Public Forum

Development or Destruction?

Canadian Mining Companies in Latin America:
Community Rights and Corporate Responsibility
 

Saturday, May 11
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

Koffler Institute of Pharmacy Management, University of Toronto
Room 108, 569 Spadina Avenue (between Harbord and College)

Admission is free, everyone is welcome.

Canadian companies are at the forefront of mining investment in Latin America. But are they bringing the benefits of development to the people of the region, or only the costs?  How accountable are these companies regarding the impact of their activities on local environments?  How sensitive are they to the concerns of local communities?  Do they bring new employment opportunities for locals, or take advantage of the absence of labour rights?

Can voluntary, industry-driven guidelines for corporate social responsibility assure real community participation and sustainable economic practices? What role has the Canadian government taken to ensure that these companies act abroad in a manner that would bring pride rather than shame to Canadians?

On the eve of a major industry convention in Toronto, come and hear social activists, unionists, and academics from Latin America and Canada discussing the impact of Canadian mining companies on communities and countries throughout the region.  Speakers from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Mexico and Peru will be on hand to discuss their experiences.

This will be a participatory event, come and take part.

This event was organized in conjunction with the three-day conference Canadian Mining Companies in Latin America: Community Rights and Corporate Responsibility at York University. For more information on the speakers and issues of this Forum, see the details given here.

Co-sponsors:
Centre for Social Justice, Metro Network for Social Justice, Oxfam Canada

The organizers gratefully acknowledge the support of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC); the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW); the Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA); and, all from York University: the Office of the VP Research & Innovation, the Office of the VP Academic, Hospitality York, The Centre for Research on Work & Society (CRWS), and the Departments of Political Science, Social Science, and Sociology.

CERLAC and the Rural Community Development Group (RCDG)
present

A BROWN BAG SEMINAR

with

Andrés Yurjevic
Latin American Center for Sustainable Development (CLADES)
Santiago, Chile
 

Wednesday, April 24th, 2002
2:00 - 3:30  p.m.
305 York Lanes
 

Andrés Yurjevic is the founder of CLADES and the Chilean director of the York-Catholic University of Temuco Linkage Project. This project seeks to strengthen the Center for Sustainable Development as a teaching and research institution at the Catholic University of Temuco in Southern Chile. The goal of this Center is to use innovative teaching methods and university research to develop human resources that can simultaneously alleviate rural poverty and gender inequity, while ensuring environmental sustainability. The Center works with an NGO, the Centre for Education and Technology (CET), and CLADES, a Latin American NGO network which was formerly known as the Latin American Consortium on Agroecology and Development. The common objective of these institutions is to improve the economic situation and viability of small rural producers in an environmentally sustainable way.

Andrés will present the experience, context, and challenges that CLADES faces as it pursues its work on agroecology and sustainable rural development. The purpose of the discussion is to deepen the links with interested faculty and students at York University, in the context of the York-Catholic University Linkage Project.

For further information on CLADES, please refer to the following Spanish website: www.clades.org. A short description in English is in: www.web.net/~icact/clawg/9899clades.html and a longer one in www.egfar.org/partners/2nrm/cases/4_2.PDF. The Centre for Sustainable Development at the Catholic University is presented in: www.uctem.cl/centros/cds.html. For information on the Master’s Program in Management of Rural Development and Sustainable Agriculture supported by the project, refer to: www.uct.cl/magistercds. A short description of CET in English is in: www.web.net/~icact/clawg/9899cet.html.

Everyone is welcome.

For further information, please contact Ricardo Grinspun at ricardo@yorku.ca or Alejandra Roncallo at aler@yorku.ca.

CERLAC and the Rural Community Development Group (RCDG)
present

A BROWN BAG SEMINAR

Decentralization and the Question of Municipal Democracy
in Ecuador and South Africa

with
John Cameron and George Niksic
 

April 25th, 2002
2:00-3:30  p.m.
305 York Lanes

Decentralization is being promoted around the globe by the World Bank and other development agencies as part of a series of so-called "second generation reforms" intended to make governments more efficient and more responsive to citizen demands. However, the actual success of initiatives to make local governments more efficient, more democratic, and more effective as agents of human development depends much more on local factors and conditions than on administrative reforms at the national level. John Cameron and George Niksic will examine instructive cases in Ecuador and South Africa of efforts to make municipal governments more democratic in the context of decentralization.

John Cameron will analyse efforts by peasant and indigenous organizations to implement participatory democracy in rural municipal governments Ecuador, and examine the attempts of those municipalities to promote economic and social development. He will place particular emphasis on the structural conditions underlying the relative success and failure of participatory initiatives at the municipal level.

George Niksic will examine various initiatives undertaken by the African  National Congress-led Council in Port Elizabeth, South Africa to foster a participatory form of politics and a developmental role for local government. In particular, he will focus on the relationship between the local government and the popular sectors, and the structural constraints  that impact upon it.
 

John Cameron is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at York University and Graduate Research Associate at CERLAC.

George Niksic is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at York University.

Everyone is welcome!

CERLAC and the Rural Community Development Group (RCDG)
present

A BROWN BAG SEMINAR
 

Corporate Expansion and Indigenous Communities
in Rural Ecuador

with
TANYA KOROVKIN

Dr. Korovkin will present a discussion of her on-going research, conducted jointly with Ecuadorian academics and NGO workers. The presentation will deal with the recent expansion of traditional and non-traditional exports: oil in the Amazon and cut flowers in highland Ecuador. The focus is on the social effects of this expansion and on the prospects for negotiation between communal organizations and companies.

CERLAC Fellow Tanya Korovkin teaches Political Science at the University of Waterloo. She has conducted research in Peru and Chile, and currently works on  CIDA-  and SSHRC-sponsored projects in Ecuador. Dr. Korovkin is author of a book and various articles on structural and cultural change in the rural areas of these countries.
 

Thursday, April 4th, 2002
2:30 - 4:00 pm
Room 305 York Lanes
York University

CERLAC
and International Development Studies (IDS) at York
present

Sérgio Baierle
CIDADE (Center for Urban Studies) Porto Alegre, Brazil

 speaking on

The Workers Party in Brazil:
Breakthrough, Consolidation or Thermidor?
 

Sérgio Baierle has has been intimately involved with the capacity-building aspect of Porto Alegre's participatory budget since its inception when the Workers Party came government there as part of Popular Front in 1989. He is one of the few persons in Brazil who has conducted systematic and continuous research on the new kind of participatory democracy that the new Workers Party of Brazil was committed to since its formation two decades ago, so refreshingly different from the statism of traditional communist and social democractic parties.

In this talk, based on a new paper he has written called "Porto Alegre in Thermidor", he will explore the contradictions and dangers participatory democracy is now facing, including from developments within the Workers Party itself. He will address the necessity for a new advance in radical movement politics if the democratic hegemony in Porto Alegre is not to evaporate, and will relate this to the strategies and prospects of the PT in the upcoming general elections in Brazil later this year.

Sérgio Baierle works with CIDADE, Centro de Assessoria e Estudos Urbanos, an NGO working for the empowerment of grassroots movements with research on urban reform policies and democratic local budget processes. CIDADE has worked on participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre since 1994 to empower people to participate in decision-making and develop their collective self-governing capacities.

Thursday, March 28th, 2002
11:00 am - 1:00 pm

Social Science Lounge
S752 Ross Building
York University
 

Background document:
Happiness is Like Water in a Net: Presentation notes on the Porto Alegre Participatory Budget by Sérgio Baierle

This event was organized with the assistance of Dr. Leo Panitch, Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy
 

CERLAC and the Rural Community Development Group (RCDG)
present

A BROWN BAG SEMINAR
 

Participatory Methodologies for Sustainability
on the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua
 

March 28th, 2002
2:30 - 4:00 pm
390 York Lanes

The southern Caribbean coastal region of Nicaragua is home to a diverse ethnic population and a complex ecosystem.  As a site of abundant wealth and historic tensions, and with local political mechanisms that are weakening in the face of economic liberalization, the Pearl Lagoon basin is in danger of increased inequities as the extraction of coastal resources continues.

Bernice Kozak and Christine McKenzie, working in collaboration with IDRC and the Coastal Areas Monitoring Project (CAMP- Lab) employed participatory methodologies to address these issues in the Pearl Lagoon basin region.

Bernice Kozak will discuss her proposed dissertation dealing with 'Lessons in  Political Economy from a Micro Perspective’, suggesting that a greater understanding of local political economies illuminate conceptual issues at the meso-scale level (regional or national) and the macro-scale (international political economy).  A further critical component of this work is concerned with the inclusion of participatory methodology.  Thus the discussion will focus on how to incorporate participatory methods into the study of political economy, focusing on possible limitations, strengths, and ethical issues.

Christine McKenzie will focus on how participatory action research and popular communications were used to engage local communities in dialogue to address issues of environmental sustainability.  In particular she will focus on the opportunities and tensions associated with the ‘outsider’ as change agent in facilitating critical analysis and social movement learning.

Background: Bernice Kozak is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at York University
Christine McKenzie is a Masters Candidate in Environmental Studies at York University

Everyone is welcome!

CERLAC presents

Civil Society's Response to Globalization
in Latin America
 

with visiting speaker
Victor Armony
(Université du Québec à Montréal)

During the 1990's, most Latin American countries have undergone market liberalization processes. These processes have often resulted in increased inequalities and social exclusion. While many Latin Americans have grown disillusioned with politics, and others have expressed their dissatisfaction within the political system, many have resorted to new forms of collective action that are rooted in civil society organizations and networks. These include strategies of civil disobedience, road blockades, vacant land occupation, and citizen assemblies. The example of Argentina is particularly interesting in this regard: the "piqueteros" and "cacerolazos" have played a decisive role in the social response to the current economic and political crisis.

Victor Armony is Professor in the Department of Sociology of the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). He is also the Research director for the Canada Research Chair in Globalization, Citizenship and Democracy (UQAM) and the
author of Représenter la nation: le discours présidentiel de la transiton démocratique en Argentine (Montréal : Éditions Balzac, 2000).

Tuesday, April 2nd, 2002
2:30 - 4:00 pm
Room 305  York Lanes
York University

CERLAC presents

Phil Kretsedemas
Ryerson University

speaking on

Haitian Immigrants & Welfare Reform in the US
The new face of de jure segregation?  Legal status limitations and labor market hardships
for Haitian immigrants in Miami-Dade County.
 

Tuesday, March 19th, 2002
2 - 3:30 pm
390 York Lanes
York University
 

Several researchers have noted that welfare and immigration reform have tied social service administration more closely to the demands of local labor markets.  For working poor immigrant communities in particular,  these reforms have exacerbated pre-existing tendencies toward service under-enrollment and over-concentration in the most peripheral segments of the labor market.

This presentation discusses the findings of a case-study that examined the impact of welfare reform for Haitian immigrants in Miami-Dade county.  The findings of this study demonstrate that there is a much closer correspondence between legal status and labor market hardships, for Haitian immigrants, than between legal status and service access.  As a consequence, the immigrant service restrictions implemented under the 1996 Welfare Reform Act appear to have had a much more pronounced impact on labor market participation than on the already low rate of service access.  A comparison of household and individual estimates of legal status also reveals that household estimates provide a more comprehensive account of labor market hardships, but individual estimates provide a more precise indicator of gender differences.

The concluding discussion considers how welfare and immigration reform have created new trends in labor market segmentation for immigrant communities and new forms of intra-group stratification, by gender and legal status.  These trends are used to make some preliminary observations on the forms of stratification that are becoming typical of the post-Keynesian era, and how they differ from the forms of institutional discrimination that characterized the (latter phase) of the Fordist industrial era and the social welfare state.

************

Phil Kretsedemas received his doctoral degree in Sociology from the University of Minnesota in 1997.  His dissertation research (conducted in 1994-1995 with a grant from the Social Science Research Council) examined political attitudes toward neo-liberal economic reforms among working poor communities in Jamaica. Since this time, he has served as a welfare reform policy analyst and community organizer for  non-profit community organizations in the Miami-Dade area and as an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Florida Memorial College, a historically black college also located in the Miami-Dade area.  He is currently serving as an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Ryerson University (Toronto, Ontario) and remains actively involved, as a welfare reform researcher, for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Scholar Practitioner Program.  His current work explores how recent trends in social  policy, contemporary discourses on race and ethnicity, and labor market dynamics are creating new forms of social stratification for working poor, immigrant communities.

CERLAC and the Rural Community Development Group (RCDG)
present

A BROWN BAG SEMINAR
 

Participatory Research and Plant Breeding:
An Experience with Hillside Farmers in Honduras

with
Sally Humphries
Phd York, Sociology, 1989.  Associate professor at University of Guelph, Sociology/Anthropology. Graduate coordinator of Guelph's International Development program. Since 1993, coordinator of a participatory research program in Honduras.

Thursday, March 7, 2002
2:30 - 4:00  p.m.
York Lanes 278

Dr. Humphries will present work that she has supported for the past nine years with farmer-researchers in Honduras. The program has grown from a pilot project with a handful of small-scale hillside farmers to include 500 farmer researchers organized in 50 research teams within a farmer-led  national federation.  Resource-poor farmers located in some of the most impoverished regions of Honduras have learnt how to experiment with different low input technologies designed to improve the
management of their plots and increase their food supply and family income. More recently, they have become involved in plant breeding, learning how to enhance their own landraces of maize and beans.

Everyone is welcome!

CERLAC, York International, and the Jagan Lecture Planning Committee
proudly announce

The Fourth Annual Jagan Lecture

with

George Lamming
the renowned author, lecturer, and commentator from Barbados

speaking on

Language and
the Politics of Ethnicity

A highly political author, George Lamming is credited, along with Vic Reid, Wilson Harris, V.S. Naipaul, Everton Weekes, Derek Walcott, Garfield Sobers, Mighty Sparrow, and others, with making the emergence of a Caribbean identity possible. Lamming sees the lack of cultural identity in this region as a direct result of the history of colonial rule. Ngugi wa Thiong'O, while reviewing Lamming's Of Age and Innocence, concurs that, "The West Indian's alienation springs . . . from his colonial relationship to England."  Lamming, who denounces colonialism as well as neo-colonialism, recognizes that language is a means of colonization and encourages resistance to cultural imperialism: "People are becoming aware that the overwhelming dominance of North American mass culture will destroy the society if there is not what one would call a force of cultural resistance to that."

George Lamming was born on June 8, 1927 in Barbados where he attended Combermere High School. He left for Trinidad in 1946, teaching school until 1950. He then emigrated to England where, for a short time, he worked in a factory. In 1951 he became a broadcaster for the BBC Colonial Service. He entered academia in 1967 as a writer-in-residence and lecturer in the Creative Arts Centre and Department of Education at the University of the West Indies. Since then, he has been a visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Pennsylvania and a lecturer in Denmark, Tanzania, and Australia. In recent years Mr. Lamming has devoted his time to lecturing and trade union activity.

Lamming's first novel, In the Castle of My Skin (1953) has long been recognized as a foundation text of Caribbean literature. Sandra Pouchet Paquet describes it as an "autobiographical novel of childhood and adolescence written against the anonymity and alienation from self and community the author experienced in London at the age of twenty-three." His next novel, The Emigrants, deals with a group of West Indian expatriates who, like Lamming, reside in England. His more recent works depart from this semi-autobiographical format. Of Age and Innocence and Season of Adventure take place on Lamming's fictional Caribbean island of San Cristobal and, according to Jan Carew, represent an attempt "to rediscover a history of himself by himself." His next novel, Water with Berries, describes various flaws of West Indian society through the plot of Shakespeare's The Tempest. Natives of My Person, his final novel, is an account of the voyage of a slave-trading ship on its voyage from Europe to Africa to the North American colonies. His non-fiction work The Pleasures of Exile (1960) is acknowledged as a seminal text on the cultural history of the region.

The Jagan Lecture Planning Committee is proud to host George Lamming as the keynote speaker for the the Fourth Cheddi Jagan Lecture.

March 2, 2002
7:30 - 9:00 p.m.

Vari Hall Lecture Room A
York University, Keele Campus
Toronto, ON

Gazette article on this event:
http://www.yorku.ca/ycom/gazette/past/archive/2002/040302/issue.htm#6

A few George Lamming Links:
Recent Interview: Damming Lamming
1999 Interview in Caribbean Writer (excerpt)
1989 Interview

We gratefully aknowledge the Emory University webpage on George Lamming, designed by James Hare, as a source of much of the text above, describing Mr. Lamming and his career.

The Jagan Lectures commemorate the life and vision of the late Dr. Cheddi Jagan, Caribbean thinker, politician, and political visionary. The series of annual lectures is founded upon the idea that the many and varied dimensions of Chedii Jagan’s belief in the possibility of a New Global Human Order should be publicly acknowledged as part of his permanent legacy to the world.
 

CERLAC and the Rural Community Development Group (RCDG)
present

A BROWN BAG SEMINAR
 

Neo-liberalism in Rural Mexico

with
Hepzibah Muñoz
 

Thursday, February 28, 2002
2:00 - 3:30 p.m.
Room  390 York Lanes

This study will present an analysis of the politics of economic restructuring in rural Mexico that accompanied economic liberalisation and agrarian reform, based on Antonio Gramsci’s and Robert Cox’s analyses of historical transformations as a result of the combination of international and domestic factors. The speaker will examine how the convergence of interests among different social forces within the Mexican power bloc and changes at the world level set the conditions for neoliberal restructuring in rural Mexico.  Attention will be paid to how internal factors such as the hegemonic power of the Mexican state and the official party facilitated the adoption of the neoliberal reforms in the Mexican countryside (i.e. land commodification),  were later locked-in within the new constitutional framework of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Hepzibah Muñoz Martínez, MA & Ph D candidate in Political Science at York, B.A. in International Studies Universidad de Monterrey.  In her Master's Research Project, she studied neoliberal reform in rural Mexico. Currently, she is working on the effects of  the mobility of financial capital on Mexico’s banking system.

Everyone is welcome!

CERLAC presents

One step forward, two backwards:
The 2001 Nicaraguan Elections in Historical Perspective
 

with Visiting Speaker

Alejandro Bendaña
Centre for International Studies, Nicaragua

On November 4, 2001, a national election was held in Nicaragua. Liberal Party candidate Enrique Bolaños Geyer was elected over former Sandinista comandante Daniel Ortega of the FSLN by a margin of more than 13 percent.

The presentation will deal the internal and international factors that conditioned the political-electoral process and that shape institutional development in Nicaragua.

See also our announcement about the CERLAC Conference Latin America and the Caribbean after September 11, for which Dr. Bendaña will be the keynote speaker. Additional information and links about the speaker are provided there. Thanks also to the co-sponsors of that event (York International, International Development Studies, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and Founders College at York, as well as KAIROS), whose support has helped us to bring Dr. Bendaña to York.

Thursday, February 7th, 2002
11:30 am - 1:30 pm

Social Science Lounge
(Room S752, Ross Bldg.)
York University

The Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC)
at York University extends an

Open Invitation to a Workshop on

Friday, February 8, 2002
9:15 AM – 5:00 PM

Founders Senior Commons Room
Third Floor, Founders College
York University, Toronto
 

Admission is free; registration not required.

“Everything has changed,” proclaimed the mainstream media after the horrific events of September 11. But from the vantage point of the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean, many things remain the same: persistent poverty, striking social and economic disparities, speculative capital and financial crises, environmental degradation, growing human insecurity, and expanding conflict zones. Some things do seem to have changed, though. The “war on terrorism” (following in the footsteps of the “war on drugs”) provides further opportunity for the strengthening of authoritarian forces and the aggressive pursuit of U.S. interests in the region, while regional economies are “liberalized” and integrated to better respond to the needs of transnational capital.

 Alejandro Bendaña, a noted Nicaraguan intellectual and social activist, will be the keynote speaker in a one-day workshop to discuss these issues, what they signify for the future, and how citizens and social movements in the region are responding to the challenges. Alejandro is the Director of Managua-based Centro de Estudios Internacionales (CEI), an NGO that engages in peace building (education and action) and in research and advocacy on global themes relating to economic justice. He was Secretary-General of Nicaragua’s Foreign Ministry during the Sandinista government, works for the Jubilee 2000 South campaign that advocates for debt cancellation, and is the author of Power Lines: U.S. Domination in the New Global Order (Click here for a book reviews by the War Resisters' League and by  the Institute for Global Dialogue . See links given below for more Bendaña publications on-line).

As the purpose of this event is to encourage debate, ample time will be provided for open discussion of the issues during the day. Come prepared to participate!

Program

The Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program (LACS), Founders College, and CERLAC
present:
 

LATIN AMERICAN & CARIBBEAN
DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL
 

February 4 - 8, 2002
York University
 

Featuring an exciting new selection of documentary films about various countries in the region.
Jury positions available!
 

Everyone is welcome.  Show times and titles listed below.
Oh, and there will be free food!
 

The festival is part of International Development Week. It is sponsored by York International and the Divisions of Humanities and Social Science.

For more information, please contact: lacsfilmfest02@hotmail.com

PROGRAM

CERLAC Presents

Child Malnutrition and Social Inequality
in the Andean Region

with visiting speaker

Carlos Larrea, Ph.D.
FLACSO-Quito, Ecuador; Visiting Scholar at Harvard University; CERLAC Fellow

Dr. Larrea will discuss the findings of his recent research on the relationships between social inequality and malnutrition in the Andean Region. His presentation will be based largely on the article "Child Malnutrition and Social Inequality in the Andean Region," co-authored with Wilma Freire, which presents and analyzes recent empirical evidence from household surveys on chronic child malnutrition in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, with special attention to socioeconomic, regional, and ethnic differences.

Wednesday, February 6th, 2002
11:30 am - 1:00 PM

Social Science Lounge
(Room S752, Ross Bldg.)
York University

Co-sponsored by the Center for Feminist Research and the Health and Society Program at York University.

CERLAC presenta / presents

una presentatión con / a presentation with

GLORIA CAMACHO

sobre / on

Estan  bienvenidos  todos. / Everyone is welcome.
This presentation will be in Spanish with English translation.

CERLAC Presents
A Brown Bag Seminar

"The Head Cornerstone"
Poverty & the Jamaican Family

Ruth Hamill (Ph.D. Candidate, Social Anthropology) will screen and discuss her film, "The Head Cornerstone," which chronicles the struggles of an impoverished family in Jamaica.

Wednesday January 30th 2002
1 - 2:30 pm
Nat Taylor Cinema
(Ground Floor, North Ross Bldg.)
York University

CERLAC Presents

This event will feature the screening of two new short documentary films on the issues of war and displacement in Colombia, followed by a discussion led by the films producers and other informed activists and scholars.

The Hidden Story: Confronting Colombia's Dirty War is a 29 minute video produced by the Latin America Human Rights team of KAIROS (formerly Inter-Church Committee on Human Rights in Latin America) in partnership with various other organizations; it premiered in October 2001. It reveals the reality of Colombia's dirty war through powerful images and the equally powerful testimony of men and women who risk their lives each day to build peace with social justice in Colombia. "The Hidden Story" analyzes the roots of the conflict, the role of the US sponsored Plan Colombia and the so-called war on drugs, Canadian connections, and the importance of international support for those working for social justice in Colombia.

Shiela Gruner's short (approx. 15 mins.) video, "What Happened in El Firme: Forced Displacement on the Colombian Pacific," was filmed last August. With the situation on the Naya River in Colombia worsening constantly, this video presents testimony on the situation from members of  local communities and from social movement leaders, as well as from Canadians who visited the region. The film is a provocative discussion piece sure to stimulate a productive exchange on the issues of Canadian involvement, development, culture, and forced displacment in the current conflict in Colombia.
 

Wednesday January 23rd, 2002
1 - 2:30 pm
Nat Taylor Cinema
(Ground Floor, North Ross)
York University

CERLAC presents

Amazonian Discourses:
A Look at the Brazilian Amazon

The speakers, visiting professors at York for the current academic year, will discuss current discursive practices on the Brazilian Amazon.

After the brutal assasination of the rubber tapper Chico Mendes, the Brazilian Amazon was inundated with national and international writers, journalists and film makers trying to see and tell the world what was happening in this region. Articles, videos and films about the Amazon were produced from different points of view. This background encouraged the speakers to produce a book of essays analysing how Amazonia has been described.

In this talk, the speakers will explore questions such as: What discourses on the Amazon are being employed by American travel-writers, journalists, and researchers since the assasination of Chico Mendes?  What practical level of discourse about the region obtains in the academic environment of South-Eastern Brazil? How do people who inhabit the region read these discursive practices?

As part of the presentation, the video "Women rubber-tappers" will be screened.
 

Tuesday January 15, 2002
1:00 – 2:30 pm
390 York Lanes

Everyone is welcome.

CERLAC and the Rural Community Development Group (RCDG)
present

ARGENTINA:
A Crisis Foretold

After 25 years of economic reform, what does Argentina have to show for it?  Unprecedented levels of poverty and unemployment, a growing concentration of wealth, a shrinking economy and a monumental public debt.  While these years of reform allowed the economic elites of the country to greatly increase their wealth, they also created the conditions that made Argentina’s current social explosion and political crisis inevitable.  Meanwhile, those with power arrogantly continue to insist, in the midst of disaster, that there was no other way for Argentina.

CERLAC Director Viviana Patroni, Ph.D., studies the labour movement in Argentina. She was in the country during the time of the December protests and over-turning of the government. Her commentaries have been featured extensively in national print and broadcast media coverage of current events.

Thursday January 17, 2002
2:00 – 3:30 pm
The Douglas Verney Room, S674 Ross
York University

    It is still too early to say how this crisis will be resolved. It is   difficult to see how what Argentina has lost can be rebuilt  soon  enough to appease those who no longer believe that increasing the prosperity of a few will eventually bring benefits to all. One thing,  though, seems clear: inequality, social exclusion, and the concentration of power are a poor foundation on which to build a decent and livable society.

The Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC)
& SalvAid present

Visiting Speakers

speaking  on

Youth Community Organizing
& Rural Development Projects
in El Salvador

Nubia Castillo and Emilio Espín Amprimo from El Salvador are visiting various cities in Ontario and Quebec, promoting the rural development work of Canadian NGO SalvAide in El Salvador.

Nubia Castillo will describe her experiences with youth community organizing and the School of Youth Leaders, and will discuss the situation of youth in her country. Emilio Espin Amprino will talk about the challenges that face the rural population of the country, and about the possibilities for rural development in present-day El Salvador.

Friday, Nov. 30th, 2001
1:00 - 3:00 p.m.
305 York Lanes

Everyone is welcome.

BACKGROUND LINKS:
About Salvaid
Salvadoran NGOs supported by SalvAid: CRIPDES, CORDES

CERLAC & the RCDG present
 

A Panel Discussion:

Demystifying Social Capital

with

Susan Spronk Ph.D Candidate in Political Science
John Cameron Ph.D Candidate in Political Science
Eduardo Canel Ph.D in Sociology
 

Since Robert Putnam’s work Making Democracy Work in 1993, “social capital” has become one of the key terms of the development lexicon.  However, the adoption and popularity of the language of “social capital” in the development community has not been without controversy.

Susan Spronk will investigate the theoretical origins of the concept of “social capital”, seeking to demonstrate that its popularity reflects the growing influence of neo-classical economics over the social sciences and how this convergence has served to soften the critical contribution of the neo-institutionalist literature on the developmental state.

John Cameron will offer a critical analysis of the deployment of the concept of "social capital" in Latin America based on field research in Chile and Ecuador. He will offer an analysis of the World Bank's recently developed policies to promote "social capital", focusing on the contradictions between those policies and the Bank's broader macro-economic policy agenda. John will argue that rather than promoting social capital formation, contemporary macro-economic policies are in fact, undermining and destroying it.

Eduardo Canel will discuss the experience of Montevideo to assess the usefulness of the concept of social capital to explain the different degrees of success with which local communities seized the opportunities that were created by decentralization.

Thursday, November 29th
1:30 – 3:30 p.m.
York Lanes 390
 

Everybody is welcome.
 

CERLAC Presents visiting speaker:
Jorge Salazar
 

Making Sense of 'Chaos':
An examination of the Colombian conflict

Monday, October 1, 2001
 1 - 2.30 p.m.
390 York Lanes
 

 CERLAC Presents
A BROWN BAG SEMINAR:

NAFTA & Environmental Politics in Mexico:
The challenge to participatory planning and sustainable agriculture

Wednesday, October 10
1 - 2.30 p.m.
390 York Lanes

The Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC)
The Rural and Community Development Group (RCDG)
and the African Studies Program

PRESENT
 

Biotechnology and Rural Development:
Promise and Peril for Southern Africa

Noah Zerbe is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Political Science, York University. He will discuss the impact of recent biotechnological advances on  agriculture in Southern Africa. Drawing primarily from the Zimbabwean and South African cases, he will examine: (1) Promises and Dangers of agricultural biotechnology  for farmers in Southern Africa; (2) Implications of international agreements  such as the GATT/WTO and Convention on Biological Diversity for agriculture in  Southern Africa; and (3) African alternatives to intellectual property rights
in biotechnology.

Thursday, October 25, 2001
1:30 – 3:00 p.m.
390 York Lanes

CERLAC presents

A presentation on

Cuba and the Global Economy

with
Visiting Speaker

Elena Caridad Alvarez González
Associate Prof., University of Havana; Director, National Institute for Economic Research (INIE)
 

Thursday, October 18, 2001
3  - 4:30 pm
390 York Lanes
York University

Prof. González will address the current economic situation in Cuba and future propsects in light of global conditions. She will also discuss Cuba's perspective on globalization and its hemispheric manifestation through such mechanisms as the proposed FTAA agreement.

Prof. González has long been an instructor and researcher at the University of Havana and INIE. She received the 1994 Cuban Academy of Sciences Award for a study on possible secenarios for the evolution of the US blockade against Cuba. She has also worked for the Central Planning Board of the Cuban government and publishes and speaks internationally on the external sector of the Cuban economy and macroeconomic issues. She is president of the Scientific Council at INIE, a collaborator of the Centre for World Economy Studies, a founding member of the Association for Cuban Economicsts, and a member of LASA.

The Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean
The Department of Film and Video and the Graduate Programme in Film and Video

present

a seminar on

Women in Cuban Cinema
with Visiting Speaker

MAYRA VILASÍS
Cuban film director and writer, ICAIC; Adjunct Professor in Women’s Studies, University of Havana
 

Prof. Vilasís will explore the status of gender issues in Cuba through a discussion on women in Cuban film, illustrated with clips from relevant sources. She will relate these issues to questions of national culture and identity in the current context of globalization, with a focus on the implications for Cuban national cinema of increasing foreign sponsorship.

Wednesday, October 31, 2001
1:30 – 3:00 pm

The Sound Stage
Department of Film and Video
(Room 130, Centre for Film and Video)
York University

Prof. Vilasís has worked in the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC) since 1974 as an assistant director, a co-screen writer and a writer mainly for documentary films, and has been directing films since 1985. She has published criticism, interviews and film articles in various magazines and periodicals, and teaches courses internationally on film and filmmaking. She is Adjunct Professor at the University of Havana and a member of its Women Studies Department. She is now working as Coordinator of the Screen Writing Department at the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Video in San Antonio de los Baños International Film and Video School (EICTV). For more information about Prof. Vilasís, see: http://www.cubacine.cu/realizad/mvilasis.html (in Spanish)
 

Everyone is welcome!
 

Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean
Presents A BROWN BAG SEMINAR:
 

Sombras Chinas / Chinese Shadows
José Martí and the Return of the Repressed

Frank F. Scherer, Ph.D. Candidate / Dept. of Social and Political Thought, will focus not so much on the “words” of the renowned and celebrated Cuban writer and revolutionary hero as on his silence(s). To begin with, Marti was born and raised in the Cuba of the “Yellow Trade”, the infamous commerce that brought over 250.000 Chinese “coolies” to the island between 1847 and 1874 alone. And yet, the 24 volumes of his Obras Completas, or Complete Works, never mention this - in all its facets - significant presence. A silence, and a repression, that reveals its own eloquence as it opens space for an exploration of several intriguing elements such as: a) Marti’s writings concerned with Chinese immigrants in New York; b) the publication in 1892 of The Chinese in the Cuban Revolution by Gonzalo de Quesada, Marti’s secretary and life-long friend; and c) how this silence is to be interpreted in the context of Martí’s theories of race as well as his path-breaking conceptualization of “Our America”.

Frank is a collaborator of the Caribbean Religions Project and the contributor of a chapter to that project's latest publication: Nation Dance. He is also the winner of the Graduate Level 2001 Baptista Essay Prize.

Tuesday, November 6th, 2001
1 - 2.30 p.m.
230R York Lanes
(German and European Studies)

The Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean
Presents A BROWN BAG SEMINAR:

 The Peace Communities
of War-torn Colombia:

  A slide show and first-hand account of rural communities struggling to find peace in the midst of war

Scott Pearce, MA candidate in Political Science, worked for ten-months in Uraba, one of the "conflict zones" of Colombia, with Peace Brigades International. His work involved accompanying local human rights workers and leaders from the Peace Communities whose lives were threatened because of the work they were doing. The presentation will include a slide show and a first-hand account of the Peace Communities of San Jose de Apartado and Cacarica--two communities which have declared their neutrality and attempted to extracate themselves from the ongoing conflict in Colombia."

Thursday, November 15th, 2001
1 - 2.30 p.m.
278 York Lanes
(in front of FGS)

The Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC)
& The Rural and Community Development Group (RCDG)

Present A BROWN BAG SEMINAR:
 

Negotiating "Resettlement"

The World Bank, Transnational Mining Companies,
and Local Communities in Peru

David Szablowski, (D. Jur. candidate, Osgoode Law School), will discuss the experiences and interactions between local communities and transnational mining companies (TMCs) in Peru. In the last fifteen years, globalizing political, economic, legal, and technological changes have resulted in an explosion of new mining activity in regions across the globe that were previously inaccessible to mining development. TMCs and the local communities of these regions have as a result been propelled into new and complex encounters in which the rights, benefits, and losses of mining development are divided among them. This seminar will present a study of one such transnational legal order, the World Bank Operational Directive 4.30 on Involuntary Resettlement and its regulatory influence upon the corporate-community relations relating to the development of a Canadian-owned mining mega-project in the Peruvian Andes.

Thursday, Nov. 22, 2001
2 – 3:30 p.m.
390 York Lanes

Everyone is welcome.
 

 BACKGROUND LINKS:
Peruvian Farmers Battle Canadian Mining Giant Over Future of Their Lands
by Kevin G. Hall; July 13, 2001 in the Seattle Times

Mining in Peru

Mining Companies Invade Peru's Andean Cloud Forests

Mineral Rights vs Community Rights in Peru

See the York Gazette article on this event.

The text of Amanda's lecture at this event is in preparation for publication as a Colloquia Paper by CERLAC. Return to the website in future weeks, and check the CERLAC Publications page.

A portion of Amanda's presentation was broadcast on CBC Radio's "As It Happens" on Friday May 25, 2001.

**

CERLAC and York International presented
The Second Bi-annual Michael Baptista Lecture

featuring
Colombian human rights worker

Amanda Romero-Medina
Quaker International Affairs Representative for the Andean Region,
American Friends Service Committee (ASFC) in Bogotá, Colombia.

who spoke on

COLOMBIA:
Internal Displacement and Humanitarian Crisis

The internal armed conflict in Colombia is producing the largest numbers of forcibly displaced populations and asylum
seekers in this hemisphere. The situation worsened in the last decade as armed parties increased their attacks against the
civilian population. Forced displacement of populations constitutes a serious human rights violation, and in Colombia
this displacement is itself the result of widespread human rights abuses and violations of International Humanitarian Law
that continue unpunished. Despite important recommendations by the United Nations and OAS human rights bodies -
including the presence in the country of permanent programmes and offices of the UNHCR and High Commissioner for
Human Rights - the Colombian government has chosen to work for a peace agreement with the leftist guerrillas without
tackling the role and criminal activities of self-defence or paramilitary groups.

Respected Colombian human rights educator and activist Amanda Romero-Medina brings over twenty years of
experience to this presentation, in which she discussed the present humantitarian crisis in Colombia, its roots, and
future prospects in light of Colombian governmental policy, external factors, and the committed efforts of civil society
organizations promoting non-violent alternatives.

This event took place:
Wednesday the 23rd of May, 2001
in the Senate Chamber,
9th Floor North Ross Bldg.
York University

Amanda also participated in the conference "Violence and Peacebuilding In Colombia", May 24- 25, 2001.

Background documents:
"Colombia's Invisible Wars" by Liisa North and Shiela Gruner, from Peace Magazine, Apr-June 2001.
Background Brief on Plan Colombia, by Liisa North and Louis Lefeber, November 2000.

A report on this well-attended conference is in preparation and will be published as a CERLAC Report. Return to the website in future weeks, and check the CERLAC Publications page.

**

The conference recieved front-line attention in the International Section of the Globe and Mail on May 28, 2001.
The text of the article follows below.

New approach to Colombia urged
 Ottawa should distance itself from U.S. militaristic strategy, conference told
PAUL KNOX
The Globe and Mail
Monday, May 28, 2001

CERLAC and The Nathanson Centre
at York University

presented the following

Conference on

Violence and Peacebuilding
in Colombia

This event took place on:
May 24 – 25, 2001
Founders Senior Common Room
305 Founders College
York University

Thursday May 24

Friday May 25

CERLAC acknowledges the generous support of:
The Nathanson Centre on Organized Crime and Corruption; Osgoode Law School; The Office of the Vice-President - Research and Innovation; the Division of Social Science; the Department of Political Science; Founders College; and the Faculty of Arts - all at York University.

Background documents:
"Colombia's Invisible Wars" by Liisa North and Shiela Gruner, from Peace Magazine, Apr-June 2001.
Background Brief on Plan Colombia, by Liisa North and Louis Lefeber, November 2000.
Profiting from Repression: Canadian Firms in Colombia..., by Asad Ismi, Rights Action.