2009-2010 Events

Latin American Politics Study Group

Join us in our first meeting!

Weds March 31
3:00 PM
Conference Centre, 5th Floor YRT (York Research Tower)

We invite you to a meeting to discuss the creation of a thematic study group on contemporary Latin American politics.

Our aim is to create an interdisciplinary space in which to share our research and political concerns related to:

• neoliberal hegemony in the region,
• the turn to the left,
• the relationships between left and center-left governments and social movements,
• key public policy areas, and
• the recent re-emergence of the right

among other topics.

Please let us know if you plan to attend:

Ruth Felder, Political Science - felder_ruth@yahoo.com.ar
Paulo Ravecca , Political Science - paulorav@yorku.ca

Strong challenges to neoliberal orthodoxy have emerged in the region in the past decade, including the rise of powerful social movements and the so-called “pink tide” policies stemming from the electoral victories of left and center-left governments. Much debate and renewed analytic effort is required to understand this increasingly complex political landscape and the uncertain longer-term outcomes recent developments may bring about. Arguably, these recent developments may produce post-neoliberal development models, renewed neoliberalism, or authoritarian setbacks.

Recent critical analyses of Latin American politics have highlighted several dimensions --culture, religious practices, indigenous communities and their relation with “nature,” power relations in everyday life, etc.—that were generally absent in traditional approaches. However, while shedding new light on important aspects of Latin American politics, these new perspectives tend to ignore economic, political and institutional factors that to a large extent shape Latin American societies and, as a result, they offer oversimplified understandings or even a “progressive” re-exotization of the region.

Political analysis is especially relevant today as Latin America undergoes dramatic changes that will affect the future of the region and its people in ways still unknown. As a starting point, such analysis must acknowledge that existing political institutions--such as the state, political parties, democracy, etc.--are not mere “western” impositions but have rather emerged historically as the product of complex balances of forces, conflicts, and popular struggles in the region.

CERIS – The Ontario Metropolis Centre, Community Arts Practice @York (CAP), and CERLAC

Present

a Public Seminar

Latin American Artists in Toronto:
Immigrants and Artists at Work

March 23, 2010

12:30 - 2:00 pm

Conference Center, 5th floor, York Research Tower

York University

Image: Detail of mural by Rodrigo Barreda

Moderators:

Deborah Barndt, Environmental Studies and CAP
Luin Goldring, Sociology, CERLAC and CERIS

Panelists:

Rodrigo Barreda, Latin American Canadian Art Projects

Alberto Guevara, CAP Coordinator, Fine Arts
Mayahuel Tecozautla, MFA Dance, Fine Arts

At the second CERIS seminar on issues related to immigrants and the arts, panelists will reflect on their work as artists in Canada, addressing:
• Challenges faced by Latin American artists working in the arts sector
• How artists negotiate their identities in their artistic production processes
• The role of funding bodies and gallery practices in shaping “immigrant art”
• How artists develop an aesthetic in the context of Canadian multicultural policy
• Contrasts between artistic production cultures “here” and “there”

This seminar is free and open to the public.

More info

Please RSVP to ceris.reception@utoronto.ca or call (416) 946-3110

Read here an interview (in Spanish) with the film's producer and director, from the Argentine periodical Pagína 12.

“NEGRO CHE”: A SUMMARY

Many Argentines, if you ask, will tell you: ‘In Argentina there are no black people.’ “NEGRO CHE” unearths the hidden history of black people in Argentina and their contributions to Argentine culture and society, from the slaves who fought in the revolutionary wars against Spain, to the contemporary struggles of black Argentines against racism and marginalization. The film is mostly based on interviews with black Argentines from a variety of backgrounds and provides a counter-narrative to the national myth of Argentina’s exclusively European heritage.

In fact, the first Argentine president, Bernardino Rivadavia, was of African descent. This documentary details black Argentines’ important participation in the revolutionary wars and shows how tango, a touchstone for Argentine national identity, is rooted in milonga, candombe, canyengue, and other musical and dance forms of 19th century black Argentines.

“NEGRO CHE” exposes how the whitewashing of the Argentine self-image came about during the 19th century. Drafting of blacks for the wars of independence (1810-1816), the bloody war with Paraguay (1865-1870), the civil wars (1820-1853), their quarantining during the yellow fever epidemics (1871), as well as miscegenation diminished the black population, spreading African blood throughout the Argentine population, including those who now consider themselves “white.”

But the descendants of the first black Argentines live on, their numbers bolstered by black immigration from Cape Verde in the early 20th century, and in the last 10 years, from West Africa.

These immigrants have made their own contributions and faced their own challenges in Argentine society.

“NEGRO CHE” responds to contemporary racism and marginalization by presenting the voices of individual Afro-argentines, who recount their experiences of workplace discrimination, skinhead violence, the difficulty of interracial relationships, the double burden of black women, and the dangerous internalization of stereotypes by black Argentines themselves.

“NEGRO CHE” provides an important challenge to the marginalization of blacks in Argentine official history by rescuing the story of Argentina’s black cultural legacy from oblivion. It is also a gripping tale of the ways in which individual black Argentines have resisted and coped with everyday racism and are claiming their rightful place within Argentine history and culture.

RECOMMENDED READINGS:

Los afroargentinos de Buenos Aires. Andrew, George Reid 1989

Afroargentinos Hoy: invisibilización, identidad y movilización social.
Marta Maffia y Gladys Lechini (compiladoras)

Brazilian Studies Seminar

The 28th Sao Paulo Art Biennial

and the Case of the Empty Second Floor

a presentation by photographic artist and art exhibition cultural manager

Valentine Moreno

March 24th, 2010

12:30 to 2:00 p.m.
830 York Research Tower

The Sao Paulo Art Biennial is Latin America’s largest and the world’s second oldest international art exhibition, gathering artists, curators, critics, scholars, and museum and gallery directors to exhibit and discuss contemporary art. Entitled In Living Contact and on view in 2008, the 28th São Paulo Art Biennial generated a great deal of controversy when the event’s curators decided to leave the Biennial pavilion’s second floor — a 1200 square meters space — entirely empty.

The controversy culminated with 40 graffiti artists invading the Biennial’s opening event and spray-tagging the empty floor, an act handled as vandalism and the police acted violently against the supposed criminals. A female young artist was arrested and accused of destruction of cultural patrimony. Her arrest initiated a broader discussion among artists, curators, and politicians regarding the access of diverse social groups to international art events such as the Biennial.

This paper analyses the controversial events happened at this 28th Biennial, focusing on access to representation in the institutionalized environment of the exhibition. It explores how the case is been handled by the events stakeholders (artistic community, the police, and the federal government) and the different manners in which this discussion may offer multiple perspectives on concepts of architecture of representation and access to the so-called public spaces and public artistic events.

Valentine Moreno was born in Sao Paulo, where she obtained a BA in Photographic Art and Culture at Senac University in 2006. Since 2001, Moreno has worked as a cultural manager, organizing contemporary art exhibitions and cultural events in partnership with cultural institutions. She was recently selected as the Venice Apprentice, assisting with the installation of the Canada Pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale. She is currently an MA student in Museum Studies at the University of Toronto, researching the relationship between contemporary art practices and the museum institutional space.

Visit the Brazil Studies Seminar webpage

BSS Seminar

Capoeira Learning as a Spiritual Search

with

Marcio Moraes Mendes

Brazilian capoeira teacher

March 10, 2010

12.30 to 2:00 pm
Room 830, York Research Tower, York University

Marcio will present on his forthcoming book My such Capuera, a romance and an autobiography that explores capoeira as the basis of an internal spiritual search.

Marcio Moraes Mendes is from Belem, Brazil, and learned Capoeira from the Master Bezerra, a pioneer in Capoeira Teaching in Belem. Marcio taught Capoeira at the Federal University of Para, at York University, at University of Toronto, at Ryerson University, at University of West Indias and at the YMCA. He has conducted workshops in France, Portugal, Trinidad and Tobago and in the UK. He owns a Capoeira School in Toronto, Canada, called Escola de Capuera Angola. He is also a York University student at the Department of Philosophy.

NOTE: This lecture will be accompanied by an exhibition & sale of original Haitian art. Following the lecture, some of the pieces will be sold by silent auction, with all proceeds supporting a charitable cause in Haiti. (For more information on the art and the cause to be supported by its sale, scroll down; also, see the March 4 event webpage - link provided below.)

Prof. Bellegarde-Smith will also deliver the 2010 Michael Baptista Lecture

THE HAITIAN APOCALYPSE AND REBIRTH

on March 4. Visit the event webpage for more information

about that lecture, the lecturer, and the issues under debate with which he will engage.

Co-sponsored by
The Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on the Global Migrations of African Peoples, Founders College, Vanier College, New College, McLaughlin College, Winters College, Stong College,
the Departments of Humanities and History
and the Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACS) programme
at York University

and A Different Booklist bookstore

More information: cerlac@yorku.ca

Information on the Children in Crisis bibliotherapy and Creole literacy project of IBBY Haiti (Ayibbi) available here.

Visit the websites of

Arte Del Pueblo

Caribbean Studies at U of T

A Different Booklist

RedLEIDH, a joint project led by CERLAC and Osgoode Hall Law School,
invites you to a Public Lecture

Professor of Political Science, Social and Political Thought, International Development
Studies and Women’s Studies, York University

Back by popular demand, Judy Hellman will animate a workshop for graduate students

Professor Guilhermina Lavos Coimbra will analyze the history of nuclear energy in Brazil
and the current situation of energy rationing due to drought and the Kyoto Protocol.

Indigenous and Popular Resistance to Gold Mining
in Guatemala & Honduras
Rights Action Speaking Tour

with Dory Lucy Arias
of the José Alvéar Restrepo Lawyers' Collective (CAJAR)

in association with:

RedLEIDH (the Latin American Human Rights Education and Research Network – a
collaboration of Osgoode Hall Law School and CERLAC)