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6TH JAGAN LECTURE SERIES Carolyn Cooper and the Sexual Politics of Jamaican Dancehall Culture By Andrea Davis
Indigenous Struggles in the Americas and Around the World: Land, Autonomy, and RecognitionBy
Leandro Vergara-Camus Held on February 10-11, 2005 at York University in Toronto, the conference “Indigenous Struggles in the Americas and Around the World: Land, Autonomy, and Recognition” brought together a diverse group of participants made up of indigenous leaders, academics, and students from several countries and indigenous nations, activists from indigenous and non-governmental organizations, as well as representatives of government agencies, among many others.
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CULTURE & POLITICS IN URUGUAY: a
meeting with legendary singer Daniel
Viglietti On October 6, 2005, Uruguay’s legendary singer, poet and composer, Daniel Viglietti, shared his music and his thoughts about current events in Uruguay with a captivated audience of students, professors and community members at York University. Sponsored by CERLAC and the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Programme (LACS), the event included social and political analysis, anecdotes, Viglietti’s classic songs as well as newer compositions, and audience participation through not only questions and comments, but also a memorable sing-a-long.
CERLAC Fellow Eduardo Canel (Social Science, LACS) opened the event with a discussion of the current situation in Uruguay following the recent election of the Frente Amplio, a centre-left coalition, in November 2004. He spoke of a time of a great deal of optimism in Uruguay, as hopes have been lifted that with the new government’s “Social Emergency Plan,” social issues including poverty, unemployment, marginalization and popular participation will be prioritized. He also provided information about the fundraising campaign, called Mano con Mano (Hand in Hand), organized by members of the Uruguayan community in Toronto to fight poverty in Uruguay. Viglietti’s Canadian tour, organized by the Frente Amplio Support Group in Toronto, helped to raise funds for this campaign. Daniel Viglietti then delighted the audience with a number of songs, including such classics as Bandera nuestra, Cielito, América latina está gritando, and his most famous song, A desalambrar (Tear Down the Fences), which became an anthem throughout the region for social forces struggling for land reform. In between songs, Viglietti shared anecdotes about the origins of his songs, the struggles they support and the needs and hardships that they reflect. Following his discussion and performance, he responded to questions about the many challenges that face Uruguay today and about his expectations of the new government. CERLAC and those present at this exciting event were treated to a memorable and intimate afternoon with one of the top exponents of Latin America’s socially committed music.
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CULTURE AND POLITICS IN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS By Gabriela Agatiello
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A panel discussion on the context and consequences of the recent referendum in Venezuela Maria Victor Paez emphasized that democracy has been strengthened as Venezuelans take active roles in issues such as public education, public health, land reform and food security. For the first time, she contended, people are talking about human rights and developing class-consciousness. Victor pointed out that the outcome of the referendum grants international recognition to the legitimacy of the Chávez government, while the opposition has discredited itself internationally with its anti-democratic response. Nicolas Lopez discussed the role of popular organizing and participatory democracy in the Bolivarian project, noting that such principles are now included in the Bolivarian constitution. A result has been increased political consciousness in the Venezuelan population. Focusing on what can be learnt from Venezuela with respect to neoliberalism, power, and the state, Greg Albo identified some of the challenges facing Chávez: moving beyond continual campaigning and plebiscitarianism; breaking out of international isolation; gaining state control over social programs; converting oil rents into new economic development projects; and crucially, developing political power at the base. Sam Gindin discussed the challenge of learning to operate democratically and not bureaucratically, and he recognized the importance of the numerous programs being developed under Chávez: literacy programs; a free Bolivarian university with stipends for living expenses and politicized content; alternative television programming; and the beginnings of land reform and the democratization of food. All of the panelists saw the Bolivarian process underway in Venezuela, including the recent referendum, as inspiring for all of Latin America, offering us an example of what alternatives to neoliberal capitalism and globalization might look like.
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VISITING SPEAKERS
*Colombia's "Internal Enemies" and their Cry for Liberty.
Oct 12, 2004. Jasmin Hristov, MA Candidate, Sociology, CERLAC Graduate Associate.
CERLAC Winter Film Series, Tuesdays, Winter 2005. | ||
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Alfredo Saad-Filho, School of Oriental and African Studies in London, May 19, 2005.
Antonieta Barrón, September 2004 - January 2005, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
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By Andrea Davis
"Sweet and Sour Sauce: Sexual Politics in Jamaican Dancehall Culture" followed in a tradition of outstanding, but provocative, lectures given by influential Caribbean thinkers. Dr. Cooper offered an insightful and sometimes controversial engagement of Jamaican dancehall culture as a critical intervention into gendered and racialized Caribbean middle-class values. Examining the lyrics of Jamaican DJs, like Shabba Ranks and Lady Saw, Dr. Cooper deployed dancehall as a strategy of cultural resistance. She encouraged her audience to interrogate dancehall as part of a critical and complex cultural exchange that allows for particular performances of "gender" and "race," which when read within the specific cultural contexts out of which they arise offer potentially liberating possibilities. The animated question-and-answer period that followed allowed Dr. Cooper and her audience to further explore the relevance of dancehall culture within the Caribbean Diaspora and to examine the ways, sometimes problematic, in which cultures are translated across borders.
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Individual presentations touched upon a broad range of issues including threats to subsistence and indigenous ways of life, conflict over land claims, the violation of human rights, the oblivion of indigenous peoples in national historical memory, the struggle for autonomy and self-determination, the increasingly urban settings of indigenous lives, women's participation within indigenous movements and the re-invention of tradition and gender relations, as well as the recent use of the international judicial system by indigenous peoples. The conference brought to light the enormous differences existing between the struggles of indigenous people in Latin America and in Canada, but extending the discussion on indigenous struggles to include Asia and Africa complicated matters even more. However, among all these different realities, experiences, and struggles, it became evident over the course of the conference that indigenous peoples are going through profound processes of transformation, which challenge conventional perceptions and representations of indigeneity. These transformations are the result both of pressures from outside and of processes of transformation emerging from within indigenous communities, as the case of indigenous feminism indicates. Presentations and discussions pointed to the common threat to indigenous people's rights and livelihoods posed by policies and models of development imposed from above, but they also shed new light on the potential inherent in struggles initiated from below by indigenous people themselves. All in all, one of the conference's great achievements was that it dispensed with perspectives that tend to objectify indigenous people and deprive them of their agency and emphasized the fact that indigenous people in the Americas and around the world are embarking on a process of redefining their own place within, or in relation to, existing nation-states and developing new ways to respond to the challenge of neoliberal globalization. The conference was organized by The University Consortium on the Global South (UCGS) and the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC), with the collaboration of the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto and the Aboriginal Student Association at York University. The conference benefited from the financial support of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and York International, as well as various units at York University. A complete report on the conference with abstracts of every presentation will soon be available on the UCGS website: www.ucgs.yorku.ca
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On
Saturday, October 22, 2005, a rainy evening in Toronto and its suburbs,
Dr. Carolyn Cooper, Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at the
University of the West Indies (Mona Campus) kept things hot and spicy at
the sixth annual Jagan Lecture at York University. The appeal of the
Jagan Lecture Series, which commemorates the life and vision of the late
Cheddi Jagan, lies in its willingness to challenge conventional academic
boundaries and to engage subject matter that has resonance not only with
the academic community, but also with a wider Toronto-based
constituency. The success of the evening was evidenced by the large
turnout of an enthusiastic younger-than-usual audience in bold defiance
of the weather.
Soledad Bordegaray also spoke about the struggles of unemployed workers in Argentina, highlighting her involvement in the unemployed workers movement MTD La Matanza. This organization was started in 1995 as a reaction to Argentina's economic and unemployment crisis that resulted from the neoliberal restructuring of the economy during the 1990s. When everyday necessities such as paying the electricity bill became impossible, a group of people in her neighbourhood came together to help each other meet their basic needs. Rejecting the clientelist practices that have traditionally characterized the Argentine social and political landscape, they have opted for an autonomous organizational structure, emphasizing active participation within the community and collective decision-making. The organizational principles of autonomy and horizontality form the basis of all their projects and activities, which include the founding of an autonomous school, a bakery project, and a book titled "From Guilt to Self-management."