CERLAC Review: Students

Dolores Figueroa, originally from Mexico City, left her home in Nicaragua in 2000 to do her MA at York University. She was participating in the Interlinkage Project jointly run by CERLAC and the University of the Autonomous Regions of the Caribbean Coast (URACCAN) in Nicaragua.

Seven years later, Dolores is now close to finishing her PhD at York in the Department of Sociology. For the past six years, she has examined women’s political participation and activism in Indigenous social movements. In a comparative study of Nicaragua and Ecuador, she explores Indigenous women’s contested locations in their sociopolitical and ethno-political organizations. Dolores seeks to understand how Indigenous women insert themselves within spaces in which Indigenous people are facing a long-term struggle for recognition, and how they advance struggles for women’s rights and recognition within these spaces.

Congratulations to the students who successfully completed the diploma program in 2006 & 2007

Melisa Breton (MA Political Science). Racial Identities in the Dominican Republic: Neoliberalism, Whiteness and the Law. March 2007.

Jennifer Faith Boundy (MA Women’s Studies). Interrogating Solidarities: Self-Reflexive Praxis in Transnational Activism with Women of Chiapas. March 2007.

John Carlaw (MA Political Science). “Low Intensity Democracy” and Human Rights in the Dominican Republic. November 2006.

Simon Granovsky-Larsen (MA Social and Political Thought). Perpetual Impunity and the (Un)Rule of Law: The Guatemalan Commission for the Investigation of Illegal Groups and Clandestine Security Organizations (CICIACS). April 2007.

Mark Hostetler (PhD Geography). Enhancing Local Livelihood Options: Capacity Development and Participatory Project Monitoring in Caribbean Nicaragua. April 2007.

Loretta Lynn Murphy (MA Translation). The Migration Of Meaning: Of Orçamento Participativo In Porto Alegre And Participatory Budgeting In The Toronto Community Housing Corporation. Fall 2007.

Rachel O’Donnell (MA Political Science). An Ongoing Assimilation Project: The Violence of Developing Nationhood in Guatemala. August 2006.

Kamla Ross MacGregor (MA Political Science). The Politics of Civil Society in Jamaica. 2007.

CERLAC is pleased to introduce changes to our graduate diploma program in Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACS), designed to make the program more flexible, participatory, and rewarding. Students now require only one faculty supervisor instead of a three-person supervisory committee, and must complete the following requirements along with their graduate degree at York University:

• Have at least two months of experience, beyond simple tourism, in the region

• Complete a third research paper or an oral examination demonstrating breadth of knowledge of the region

• Participate in ten CERLAC events or activities, with written commentaries on at least five

As an example of a newer breed of conservation projects which re-conceptualizes local actors as ‘conservation partners’ rather than simple agents of ‘destruction,’ I anticipated that a study of the MMBC would allow me to test many of the claims supporting this approach, specifically regarding the nature of participation and the extent to which space existed for genuine debate and dialogue.

During my eight months of fieldwork, what became particularly clear in the case of the MMBC was that despite the rhetorical objectives of the GEF and the project’s Implementing Agency, the World Bank, “participation” has remained remarkably shallow. From my fieldwork, I have learned that this has been the case for a number of reasons. First, the project was designed before any communities were consulted about what they might want, or regarding their understanding of biodiversity challenges locally. This meant that critical stakeholders were excluded from a crucial step in project development.

Second, participating communities themselves were in many cases selected based on their political allegiance to the then-ruling PRI, ignoring vital biological data, which should have been considered in the geographical distribution of focal areas. Third, the MMBC treats participating communities as both homogenous and harmonious, neglecting the very real power relations delineated along class, gender, and ethnic lines that exist within any social formation. This has ultimately privileged the participation of an elite minority within the overarching project framework. Lastly, within the project, biodiversity is valued not for the cultural, spiritual, and livelihood functions it serves, but for its value on the market. The effect has been to preclude alternative understandings of this critical resource, with wide-ranging livelihood implications.

Rather than providing a genuine opportunity for participatory conservation and development, many suspect the Corridor simply represents another tool of power through which local elites, government officials, and foreign interests may benefit. While this may not be the case entirely, the pervasiveness of this belief surely necessitates more than passing reflection on the project itself. What’s more, the MMBC has been used by some as a tool in the agrarian conflict in Chiapas, whereby they have sought the removal, with project funds, of local communities classified as “invaders” within the Lacandon Jungle. Not surprisingly, such communities are frequently sympathetic with the Zapatista movement’s call for justice in the resolution of land disputes in the region, and many have been awaiting official regularization of their lands for decades and should in no way be considered illegal invaders. Should we be surprised that with such intense conflict, projects that “depoliticize the landscape” confront serious obstacles? Indeed, the project was stalled for a number of years due to inter-community conflict on the issue of land amongst other things, so that by September 2006 no projects were yet underway, despite initial project commencement in 2001. Combined, such factors do not bode well for democratic processes, participatory struggles, or biodiversity conservation—seriously calling into question business-as-usual top-down schemes dressed up in shallow participatory garb.

Kate Ervine is a doctoral candidate in York’s Department of Political Science. On February 1, 2007, she delivered a CERLAC Brown Bag Seminar on her field research, entitled “Assessing Participatory Conservation and Development: Unequal Relations of Power, Competing Interests and the Politics of the Local.” Her field research was partially funded by CIDA’s Canada Corps - University Partnership Program Internship.

In Nicaragua, she worked with Miskitu women members of YATAMA (Organizations of the Peoples of the Mother Earth, in Miskitu), an Indigenous political party and the main political organization of the Miskitu People. In the highlands of Ecuador, she developed a collaborative relationship with Kichwa women members of the Indigenous Kichwa People’s National Confederation, ECUARUNARI, the main organization of the Kichwa People. Her research has been facilitated by a Doctoral Research Award from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).

Many of the Indigenous women Dolores has worked with are hesitant to openly discuss gender inequalities that exist within their communities, as they do not want to create space for criticism by outsiders. The challenge, says Dolores, is to find a balance between advancing a collective agenda on one hand and advancing women’s rights on the other.

In her year of research in Nicaragua, Dolores was readily welcomed by female leaders. Later, in Ecuador, she participated in the ECUARUNARI Dolores Cacuango School of Women’s Leadership, which offers political, administrative, and Spanish-language education for local Indigenous women leaders. While this school was initially wary of receiving an outsider in the community, Dolores’ involvement with YATAMA and URACCAN provided a bridge, and soon she was welcomed to teach, prepare materials, write news reports, and engage in her research.

In addition to her fieldwork and studies, Dolores has also supervised students at URACCAN and collaborated with the Center for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Women on the “Research Agenda on Violence against Women in the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua.” In December 2006 she published a paper entitled “Interview with Mirna Cunningham Kain” in the International Feminist Journal of Politics (www.tandf.co.uk/journals) and contributed “Apuntes sobre genero, desarrollo sustentable y manejo de recursos naturales” to The Rama People: Struggling for Land and Culture, edited by Miguel Gonzalez, Svein Jentoff, Arja Loskinen, and Diala Lopez.

In October 2007 Dolores was a guest speaker at the Foro Universal de las Culturas in Monterrey, México, where she presented a paper entitled “Construyendo una experiencia de educación intercultural: Universidad de las Regiones Autónomous de la Costa y Caribe Nicaragüense (URACCAN).” Earlier that year Dolores presented a paper entitled “Diverse Experiences of Training on Human and Women’s Rights and Indigenous Women’s Leadership in Central America and Ecuador” at the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) conference in Montreal, and taught a summer term course at York University called “Advanced Seminar in Development Studies: Contentions to Modernization and Globalization.”

Dolores has embraced the challenge of reconciling the world of academia and the URACCAN commitment to community development and the participatory production of knowledge. Her PhD work has led her to explore different methods of training in women’s rights and human rights for Indigenous women, and she has sought to establish a point of encounter for the realization of these rights. Dolores believes that education is an important part of development, and hopes to move ahead as both a researcher and teacher of human rights and women’s rights. With a clear passion for her research and a strong commitment to working towards the advancement of the rights of Indigenous women, she will no doubt continue to contribute a great deal to both endeavours.

Alejandro Campos-Garcia (PhD, Sociology) is researching public policies against racism in Latin America (Cuba & Mexico). His most recent publication was in Reforma y Democracia, titled “¿Reforma Organizacional de Gobierno por Diseño Genérico? El Nuevo Institucionalismo Económico en Acción: El Caso del Modelo Integral de Desempeño de los Organismos Internos de Control en México.” In addition to various publications, he has also presented papers at the international conference “Latin America-Europe Meeting on Organizational Studies” (2006) and attended the Fourteenth Annual “Eyes on the Mosaic” conference in 2007. He is the holder of a Ford Foundation Grant and a Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia Grant, both since 2006.

John Carlaw (PhD, Political Science). After filling in as the Administrative Assistant at CERLAC for most of 2006, John was awarded a SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship to pursue his PhD. He is studying Comparative Politics and International Relations with a focus on Latin America. During the fall of 2006, he successfully defended his MRP, titled “‘Social Peace’ and Democracy for Whom: Low Intensity Democracy and Human Rights in the Dominican Republic,” and earned a CERLAC diploma in Latin American and Caribbean Studies.

Timothy David Clark (PhD, Political Science) is in the second year of his PhD program. His focus is Latin America, international political economy, rural development strategies, food sovereignty, and mineral and resource policy. Until 2007, Timothy was the Coordinator of the UCT Project in Temuco, Chile, where he also served as Adjunct Director of the Centre for Sustainable Development and taught anthropology; he is presently the Coordinator of the University Consortium on the Global South (UCGS) at York University. In 2006-2007 Timothy co-edited and authored the book Community Rights and Corporate Responsibility: Canadian Mining and Oil Companies in Latin America with Liisa North and Viviana Patroni (see p.6), and he also published and presented articles on food security in rural Mapuche communities.

Megan Cotton-Kinch (MA, Anthropology) is studying corporate social responsibility and extractive industries in Central America.

Natalia Crowe (MES, Environmental Studies) is examining the Great Lakes and Hudson Bay watersheds as natural and cultural landscapes. In the summer of 2006, Natalia completed work on the role of Indigenous ecological knowledge in understanding the meanings of water and its relations to place. During her graduate assistantship at CERLAC, Natalia worked in the Documentation Centre.

Kate Ervine (PhD, Political Science) completed eight months of IDRC-funded fieldwork in Chiapas, Mexico during 2005-2006, where she was studying the implementation of the Mexico-Mesoamerican Biological Corridor. In the final three months of her fieldwork, she also undertook a CIDA-funded Canada Corps-University Partnership Program Internship on Environmental Governance, which specifically sought to identify the challenges and difficulties of implementing designed conservation and development projects at the local level (see p.16). Her article “The Greying of Green Governance: Power Politics and the Global Environment Facility,” recently appeared in the December 2007 issue of the journal Capitalism, Nature, Socialism.

Vanessa Goettler (MA, Political Science) is currently studying comparative politics and international relations at York, looking to focus her research on the political economy of Hugo Chávez’ Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela. She also worked as a GA at CERLAC, administering the diploma program in Latin American and Caribbean Studies.

Simon Granovsky-Larsen (PhD, Political Science) is completing PhD coursework in comparative politics and international relations. In 2007, Simon published a short book in Guatemala on the situation faced by human rights defenders there, and spoke on a number of CERLAC and Global South panels. Simon has also been active with the recently formed Extractive Industries Research Group and the York Coalition for Responsible Investment. His doctoral proposal will address various responses to mining projects in post-war Guatemala, and he will be conducting fieldwork in Guatemala beginning January 2009.

Jasmin Hristov (PhD, Sociology) is studying state-sanctioned violence, neoliberalism, and rural movements in Latin America. She won CERLAC’s 2006 Michael Baptista Essay Prize at the graduate level. Her book manuscript on the restructuring of the Colombian state’s coercive apparatus and the phenomenon of paramilitarism has been accepted for publication by Ohio University Press and will come out in Fall 2008.

Alissa Klug (MA, Music Ethnomusicology) studies the music of a repatriated group of Jamaican Rastafarians in the Ethiopian town of Shashamane. As a graduate assistant at CERLAC, Alissa assisted with the RedLEIDH and UCGS projects.

Thomas Marois (PhD, Political Science) is currently working on his PhD dissertation. He recently presented a paper on his research at the CPSA annual conference titled “The Comparative Political Economy of Bank Privatization in Turkey and Mexico” and has a forthcoming CJPS publication on Mexico, “The 1982 Mexican Bank Statization and Unintended Consequences for the Emergence of Neoliberalism.”

Tanita Muneshwar (MA, Interdisciplinary Studies) is writing her MA thesis on concurrent themes of gender, ethnicity, politics and education as related through the novels of Indo-Guyanese women. Her areas of study include English, Women’s Studies, and Social and Political Thought. She has presented several papers at York and the University of Miami, including “So You Want to be a Coolie Woman? The Negotiation of Cooliehood in Janice Shinebourne’s The Last English Plantation.”

Kamla Ross McGregor (MA, Political Science) completed her Masters in January 2007. Her MRP was titled “The Politics of Civil Society in Jamaica: Contesting Hegemony at Pear Tree Bottom.” Since then she has been working at The Stop Community Food Centre as the Education and Volunteer Coordinator in the Davenport West neighbourhood in Toronto.

Rachel O’Donnell (PhD, Political Science) completed her Major Research Paper, “An Ongoing Assimilation Project: The Violence of Developing Nationhood in Guatemala,” and is now in the PhD program. As a graduate assistant at CERLAC, Rachel helped with coordinating, writing and the layout of the 2004–2005 CERLAC Review, and she prepared LACYORK postings.

Laurence Robitaille (PhD, Communication and Culture) is currently researching his PhD dissertation, which focuses on capoeira, popular cultures and globalization. Laurence holds an MA degree in Modern Languages and Literature from the University of Montreal and is the recipient of a CGS Doctoral Scholarship from SSHRC for 2007-10. In addition to presenting his work at various conferences during 2006, Laurence’s paper titled “Les Jeux de la Capoeira Avec L’identité Brésilienne” has been accepted for publication in 2007 by the Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies.

Fernando Rouaux (MES, Environmental Studies) is in the final year of his graduate program. His research focuses on the political ecology of water in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 2006, funded by CIDA, IDRC, and CERLAC’S RedLEIDH project, he held an internship with a human rights organization in Argentina, where he filmed his video documentary on the privatization of water in Buenos Aires. His film, “Thirst for Profit. A Story of Water Privatization,” is the product of his final project. Fernando also worked as a researcher for Naomi Klein’s recent book, The Shock Doctrine, and in 2006 he published his first novel, Los Omitidos.

Karlee-Anne Sapoznik (MA, History) was the recipient of a SSHRC scholarship in 2007 and is studying slavery and abolition in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In June 2007 she presented a paper called “Beyond National Borders: Interrogating the Driving Forces of British Abolitionists through a French-English Comparative Study, 1787-1796” at a conference at St. Mary’s University, and has recently completed research at the British Library and the National Archives in London related to Olaudah Equiano’s letters, the London Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, and the Paris-based Société des Amis des Noirs.

Danny Stephens (MA, Political Science) is currently studying international relations at York. He is interested in examining neoliberal mechanisms of deradicalization of social movements and political parties in Brazil from a political economy perspective. He was also a 2007/2008 GA at CERLAC.

Cayley Taylor (MA, Social and Political Thought) was a GA at CERLAC during the 2007/08 academic year. Her research interests include political theory, women and development, and Latin American literature.

Carlos Velásquez Carrillo (PhD, Political Science) is specializing in Central American and Salvadoran political economy, international relations, and comparative and development politics. His dissertation is about the reconstitution of the Salvadoran oligarchy in the era of neoliberal reforms and the impacts of this process for El Salvador’s democratic aspirations and integral socioeconomic development. In 2008 he plans to conduct a round of fieldwork in El Salvador and to present a paper titled “The Political Economy of Oligarchic Consolidation in Post-War El Salvador” in New York and Vancouver.

Talia Wooldridge (MA, Ethnomusicology) is working to complete her MRP titled “¡Escuchar! Women in Cuban hip hop: An analysis of gender equality in the hip hop community and Cuban society.” While at York she has completed fieldwork in Havana Cuba, New York, and Toronto. She is a SSHRC Graduate Scholarship holder and also received the OGS Award for 2007-8. She won CERLAC’s 2007 graduate-level Baptista Essay Prize, and her work has also been accepted for publication in the forthcoming 2009 version of the Greenwood Encyclopedia on Latin American Popular Music.