2014 Debates
Abstracts & audios:
Debate 3, May 2: Argentina's recent political economic history
Debate 4, June 6: Venezuela after Chavez
Debate 5, August 8: Colombia inside out
Debate 6, August 22: Chilean migration to Sydney
Debate 7, September 5: Salvadorian & Chilean testimonies
Debate 8, October 17: Latin American cultural & memory studies
Debate 9, November 7: Chile and Brazil's histories & memories
Debate 4, June 6: Venezuela after Chavez
Debate 5, August 8: Colombia inside out
Debate 6, August 22: Chilean migration to Sydney
Debate 7, September 5: Salvadorian & Chilean testimonies
Debate 8, October 17: Latin American cultural & memory studies
Debate 9, November 7: Chile and Brazil's histories & memories
Introduction
The Latin American Research Platform run a series of talks and events in
2014 concerning Latin America, hosted by the School of Humanities and Languages
at the University of New South Wales.
The 2014 Debates featured academics, researchers and Latin American presenters based on
Sydney and from other national and international centres via videoconference.
Besides creating a linkage with academics and researchers, we aim to work and
interact with other Latin American organizations and universities to discuss
politics, culture, history, memory, and current events, in order to preserve
oral histories, archives and documentation for present and future research. We
believe that the Latin American non-academic community in Australia offers a
valuable source of ideas, material and resources to enrich the field of Latin American
studies and that the concept of “community” includes more than a fixed type of
participants.
The 2014 Debates usually featured two
or three individual presenters under one general subject, allowing more time
than a regular conference time slot and the chance for questions, answers and
debate. The events run regularly on Fridays and were held at UNSW
Kensington Campus.
Abstracts & audios
First 2014 Debate
Mass (media)
battles: recent and historical examples in Argentina, Chile and Australia
Friday March 21, 2014, 4PM
Australian intelligence agencies agreements with foreign counterparts and its impact in journalism and justice
By Florencia Melgar, independent researcher
In January 2014 the Supreme Court of Justice of Chile requested the extradition of former member of the DINA, Adriana Rivas, who has been living in Australia for 36 years. Rivas is accused of aggravated kidnapping in seven cases during Chile´s dictatorship. The extradition was requested after journalist Florencia Melgar broadcast an interview with Rivas where she describes how she escaped from Chile to Argentina in 2010 to fly back to Australia. Rivas is a living proof of former DINA and CNI agents now living in Australia. Melgar investigated the mutual support between Chile´s and Australia´s secret services during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. The research proves the participation of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) in Chile´s coup in 1973, supporting CIA operation to overthrow Salvador Allende. In 1974 Sydney Morning Herald journalist Hamish Mc Donald was investigating the case and a call from ASIS to the paper put an end to the investigation underway. After 40 years, Melgar wasn´t allowed to publish all of her research either. Even though she managed to identify the two Australian spies operating in Chile during 1973 -who are alive and one of them heads an organisation on Australian international affairs- their names have to be kept in secret. In 2013 ASIS sent a letter to Melgar and strongly advised her to seek legal advice because she could be prosecuted for offences that could attract penalties of imprisonment. According to Australian legislation, the names of the spies cannot be published now or ever. This is a clear example of how the exemption of Australia´s intelligence agencies from the Freedom of Information Act has a strong impact in journalism and democracy, affecting how Australian history is told.
Florencia Melgar is an investigative journalist and independent researcher who has worked at numerous media outlets in Uruguay and Australia for more than 10 years. She produced “No Toquen Nada”, the highest rating current affairs radio show in Uruguay. She also worked in print media and television for six years. She co-authored “Las palabras que llegaron” in 2009 and “Sabotaje a la verdad” in 2006. She has worked for SBS Radio and Online, ABC Television and Instituto Cervantes. Melgar was awarded the best investigative story of the year in NSW multicultural media for the multimedia report The Other 9/11 that explores the participation of Australia in the Chilean coup 40 years ago.
A brief history of the battles against dictatorial mass media in Chile during Pinochet’s most repressive years
By Pablo Leighton, independent researcher
By Pablo Leighton, independent researcher
Since the 2011 massive student movement, protesters
in Chile have enacted critical actions over television channels. They have
physically occupied some stations and heckled sacred ‘apolitical’ events, such
as the hyper-mediatised Telethon charity campaign, associating them to the
legacy of the civil-military dictatorship that ruled until 1990. The
realization that centres of power are not always located in presidential
palaces or parliaments is an uncommon but not new phenomenon in Chile. In 1986,
the non-partisan Assembly of Civility organised one of the largest general
strikes in the period while calling for a boycott of all commercial sponsors of
television newscasts that propagandised the dictatorship. A genealogy of this
dispute goes even earlier, in 1975, when the relatives of human rights victims
comprehended that State violence and communication media were closely related.
Various media ‘professionals’ that worked as collaborators or even as agents of
DINA ―the 1973-77 Chilean secret police, officially labelled an illicit
criminal organization (asociación ílícita) by tribunals― have
been accused of and occasionally tried for being accomplices. This is a
brief history of an open dispute of hegemony in Chile, specifically against the
large cultural power of mass media, born in the most repressive years of the
dictatorship and waged until today.
Pablo
Leighton researches the
concept and practices of propaganda in 20th century and current media, and
specifically on the history of audiovisual culture in Chile and Latin America
since the 1970s. He has taught at several universities in Australia, United
States, Chile and Central America, and has worked as film director,
screenwriter and editor in fiction and documentary productions (see his film work here).
He co-edited with Fernando López the book 40 years are nothing: History and memory of the 1973 coups d'état in Uruguay and Chile (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK), a selection from works presented at
the October 2013 conference 40 years are
nothing. He has published the
essays: Archives and narratives for the coup-history of Chile (Southland
Papers 2018 & Neo Journal, Macquarie University, 2008); Televisión+estado de sitio: la perentoria doble cadena del golpe en Chile
(Ediciones Escaparate, Santiago, Chile, 2012); ASIS &
ASIO in Chile: transparency and double standards four decades after the coup
(co-written with Florencia Melgar, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK 2015); The Celebration: violence and consent in the first anniversary of the Chilean coup
(Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK 2015); and Territories of Violence: State, Marginal Youth, and Public Security in Honduras – book review (Journal of Iberian and Latin American
Research , 2016). He holds a PhD in Media and Cultural Studies
from Macquarie University, Sydney, and in Latin American
Studies from Universidad de Santiago de Chile. He also has a Master of Fine
Arts in Filmmaking from Massachusetts College of Art (Boston, USA).
Information: Human right or market commodity? Lessons from the Argentine Media Law
By Fernando López, independent researcher
On
October 10, 2009 the Argentine Congress passed Law 26,522 of Audio-Visual Communication
Services (Ley de Servicios de Comunicación Audiovisual), popularly known
as Ley de Medios (Media Law). Most media groups in Argentina
accepted the legislation and immediately set out to comply with it.
However, supported by some the most conservative figures and groups of the anti-Kirchnerista
camp, Grupo Clarín refused to comply with the legislation.
Arguing that the Media Law severely undermines freedom of speech in Argentina,
the powerful economic group launched a virulent media campaign and judicial
battle against it and, especially, the government of Cristina Kirchner. This
presentation traces the origins of the law, it explores the roots of the power
struggle between Grupo Clarín and the government of Cristina Fernández de
Kirchner, and evaluates its outcomes. The Argentine Ley de Medios
is a valuable case study for those countries in Latin America embarking on a
similar path of media reforms amid strong resistance of what can only be
described as powerful media cartels.
By Fernando López, independent researcher
Fernando is a Doctor in History from the University of New South Wales and author of the book The Feathers of Condor: Transnational State Terrorism, Exiles and Civilian Anticommunism in South America (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK, 2016). The latter determines why the military regimes of Uruguay, Chile, Paraguay, Argentina and Bolivia agreed to formally launch Operation Condor in November 1975 and, therefore, transnationalize State terrorism. He has a Bachelor of Arts and Honours in History (BA HONS HIST) from University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, Australia. His Honours thesis studied the origins of the Uruguayan leftist National Liberation Movement- Tupamaros (MLN-T) and its connections with the sugarcane workers’ trade union. His areas of research focus on contemporary Latin American History and the Cold War in Latin America. He co-edited with Pablo Leighton the book 40 years are nothing: History and memory of the 1973 coups d'état in Uruguay and Chile (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK), a selection from works presented at the October 2013 conference 40 years are nothing.
Second 2014 Debate
The crisis
of political representation in Chile: the past, present and future of the
national constitution
Friday April 4, 2014, 10AM
The genealogy of Jaime Guzmán’s subsidiary State
By Professor
Renato Cristi,
Department of Philosophy, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada [videoconference].
Cristi’s
article states that the idea of the state as a higher centralized
organization, which ought not to arrogate to itself functions that may be
performed by lower social bodies, was first introduced by Pope Leo XIII in 1891
and it was baptized “subsidiarity” many years later. An editorial
published anonymously by the politician and intellectual of the right, Jaime
Guzmán, in 1982 may contribute to clarify an issue that has been fiercely
debated in Chile lately. How is it possible that, after thirty years, the higher
education policies inspired by Guzmán and enacted by the military government
are still in place? The five democratic governments since 1990 did not
fundamentally alter the direction given by Guzmán and the military to the
educational system. A subsidiary state is still allowed to preside over most of
social areas in Chile.
Professor Renato Cristi is the author of many books such as: Carl Schmitt and Authoritarian Liberalism; El pensamiento conservador en Chile, awarded the Premio Municipal de Literatura, literary prize bestowed each year to the best book of its kind published in Chile; El pensamiento político de Jaime Guzmán, the “best intellectual biography that has been done on Guzmán” (journal Estudios Públicos); and La República en Chile.
Reform and constituent power in Chile
By Professor
Miguel Vatter,
School of Social Sciences, UNSW
Professor Vatter talks about the importance of constitution-making
politics. This phenomenon coincides with the desire of citizens to take an
active role in politics and with their scepticism with regard to the
representativeness of political parties and parliaments. Constituent power is
usually thought to be opposed to devices of representation: if the people are
present, then no representatives are needed. However, this conception of
constituent power may easily lead into populist forms of representation. In
this talk, Vatter suggests that some new options to join constituent power with
representation have opened thanks to recent work on non-traditional varieties
of political representation. These ideas will be discussed in the context of
the current constituent process in Chile.
Professor Miguel Vatter has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the New School for Social Research, and has held academic positions in political science and philosophy departments in North America and Chile, as well as a visiting professorship in Germany. He works in the areas of political theory and contemporary philosophy. His current areas of research and publication are Machiavelli, Kant, republicanism, biopolitics, and political theology.
The road to Peronism and Kirchnerism: A history of Argentina’s political economy
Friday May 2, 2014, 4PM
Argentina: The histories of a few roads not taken
By Dr James Levy, UNSW School of Humanities and
Languages
Dr James Levy is an Honorary Fellow at UNSW School of Humanities and Languages. Dr Levy’s academic career has strong connections with Latin American studies and the South American community in Sydney. He studied issues concerning taxation in Argentina (1890-1960), the Socialist Party in Granada and, together with Dr Peter Ross, he conducted comparative studies on human capital investments in Argentina and Australia.
The Kirchner governments and classical peronism: convergence and disparity
By Dr
Peter Ross, UNSW
School of Humanities and Languages
Dr Peter Ross is an Honorary Fellow at UNSW School of Humanities and Languages. Dr Ross’s academic profile includes a BA Sydney, DipEd WBTC, and a PhD from UNSW. Dr Ross has studied matters associated to Economic Development and Growth, Historical Studies and Latin American History. His principal area of research, together with Dr James Levy, is a comparative study of investment in human development in Argentina and Australia between 1890 and 1960. Subsidiary research interests include changes in the composition and internal dynamics of families in Latin America, contemporary political developments in Latin America, and environmental effects of development in Amazonia.
James Levy & Peter Ross: Q&A
Fourth 2014 Debate
Venezuela after Chávez
Friday June 6, 2014, 4PM
President Maduro and the Post Chávez Era
By Dr Rodrigo Acuña
Rodrigo Acuña’s analysis
is on the last three election results in Venezuela, specifically the last two
presidential elections in late 2012 and early 2013, and the municipal elections
in December 2013. After contextualising the outcomes of these elections, he distinguishes
the patterns of continuity and change at a national and international level
between the administration of Hugo Chávez and that of the current president
Nicolas Maduro. Rodrigo’s presentation concludes with a discussion of the current
economic situation in this oil state, and the government’s claims that an
economic war is being carried out against it by sections of the business
community and the opposition.
Reframing Venezuela: social
movements, indigenous peoples and the Bolivarian state
By Dr Luis Angosto Ferrández, Lecturer, Department
of Spanish and Latin American Studies, & Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney
Luis
discussed contemporary Venezuelan politics as reflected on state-indigenous
peoples relations. The current enfranchisement of the indigenous population is
unprecedented, and partly results from the formation of a state-sponsored
indigenous movement. This movement prioritizes access to social services,
economic development and political participation in state structures over
certain goals of free determination. Other forms of collective action, with
different priorities, evince the existence of diverging interests and goals
among the indigenous population. Luis argued that these divergences are a
reflection of the way in which the indigenous population partakes in the
shaping of contemporary Venezuelan politics.
Angosto-Ferrández (lecturer, Department of Spanish and Latin American Studies & Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney) has a background in anthropology and political science. He has extensive fieldwork experience in Latin America and Spain, and has lived, worked, and researched in Venezuela for nearly a decade. Among his recent publications are: Democracy, Revolution, and Geopolitics in Latin America: Venezuela and the International Politics of Discontent (Routledge, 2014) & Everlasting Countdowns: Race, Ethnicity and National Censuses in Latin American States (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012).
Angosto-Ferrández (lecturer, Department of Spanish and Latin American Studies & Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney) has a background in anthropology and political science. He has extensive fieldwork experience in Latin America and Spain, and has lived, worked, and researched in Venezuela for nearly a decade. Among his recent publications are: Democracy, Revolution, and Geopolitics in Latin America: Venezuela and the International Politics of Discontent (Routledge, 2014) & Everlasting Countdowns: Race, Ethnicity and National Censuses in Latin American States (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012).
Fifth 2014 Debate
Colombia – inside out
Friday August 8, 2014, 4PM
By Gabriel Andrés Arévalo, PhD candidate University of the Basque Country/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea.
Reviewing transitional justice Concept in Colombia [videoconference]
Colombians in Sydney: Making sense of community through the lens of perceived discrimination and socio-political reasoning
Sixth 2014 Debate
Seventh 2014 Debate
Eighth 2014 Debate
Gabriel Andrés Arévalo argues that, over the 21st century, Colombia’s “democratic regime” has undergone changes as a technology of governance and power device. Different factors, such as the geopolitics of water, the management of natural resources and hydrocarbons, and the geographical implications of the cocaine business have marked a new phase in Colombia’s history. This new phase is deeply influenced by the dynamics of transnational capitalism, which goes hand on hand with the promotion of democracy and peace as prescribed by the OECD and the World Bank. This notion of democracy and peace has become a decisive element in a new phase of capital accumulation, which seeks to secure markets through the provision of raw materials by Latin American countries. Based on the very restricted principles of the free market around democratic freedom, multiculturalism and human rights, this particular grammar of democracy and peace has become a refined technology of power, which allows the normalization of rebel forces and social/territorial disciplinary control benefitting the expansion of transnational capitalism. As a result, we are confronted with an impostor democracy orchestrated by impostors.
Gabriel Andrés Arévalo (PhD candidate University of the Basque Country/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea) is a researcher and political activist with a Law degree from the Free University and a Sociology degree from the National University of Colombia. He received a Master's degree in International Decentralized Cooperation and International Studies at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). Within its intellectual and spiritual interests are galactic nomadism, transnational struggles, insurgent ontologies and the intercultural processes seeking to build a new civilization beyond the West. Currently, he is undertaking PhD studies at the UPV/EHU with a Predoctoral Fellowship funded by the Basque Government. He is also a member of the Intercultural Association BerriakMundu in Bilbao.
Reviewing transitional justice Concept in Colombia [videoconference]
By Mario Cortés Santander, constitutionalist
lawyer and mediator of Universidad Libre de Bogotá & member of the Latin American Social
Forum Sydney.
Mario Cortés maintains
that, traditionally, international peacebuilding interventions have followed a
Western liberal paradigm in the form of UN peacekeeping and peacebuilding
operations and transitional justice initiatives. According to Dustin (2013),
while peacebuilding is a broader notion, peacebuilding and transitional justice
are open-ended concepts with substantial overlap in that both seek long-term
peace by rebuilding social trust and social capital and attempting to address
problems of governance, accountability, and the need for institutional reform.
For half a century, Colombians have suffered an internal armed conflict between
the National Army and left and right wing armed groups. Over the years, there
have been several peace talks and ceasefire periods, but none of them
culminated in a final peace agreement. In 2012 the government initiated
peace-talks with the FARC-EP, one of the key actors in the conflict. Almost two
years after, the parties have reached partial agreements in key points in the
agenda, opening the way to a potential peace agreement that could spell the end
of an over half a century bloody conflict. Therefore the concept of
transitional justice once again is part of discussion in order to prepare the
country for a better understanding of the conflict reasons and the effects of
its eventual ending.
Mario Cortés Santander graduated from the Faculty of Law and Political Science at the Universidad Libre de Bogotá. He has conducted Reconciliation Studies, Constitutional Law, Education and training curriculum and Administration in Colombia and Australia. Mario is linked to academic, administrative and development in higher education in Colombia and vocational level in Australia. He also has experience in socio-legal research and university of Political Institutions, Legal Argument and Hermeneutics and is passionate about education and communication.
Mario Cortés Santander graduated from the Faculty of Law and Political Science at the Universidad Libre de Bogotá. He has conducted Reconciliation Studies, Constitutional Law, Education and training curriculum and Administration in Colombia and Australia. Mario is linked to academic, administrative and development in higher education in Colombia and vocational level in Australia. He also has experience in socio-legal research and university of Political Institutions, Legal Argument and Hermeneutics and is passionate about education and communication.
By Liana Mercedes Torres, PhD candidate in Latin
American Studies, University of Sydney.
Liana Mercedes Torres discusses how Colombian migrants in Sydney reflect on the existence of a Colombian community in their current location. Interviews and focus groups with participants show how such a national definition is constructed within narratives of perceived discrimination and through the telling of the ambiguities of voicing and silencing their socio-political stance. Colombians identify themselves as both objects (i.e. receivers) and subjects (i.e. agents) of ‘otherisation’, which prompts them to engage or disengage their own position as members of the community. Likewise, reflecting on their political stance may lead them to exclude themselves from the Colombian migrant community. A number of narrative excerpts are used here to illustrate these multiple positionings. An introduction to the case study of two participants helps revisit the emerging individual and collective identities that intertwine in making sense of the community.
Liana Mercedes Torres (PhD candidate in Latin American Studies, University of Sydney) graduated from Universidad del Valle (Cali, Colombia) with a bachelor degree in Modern Languages Teaching in 2004. She taught in the English for Specific Purposes section in the same university and also worked as an EAP trainer at Universidad Nacional de Colombia-Palmira in 2006. In 2007, she was awarded the Macquarie University International Scholarship and moved to Sydney to undertake a Masters degree in Applied Linguistics (TESOL). In late 2011, she was awarded the University of Sydney International Scholarship to start a PhD in the Spanish and Latin American Department with Dr Vek Lewis as my main supervisor. She published "A Pedagogical Experience with ESP Units at Secondary Level. Analysis of Results” and her research interests are language teaching and assessment, sociolinguistics, critical discourse analysis, migration studies and media representations.
Sixth 2014 Debate
Latin American Migration to Sydney: The Chilean Case
Friday August 22, 2014, 4PM
Self-concepts of identity in Sydney’s Chilean-born residents
By Dr Fernanda Peñaloza & Dr Vek Lewis, Senior Lecturers in Latin American Studies, University of Sydney.
By Dr Fernanda Peñaloza & Dr Vek Lewis, Senior Lecturers in Latin American Studies, University of Sydney.
The experience of Chilean-born residents in Australia has been often framed within the figure of the political exile. There are relatively few studies that have looked explicitly and in detail at how self-concepts of identity are used in the Australian context. In this article, we work towards an understanding of the way in which a self-conceptualisation process is shaped in this specific migration experience via the use of identity categories such as latino/a, chileno/a, australiano/a-chileno/a, latinoamericano/a. In other words, we explore these categorizations as imagined and articulated through and in the experiential realities of the Chilean migrants’ insertion in Sydney.
Dr Fernanda Peñaloza is Senior Lecturer in Latin American Studies at the University of Sydney. She has published widely on the interconnections of aesthetics and ethnography, within the traditions brought to bear by both British imperialist narratives of travel and exploration, and the Argentine colonisation project in Patagonia. She is the editor (with Claudio Canaparo and Jason Wilson) of Patagonia: Myths and Realities, Peter Lang: 2010. She is currently working on a single authored book to be published by the University of Wales Press provisionally entitled Best Enemies in Patagonia: Argentine-Chilean Relations and Cultural Production.
Dr Vek Lewis (Senior Lecturer in Latin American Studies, University of Sydney) authored Crossing Sex and Gender in Latin America (New York: Palgrave, 2010) and has published in several academic journals ranging from Sexualities (UK) to PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies. Other publications include book chapters and articles already out or soon to appear: ‘Thinking Figurations Otherwise: Reframing Dominant Knowledges on Sex/Gender Variance in Latin America’ in Transgender Studies Reader Vol 2, ‘Forging “Moral Geographies”: Law, Sexual Minorities and Internal Tensions in Northern Mexico Border Towns’ in Trystan Cotten (ed). Transgender Migrations: Bodies, Borders and the Politics of Transition (Routledge, 2011), ‘Volviendo visible lo invisible: hacia un marco conceptual de las migraciones internas trans en México’ Revista Cuicuilco 54, and 'Nuevos ambientes, historias compartidas? Sexuality, cultural and sexual identity and practices among gay identified Latin American migrants in Sydney' in 2014 in Journal of Intercultural Studies. His areas of interest include: internal and international migration in Mexico and Australia, critical race studies, sexuality and bioethics.
Seventh 2014 Debate
Memory and first-person testimonies of the Chilean dictatorship and El Salvador’s civil war
Friday September 5, 2014, 4PM
Two
Latin American community activists in Australia spoke as survivors and direct
protagonists during the Chilean dictatorship (1973-90) and El Salvador’s civil
war (1980-92). Both testimonies give a first-person account of the recent
history of these countries.
In the first hour, Gerardo Díaz-Henríquez rendered
(in Spanish) an oral history on his role as former Secretary General of the
National Federation of Salvadorean Workers (FENASTRAS) and member of the
Farabundo Martí Front for the Liberation of El Salvador (FMLN). In 1989, a bomb
placed by the civil-military regime that killed nine members of FENASTRAS
originated as response the biggest guerrilla offensive in Latin America during
the 1980s.
Gerardo Díaz-Henríquez is an active member of the FMLN's Sydney Committee in Australia. Ex-member of the Salvadorean National Resistance; the Military/Political Organization; and the FMLN during the 1982-1992 war. Ex-Secretary General of the National Federation of Salvadorean Workers (FENASTRAS), and of the Union of the Salvadorean Hospital Polyclinic Enterprise.
In the second hour, Paula Sánchez, nurse, teacher, musician and active member of the Latin American Social Forum Sydney, speaks about his experience as member of the Communist Youth in Chile during the 1980s in the north of the country, his imprisonment by the secret police in 1987 and his exile to Australia. Paula Sánchez is a nurse specialized on intensive care, a clinical educator and associate lecturer in nursing for 14 years. She is currently working in Applied Nursing Research and is a member of NSW Nurses and Midwifes Association, Neighbourhood Watch coordinator. With her family she founded the Latin American folklore group Karualpa (faraway land or powerful land in Quechua language).
Eighth 2014 Debate
Latin American cultural and memory studies in Australia
Friday October 17, 2014, 4PM
Shopping for Identity in the Academic Market: Some Problems With Latin American Decolonial Theory
By Dr Jeff Browitt, Senior Lecturer in Latin American Studies at the School of International Studies, University of Technology Sydney.
Dr Browitt argues that the proponents of Latin American decolonial discourse enter into performative contradiction when they utilize the tools of European critical theory to deconstruct the discourse of Eurocentric modernity, while trying to quarantine their own discursive and ideological constructions from review by that selfsame European critical theory. Blind to decolonial theory’s aporias, they think they can take a morally superior and transcendental epistemological position through their contact with indigenous and Afrodescendent worlds. This process of ideological appropriation merely inverts the simplistic binary opposites that the decolonial theorists claim they wish to avoid.
Dr Jeff Browitt has published on cultural theory, Central American literature and culture, Latin American popular culture, and Colombian political economy. His major book publications include: Contemporary Cultural Theory (Routledge 2002, with Andrew Milner); The Space of Culture. Critical readings in Hispanic Studies (U. Delaware Press 2004, with Stewart King); Practising Theory: Pierre Bourdieu and the Field of Cultural Production (U. Delaware Press 2004, with B. Nelson); and Rubén Darío: Cosmopolita Arraigado (INHC 2010, with Werner Mackenbach). He is also the translator of two books with Nidia Castrillón: Carlos Monsiváis’s A New Catechism for Recalcitrant Indians (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2007) and Martin Nakata’s Disciplinar a los salvajes, violentar las disciplinas (Abya Yala Editores, 2014, with N. Castrillón).
The Chosen One (Casa de memoria José Domingo Cañas 1367)
By Dr Marivic Wyndham, School of International Studies, UTS, and Professor Peter Read, History Department, Australian National University.
This discussion addresses the work of Dr Laura Moya Díaz, member of the Chilean Communist Party, well respected psychiatrist and Marxist-Leninist ideologue who assumed responsibility for the memorialisation of one Santiago's most infamous centres of detention, torture and extermination – José Domingo Cañas 1367 - after the return to democracy. To it, she brought a commitment to the people of shanty-towns with whom she had worked throughout the dictatorship, insistent demands for justice for the perpetrators and an understanding of the significance of the site itself. Throughout their study of many such centres, José Domingo Cañas provides a unique example of the influence of a single, complex individual in determining the content and interpretation of a 'House of Memory'. This presentation will conclude with a pictorial tour of the site to correlate the extent to which Moya's personality remains embedded in the site today.
Transiting from dictatorship: Chile's and
Brazil’s histories and memories
Friday November 7, 2014,
4PM
Interview
on the trilogy of books - The Memory Box of Pinochet’s Chile
With
Professor Steve J. Stern, Department of History, University of
Wisconsin-Madison, USA.
La
gestión gubernamental de la memoria en el Chile Postdictadura [video
with subtitles in English and paper in Spanish]
By Dr
Iván Pincheira, post-doctoral fellow at
the Sociology Department, Universidad de Chile.
Dr Pincheira talks about how diverse governmental actors in post-dictatorial Chile promote specific ways to represent the events of the past within the population. Memory demonstrates to be a recurrent object of governmental management and a central aspect in the subjective process of interpretation and creation of meaning of recent history. He also argues how these politics of memory, which have a tendency to represent the past mixed with the emotion of fear, are assembled with other dispositifs that reproduce the constitutional and economic order established during the dictatorship. Dr Pincheira is a sociologist from the Universidad de Concepción, and he has a Master and a Doctorate in Latin American Studies from Universidad de Chile and Universidad de Santiago de Chile. He has published books and articles relating to social movements, youth, biopolitics, governmentality and the sociology of emotions.
Shaping transitional justice in Brazil: a history of the Amnesty Commission (1979-2014)
Pedro Teixerense, PhD candidate at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and
research analyst at the Brazilian National Truth Commission.
Pedro Teixerense argues that societies that have
experienced systematic violations of human rights tend to adopt a certain model
of transitional justice, reflecting the political culture prevalent in each
society and as an expression of the disputes among political groups vying for
the control of the transitional process. Brazilian society has used amnesties
laws to deal with political conflicts more than any other Western political community
over the past century, a usage that can make the concept of amnesty a synonym of
forgetfulness. Specifically, Pedro discusses the adoption of the 1979 Amnesty
law, its consequences and the history of the Amnesty Commission created within
the constitutional arrangement of the transition from dictatorship to
democracy. Besides his work on Brazil and a Master in History from the
University of Brasilia, Pedro Teixerense has researched the Uruguayan transition.
Pedro Ivo Carneiro Teixeirense is a researcher and PhD Candidate in Social History at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany. Pedro Teixerense has a Bachelor with Honours in History and a Masters degree. His field of research covers democracy, social control and children´s rights, and prevention of violence and human rights. He has worked as a teacher, researcher and legislative consultant for the Federal Senate; has been a member of the Special Commission of History of the Senate, and worked as Associate Consultant for the Plan of Public Policies in Brazil. Pedro was also a Research Analyst offering technical advice on issues related to human rights, transitional justice, memory and truth, with the aim of providing support for the National Truth Commission (NTC). He organized data analysis that enabled the Commission to clarify facts and circumstances surrounding cases of serious human rights violations, and conducted teams of researchers in identifying files and other sources of information on the death and the forced disappearance in Brazil and abroad, during the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964-1985). He was also involved in organizing database for the Council of Children´s Rights and the Guardianship Council in the process of building democracy for children and adolescents in Brazil. In 2016 he presented in Germany, “Is there a room for History? Clashes between opposing narratives and the profile of the victims of the military dictatorship in the National Truth Commission’s final report”.