The Latin America Bureau (LAB) invites you to the fourth and final instalment of our Voices of Latin America webinar series: A Celebration of Cultural Resistance.
Building on LAB’s Voices of Latin America book published in January 2019, the authors are back to provide an update on Latin America’s new activism through the testimonies of activists from the front line. In the fourth and final instalment of the series, we focus on cultural resistance in Latin America.
Art is flourishing in the region and has increasingly engaged with struggles for equality, group identity, justice, and memory. Music, graffiti, and memorial art provide alternative means of expression to those mandated by mainstream media, rescuing the past and helping people to construct identities for the future. In the region’s social protests of the past two years and before, art has been used to make powerful political statements, taking over entire cities with protest slogans, posters, graffiti and more. Culture also provides a space for thought and discussion of some of the most contentious social issues.
LAB’s next webinar, A Celebration of Cultural Resistance (25 September, 15:00-16:30), will be presented by Louise Morris, author of the Cultural Resistance and Fighting Machismo: Women on the Front Line chapters; Rebecca Wilson, LAB’s managing editor and music and culture journalist; and Karoline Pelikan, documentary filmmaker and cultural manager, LAB’s film content editor and the founder of EmpoderArte and Cine Latino.
They will be joined by cultural activists from the front lines of their communities:
- We’ll hear from Edith Laverde, from Abya Yala arts collective, Colombia, who discusses how art, music, and theatre helps the community understand the changing world around them.
- We’ll talk to Solvay Caceres Cabarcas, community organiser from San Basilio de Palenque, Colombia, who speaks about the revival of traditional practices, cultivation and medicine in her Afro-Colombian community.
- Fabiola Reyna, founder of the Hecho por Mujeres film festival in Peru, will talk about celebrating women working in film.
- We’ll also hear music from INKA, a singer and rapper from the Dominican Republic who uses music to address discrimination and the country’s colonial past.
About the series:
Building on the Voices of Latin America book published in January 2019, the authors are back to provide an update on Latin America’s new activism. From Bolsonaro’s presidency and Chile’s estallido social to Colombia’s peace process and regional migratory caravans, we will be discussing Latin America’s developments from the past few years and talking about how social activists have adapted to these new challenges.
The testimonies of activists will be at the heart of the seminars. We will catch up with the activists and leaders featured in the book as well as hearing from new changemakers in pre-recorded interviews. Each seminar will be followed by a Q&A with the speakers and an activist from the ‘front line’.
A note: We have taken the decision not to make the COVID-19 pandemic the focus of these seminars. The pandemic has indeed infiltrated every aspect of life during the past year and has taken a disproportionate toll on the underprivileged communities of Latin America. Here, however, we seek to talk about other ongoing and long-term issues that Latin Americans face. LAB is currently producing a Voices project specifically about the impact of COVID-19, which will be publicised and made available in due course.
Schedule:
13 March | 15:00-16:30 | State Violence and Student Resistance
10 April | 15:00-16:30 | The Rainbow Tide and Fighting Machismo
8 May | 15:00-16:30 | The Rights of Nature and Indigenous Peoples
25 September | 15:00-16:30 | A Celebration of Cultural Resistance
*All times are UK local time.
For enquiries, please contact emily.gregg@lab.org.uk
*Thank you to the Society for Latin American Studies for their generous grant which made this series possible. Thank you also to LAB’s volunteers for their assistance in this project.*