07 January 2019 Dear LAB Supporter and Friend,
LAB News
Only two weeks to go! Reserve your tickets now!
Voices of Latin America – social movements and the new activism will be published on 18 January. The launch party on that day is at popular London music venue Rich Mix, in Shoreditch, starting at 7:00 pm. You can reserve tickets (and a copy of the book at super-discount price) at: https://richmix.org.uk/events/viva-la-resistencia You can reserve mail-order copies of the book at: https://developmentbookshop.com/voices-of-latin-america
- Louise Morris will interview the book’s editor, Tom Gatehouse.
- Actors will read brief extracts from the voices.
- Guest speaker is Pavel Nuñez from Honduras, one of the ‘voices’ interviewed in the book. Pavel is a musician, social media activist and educator.
- Richard Bourne will talk about LAB’s other new publication, Amazon Besieged, which was launched at the Latin America Adelante conference on 1 December.
- The launch party will continue with music (from Colombian DJ Amanda Chamorro – aka La Vecina), Latin American food and a bar. Prices:
Among the initiatives in which Pavel Nuñez has been involved is a popular university, as he describes:
“We talked a lot about one day starting a university. Last year the conditions were right – I was out of work and had the time to dedicate to it. The first thing was to assemble a team, which was interesting, because if you’re going to set up a popular university then you have to follow the rules of popular education, the first of which is that no money changes hands. Zero lempiras. How do you start a university without a single lempira? We set up the first course, which was theory of organization. We gathered 25 young people and we gave each one of them their role from the first day – public relations, teaching, setting up the library, film projects, etc. The aim of the first course of the university was the foundation of the university itself, which we called the Universidad Clementina Suárez [named after the Honduran poet]. The name and everything else was decided on that first course. It was an interesting curriculum. I took on the role of rector, knowing that later we had to get in more students, open it to the people. More and more people started coming, and we’ve had more than 100 people after only a year. The Universidad Clementina Suárez isn’t about me talking. We don’t have buildings, it’s a popular university so our philosophy is that we don’t need four walls to educate, we can meet in cafés, other universities, houses, anywhere.” –Pavel Nuñez was interviewed for Voices in November 2016
Other promotion for Voices of Latin America
LAB hopes that Voices, like its predecessor title Faces of Latin America will become the go-to reader for a whole range of university courses in development and women’s studies, sociology, politics, ecology, the environment and social anthropology. Also, it should be a must-read for gap-year students, travellers to Latin America and for everyone interested in the importance of social movements for developing alternative political strategies. Read what leading Latin Americanists in the UK and US are saying about the book (Read more…). We hope that you, our loyal subscribers, will help by ensuring that Voices appears on reading lists, and is stocked in your local bookshop and university bookshops. Can you think of an opportunity for staging a ‘mini-booklaunch’ for Voices where you live? We will do our best to supply a speaker from the LAB Voices team and copies of the book for sale.
Amazon Besieged – by dams, soya, agribusiness and land-grabbing by Mauricio Torres and Sue Branford was published and launched on 1 December. You can order copies by mail from:
https://developmentbookshop.com/amazon-besieged
Every day since January 1 has brought further dispiriting news of the actions of the Bolsonaro government. An excellent article, written for LAB by Marcos Colón, looks at the disastrous impacts likely around Santarem, as permission is given for a new soya port in the Lago do Maicá area (Read more…)
Best wishes,
The LAB Team
