CLAS events November

Honduras on Fire: Human Rights Crisis and Mass Migration

A Conversation with Honduran Human Rights Defender Aracely Medina Castillo

Two events:

Date: November 7, 2013

Time: 4:30 - 5:45pm

Location: Barco Law School (Forbes Ave), Room 107, Pitt For more information: Dan Kovalik, dkovalik@usw.org Date: November 11, 2013

Time: 4:30 - 6:00pm

Location: CMU, Room TBA

For more information: John Soluri, jsoluri@andrew.cmu.edu

 

Honduras faces a human rights crisis. It is the most dangerous country in the world and, according to Human Rights Watch, "violence and threats by unidentified perpetrators against journalists, human rights defenders, prosecutors, peasant activists, and transgender people remain serious problems. Perpetrators are rarely brought to justice." Meanwhile, according to the State Department, roughly 13% of the Honduran population—1 million Hondurans—have migrated to the United States, 600,000 of whom are believed to be undocumented. Why is there a human rights crisis in Honduras? Who is being killed and why? What is the role of U.S. policy? And why are people migrating to the U.S.? Is there a connection with the human rights crisis? Join Aracely Medina Castillo and Witness for Peace for an important conversation, "Honduras on Fire: Human Rights Crisis and Mass Migration."

 

Aracely Medina Castillo is a Honduran activist and educator who has worked for over a decade defending the human rights of Hondurans, focusing particularly on Honduran migrants and their families. She is the deputy director of the Jesuit Center for Reflection, Research, and Communication (ERIC-SJ), a think tank that conducts research and reports on societal trends and public opinion in Honduras. She is also the national supervisor of Jesuit Migrant Services-Honduras (SJM) and the Social Ministries coordinator for all of Central American. Ms. Medina will discuss the impact of the Honduran human rights crisis, why Hondurans migrate to the U.S., as well as her work supporting migrants and the family members left behind. Finally, Ms. Medina will speak to how U.S. policy can positively impact the situation. (In Spanish with English translation.)

 

Symposium on Security Challenges in Central America

Date: Friday, November 8, 2013

Time: 9:00 am – 3:00 pm

Location: University Club, Ballroom B

For more information: ridgway.pitt.edu

RSVP to beb38@pitt.edu on or before November 1st, 2013. This event is free but availability is limited

(complimentary lunch).

Guest Speakers: Douglas Farah, President, IBI Consultants and Senior Associate, Americas Program – CSIS; Steven Dudley, Co-Director of InSight Crime; Thomas Bruneau, Vice President of Global Academic Professionals; Juan Ricardo Gómez Hecht, Professor and Advisor of Public Security at the

College of High Strategic Studies of El Salvador Armed Forces; Juan Carlos Garón, Global Fellow at

Woodrow Wilson Center and a researcher for the United Nations Development Program.

Sponsored by the Matthew B. Ridgway Center for International Security Studies, Graduate School of

Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh and by the Center for Latin American Studies

(CLAS), University Center for International Studies, University of Pittsburgh.

Undocumented Workers and Human Rights: Lessons from Scholar-Activists in

Costa Rica

A lecture by Carlos Sandoval (Instituto de Investigación Social, Universidad de Costa Rica)

Date: Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Time: 12:00 pm (noon) – 1:30 pm

Location: 4217 Posvar Hall

For more information: lep12@pitt.edu or lavst12@pitt.edu

Costa Rica has been a major immigrant-receiving society within Central America, all the more as tighter US borders and violence against migrants in Mexico have made travel northwards even riskier. But immigrants in Costa Rica—especially Nicaraguans—have faced discrimination in employment, education, health care, and more. Dr. Carlos Sandoval and his colleagues have worked through multiple means, from community organizing to arts activism to a legal case before the Costa Rican Supreme Court, to build undocumented workers' access to basic rights in Costa Rica.

 

Carlos Sandoval is a professor in the Escuela de Estudios de la Comunicación and the Instituto de Investigación Social of the Universidad de Costa Rica. He is the author or editor of many books, including Shattering Myths on Immigration and Emigration in Costa Rica (2010) and Threatening Others: Nicaraguans and the Formation of National Identities in Costa Rica (2004). He completed his PhD in Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham, U.K., in 2000.

 

Sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies, the Department of History, and the Global Studies

Center at the University of Pittsburgh.

 

Tumbas, gusanos y epitafios: recuperando escritores cubanos prohibidos,

Una presentación de Antonio José Ponte

Date: Monday 18, November 2013

Time: 1:00 pm

Location: Humanities Center (602 CL)

Antonio José Ponte is a renowned Cuban writer who presently lives in Madrid. This semester he is occupying the

Andrés Bello Chair at the King Juan Carlos Center at New York University. His many publications include the novel Contrabando de sombras (2002), the short story collections Cuentos de todas partes del imperio (2000) and

Un arte de hacer ruinas (2005), the poems collected in Asiento en las ruinas (1995 and 2005), and the essays Las

comidas profundas (1997), El abrigo de aire (2001), El libro perdido de los origenistas (2002), La fiesta vigilada (2007) and Villa Marista en Plata (2010). His stories have been translated into English as In the Cold of the Malecon and Tales from the Cuban Empire (both City Lights, 2000 and 2002).

Sponsored by the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures and the Center for Latin American

Studies at the University of Pittsburgh