Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs: PLACA, Speaker Series 2009-10

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Spring 2010

February 24, 2010 Eggers 341, 4pm *

Alfredo Lopez is the Medical Director of the Maternal Child Health Center at St. Joseph's Hospital. He is also a former migrant worker. He will speak about his experience as part of a family of migrant workers and about the health issues faced by agricultural workers.

March 2, 2010 Eggers 341, 4pm *

Maria Cristina Garcia, Professor of History, Cornell University

"Central Americans and the Politics of Refuge"

Garcia Lecture 2

Garcia will discuss Central American migration to Mexico, the United States, and Canada during the political upheaval of the 1980s and 1990s: how each of these three governments responded to the presence of Salvadoran, Guatemalan, and Nicaraguan refugees within its borders, and how their policies influenced the character and flow of migration across the region. The presentation will also discuss the individuals, groups, and organizations that responded to the refugee crisis, and who worked within and across national borders to shape a more responsive refugee policy. It was the pressure exerted by individuals and non-governmental organizations that worked first-hand with the refugees that forced these states to address the crisis. Collectively these individuals and organizations established domestic and transnational advocacy networks that collected testimonies, documented the abuses of states, re-framed national debates about immigration, pressured for changes in policy, and ultimately provided a voice for the displaced and the excluded.

April 1, 2010 Eggers 060, 4pm

The "Re-Imagining the Americas Conference Series" Presents:

Panelists:
José Miguel Hernandez, Theater Director, The Spanish Action League, Syracuse
Christen Smith, Ford Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Africana Studies, Johns Hopkins University

In recent years, popular theater has been increasingly used throughout the world as a way to empower youth, raise consciousness, articulate public issues and organize for social change. This panel considers two cases of popular theatre: Choque Cultural in Salvador, Brazil, that focuses on the issues of racism and police brutality; and La Joven Guardia del Teatro Latino in Syracuse (http://www.spanishactionleague.com/theatre.html), that focuses on raising the self-esteem of Latino youth. Because the program in Salvador is more self-consciously political than the program in Syracuse, this panel will raise important questions about the nature of “politics” and the role of the arts in social change.

José Miguel Hernandez is originally from Cuba and has lived in Syracuse for 12 years. For 10 years he has worked the Spanish Action League as a theatre dance instructor. He has a degree in nursing from The National Institute of Oncology and Radiobiology in Havana, Cuba, and a theatre degree from Teatro Estudio.

Christen Smith is Ford Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Her research takes a critical look at the politics of performance, race, violence and the body in Brazil and the Americas. Her current book project, Tearing Down the Big House: Performance, Race, Violence and the Body in Brazil, investigates the politics of performance, racial formation, violence and racism in contemporary Brazil through an ethnographic look at the multiple registers of racial violence that frame everyday social interactions in Bahia.

Co-sponsored by Latino-Latin American Studies, African Americans Studies, and Anthropology.

April 12, 2010 Eggers 220, 12:45pm *

Jorge Durand, Professor of Anthropology, Universidad de Guadalajara

“Temporal workers programs. The mexican case”

Historically, migration of temporal workers is linked with stationary jobs, mainly in agriculture. With such characteristics, there were several programs in Mexico (1942-1964) and in the Caribbean (1950-1990). This model has received a lot of criticism and rejection from both, the sending countries as well in the receiving countries. However, there is no choice, workers need to be imported temporally or definitely. The United States is considering this option within a migratory reform.

Durand Picture

April 20, 2010 Eggers 220, 4:00pm

"A Model of Labor Transnationalism: The UE-FAT Cross-Border Alliance"

Panelists:
Robin Alexander, United Electrical Workers (UE) Director of International Affairs
Benedicto Martinez Orozco, Co-President, Frente Auténtico del Trabajo (FAT)

The UE-FAT Strategic Organizing Alliance is quite unique in the history of transnational labor organizing and is often referred to as a model for international solidarity. Both unions have been able to sustain themselves as independent worker organizations in the face of large, centralized and bureaucratized national labor federations that have developed a sometimes insurmountable distance from the labor grassroots. The UE is a historical rarity in the U.S. and is deserving of study for this as well as for the political principles which led it to chart its own path despite tremendous pressures to fall in line with a historically establishment-friendly national federation. It is one of the original CIO Unions and maintains as its watchword a commitment to democratic and independent rank-and-file unionism. The UE’s most significant cross-border alliance has been with the Frente Auténtico del Trabajo (FAT), one of the only independent labor federations in Mexico. It is composed of labor unions, worker owned cooperatives, and farmworker and community organizations. In addition, a national women’s network which coordinates work on gender and equity is represented within the FAT’s leadership body and operates within all of its sectors and zones.

Co-sponsored by Latino-Latin American Studies, Sociology, Geography, and Women and Gender Studies.

April 21, 2010 Eggers 341, 4pm *

Robert Courtney Smith, Professor of Sociology, Baruch College and CUNY-Graduate Center

"Horatio Alger Lives in Brooklyn...But Check His Papers."

The title (for a book I am writing) intends to convey two key findings from my thirteen year, ethnographic project on children of Mexican immigrants in New York: that most of my subjects have been at least modestly upwardly mobile, and some more so, but that the undocumented usually get stuck at work and in school. Horatio Alger describes the mechanisms by which children of Mexican immigrants in my dataset have succeeded despite long odds, and how these mechanisms are mainly blocked for those lacking legal status. These findings are at odds with the theoretical and media story most often told about Mexicans in the US -- that they are a critical case of negative assimilation, and are becoming downwardly mobile, en masse. Moreover, while many discuss the undocumented population and fear it will turn into an “underclass,” there has been little direct study of it, including the 2-3 million undocumented children. My study is one of the first to do so, and uses a decade of ethnographic data observing how legal status affects their journey into adulthood. It examines the mechanisms by which both US citizen/legal residents and undocumented youth experience upward or downward mobility, including in school, the labor market and in their communities.

Co-sponsored by the Sociology Department.

*Lecture Organized by the PLACA Seminar and Speaker Series