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News Release

Last modified: Monday, April 30, 2007

Media Advisory: Workshop to examine political issues in Latin America

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 30, 2007

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) at Indiana University Bloomington will hold a two-day workshop on the topic, "Political Imaginaries in Latin America: Reverberations within the Contemporary Left," beginning on Friday (May 4).

Participants in the workshop will include scholars and former activists from the U.S. and Latin America. The workshop will be held in the Indiana Memorial Union's Maple Room at IU Bloomington from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. On Saturday, the workshop will be conducted at the Four Winds Resort at Lake Monroe from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. This two-day event is free and open to the general public.

During the 1960s, '70s and '80s, millions of people throughout Latin America demanded democratic reform and social justice. Military-dominated regimes throughout Central and South America responded with violent, indiscriminate repression. This workshop proposes to study and discuss the origins and consequences of the revolutionary and counterrevolutionary movements of the this era.

According to background materials from the conference, the social movements that followed embraced revolutionary solutions and resulted in a proliferation of violence and terror that rocked the entire region. The United States became actively involved in many of these conflicts, particularly in Central America, where the U.S. government invested billions of dollars in counterinsurgency operations that resulted in the deaths of more than 300,000 people, most of whom were civilians.

Today, the conflicts and the political aspirations have slipped far enough into the recesses of historical memory that those in the current administration refer to the "successes" and "excesses" of the period without being challenged by the mainstream media.

Sponsors for this event include The College Arts and Humanities Institute, Multidisciplinary Ventures Grant from the Dean of Faculties, Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies and LACS at the University of Michigan.

For more information, contact the CLACS office at 812-855-9097 or visit the office online at: https://www.indiana.edu/~clacs/.

The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) was founded in 1963 (originally as the Latin American Studies Program) as an umbrella organization uniting Latin Americanists from all campuses of Indiana University. Currently, there are approximately 90 affiliated faculty in 16 departments and seven professional schools who teach and/or conduct research on topics relating to Latin America.

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