An Environmental and Technological History of Cold War Mega-Projects in Latin America

Weaponizing Geography demonstrates the consequences of unbuilt mega-projects. Sebastian Diaz Angel will discuss the untold story of how a series of high modernist Cold War projects came into being and what their proponents hoped to achieve, as well as the successes, failures, and consequences of their actions. It examines the so-called “South American Great Lakes System” (SAGLS), a geographical and environmental engineering project (1964-1973) proposed by the Hudson Institute of New York, a think tank related to the U.S. Department of Defense. With the support of influential Latin American elite members, engineers, and war strategists, this think tank sought to transform the major rivers of the continent into a series of massive interlocked, channelized, and navigable artificial reservoirs. Much like the North American Great Lakes, these waterways would provide (in theory) inexpensive riverine transportation, inexhaustible sources of hydropower, and a landscape facilitating large-scale agroindustry, mining, and counterinsurgency operations in allegedly “unexploited and unexplored” tropical regions.

Please join us for this virtual conversation. Register here.

About the speaker

Before starting his Ph.D. at Cornell’s History Department, Dr. Sebastian Diaz Angel had an M.A. in Geography, a B.A. in History, and a B.A. in Political Sciences. He worked as the Digital Map Curator at the National Library of Colombia, lectured at Externado University, and led Razón Cartográfica, an academic network promoting research on the history of geography and cartography in Colombia and Latin America. Sebastian specializes in maps studies and has a profound interest in environmental history, science and technology studies, geopolitics, public history, and the digital humanities.

Host

Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies

"Language Revitalization, Cultural Reclamation, and Global Indigeneity"
Américo Mendoza-Mori
Lecturer and Faculty Director for the Latinx Studies Working Group, Harvard University

In recent decades, revitalization and reclamation programs for Indigenous languages have emerged at universities, both promoting the language and fostering community empowerment, particularly among youth. We will explore strategies to incorporate Indigenous cultures and languages of the Americas within the Humanities and Social Sciences as relevant and complex curricular components.

For this presentation, we will discuss opportunities for building up academic and cultural programming to challenge and expand traditional notions of Indigeneity as a "thing of the past" into relevant and pressing issues, and to reflect on how colleges and language departments can support more diverse spaces for the representation and visibility of Indigenous cultures, scholarship, and voices, in connection with curricular goals. We will specifically explore the case of Quechua-language initiatives in the global advance of the language. Quechua is the most spoken Indigenous language family of the Americas, with 8-10 million speakers in South America.

Bio: Américo Mendoza-Mori teaches and researches on Indigenous and Latinx Studies at Harvard University where he is a Lecturer and Faculty Director for the Latinx Studies Working Group. Dr. Mendoza-Mori is involved with different research and community-oriented projects to raise awareness of the relevance of Quechua languages and literatures, Latinx and Latin American cultures, and Indigenous systems of knowledge. His work has appeared in a variety of academic publications, a TEDx Talk, and he has been featured at major institutions such as the United Nations and in international media (The New York Times, BBC, NPR, The Guardian).

This event will be held in person in G25 Stimson and will also be streamed live over Zoom (registration required). Join us at the LRC or on Zoom.

The event is free and open to the public. Campus visitors and members of the public must adhere to Cornell's public health requirements for events.

Co-sponsored by the Language Resource Center and the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program through its Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language (UISFL) grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

Talk by Kaneesha Cherelle Parsard (English Language and Literature, University of Chicago)

“Is the ‘Coolie Woman’ A Banker?” revisits the figure of the “coolie woman” during Indian indenture in the British West Indies. Histories of indentured Indian women have focused on the experience of recruitment, labor exploitation, and especially violence at the hands of planters or would-be husbands. Instead, this talk looks instead to the bangles, necklaces, and anklets they carry in plain sight. Following brief but revealing references to jewelry through craft and financial histories, travel writing, poetry, photography, and painting, the “coolie woman” becomes an agent of global finance. Jewelry is a little-seen source of value, her collateral against the violence of the plantation and of companionate marriage.

Kaneesha Cherelle Parsard is an assistant professor of English at the University of Chicago, where she writes about the legacies of slavery and emancipation in the Caribbean and in the broader Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds. Parsard is working on her first book project, “An Illicit Wage,” an aesthetic history of hustling, sex work, and hoarding as practices of freedom. Her scholarship has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the American Council of Learned Societies and can be found in American Quarterly, Small Axe, the South Atlantic Quarterly, and Representations.

Find out more about this study abroad opportunity in Ecuador. Politics of Sustainable Development in Latin America is a multi-term, four-credit course that will bring students onsite in Ecuador during the January term. Students will travel to Quito, Ecuador to begin their field study at Cornell's Global Hub partner institution, the Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ). Following their in-country orientation, students will then relocate to the indigenous community of Sacha Waysa in the Amazon region of Ecuador to work with local partners and the Yakum Foundation on projects related to biodiversity, agroforestry, reforestation, food sovereignty, and community planning.

Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program (LACS) Seminar Series, Co-sponsored by: Romance Studies & Department of Performance & Media Studies

Through a long-term personal project called What Remains, Lexi Parra has been documenting the effects of violence, repression by the State, and power of community in the targeted barrios of Caracas, by following the lives of those most affected. In this presentation, Parra will share her ongoing work paired with testimonies from local collaborators to offer an analysis of the militarization of Venezuelan police forces and the false narratives of an improving country as the crisis continues. She will also offer insight into the importance of nuanced, ethical storytelling.

Lexi Parra is a Venezuelan-American photographer and community educator based between Caracas and New York. Her work focuses on youth culture, the personal effects of inequality and violence, and themes of resilience. Parra has worked with The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR, The New Yorker, and others. Her degree is in Photography and Human Rights, from Bard College. Parra is the founder of Project MiRA, an arts education initiative that fosters visual literacy and critical analysis with youth in the barrios of Caracas. Project MiRA has been supported by Canon USA and the Davis Peace Prize.

Sometimes dismissed as mere fantasies, utopian capitalist experiments by the ultra-rich have in fact been tried in many places on earth, often with disastrous consequences for the local inhabitants, according to Ray Craib, Marie Underhill Noll Professor of American History.

In a live, hybrid (in-person and livestreamed) Chats in the Stacks book talk, Craib, who also holds affiliations with Romance studies, Latin American and Caribbean studies, and Latino studies, will discuss this history as revealed in his new book Adventure Capitalism: A History of Libertarian Exit, from the Era of Decolonization to the Digital Age (PM Press/Spectre, 2022). Based on deep dives into FBI files as well as archives in the US, the UK, and Vanuatu, Adventure Capitalism is a global history of elite exit projects involving an array of characters, from old guard coup leaders to techno-utopians, segregationists, socialists, real estate speculators and international spies. Craib will explore his work’s implications for understanding the history of contemporary cap­italism, decolonization, and empire, as well as the direction of our global future.

This talk is hosted by Olin Library. Light refreshments will be served.

The Latina/o Studies Program Fridays with Faculty luncheon seminar offers an opportunity for Latina/o and non-Latina/o students of all levels and disciplines to meet faculty and administrators from across the university for informal conversation about their current research/work in progress. All are welcome!

Fridays at 12 noon.

September 22

Asís Martinez Jerez
Associate Professor
Nolan School of Hotel Administration
Cornell SC Johnson College of Business

September 29

Irina R. Troconis
Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies
Department of Romance Studies/Spanish
College of Arts and Sciences

October 20

Helena María Viramontes
Distinguished Professor
Department of Literatures in English
College of Arts and Sciences in conversation with
Playwright, Virginia Grise

October 27

Mary Pat Brady
Professor
Department of Literatures in English
College of Arts and Sciences

November 3 (Postponed for Spring 2024)

Alexandra Dufresne
Director
State Policy Advocacy Clinic
Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy

November 10

Adriana Reyes
Assistant Professor
Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy
Department of Sociology
College of Arts and Sciences

November 17

Emilio Rojas
Visiting Critic
Department of Art
College of Architecture, Art and Plannin

This series made possible with support from the College of Arts Sciences Dean's Office.