Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program (LACS) Public Issues Forum.

In 1979, the Caribbean island of Grenada became the first and so far only nation in the history of the English-speaking world to declare itself revolutionary, oust its elected government, and adopt socialist approaches. Visits from Brazilian educationalist Paulo Freire, African-American activist Angela Davis, Kenyan novelist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, and support from the then Cuban government, signalled that this was not just a "small island" affair but a major international one, reverberating throughout Latin America and the African Diaspora.

On the 40th anniversary of the revolution's 1983 collapse and the US invasion that swiftly followed, the distinguished Grenadian novelist Merle Collins reflects on how the revolution encouraged participants like herself to think in global terms and how it influenced her own life and writing. The talk comes as she publishes her latest novel, Ocean Stirrings, about Louise Langdon, the Grenadian activist who was also the mother of Malcolm X.

Merle Collins is Professor Emerita, University of Maryland, where she taught for several years in the Department of English and the Comparative Literature Program. During the period of the Grenada Revolution, she served as a coordinator for research on Latin America and the Caribbean for the Government of Grenada. She left Grenada in 1983. The author of three novels, a collection of short stories and three collections of poetry, she also served as Director of University of Maryland's Latin American Studies Center (now Latin American and Caribbean Studies Center).

A Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program (LACS) Public Issues Forum funded by the US Department of Education's Title VI UISFL grant, co-sponsored by English Literatures Department, Society for the Humanities, and the American Studies Program.

Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program (LACS) Seminar Series, Co-sponsored by: City and Regional Planning (CRP) and the Cornell Center for Health Equity (CCHEq).

A discussion with three Puerto Rican community leaders from Caño Martín Peña CLT, Taller Salud and La Colmena Cimarrona who will be speaking about strategies of resistance, community solidarities and emancipatory processes to advance collective land ownership and land-based repair mechanisms that improve access to housing, built environment, environment, food security, and climate adaptation; ultimately contributing to achieving health justice. Land is at the root of structural inequities. It is also the basis for community sovereignty, justice and healing. Within a Puerto Rican context, community land claims acquire particular relevance due to the continuous exposure to climate injustices, the lack of adequate investment for basic infrastructure on the island and structural power inequities.

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Featured Speakers:

Iván Duque Former President of Colombia (2018-2022) Colombia
Heather Henyon Founding Partner Mindshift Capital, UAE
Andrew Karolyi Charles Field Knight Dean and Harold Bierman Jr Distinguished Professor of Management Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, USA
Mark Mobius Founding Partner Mobius Capital Partners, UAE
Juan Pablo Ortega Co-founder and CEO Yuno, Puerto Rico
Shaanti Shamdasani CEO & Founder S. ASEAN International Advocacy & Consultancy - SAIAC, Indonesia
Vera Songwe Chair and Founder Liquidity and Sustainability Facility, Africa
Marcos Troyjo Transformational Leadership Fellow University of Oxford
Edward Tse Founder and Chairman Gao Feng Advisory Company, China

The Cornell Emerging Market Institute Conference is the United States’ leading annual forum for discussing the ongoing trends and phenomena in our world’s rapidly growing emerging markets. Bringing together heads of the world’s largest multilateral institutions and preeminent business, the conference fosters engaging discussions on economic development and this year, specifically, through the lens of global supply chains.

The Conference is hosted at Cornell’s landmark Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island in New York City and will feature a variety of key-note speakers, thought-provoking panel discussions, networking sessions, and two sponsored competitions: the Cornell EMI Mark Mobius Pitch Competition and the Cornell EMI Corning Case Competition. The Conference also marks the launch of the Institute’s Annual Report, a collection of research and articles from the past year developed by researchers within Cornell as well as the Emerging Multinationals Research Network in collaboration with OECD Development Center, UNCTAD, IFC, and Inter-American Development Bank.

This year’s conference is centered around the compelling theme Risks and Realignments:

Emerging markets are in flux—no longer the future, already central to the present. And yet Capital is flowing as if there is doubt, with new partnerships dawning, old questions lingering. The EMI Conference straddles the crossroads, here to capture a seminal moment, when crises — even the specters of financial contagion — may not have to threaten us, so much as invite us to think anew. This Conference reaffirms our commitment to building bridges, as risks spill over, as potential realignments draw closer. The conference will hold 4 panels, the Cañizares Award ceremony, and the competition finals:

Central Bank Digital Currencies: Looking Back and Looking ForwardReorganizing investments in Emerging MarketsRealignments: Multilaterals and Sovereign Wealth FundsLaunch of the EMI Report 2023Cornell EMI Corning Case CompetitionCornell EMI Mark Mobius Pitch CompetitionJoin us.

Cornell University’s Emerging Market Institute is holding its annual conference on November 3rd at Cornell Tech on Roosevelt Island, NYC.

The Emerging Markets Institute holds an Annual Conference every first Friday of November, in which Emerging Markets are brought to the forefront of discussion. Within the conference, EMI also holds the finals of the and the . Stay connected to the EMI Conference website to find more about the speakers and agenda, and follow our newsletter.

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.