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Fighting for Better Days

30 May 2019, 6:00 pm–8:00 pm

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Please join us for a discussion and reception as we celebrate the launch of Voices of Latin America: Social Movements and the New Activism.

This event is free.

Event Information

Open to

All

Availability

Yes

Cost

Free

Organiser

Daisy Voake

Location

Room 103
Institute of the Americas
51 Gordon Square
London
WC1H 0PN

These are alarming times in Latin America. The presidency of Jair Bolsonaro not only represents an existential threat to Brazilian minorities, but to democracy itself in Latin America’s largest nation. The ongoing political turmoil in Venezuela has led to a major humanitarian crisis and the threat of U.S intervention is very real. Meanwhile, the election of the hard-line Iván Duque in Colombia has put the country’s fragile peace deal at risk. And throughout the region, hard-won social progress appears in jeopardy.

Latin America is now the world’s most dangerous region for land, environment and human rights defenders. Recent years have seen the assassinations of prominent activists such as Rio de Janeiro city councillor Marielle Franco and the Honduran indigenous leader and environmental activist Berta Cáceres. And yet, despite this hostile climate, autonomous social movements have multiplied and thrived.

Voices of Latin America, published by Latin America Bureau and Practical Action Publishing, brings together interviews with more than 70 activists on the ground, from Mexico to Chile, from the wetlands of Belize to the streets of São Paulo. These extraordinary first-person testimonies not only showcase the rich diversity of these movements, but also provide compelling examples of integrity, courage, and effective resistance through solidarity and collective action.

Join us for lively debate and a glass of wine with chapter authors Louise Morris, Ali Rocha, Emily Gregg, Sue Branford and Mike Gatehouse, alongside the book’s editor Tom Gatehouse. Professor David Treece (Camoens Professor of Portuguese at Kings College London) will chair this event.


Speaker bios

Louise Morris is a journalist, audio and TV producer. She specializes in women’s rights and the intersection between art and politics. Louise works primarily in radio, producing and presenting documentaries for BBC R4 and producing for NPR. She previously worked producing a daily TV magazine programme. She has written for The Wire, Delayed Gratification, and BBC News Online, among others.

Ali Rocha is a news and documentary producer who has worked with the BBC, Channel Four, ITN and Al Jazeera English on their Brazil coverage since 2003. She is also a human rights activist campaigning against the genocide of poor black youth in Brazil. She runs social media group Brazil Matters and helps to manage Brazilian Women Against Fascism UK, an activist group created to oppose the government of Jair Bolsonaro.

Emily Gregg has written blogs for LAB on the Colombian Peace Process and the legacy of El Salvador’s 1992 peace accords. She is now studying for an MSc in the history of international relations at the London School of Economics with a focus on human rights and Latin America.

Sue Branford is a journalist who reported from Brazil for over a decade. A founding member of LAB’s editorial team, she has worked for the BBC, the Financial TimesThe Guardian and The Economist. She has written five books on Latin America, mainly on Brazil. Her latest book, co-authored with Mauricio Torres, is titled Amazon Besieged: by dams, soya, agribusiness and land grabbing (Practical Action Publishing and LAB 2018).

Mike Gatehouse lived in Chile in 1972-3 and worked for 15 years in London for Latin America solidarity and human rights organizations. Co-author of LAB’s Soft Drink, Hard Labour – Guatemalan workers take on Coca Cola and In the Mountains of Morazán – Portrait of a returned refugee community in El Salvador, he is an editor at LAB.

Tom Gatehouse is a writer and translator who has lived in Argentina, Spain, and Brazil. He holds an MPhil in Latin American Studies from the University of Cambridge. He has written for LAB and Red Pepper and his translations have appeared in Folha de S. Paulo, Agência Pública, and Tales and Trails Lisbon, a recent collection of short stories and other writings. He lives in London.

David Treece is a Camoens Professor of Portuguese at Kings College London. David teaches across all areas of Brazilian culture, literature and cultural history, including specialisms in twentieth-century music and poetry, nineteenth-century and contemporary fiction, and the culture and politics of Afro-Brazilian identity and race.