2014-2015 César Chávez Fellow
Charlene Cruz-Cerdas is a Ph.D. candidate from the department of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and is the current 2014-2015 César Chávez Fellow.
[more]This event convened a panel of experts to discuss the upcoming October 2022 federal elections in Brazil, arguably one of the most pressing elections of modern contemporary Latin American politics. In 2018, Brazilians elected the far-right Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency. Bolsonaro's election represented the most serious challenge to Brazil's democracy since the restoration of civilian rule in 1985 after over two decades of military dictatorship (1964-85). In conjunction with Bolsonaro's sustained weakening of democratic institutions and norms, his presidency has seen record deforestation of the Amazon, rising violence against Afro-Brazilians, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ persons, and a troubled response against the COVID-19 pandemic in which Bolsonaro spread misinformation about vaccines. His main opponent is Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from the Workers' Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores), the former trade union leader and president of Brazil (2003-10), whose previous imprisonment on corruption charges based on flimsy evidence preemptively ended his 2018 presidential campaign. The current election promises to be no less dramatic and our panel of experts will address a complex, highly fluid situation whose implications extend beyond Brazil and will engage anyone interested in the global rise of right-wing authoritarian populists, climate change, and the potential redux of the 2000s "Pink Tide" of leftist leaders across Latin America.
You can view the recording here: Precarious Democracy recording
Charlene Cruz-Cerdas is a Ph.D. candidate from the department of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and is the current 2014-2015 César Chávez Fellow.
[more]Senior Lecturer Douglas Moody has been awarded the Presidents’ Good Steward Award for faculty by the Campus Compact for New Hampshire.
[more]My Dartmouth Latin American Studies degree has been the foundation of my professional life for 5 decades. The mixture of humanities and social science gave me the basis for re-inventing my interests throughout my career.
[more]Upon graduation from Dartmouth, I worked for several years in the field of public education, before making the transition to electoral campaigns, legislative advocacy, and public engagement. My work in Latino Studies and Latin American and Caribbean Studies has served me well professionally, and proven to be of tremendous personal benefit as well. I would welcome the opportunity to speak with majors, minors, fellows, and graduate-degree pursuing scholars, about the past, present, and future of LALACS at the College.
[more]Negarra Kudumu '01 writes, "Since April of 2009 I have been living and working in the Netherlands at a research institute called HIIL (Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law). In a very basic way my LALACS major, coupled with studying Spanish and Portuguese, has equipped me with a broader tool kit for relating to and understanding the world. Because of LALACS's interdisciplinary nature, I often find myself drawing upon that knowledge base to see how well--or not--it applies to other historical and cultural concepts.
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