
¡Adiós Pinochet! / Good bye Pinochet! | Chilean arpillera, Anonymous, 1980c | Conflict Textiles collection Photo Colin Peck, © Conflict Textiles
Hosted by CLAS, Global Studies and the Center for Civil Rights and Racial Justice at the University of Pittsburgh
February 14, 2025
Registration
To register for the conference please access the link below:
Location:
4310 Posvar Hall | Center for Urban Education, Posvar Hall
Description
In 2024, Brazil marks the 60th anniversary of the military coup that initiated a 21-year dictatorship. This coup was part of a broader wave of military interventions across South America, leading to authoritarian regimes in Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina. Although most of these regimes dissolved by the early 1990s, authoritarianism remains a significant element in Latin America’s political memory.
This conference brings together scholars from Latin America and the United States to examine the intersections of authoritarian governance, collective memory, and the ongoing struggle for justice and human rights across the region. Key topics include the role of political parties under authoritarian regimes, grassroots memory initiatives, transitional justice efforts, and the pressing challenge of strengthening democratic resilience in the face of resurgent authoritarianism.
Program
9:15 AM
Welcome and Opening Remarks
Keila Grinberg (Center for Latin American Studies, University of Pittsburgh), Lara Putnam (Center for Global Studies, University of Pittsburgh), Sheila Velez-Martinez (Center for Civil Rights and Racial Justice)
9:30 AM to 11:30 AM
Session 1: Memory, human rights and authoritarianism
Chair: Keila Grinberg (University of Pittsburgh)
Public History, Sites of Memory and Conscience about the Brazilian Dictatorship
Samantha Quadrat (Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil)
Memory processes against denialism (?) in Argentina. Challenges, struggles and uncertainty
Ludmila da Silva Catela (Universidade Nacional de Cordoba, Argentina)
The Rule of Law, State Violence and Social Revolt in Transitional Chile
Hugo Rojas (Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Chile)
Discussants: Laura Gotkowitz (University of Pittsburgh) and Sheila Velez Martinez (University of Pittsburgh)
Lunch Break
1:00 PM to 3:00 PM
Session 2: Politics under Authoritarian Regimes
Chair: Lara Putnam (University of Pittsburgh)
The attack on political elites: revocation of mandates and suspension of political rights in Brazil (1964-1969)
Lucia Grinberg (Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
Brazil and the Condor Operation: Systems of Cross-Border Repression in South America
Roberto Simon (independent scholar)
"Is Democracy the Opposite of Dictatorship? Reckoning with the Democratic Roots of the Cold War Military Regimes in Latin America"
Barbara Weinstein (New York University)
Discussants: José Cheibub (University of Pittsburgh)
Coffee Break
3:15 PM to 4:30 PM
Keynote Speaker: Dora María Téllez (Visiting Scholar, Harvard University)
Authoritarianism, Once Again: Memories and Reflections
Discussant: Michel Gobat (University of Pittsburgh)
4:30 PM to 6:00 PM
Book Launch (Reception to follow)
Teoría crítica del derecho y justicia social en las Américas
Edited by Sheila Velez-Martinez and Hugo Rojas
Bios of our Participants
Barbara Weinstein
Dora María Téllez
Dora María Téllez is a Nicaraguan historian, politician, and social rights activist.
During Nicaragua´s revolutionary government (1979-1990), she served as representative and vice president of the Council of State and as Minister of Health. In 2021, she was imprisoned for 20 months and held in isolation for denouncing the human rights violations of the government.
She is the author of books and academic publications about Nicaraguan economic and social history, the challenges of democracy, social movements, exclusion of indigenous and other minoritized communities, and the evolution of the Nicaraguan political system.
Téllez is member of Nicaraguan Academy of Geography and History and the Guatemalan Academy of Geography and History. She has also received two honorary doctorates from the University of Helsinki (2011) and from the Sorbonne-Nouvelle University (2022).
On summer 2023, she was Visiting Research Scholar, Program in Latin American Studies, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey. On 2023-2024, she was Visiting Professor, Richard E. Greenleaf Distinguished Chair in Latin American Studies. Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana and in 2024, Cisneros Visiting Fellows at David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University.
Hugo Rojas
Hugo Rojas Corral is Professor of Sociology of Law and Transitional Justice at Alberto Hurtado University and Researcher at the Millennium Research Institute on Violence and Democracy. He holds a doctorate in Sociology from the University of Oxford, a doctorate in Law from the University of Salamanca, and a masters in Law and Anthropology from the London School of economics.
José Cheibub
Keila Grinberg
Keila Grinberg (PhD, Universidade Federal Fluminense, 2000) has recently been appointed Director of the Center for Latin American Studies and Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh. A native of Rio de Janeiro, she joined Pitt after being a member of the History Department of the Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro for almost twenty years. During that time, she also had appointments as Visiting Professor at Northwestern University and at the University of Michigan, as Tinker Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago and as the Andrés Bello Chair in Latin American Cultures and Civilizations at New York University.
A specialist on slavery and race in the Atlantic World, she has authored, co-authored, and edited several books and articles in Portuguese, English, Spanish, French, and Russian, including A Black Jurist in a Slave Society: Antonio Pereira Rebouças and the Trials of Brazilian Citizenship (UNC Press, 2019), a finalist of the 2020 Frederick Douglass Book Prize. She also co-directs the public digital history project "Present Pasts: Memories of Slavery in Brazil." Her most recent research project examines nineteenth-century cases of kidnapping and illegal enslavement on the southern Brazilian border. She is also interested in Jewish History, the teaching and writing of History, and memory and public history of slavery.
Lara Putnam
Laura Gotkowitz
Lucia Grinberg
Ludmila da Silva Catela
Doctora en Antropología Cultural y Magíster en Sociología por la Universidad Federal de Río de Janeiro. Profesora e investigadora de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Es autora entre otros textos de los siguientes libros: No habrá flores en la tumba del pasado. La experiencia de reconstrucción del mundo de familiares de desaparecidos. (La Plata: Ediciones Al Margen (2001-2002-2009-2014)(Editado también en portugués por HUCITEC).
Ha compilado junto a Elizabeth Jelín: Los archivos de la represión: Documentos, memoria y verdad. (Madrid y Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2002) y junto a Elizabeth Jelin y Mariana Giordano, Fotografía, memoria e identidad. (Trilce Editorial, 2010). Ha organizado el libro con textos de Michael Pollak, Memoria, olvido, silencio. La producción social de identidades frente a situaciones límite. (Ediciones Al Margen. La Plata, 2006), Memorias al Margen. Análisis etnográficos e históricos sobre el pasado reciente en Argentina (Ediciones del Pasaje, 2015) y junto a Elizabeth Jelin y Agustina Triquell, ¿Qué hacemos con las cosas del pasado? (EDUVIN, 2022). Archivos Etnográficos. (Editorial FFyH, 2024).
Entre los años 2006-2015 se desempeñó como Directora del Archivo Provincial de la Memoria de Córdoba-Argentina. Desde 2016 a 2017 fue Directora del Museo de Antropología de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Actualmente es Investigadora Principal del CONICET en el IDACOR-UNC. Profesora de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba y de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Directora del Doctorado en Ciencias Antropológicas de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba.
Michel Gobat
Samantha Quadrat
History Professor at Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF), PhD, Universidade Federal Fluminense (2005), Laboratório de História Oral e Imagem (Labhoi) and CNPq researcher.
Sheila Vélez-Martínez
Jack & Lovell Olender Professor of Refugee, Asylum, and Immigration Law, Co-Director, Center for Civil Rights and Racial Justice.
Professor Sheila I Vélez Martínez is the Jack and Lovell Olender Professor of Asylum Refugee and Immigration Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. She is also the Director of Clinical Programs and the Immigration Law Clinic. Her academic publications and academic interests include issues related to immigrant women, Puerto Rican migration, Caribbean Migration, remittances, legal pedagogy and OutCrit theory.
She joined Pitt Law as a visiting professor in 2010 to establish the Immigration Law Clinic. She is a member of the Board of Directors of LatCrit (Latino and Latina Critical Legal Studies Inc.) and also of Friends of Farmworkers. She holds a Juris Doctor from the University of Puerto Rico School of Law.
Roberto Simon
Roberto Simon is a journalist, political risk analyst, and the author of Brazil Against Democracy: The Brazilian Dictatorship, the Chilean Coup, and the Cold War in South America. He has published and collaborated with multiple media outlets, including Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal. He was a columnist for Americas Quarterly and Folha de S. Paulo, and served as a Senior Director for Policy at the Americas Society/Council of the Americas. Previously, Simon was the lead Latin America analyst on Geopolitical Risk at FTI Consulting. He spent nearly a decade as a reporter with O Estado de S. Paulo, covering events throughout Latin America and the Middle East. Simon holds a Master in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government.