At a book talk for "Until the Storm Passes" about the Brazilian dictatorship of 1964–1985, author Bryan Pitts said the malleability of the Brazilian political class has made it possible for Brazilian democracy to become more representative over the past several decades.
Using quantitative and qualitative data, the report's analysis finds unprecedented violence against migrants in six northern Mexican border states and four southwestern U.S. border states during the period January 1, 2021–June 30, 2022.
The director of the Center for Brazilian Studies receives the Brunn Award for Creativity in Geography on March 24. In honor of the occasion, Hecht answers questions about the award, her research and the current state of Amazon rainforest.
“‘Bad Mexicans' tells the story of how the magonistas built their social movement here in the United States... [and the] cross-border counterinsurgency campaign that tried to stop them,” said historian Kelly Lytle Hernández at a recent Center for Mexican Studies event.
“It was a really great first-hand experience to see how a public health program is implemented in a country with limited resources and hard-to-reach communities,” said Mia Giordano of her fieldwork in Guatemala last summer.
Under the leadership of literary scholar Jorge Marturano, the Program on Caribbean Studies has explored the region through the web of relationships that connect Carbibbean nations with Central and South America, including their shared Afro Descendant culture.
Six centers of the institute have been awarded Title VI funding for area and/or language studies at UCLA.
Verónica Zavala Jacobo grew up between Mexico and the U.S. with parents who were seasonal farmworkers. She came late to formal education, but once she began, there was no stopping the gifted student. Now in a Ph.D. program at UCLA, she has already completed a B.A. in social work and an M.A. in Latin American studies.
Feb 3, 2022. “For me, it's a watershed moment. It's not any plant, it's GM, a national corporation with plants in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico,” said Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, director of the UCLA Center for Mexican Studies, said to the Wall Street Journal regarding the recent election of a new, independent workers' union in a GM plant in central Mexico. “It opens the door and the possibility for big changes in Mexico.” Stronger labor protection provisions in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement of 2018 and the consequent reform of Mexican labor laws in 2019 made the election of the new union possible. The Los Angeles Times reported (Feb 4), "Gaspar Rivera-Salgado ... described the vote as test for the Mexican government to organize fair elections and ensure 'that workers have the right to choose free from coercion.'”
Blog Post by Paavo Monkkonen, Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy