April 2021 Newsletter

Spring is here and hope in sight, despite myriad challenges ahead. Recent events have turned our attention once again to racism and an ongoing crisis on the borders of the U.S., Mexico and Guatemala.

The LAI condemns all racism and racial violence against Asian-Americans and Asians and all people of color. The previous administration's pretense that a wall or the deployment of more military police or the inhumane treatment of children would solve the border crises has accomplished nothing. The fact is that most asylum seekers are running away from broken, war-torn, violent, hurricane-ravaged countries out of desperation. If we know our history, then we would know that U.S. foreign policy in the 20th and 21st centuries has failed to help the nations of Central America that are most impacted by the crisis. The solution, obviously, is to help this impoverished region of the hemisphere, not to persecute their people by subjecting them to more hardship. The LAI supports humane and informed responses to the crisis and condemns anti-immigrant speech and policies designed to punish victims of the crisis.

We continue our mission to promote education and research on Latin America. In fact, we have two events focused on human rights planned for Monday April 5. The first is "Re-imagining Rights in the Americas," a special event co-sponsored with the UCLA Promise Institute for Human Rights, featuring the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Francisco Cali Tzay, Honduran leader and Coordinator of the Lenca organization COPINH, Bertha Zuñiga Cáceres, and Garifuna activist and scholar, Dr. Rony Castillo. The event will be conducted remotely in Spanish with simultaneous English. The second event of the day is another conversation in our Voces de Latinoamérica series, this one with Amaral Arévalo, of the Centro Latinoamericano en Sexualidad y Derechos Humanos, who will speak about gender and sexuality in El Salvador. This remote event will be conducted in Spanish.

We encourage you to contribute to our mission of promoting research and teaching on Latin America, which is as relevant now as it was when our Organized Research Unit was founded in 1959, one of the first centers in the nation dedicated to research on Latin America. We wish you well and look forward to seeing you in April!

Kevin Terraciano
Director, Latin American Institute