Winter Quarter 2006-07 News
Fidel Castro and His Rise to Power
On January 30, Bolívar House was privileged to welcome New York Times reported Anthony DePalma to give his talk, entitled: “The Beginning and End of Castro’s Cuba.” The talk itself revolved around NYT reporter Herbert Matthews and his now infamous trip to Cuba to interview Fidel Castro in 1957, just before the revolution and when many people thought Castro was dead. Matthews’ interview launched Castro back into the limelight, including the front page of the Times, and, some argue, helped the notorious dictator gain ultimate power in Cuba. Matthews is now a legendary figure in Cuba.
Anthony DePalma was the first foreign correspondent of The New York Times to serve as bureau chief in both Mexico and Canada. Starting in 1993, he covered some of the most tumultuous events in modern Mexican history, including the Zapatista uprising, the assassination of the ruling party's presidential candidate and the peso crisis that quickly spread economic chaos to markets all over the world. Mr. DePalma has also reported from Cuba, Guatemala, Suriname, Guyana, and during the Kosovo crisis, Montenegro and Albania. DePalma’s latest book is entitled The Man Who Invented Fidel, which is about Herbert Matthews.
Violence and the Police in Democratic Brazil
On January 23, Bolívar House was honored to host Professor Ronald Ahnen from St. Mary’s College in Moraga, CA for a talk on Brazil entitled, "Explaining Brazil's Persistent Police Violence under Democracy." As the title indicates, Ahnen’s talk focused on violence in modern-day Brazil, particularly Rio de Janeiro. He talked about the police force in Rio and how it is made up of two forces: the civilian police and the military police, with the latter handling street patrol. In 2003 alone, over 1,000 people were killed in the state of Rio by policemen, or 15 % of all homicides reported. Ahnen argues that the political culture of Brazil, fed by immense inequality and elite liberalism, sets up a system where citizens do not look at each other as co-equals. In Brazil, governors wield immense power; they depend on police forces for reelections and are pressured by constituents to have a handle on crime—or at least appear so. Human rights groups believe that demilitarizing the police force and getting rid of military courts for military policemen would improve the situation.
Dr. Ronald E. Ahnen has been Assistant Professor of Politics at St. Mary’s College since 2003. He has been researching human rights, police violence and public safety policy in Brazil and Latin America for over a decade. His book manuscript “Democracy vs. Rights: The Politics of Police Violence and Public Safety Policy in Brazil” is currently under review. Recently he has begun a new line of research on Micro-credit programs aimed at poverty reduction and social integration. His publications have appeared in the International Journal of Children’s Rights, the Bulletin of Latin American Research, and Latin American Politics and Society.
Looking at Disease in 19th-Century Rio de Janeiro
On January 16, Professor Zephyr Frank gave a talk entitled, “Corrupting Vapors: Public Health and Disease in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro.” This talk is based on research that Professor Frank conducted, looking at the relation between disease/death and inequality in the city. In order to do his research, he looked at several sources, including parish registers and official reports. Some of the diseases afflicting Rio de Janeiro during the time were yellow fever, cholera, and tuberculosis.
Professor Frank obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign in 1999. He specializes in Latin American history, with an emphasis on the history of Brazil. He teaches courses on Latin America focusing on the family, economy, and culture and politics. His other interests include social structure, wealthholding, and slavery.
The Transition Myth in Spain
On January 9th, the Bolívar House Tuesday Lecture Series for Winter Quarter kicked off with a talk from Professor Joan Ramon Resina entitled, "And Then They Became Democrats: The Transition's Myth and the Pragmatic Approach to History in Spain." The talk focused on Spain immediately after the Franco era, or the transition. Resina argued that the transition was successful because it cancelled the memory of Franco, which appeased both Spaniards and outsiders.
Resina specializes in Spanish and Catalan literatures with an emphasis in the modern period. His interests, which include a strong cultural component, range from urban studies to the collective memory and issues of political and social scale, such as the relation between the local and global. He has held teaching positions at Cornell University, Northwestern University, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He has received two Ph.D.’s from two universities: UC Berkeley (Comparative Literature) and the University of Barcelona (English Philology).