@dsharnak
Historian studying Latin America, social movements, human rights, transitional justice, USFP, sports. Author: Of Light and Struggle (Penn 2023). Co-editor: Uruguay In Transnational Perspective (Routledge 2023)
"Kast’s appointment of 30-year-old evangelical Judith Marín as women and gender equality minister underscores his hardline stance. Marín disrupted a senate session on abortion decriminalisation in 2017, shouting “return to the lord” while being forcibly ejected by police."
From the article: "Chile allowed abortion for medical reasons from the 1930s until Gen Augusto Pinochet issued a total ban in 1989 as one of his final decrees. An unapologetic supporter of Pinochet, Kast upholds much of the regime’s antiquated values on society and patriarchal family order."
Happy Women's History Month... www.theguardian.com/global-devel...
First female Sec Gen finally??
I gave a second interview with the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) about why the right is attempting to shut down NPR and PBS, and how rural station closures will affect democratic discourse. Thanks to the excellent Lucy Schiller.
Kast names worrisome cabinet members in Chile.. "Fernando Rabat, who defended Pinochet in an illicit funds case, will lead the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, which is still overseeing cases linked to the dictatorship." www.reuters.com/world/americ...
CFP on Venezuelan Revolutions: ageofrevolutions.com/2026/01/06/c...
"But the attendant rehabilitation of one of the continent’s most infamous autocrats is a particularly agonizing setback in a country where many considered the long struggle for democracy to have been won."
"Some might call his rise just one more alarming case of a worldwide trend toward nativist authoritarianism — and it is..."
Our Phi Alpha Theta chapter made the main page of the national website. This is what “unlocking your historical potential” looks like…
Flyer for Renata Keller's talk about The Fate of the Americas at Rowan University on Oct 30 at 2pm
Today at @rowanuniversity.bsky.social, come (lots of) rain or shine! @dsharnak.bsky.social just sent me some advance questions from her students and they are 💯. So excited!!
The first chapter deals with McNamara and the success of this project in overseas arenas. I think you’ll love it!
It was a pleasure to review Karen Robert's book, Driving Terror: Labor, Violence, and Justice in Cold War Argentina. It's a deep history of the Ford Falcon before, during, and after the nation's dictatorship. I highly recommend getting a copy! www.h-net.org/reviews/show... @h-diplo.bsky.social
Take a read for yourself! (🧵/11) www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
"Ultimately, the Friends’ innovation and legacy in human rights work are its protection-based advocacy and its coalitional politics that make it worth studying from the perspective of scholarship on transnational social movements."(🧵/10)
As I write, "In the context of the explosion of grassroots human rights activity and work in the 1970s and 1980s, the Friends brief tenure and limited impact was not unusual. The more famous and long-lasting groups, such as Amnesty and eventually @hrw.org are the anomalies."(🧵/9)
It's a hard searched for story of one of the many, smaller human rights groups that arose in response to the massive violations taking place during the period of Argentine state terror, albeit with a short lifespan. (🧵/8)
What came out of this journey is finally in published form and I'm thrilled to see this in print. "Protection-based advocacy: assessing the United States Friends of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo." (🧵/7) www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
And we called archives we couldn't visit from all over the country and many were generous enough in the immediately post-Covid/archives reopening phase to send us scanned files as well. (🧵/6) {Shout out to amazing archivists--truly the best people!}
we visited archives all over the northeast looking for needles in the haystacks. We researched any member of the group's personal papers, public documents, memoirs. We tried to interview any surviving members of the Friends- sometimes successful, sometimes in vain. (🧵/5)
And after that, well, I knew I had to do more research on this group and see if anything was there. I invited that student to accompany me on the journey and learn about archival research. Over the next year and a half...(🧵/4)
That summer, I was in the Ford Foundation archives at the Rockefeller Archive Center, doing research for an unrelated project, and found a series of documents about the group's founding! (🧵/3)
After some more of my own searches, I still didn't find anything. The student went on to write a great capstone paper on the US government & the Madres, and I all but forgot about the group until...(🧵/2)
In 2022, a student came to me asking about this group they had found mentioned in State Department documents called the United States Friends of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. I asked twitter for help and got no response. (🧵/1)
I can't get through "I Love You Forever" without weeping, which my daughters think is hysterical. Apparently though I am not the only one.
Also, Paperbag Princess is a mainstay in our house. I have gifted it to many a friend!
Check out this week's newsletter for original reporting on Peru's uprising and a review of a book on Brazilian Jews. Read as well about U.S.-Venezuela tensions, Peru's new president, Milei's bailout, Guatemala's prisons, and more.
nacla.salsalabs.org/oct_17_25
And even though my own current book project doesn't cover Brazil, I was fun to use some research from my own archival visits (the review starts with this survey from 1968).
It was a pleasure to review this book, Brazilian Belonging, for NACLA nacla.org/brazilian-be...
