LAS Spring 2008 Program:  The Andes Today: Power, Politics & Society

 *Tuesday, February 19: Public Lecture:  Colombia Human Rights Watch, 7 p.m. Davis Auditorium

      Diana Gómez, whose father was ‘disappeared’ and killed in Colombia in 2006, will speak about politics and society in contemporary Colombia.  She works with Movimiento Hijos e Hijas por la Memoria y contra la Impunidad (Movement of Sons and Daughters for Memory and against Impunity) and is a graduate student in anthropology writing a master’s thesis on the history of feminism in Colombia.  Her US trip is sponsored by the Colombia Human Rights Committee.

Tuesday, March 4: Our Brand of Crisis (2005), 7 p.m., Davis Auditorium

A US-made documentary on US political advisers providing counsel to Bolivian presidential candidate in 2004 elections

Tuesday, March 25: Días de Santiago (Peru, 2004), 7 p.m., Bolton 282

A soldier returns home from the Peruvian army after six years of fighting on the border, and has trouble in the transition to civilian and peacetime living.

Tuesday, April 1:  Bolívar Soy Yo (Colombia, 2002), 7 p.m. Davis Auditorium

A movie actor playing independence leader Simon Bolívar in a Colombian television series begins to believe he is Bolívar, and seeks to fulfill one of his political missions, to reunite Andean states into a single country.

Tuesday, April 7: Sumas y Restas (Columbia, 2002), 7 p.m. Emerson Auditorium

Screening and conversation with the director, Colombian filmmaker Victor Gaviria.  View Pictures
The film tells the story of a real-estate developer from a respectable upper-class Medellin family who gets involved in a drug deal thinking he can make some quick money to help finance a cash-strapped development project.  But he soon learns that he can't leave the business as easily as he entered it and finds himself fighting for his life against his new associates.

*April TBA: Screening of Sean Mattison '08's Parapolitics in Colombia

A documentary in-progress about the intersection of politics and violence in contemporary Colombia that brings in voices from the government, guerrillas, labor unions and civil society.

* Events organized by Sean Mattison ’08 with and co-sponsored by Latin American Studies and the Intercultural Global Understanding Task Force