Latin America Week 2005

national | miscellaneous | event notice Monday April 04, 2005 16:43 by Stuart White - Latin America Solidaritty Centre info at lasc dot ie 5 Merrion Row, Dublin 2 01 676 0435

A Week of Solidarity, Culture And Fun With Events All Around Ireland

LASC will be launching a year of education and campaigning work around the theme of culture during Latin America Week.

The week opens with a conference in Dublin on 16th April and our speakers include Jaime Enrique Arias Arias who is the “Cabildo” or elected leader of the Kankuamo group, from the Sierra Nevada de St. Marta in Northern Colombia.

Subsequent events include cultural events, workshops, seminaries, documentaries, photographic exhibitions, music, dance and lots more to explore the effects of commodification on culture in Latin America today.

The Latin America Solidarity Centre (LASC) is an initiative for cultural promotion, development education and campaigning solidarity, linking Ireland and Latin America.

Latin America is an extremely cultural rich and diverse region, but is this cultural diversity being maintained and protected? Although the right to culture is enshrined in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, industrial and development projects, often linked to conflict and violence, are threatening vulnerable cultures in the region.

LASC will be launching a year of education and campaigning work around the theme of culture during Latin America Week on 16 April 2005.

The week opens with a conference in Dublin on 16 April and our speakers include Jaime Enrique Arias Arias who is the “Cabildo” or elected leader of the Kankuamo group, from the Sierra Nevada de St. Marta in Northern Colombia.

The Kankuamo are one of four indigenous groups living in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Northern Colombia. These groups are descendants of an ancient South American civilization called the Tayrona, and are unique amongst Amerindians as they were never truly vanquished by the Spaniards. They are now a symbol for the rest of Colombia's indigenous groups, as their culture began to re-emerge 20 years ago due to the determination of the ethnic group's younger generation, who heeded their elders' call for the need to recuperate their cultural identity. To be a Kankuamo Indian in Colombia today is dangerous. In the past two decades, 261 members of that ethnic group have been killed, 92 (more than one-third) in the two years since the government of President Alvaro Uribe took office

Subsequent events include cultural events, workshops, seminaries, documentaries, photographic exhibitions, music, dance and lots more to explore the effects of commodification on culture in Latin America today. These events are taking place in Galway, Limerick, Belfast and Dublin.

We will also be looing at related issues in Ireland, i.e., the struggle to protect heritage, the creation of a culturally diverse society and the cultural consequences of displacement of inner city communities in Ireland.

For more details:

See LASC website www.lasc.ie

Contact LASC for a copy of the full Latin America Week Programme of Events on:

info@lasc.ie
01 6760435
5 Merrion Row, Dublin 2