Tulane University

The Liberace of Lucha Libre: An Evening with American-born Mexican luchador Cassandro

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Join the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South, the Newcomb Art Museum, Amigos de los Amigos, and krewedelusion in welcoming American-born Mexican luchador Saúl Armendáriz, or Cassandro, on Wednesday, February 20, 7:00 PM, in the Freeman Auditorium. Cassandro will speak about his personal story of growing up and training as a lucha libre in México. He became one of the first openly gay exóticos (a wrestler who dresses in a flamboyant style), and later he had the honor of being the first exótico to win a championship title.

Cassandro will speak about how he negotiated his gay identity and overcame adversity in the world of professional Mexican wrestling. He will also share his experiences outside of wrestling, as an LGBTQ activist, circuit speaker, and most recently as the subject of a feature documentary, Cassandro, The Exótico which received critical acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2018.

This event is free and open to the public. Parader and performer Antonio Garza will moderate.

For more information contact: New Orleans Center for the Gulf South via email dfrazier@tulane.edu, by phone (504-314-2889), or visit the event website.

Sponsored by: Newcomb Art Museum, Amigos de los Amigos, krewedelusion, and The New Orleans Center for the Gulf South.

Life without Lead: Contamination, Crisis, and Hope in Uruguay

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Join the Environmental Studies Program and the School of Liberal Arts at Tulane University in welcoming Daniel Renfrew, West Virginia University, who will giving a talk titled Life without Lead: Contamination, Crisis, and Hope in Uruguay on Thursday, February 21 at 5:00 PM in the Stone Auditorium as part of the EVST Focus on the Environment (FOTE) Speaker Series.

Life without Lead examines the social, political and environmental dimensions of a devastating lead poisoning epidemic. Drawing from a political ecology of health perspective, Daniel Renfrew situates the Uruguayan lead contamination crisis in relation to neoliberal reform, globalization, and the resurgence of the political Left in Latin America. He traces the rise of an environmental social justice movement and the local and transnational circulation of environmental ideologies and contested science. Through fine-grained ethnographic analysis, this book shows how combating contamination intersected with class politics, explores the relationship of lead poisoning to poverty, and debates the best way to identify and manage an unprecedented local environmental health problem.

Daniel Renfrew is an associate professor of Anthropology. He received a Ph.D. in anthropology from Binghamton University, State University of New York in 2007. Dr. Renfrew joined the WVU faculty in Fall 2008 after a year as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Towson University. Dr. Renfrew’s research interests span the environmental, urban, critical medical and political anthropology sub-fields, and his research draws from and contributes to interdisciplinary scholarship on political ecology, social movements, science and technology studies, and Latin American studies. His research has focused in particular on anthropological and political ecological analyses of environmental conflicts.

Critical Issues in Democratic Governance: Spring 2019 CIPR Series

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Latin America faces major threats to democratic governance, but there are also new opportunities for grassroots mobilization and social policy expansion. In Critical Issues in Democratic Governance the Stone Center for Latin American Studies and the Center for Inter-American Policy and Research will host speakers to discuss emerging issues that have surfaced in democratic governance in the region. In Brazil, the AIDS movement constructed a powerful new advocacy coalition, with coordination between bureaucrats and activities. In Argentina and Brazil, there are sharp contrasts in the social welfare policies that governors and mayors have implemented, with profound consequences for livelihood of the poor and marginalized. Finally, the outbreak of violence across Latin America, under democratic regimes raises questions about how criminal organizations compete for influence over transnational illicit networks and infiltrate the state.

Spring 2019 Schedule

February 8, 2019
State-Sponsored Activism: Bureaucrats and Social Movements in Democratic Brazil
Jessica Rich, Marquette University

February 22, 2019
Uneven Social Policies: The Politics of Subnational Variation in Latin America
Sara Niedzwiecki, University of California, Santa Cruz

April 5, 2019
Homicidal Ecologies: Illicit Economies and Complicit States in Latin America
Deborah Yashar, Princeton University

Please RSVP to cipr@tulane.edu.