Time: 12:00 - 14:00
Venue: Bergen Resource Centre for International Development

Exile has been present in Latin America since colonial times. After independence from Spain and Portugal, Latin American nation states have actively used exile as a regulatory political mechanism preferable to prison or execution, in dealing with opposition that various governments have been unable to assimilate into their political systems. The continuous use of political exile has made this part and parcel of the political culture of many countries across the region. In the twentieth century the opening of political systems transformed political exile into a mass exclusion mechanism that later began to play an active political role in the international arena, opening new venues of contesting action outside the national public spheres.

The book, The Politics of Exile in Latin America, addresses exile as a major mechanism of institutional exclusion used by all types of governments in the region against their own citizens, while they often provided asylum to aliens fleeing persecution. Latin America’s nation states have regularly used exile instead of prison or execution to deal with political opposition, including during the period of right-wing dictatorships that dominated Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s.

In the presentation of his book Mario Sznajder will focus on exile as a political tool of exclusion, as well as discuss presidential exile, the formation of Latin American communities of exiles worldwide, and the role of exiles in shaping the collective identities of these countries.

Gabriela Fried, herself an exiliada during the latest wave of authoritarianism, will offer comments and questions to Sznajder’s presentation.

Mario Sznajder, PhD, is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science and Leon Blum Chair at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  He is also a research fellow at the Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace. Sznajder has authored various books on Fascism, democratization, human rights, politics, collective identities, as well as a large number of scientific articles on these subjects.

Gabriela Fried, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Sociology at California State University Los Angeles, and a Researcher at the Facultad de Psicología de la Universidad de la República, Uruguay. Fried’s specialization includes cultural sociology, social memory and trauma after political conflict, exile and transmission of memory, human rights, peace and conflict studies. Recently she has worked with the gendering and generational transmission of the experiences of disappearance, torture and exile after state terror.

A light lunch will be served at 12:00 before the presentation starts.