Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, UC Berkeley

09/03/2026

Story-telling is one of the themes that came out of the 2025-26 event series Mesoamerica: Disrupting Narratives, Past and Present. Series organizers Christián González Reyes and Miroslava Guzmán Pérez write about how events brought those stories to the fore. Read the the latest from the CLACS Blog!

Christián González Reyes and Miroslava Guzmán Pérez share highlights of the student-organized event series about Mesoamerica centered around storytelling, research, and community-building, showcasi…

08/27/2026

What does the digital future look like in a country like El Salvador? Deibi Sibrian, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management (ESPM) at UC Berkeley, leads a working group of Berkeley students and others in looking at the impact and prospects of El Salvador's aggressive push to be at the forefront of the new "digital ecology."

Read about the group's work on the CLACS Blog

In 2025, Deibi Sibrian conducted fieldwork in San Salvador, examining the socio-environmental impacts of digital transformation in the context of rapid technological changes and urban redevelopment…

08/25/2026

Tianna Paschel, the new Faculty Director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, welcomes the CLACS community back to campus for an exciting new year!

Read her welcome message: https://clacs.berkeley.edu/news/welcome-tianna-paschel-clacs-new-faculty-director

08/21/2026

Tracing the links among Latin American and Caribbean artists, Lydia Millhon, a 2025 CLACS Tinker Field Research Grant recipient, examines the relationships of Afro-Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén with others in the Concrete art movement of the 1940s.

Read the latest from the CLACS Blog: Concrete Connections: Nicolás Guillén and his First Trip to Brazil in the 1940s https://clacsberkeley.blog/2026/08/04/concrete-connections-nicolas-guillen-and-his-first-trip-to-brazil-in-the-1940s/

Department of Spanish and Portuguese, UC Berkeley

08/19/2026

In October 2025, writer Gabriela Cabezón Cámara came to CLACS to discuss her book "We are Green and Trembling." A few weeks later, that book won the 76th National Book Award for Translated Literature. Coincidence? You decide.

See more about the event on our Past Event page: https://clacs.berkeley.edu/we-are-green-and-trembling-literatura-y-mundos

Department of Spanish and Portuguese, UC Berkeley National Book Foundation

08/17/2026

How do you realize that academia is not the right career path? Tessa Wood, a 2025-26 CLACS Graduate Affiliate, discusses moving on from her Ph.D. program and choosing a new career path. To read the the latest from the CLACS Blog: https://clacsberkeley.blog/2026/07/24/finding-a-new-path-after-academia/

08/14/2026

Nearly 300 people have lost their lives, with many more injured and displaced by the recent 7.4-magnitude earthquake that struck western Colombia on August 10, 2026. Our hearts go out to
and we stand in solidarity with everyone affected. If you want to support people now on the ground in Colombia, please consider donating to the following organizations, which focus on remote areas of the country that have been marginalized in mainstream coverage of this humanitarian crisis.

Fundación Juntas - Cali/Valle/Buenaventura
https://vaki.co/es/vaki/crowfunding-por-la-restauracion by NBC BB CC by BB -dignidad-100826

Fundación Haga Que Pase — Cali/Valle
PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/fundacionhagaquepase

Centro de DDHH del Pacífico — Pacific Coast/Valle
PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/darnerod310
⁠
Humanitarian Aid for Buenaventura – Buenaventura https://vaki cv.co/vaki/ayuda-humanitaria-en-m be by buenaventura-apoya-a-los-l-deres-lideresas-y-sus-familias-afectados-por-el-terremoto

Other trusted nonprofits and organizations supporting people affected by the earthquake: linktr.ee/colombiaearthquakehelp

08/13/2026

In April 2026, Yarimar Bonilla (Princeton), hosted by CLACS and the Caribbean Coalition, visited Berkeley to discuss U.S. imperialism, and argued that territorial ambitions from Greenland to Venezuela are not a new phenomenon, but instead the revival of long-term impulses that drove the history of relations with Puerto Rico and throughout the Caribbean and Latin America.

See more photos on the CLACS Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecaribbeanco/p/DXNfBBVj6wZ/

African American Studies at University of California, Berkeley UC Berkeley Anthropology Yarimar Bonilla Effron Center for the Study of America, Princeton University

07/25/2026

What do you do when a teachers' strike starts just as you are arriving to do field research in education? In July 2025, Henry Sales, Ph.D. student in Education and a 2025 Tinker CLACS Research Grant recipient, faced just that situation, as a national teachers' strike in Guatemala transformed his research focus. Instead of formal classrooms, he observed Maya Mam communities sustaining learning through cultural practices and community engagement, revealing that education is strengthened through cultural identity, emotional labor, and resilience amid uncertainty. Read the latest from the CLACS Blog: https://clacsberkeley.blog/2026/07/22/maya-mam-teachers-and-students-keeping-education-moving-when-a-strike-closed-schools/

Henry Peruelo Sales Trybe -Maya

07/16/2026

Sometimes fighting against a disease leads to unintended consequences. Andrés Caicedo (Environmental Science, Policy, and Management) looks at the biology and labor consequences of a new oil palm tree, introduced to fight bud rot disease in Colombia.

To read the the latest from the CLACS Blog, visit: https://clacsberkeley.blog/2026/07/09/the-gendered-politics-of-assisted-pollination-of-palm-trees-in-tumaco-colombia/
UCBerkeley