Center for Latino/a & Latin American Studies

08/26/2026

📚 New Book from UO Professors Dr. Lynn Stephen and Dr. Erin Beck!

Seeking Justice for Gendered Violence: Courts, Communities, and Care in Guatemala, co-authored by Erin Beck and Lynn Stephen, examines how Indigenous women and communities in Guatemala navigate systems of justice while confronting gendered violence.

Drawing on ten years of ethnographic research, the book explores both the possibilities and limitations of legal reforms—and highlights the grassroots knowledge, care, and community networks women use to survive violence, pursue justice, and support one another.

Published by Duke University Press, the book will be available September 2026.

📖 Learn more or order:
https://www.dukeupress.edu/seeking-justice-for-gendered-violence

08/26/2026

🎉 Congratulations to CLLAS Outstanding Undergraduate Award recipient Grace Gómez!

Grace’s work, Ferrocarril de Mi Vida, uses the tradition of the cartonera—handmade books created from repurposed cardboard—to tell deeply personal stories of family, memory, culture, and identity.

Through photographs, testimony, and storytelling, Grace reflects on her upbringing, her family’s history, and her experience navigating her Latina and Mexican-American identity. In reflecting on the project, Grace writes:

“The cartonera helped me realize that there is no such thing as Mexican enough. I can understand now that it is my cultural identity, and no one can take that away from me.”

Her project also connects her individual story to the larger tradition of cartonera publishing, a movement that began in Argentina using discarded cardboard to create affordable, accessible books and has since spread throughout Latin America and beyond.

We are proud to recognize Grace and celebrate the thoughtful, creative, and deeply personal scholarship represented in her work. Congratulations, Grace! 💛

08/21/2026

📣 Join us for the HSI Symposium: Building a Latinx-Thriving University of Oregon!

📅 October 22 & 23, 2026
📍 Ford Alumni Center | University of Oregon

As UO’s Latiné student community continues to grow, how can we strengthen support, deepen belonging, and expand opportunities for students to thrive?

Join students, faculty, staff, educators, community partners, and higher education leaders for two days of learning, conversation, and collaboration.

✨ Thursday, Oct. 22, 9am-5pm: Keynote, panels & breakout sessions
🤝 Friday, Oct. 23, 9am-3pm: Collaborative planning sessions

Come for one or both days—or simply drop-in for sessions that fit your schedule!

More information about speakers and the full schedule will be shared in the coming weeks.

🔗 Early Registration is now open! Reserve your spot! https://oregon.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8igY2mgu22jqqnc

08/20/2026

Nathan Juarez, percussionist, vocalist, composer, educator, DMA student in Percussion Performance, and MA student in Music Theory, is documenting new music for voice and percussion.

His project, Cycles and Spheres: Documenting New Music for Voice and Percussion by Latin American and Diasporic Composers, focuses on the professional recording, video documentation, and dissemination of newly commissioned art songs by underrepresented composers working within Latin American and diasporic contexts.

The project expands art song beyond its historically European-centered languages, aesthetics, and voice-piano traditions by foregrounding percussion, embodied vocalization, and rhythmic language informed by hemispheric traditions.

With support from CLLAS, Juarez will record high-quality videos of newly commissioned works, “Blake’s Infinity” by Felipe Lara and “Wind Crossing” by Susie Ibarra and produce a full-length album featuring those works alongside Randy Stagich’s “Danse Domestique,” Juarez’s own arrangements, and his five-movement song cycle with percussion ensemble, “The Scholar.”

This documentation phase will preserve new repertoire, support his doctoral research, and help make contemporary art music rooted in Latin American and diasporic aesthetics accessible to future performers, scholars, and communities.

08/18/2026

Mariana Rivera Ramirez, PhD Candidate in Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies, investigates how Latino boys and young men use style, art, and popular culture to challenge respectability politics and dominant ideas about “positive” representation.

Their project, A New Kind of Gangster: Edgars, Style, and the Hyper-criminalization of Latino Boys, examines the “Edgar” haircut, the work of Latinx photographer Fabian Guerrero on Edgars, and the protest art of San Antonio-based mural artist Colton Valentine.

By analyzing these forms of self-fashioning and aesthetic expression, Rivera Ramirez explores how non-respectable visibility can become a resource for identity, resistance, survival, and solidarity.

With support from CLLAS, Rivera Ramirez will conduct cultural studies analysis of Guerrero’s “Edgar” photography series, contemporary media coverage of the Edgar phenomenon, and the mural art of Colton Valentine.

This research will form part of their dissertation, Resisting Respectability: Black and Latina/o Aesthetic Performance in the 21st Century, and will support the development of a chapter draft for committee review. The project contributes to Chicanx/Latinx Studies, Ethnic Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and scholarship on racialized representation in popular culture.

08/14/2026

Sanjula Rajat, PhD Student in the Department of Philosophy, studies decolonial philosophy, feminist philosophy, and social and political theory. Their project, Thinking the Outside of Freedom through Modernity: Decolonial Thought and the Framework of Rights, is a collaborative research project with Dr. Miguel Gualdrón Ramírez that centers Latin American struggles for liberation as grounded practices of freedom.

The project examines debates in decolonial theory around freedom, rights, and equality, and turns to Latin American anti-colonial movements to develop a framework for understanding freedom as rooted in struggle.

With support from CLLAS, Rajat will conduct archival research at the Latin American Collections of the University of California Riverside Library and the Latin Americana Collection at the University of California Berkeley. The archival work will focus on materials related to resistance movements, political struggle, and anti-colonial revolutionaries in Latin America, including oral history collections connected to the Revolutionary period in Mexico and materials on Brazilian left movements and anti-colonial revolutionary writings.

This research will support a journal article and contribute to interdisciplinary conversations in philosophy, history, comparative literature, sociology, and Latin American decolonial thought.

08/11/2026

Dr. Ramón Resendiz, Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology, investigates public memory, historical erasure, and grassroots resistance in Cameron Park, Texas, the largest colonia in the United States.

His project, A Chronicle for Cameron Park, documents six decades of Latinx life and civic organizing in a U.S.-Mexico border community often reduced to narratives of poverty and neglect. Through oral histories and family photographs, the project centers the elders who helped transform Cameron Park from raw, unincorporated land into a neighborhood with roads, electricity, water infrastructure, and a strong sense of community belonging.

With support from CLLAS, Dr. Resendiz will complete the final production and post-production phases of this community-based documentary and digital archive. The grant will support additional interviews, digitization of family photo archives, and editing for a feature-length documentary and open-access digital collection housed through the University of Oregon Libraries.

This project will preserve community memory, return narrative authority to Cameron Park residents, and contribute to Latinx Studies, Borderlands Studies, visual anthropology, and decolonial media studies.

07/14/2026

How do Guatemalan Maya women preserve culture, identity, and community after migration?

In 2024, with support from a CLLAS Graduate Research Grant, University of Oregon PhD student Liesl Cohn De León documented the experiences of Guatemalan Maya women and men living in Oregon through oral histories and community-based fieldwork.

Her research explored how language, traditional clothing, food, faith, and everyday commerce help sustain Indigenous identities and collective memory across generations and borders. By centering the voices and lived experiences of Maya communities, her work sheds light on the rich diversity within Latin American migration and highlights the importance of recognizing Indigenous communities in Oregon.

Read more about Liesl's research and its impact on our website.

https://cllas.uoregon.edu/16455-2/

By Liesl Cohn De León, 2024 CLLAS Graduate Grantee PhD Student in Anthropology Since the 1980s, the Guatemalan Maya have […]

07/13/2026

🎉 Congratulations to 2026 CLLAS Faculty Research Grant recipient Dr. Blanche Wright!

CLLAS is proud to support Dr. Blanche Wright, Assistant Professor of Psychology at UO, with a Faculty Research Seed Grant for her project, "Linguistically Appropriate Care for Newcomer Adolescents from Latin America: Implementing a School-Based Mental Health Intervention."

Dr. Wright's research will expand a school-based mental health intervention to better support students from Latin America who are newly arrived to Oregon, including both Spanish-speaking and Mam-speaking youth, helping reduce language barriers to culturally and linguistically appropriate mental health care.

With support from CLLAS, Dr. Wright will collaborate with Dr. Guillem Belmar Viernes and Dr. Gabriela Pérez Báez from the University of Oregon Department of Linguistics, along with Pueblo Unido and the Collective of Indigenous Interpreters of Oregon, to develop training that helps school providers deliver linguistically appropriate mental health care. The project will also partner with 4J, Bethel, Springfield, and South Lane school districts to implement the intervention in schools.

The research will focus on communities in Lane County, Oregon—including Eugene and Cottage Grove—as well as Guatemala, strengthening mental health support for newcomer youth while advancing interdisciplinary research at the intersection of psychology, linguistics, education, and community partnership.

Congratulations, Dr. Wright! We look forward to following the impact of this important research.

07/01/2026

Research from the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) emphasizes that empowering local communities and volunteer responders is essential to effective disaster response and long-term resilience. Those principles are reflected in the work of Grupo Andino de Rescate (GAR), whose trained volunteers are providing critical assistance to communities affected by the recent earthquakes in Venezuela.

CLLAS is proud to recognize Jesús Neyo León Monsalve, a member of Eugene's community and Grupo Andino de Rescate, who has helped organize emergency relief efforts in response to this disaster. Thanks to the generosity of supporters in Eugene, across the United States, and throughout Latin America—including partners in Mexico and Colombia—GAR has already deployed 35 volunteer rescuers to assist communities in the affected areas.

Jesús has launched a GoFundMe campaign to help provide transportation, fuel, rescue equipment, medical supplies, communications equipment, food, and other essential resources needed to sustain these lifesaving efforts.

If you are able, please consider making a donation or sharing the campaign with your network. Every contribution helps volunteers reach communities in need.

🔗 Support the relief effort:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-gars-earthquake-relief-in-venezuela

Our thoughts are with everyone affected by the earthquakes, and we are grateful to the volunteers and organizations working tirelessly to support impacted communities.