The Agenda, Speakers and Venue
The Speakers for the 2021 ELAF have now been decided!
Speaker Line-Up 2021
ELAF 2021 aims to create a space to understand the most daring issues from a Latin American perspective and formulate solutions. Because of this, sessions will be interactive and attendees will work closely with renowned speakers in a collaborative environment. We believe this will allow the forum to result in plausible ideas, policy proposals, and lifestyle changes.
With our choice of speakers, we want to have an approach to each issue which is as Intersectional as possible.
Itandehui Jansen - 2pm
Talk - The Gendered Impact of Urban Migration in Mexico (Through the Lens of a Filmmaker)
Biography:
As a filmmaker and researcher, Dr Itandehui Jansen is interested in the interrelation between fiction and documentary and in the synergy between film theory and practice.Her own films have screened at many different international film festivals, such as the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival and the Morelia International Film Festival.
The subject of this talk will relate to her most recent film project In Times of Rain which combines a fictional approach with documentary elements and counts with the support of the Mexican Council for Arts and Culture (CONACULTA) for script development.
A short synopsis for the film is: Soledad (45) is a traditional healer who lives with her grandson Jose (7) in an indigenous village in Mexico. Soledad’s daughter, Adela, moved to Mexico City to work many years ago. Adela is about to marry Chucho and in her desire to have a normal family life decides that Jose should join her in the city. Soledad vehemently opposes this idea. She believes the boy is better off in the village. While Soledad tries to find a way to grapple with the imminent loss of her grandson she continues her daily activities in the maize fields and tending to villagers who require her care.
Thurday 4th March
Agustin Diz - 3pm
Talk - Democracy, Gender, and Indigenous Communities
Biography:
Agustin is a political and economic anthropologist at the University of Edinburgh who specialises in Latin America and has conducted research among indigenous Guaraní settlements in Argentina's Gran Chaco region.
Dr. Diz will expand on his recent paper titled ‘‘Healing the Institution’: Conflict and Democratic Sovereignty in an Indigenous Community of the Argentine Chaco’ where he explores how governance in the Chaco community creates an ambiguous space for recognition and empowerment. Increased government recognition of this indigenous community allows indigenous leaders to further their own agendas yet continues to limit the role of women in decision-making.
Friday 5th March
Lulú V. Barrera - 2pm
Talk - The Role of Cyberactivism in Defending Women's Rights
Biography:
Lulú is a feminist activist and human right defender based in Mexico City. Lulú founded and currently leads Luchadoras, a feminist NGO that explores the intersections between gender, technologies and human rights, and works for an Internet free of violence against women. She is part of the National Network of Women Human Right Defenders in Mexico and the Latinamerican Network of Political Innovation. Her professional background is in Anthropology, Gender Studies and Chicana/o Studies and she has developed gender related policies, frameworks and actions in collaboration with El Colegio de México, Article 19, the mexican think thank FUNDAR, UN Women, the National Institute of Public Health and the Association of Progressive Communications, among others.
Lulú joined Amnesty International as activist in 2005, led the International Youth Advisory Body from 2008 to 2010, and was subsequently elected Chair of AI Mexico. Lulú was awarded the "Hermila Galindo" recognition by the Human Rights Commission in Mexico City and was the recipient of the Womanity Award for her work on promoting women's rights and preventing violence online.
Cancelled
Alba Rueda - 4pm
Talk: A Trans Activists view from within the Argentinian Government
Biography:
Spanish: Activista Trans. Subsecretaria de políticas de diversidad del Ministerio de las Mujeres, Género y Diversidad. Integrante de Noti Trans y Mujeres Trans Argentina. Investigadora del Departamento de Género y Comunicaciones del Centro Cultural de la Cooperación Floreal Gorini. Integrante del Consejo Asesor del Observatorio de Género en la Justicia, Consejo de la Magistratura de C.A.B.A.
English: Trans Activist. Subsecretery of diversity politics in the Argentinian Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity. Member of Noti Trans and Trans Women Argentina. Investigator for the Department of Gender and Communications of the Cultural Centre of Cooperation Floreal Gorini. Member of the Council for Assessment of the observation of Gender in Law, Council of the Magistrate of Buenos Aires.
Saturday 6th March
Camila Cavalcante - 5pm
Talk - Us For All Women: Activism through Art
Biography:
Camila Cavalcante is a visual artist and researcher focused in feminism and photography. She is the author of For the Lives of All Women, a bilingual book of photographs, testimonials and essays about the experiences of illegal abortions in her home country of Brazil. She completed an MA photojournalism and an MSc Applied Gender Studies from University of Strathclyde. As an artist, she has exhibited her work in the UK, US, Netherlands, France, and Brazil, and has taken part in Art residencies in Mexico, Brazil and the UK. She has been nominated for 100 Heroines in Photography, by the Royal Photographic Society, in 2018. She is also a member of the board at Scottish feminist organisation Engender.
Beatriz Garcia Nice - 4pm
Talk - Gender-Based Violence in Latin America
Biography:
Beatriz García Nice joined the Latin American Program in September 2019. She worked for the Organization of American States - Inter-American Committee against Terrorism (OAS/CICTE) managing the committee’s operations portfolio. From 2012-2015 she worked with the U.S. Department of State with the Consular Bureau at the U.S. Embassy Santiago, Chile, and with the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Bureau (INL) at the U.S. Embassy in Quito, Ecuador. Previous to working at the Wilson Center she lived in Beijing, China, where she worked to advance education opportunities in China’s most impoverished provinces and study China's political system and Mandarin. She received a B.A in International Relations and Political Science from the Universidad de las Américas-Puebla (UDLAP) and the Université Jean Moulin Lyon III, and a M.A. in Security from The George Washington University. She is currently part of the Wilson Center's initiative on gender-based violence, "Accessing Justice: Femicide and the Rule of Law in Latin America," where she focuses in El Salvador.
Eloisa Mendez - 5pm
Talk - The Women Vote in Latin America
Biography:
Eloísa Beatriz Méndez Gutiérrez was born in Mexico City. She graduated from the Faculty of Sociology at the National Autonomous UNiversity of Mexico with a degree in Sociology, where she worked for 15 as a professor. In addition, she was a professor at the University of Our Lady of La Paz, Bolivia, at the Central American Technological University, Honduras, and was the visiting professor at the University of Kragujevac, Serbia. Ms. Eloísa Méndez is the co-author of various publications and articles related to Mexican culture and cuisine, mainly: "The flavors of Mexico in Bolivia" and "This is my Mexico: children's stories about Independence and the Mexican Revolution". Wife to Mexican ambassador Mr. Marco Antonio Garcia Blanco, Ms. Mendez has lived in the US, Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Honduras, Nigeria and Serbia. She currently lives in Queretaro, Mexico.
Maria Eugenia Solis and
Lucía Inés Xiloj Cuin - 6pm
Talk - A Conversation about the legal rights of Indigenous women
Biographies:
Maria Eugenia Solis
Guatemalan lawyer and notary. Litigant and human rights defender. A university professor in Master's Programs in Human Rights for Children and Adolescents. International teacher in training processes about gender justice, sexual violence, investigation of international crimes, and human trafficking.
She is an advisor to communities and organizations that defend their natural resources. She has publications on issues of labor, sexual and reproductive rights, sexual harassment, gender justice, reparations from a feminist perspective, and socio-environmental rights.
She is the only Latin American that is part of an international alliance that monitors the International Criminal Court.
She was an ad-hoc judge of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. As a specialist in justice for women, she has rendered a report as an expert before Guatemalan courts, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and the Spanish National Court in the case of genocide.
Part of a roster of experts from around the world specialized in building international justice cases of sexual violence based on gender.
In recent years, she held the position of Director of the Office for the Protection of Witnesses in the Public Ministry; She was a senior advisor to the Guatemalan Human Rights Ombudsman and is currently a consultant for the Canada Borderless Lawyers Mission in Guatemala, UN Women, and the UN Population Fund.
Lucía Inés Xiloj Cuin
K'iche Mayan lawyer with postgraduate studies in constitutional, criminal, and environmental law. She has worked for more than 15 years in the defense and promotion of the collective rights of indigenous peoples and women through legal actions and training for justice operators.