Holocaust Consciousness and Cold War Violence in Latin America

September 12, 2023 at 1:00 PM Pacific Time
Online Event

An online lecture by Estelle Tarica (Professor of Latin American Literature and Culture and Chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of California, Berkeley)

Organized by the USC Shoah Foundation
Cosponsored by the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research and USC Dornsife Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures

In her presentation Estelle Tarica will discuss her recent book about how Holocaust memory and history circulate in Latin America and shape the ways Jews and non-Jews understand the state violence they experienced during the Cold War period. For many Americans, the main connection to the topic concerns Nazis who fled to South America after the war. In this presentation, Professor Tarica will deepen our knowledge about the topic by examining how and why the Nazi genocide of the Jews in Europe became meaningful to Latin American authors and activists from the 1960s to the present.

Estelle Tarica is Professor of Latin American Literature and Culture and Chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Berkeley. She received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Cornell University (2000). She is the author of two books and numerous articles. In her research and teaching she examines colonial legacies in modern Latin America, Indigenous and Jewish memory cultures, and the transformative power of narrative and poetry. Her first book, The Inner Life of Mestizo Nationalism (University of Minnesota Press, 2008), explores the subjective effects of racialized national identity formations in Mexico, Bolivia and Peru. Her second book, Holocaust Consciousness and Cold War Violence in Latin America (SUNY Press, 2022), is about the impact of Holocaust memories and terminologies as reference points for authors and activists confronting state violence in Argentina, Mexico and Guatemala from the 1960s to the present.

Discover more about the Center’s events here

Visit the Center’s YouTube channel to explore our video library of events (and subscribe!)