When
Center for Latin American Studies, Spring 2023 Charlas con Café – a weekly space to hear lectures from a wide variety of experts and discuss topics relevant to the Latin American region, Fridays from 1-2 p.m. (unless otherwise specified).
The madres buscadoras, the women searching for the disappeared in Mexico, operate in a context of unrelenting, multisided violence. At the same time, they choose to engage in activism that puts them at heightened risk of violence at the nexus of criminal organizations, state corruption, and insecurity. This talk investigates how the madres navigate contexts of gendered violence in Veracruz, Mexico to engage in expressions of complex gendered agency. By recognizing that the fear of never knowing about their missing loved ones outweighs the fears of violence that they are exposed to on a day-to-day basis, we gain insight into why they choose ‘fight’ rather than ‘flight.’
Dr. Julia Zulver is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie research fellow at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies and the Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas (UNAM, Mexico). Her work investigates women’s high-risk leadership in Latin America, with a focus on Mexico, El Salvador, and Colombia. She earned her DPhil in Sociology from the University of Oxford in 2018, with the support of a Commonwealth Scholarship. Her book - High-Risk Feminism in Colombia - was published by Rutgers University Press in May 2022.