Dr Linda Rabben, Washington D.C.
23 March 2006, 2 pm
Newcastle University, Percy Building, Lecture Theatre G9
The Centro de Língua Portuguesa/Instituto Camões (contributor to the seminar “Remapping Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Studies”) and the Research Groups “The Americas” and “Human Rights” at Newcastle University invite staff and students to a joint Research Seminar
Abstract
Twenty years have passed since a civilian regime replaced Brazil’s 21-year
military dictatorship. Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, the former federal human rights
secretary, observed 10 years ago that Brazil had made an incomplete transition
from dictatorship to democracy. He pointed to the persistence of what he called
“the same structure of domination based on hierarchy, discrimination,
impunity and social exclusion.” This structure continues to undermine
the Brazilian people’s exercise of all human rights—cultural, social
and economic as well as civil and political—10 years after he wrote those
words and 20 years after the military returned to the barracks.
Human rights violations have persisted in Brazil over long periods, and injustice,
conflict and violence seem entrenched throughout Brazilian society. Despite
this depressing reality, Brazilians continue to try to confront and overcome
systematic human rights abuses, impunity and corruption through grassroots social
movements, NGOs and individual actions that create possibilities for constructive,
non-violent change.
Dr Linda Rabben
Author, editor and anthropologist Linda Rabben obtained her doctorate from Cornell
University and has been active in social and political movements for more than
25 years. She has studied, written about and worked on human rights, development
and environmental issues in the United States and other countries as a researcher,
analyst, campaigner and adviser. Her professional experience includes work for
international non-governmental organizations, such as Amnesty International,
the Rainforest Foundation and the Inter-American Foundation, magazines and newspapers,
public radio programs, and colleges and universities. As an Amnesty representative,
she investigated the Candelaria street children's massacre in Brazil. Her books
include Fierce Legion of Friends: A History of Human Rights Campaigns and Campaigners
(Quixote Centre, 2002), Brazil’s Indians and the Onslaught of Civilization:
The Yanomami and the Kayapo (University of Washington Press, 20042), and the
translated and edited volume Walking the Forest with Chico Mendes, by Gomercindo
Rodrigues (University of Texas Press, in press). For her writing Linda Rabben
won the Spann Memorial Prize of the Debs Foundation and a Catholic Press Association
award. She also served on the American Anthropological Association's Committee
for Human Rights, the Brazilian Studies Association's executive committee, and
the Academic Freedom and Human Rights Committee of the Latin American Studies
Association.