(La Espera /The Waiting, a photographic essay from the project Articulo 6, by Lucia Cuba.

Art Direction: Lucia Cuba / Photo: Erasmo Wong /

Models: Jessica Rojas, Flor Vergara, Nataly Zúñiga, Pilar Trujillo.)

Conference programme of…

Eugenic Legacies across Latin America
12th–13th of October
To register, click on this link
Conference organisers: Benedict Ipgrave, Miroslava Chavez-Garcia
Conference director: Isidro Gonzalez
Hosted by UC Santa Bárbara as part of From Small Beginnings…
Co-Sponsored by: The Anti-Eugenics Project, UC Humanities Research Institute, Latin American
and Latino Program (CUNY), CONICET, Fundación Oswaldo Cruz y Oxford Brookes University.

With Spanish-English-Spanish (provided by UC Santa Barbara) and Spanish-Portuguese-Spanish

(provided by Oswaldo Cruz Foundation) interpretation
For any questions please email Benedict Ipgrave at benedict.ipgrave.18@ucl.ac.uk
This conference invites scholars, activists, and artists to look at what we can do to address
the legacies of eugenics across Latin America

Across these two days, we will be looking at how eugenics and its ramifications has played out in
different national and regional contexts across Latin America to such painful (and often deadly)
effect. But equally important, we will look to highlight the brave work that survivors, activists, scholars
and artists have carried out and tirelessly continue to carry out to expose acts carried out in the
name of (or in the shadows of) eugenics, and fight for justice for those that have been most targeted
by such ideas and practices.

As this pandemic moment exposes the stark inequalities and inequities in our society, we encounter
a global resurgence of eugenic thinking and practices and the urgency of these discussions are
unprecedented. But likewise across Latin America, whether in the battle for justice for the 300,000+
women sterilized in Peru, around the mass mobilization and subsequent process for rewriting of the
constitution in Chile, in disability activism fighting back against an increasingly ableist and
supremacist governance of Brazil, in the collective imagining and building of a post-genocide
Guatemala, or in the fight for reproductive justice in Puerto Rico, a new momentum for confronting
such legacies across Latin America is being generated unseen anywhere else.

The conference ultimately invites participants and audiences alike to consider, in understanding of
this history and its prevalence today, what as a collective across Latin America can be done to
confront such legacies of eugenics moving forward, and what can be built in its place.

Conference Programme…

Day One (12th October), 9am-4.30pm…

9-9:10am - Welcome and overview

9:15-11.45pm – Legacies of Eugenics in Peru and the fight for justice

12.15-14.30pm Eugenics, transitional justice, resistance and transformation in Guatemala

14:45-16:30pm - Eugenic legacies and rewriting of the Chilean constitution

Day Two (13th October), 8am-5.30pm PT…

8-8.10am - Welcome

8.15-9.15am – Preview of upcoming publications

9:30am-1pm (with break) – Brazilian eugenics legacies and disability activism

1.15-3pm- Legacies of eugenics in Argentina: from the second half of the 19th century to
the present

3.20-5.20pm - Puerto Rico, Greater Mexico and LatinX Reproductive Justice in the US

5.20-5.30pm – Wrap-up and invitation for further discussion

 Legacies of Eugenics in Peru… and the fight for justice

9.15am-12.15am, 12th October... 2 hrs and 30 mins

Chair: Rosemarie Lerner

Participants: Lucia Cuba, Raquel Cuentas, Sara Cuentas, Maria Mogollon, Karen Tucker, and
Victoria Vigo

Abstract...This panel will hear different perspectives and experiences around the forced
sterilisations carried out by the Peruvian government in the 1990s and the various forms of bottom-
up activism and collaborations - between those affected, activists, artists and academics - that have
arisen along the ongoing search for justice and recognition.

We recommend in advance of this panel, audiences watch the following –

Quipu - Calls for Justice - YouTube

 Panel programme…

• Clip of Quipu Project … (5 mins)

• Introduction (5 mins) / Rosemarie Lerner (The Quipu Project)

• Fujimori’s campaign, AMPAEF and the fight for justice, truth and reparation (20 mins)
/ Maria Esther Mogollon (AMPAEF)

• An analysis of the context of the forced sterilisations: coloniality, gender and

(in)visibility (20 mins) / Karen Tucker (University of Bristol)

• Showcase of the Quipu Project (20 mins) / Rosemarie Lerner

• A personal story of sterilization (20 mins) / Victoria Vigo

• Research presentation: ‘The truth is in our bodies’ (20 mins) / Sara Cuentas Ramirez
(Autonomous University of Barcelona)

• Coordination mechanisms with the powers of State and the role of women’s
organizations and the feminist movement (20 mins) / Raquel Cuentas Ramirez
(Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú)

• Articulo 6: A project on reproductive health, social justice, art, and design (20 mins) /
Lucia Cuba (Parsons New School of Design)

• Round table, inviting participants to discuss how to confront this eugenic past in Peru, and
what we can do to move forward (20 mins) / Rosemarie Lerner, Karen Tucker, Maria
Mogollon, Raquel Cuentas, Sara Cuentas, Lucia Cuba, Victoria Vigo

(Panel in Spanish, with English and Portuguese interpreting)

To return to the overall Eugenic Legacies across Latin America conference programme click here
 Participant and abstracts…

Fujimori's Campaign, AMPAEF and the fight for justice, truth and reparation
The presentation addresses from the Campaign imposed by Alberto Fujimori and the itinerary of the
complainant victims, from the countryside to the city; the rejection of their complaints from the
institutions of justice, until achieving the denunciation in Lima (2003). It describes the here and now
of their struggles and the various actions developed in their organizational and advocacy process to
date. They face not only insensitivity, indifference, but racism. What have the victims experienced
since they were operated on until today? What has happened to their families? what have they
achieved?
The National Program for Reproductive Health and Family Planning carried out by the dictatorship
of Alberto Fujimori (1995-2000), emphasized forced sterilizations of poor, indigenous, Quechua-
speaking women and other languages and origins. For his execution, he employed methods such
as deception, threat, torture, kidnapping and others. According to MINSA (2001), more than 300,000
women were operated on, 22,000 men and 18 women died as a result of forced sterilizations.
The Association of Peruvian Women Affected by Forced Sterilizations – AMPAEF, which brings
together more than 3,000 victims, is made up of 14 organizations of victims in Peru has developed
a long organizational process and struggle for more than twenty-five years for Justice, Truth and
Reparation. It has undertaken the task of building from the victims the historical memory about this
violation of rights, a crime against humanity that occurred in Peru.

Maria Esther Mogollon (AMPAEF)

Degree in Journalism from the University of Havana. Master's Degree in Gender,
Sexuality and Reproductive Health, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia
(studies completed). Diploma of Gender and Social Policies from PRIGEPP-
FLACSO, Argentina. Specialized studies in Human Rights, in CONECTAS Brazil:
the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights-IIHR and the International Center for
Human Rights. Promotion of Human Rights CIPDH-UNESCO, Argentina. She is a
member of the IESSDEH of the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia.
Feminist Activist. Member of the Broad Women's Movement, Foundation Line.
Advisor/Spokesperson of the Association of Peruvian Women Affected by Forced Sterilizations,
AMPAEF. Member of the Sexual and Reproductive Rights Monitoring Board; director of the
Observatory of sexual and reproductive rights of people with disabilities, ODISEX.

An analysis of the context of the forced sterilisations: coloniality, gender and (in)visibility
In this presentation, I offer an analysis of the context in which the forced sterilisations took place in
Peru, highlighting the role of coloniality, gender, and the specific forms of visibility
and invisibility that intersect with these.

Karen Tucker (University of Bristol)

Karen Tucker is an academic at the University of Bristol in the UK. Her work focuses
on the politics of colonial knowledge that shapes Western encounters with
indigenous knowledge, bodies and worlds, and on the decolonial practices that can
reveal and remake it.

Showcase of the Quipu Project

The Quipu project is an interactive and participatory documentary - as well as an oral digital archive
of collective memory - about those affected by the forced sterilisations in Peru in the 1990s. Between
2015 and 2017 the project collected more than 150 testimonies of sterilised Peruvian women and
men and more than 100 responses from listeners worldwide through its interactive platforms.

Rosemarie Lerner (The Quipu Project)

Peruvian director and producer. She has master's degrees in Screen Documentary
and Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship from Goldsmiths University of London.
She is producer and co-director of the Quipu Project, a Peabody Award-winning
transmedia documentary on the forced sterilizations that happened in Peru in the
1990s. Rosemarie is currently based in Lima where she directs the production
company Lúcida Media. Her work has been presented at festivals such as IDFA,
Hot Docs, Tribeca Film Festival, and Ars Electronica. She has been a mentor for the
English NGO One World Media and currently teaches transmedia storytelling at the
'Centro de la Imagen' in Lima.

A personal story of sterilization

(Abstract to uploaded shortly)

Victoria Vigo Espinoza

Victoria Vigo is a survivor of Peru's forced sterilisations and president of the
Association of Women Survivors of Forced Sterilization of Peru (AMSEFP). She
was a participant in 1998 of the human rights commission of the American
Congress, where it was possible to cut off USAID aid for family planning policy (or
AQV) with an amendment law passed by the American Senate. Victoria is the first
emblematic case that the Ombudsman's Office and the women's defender Dra
Rocío Villanueva presented to public opinion in the 1990s.

Research presentation: ‘The truth is in our bodies’

Presentation of the results of the investigation "The truth is in our bodies".

Sara Cuentas Ramirez (Autonomous University of Barcelona)

Journalist and social researcher. Coordinator of the Gender Migration and
Development Network of Spain. Coordinator of the Decolonial Feminist School in
Barcelona. Professor of the Master's Degree in Gender and Communication at the
Autonomous University of Barcelona. Contributing editor of El País - Planeta Futuro
and author of investigations such as "Lives that matter", "Caring to sustain Life" and
"The Truth is in our Bodies", among others.

Coordination mechanisms with the powers of State and the role of women's organizations
and the feminist movement
Presentation on coordination mechanisms with the powers of State (central government, Health
Justice sectors, MIMPV and MIDIS, Congress of the Republic and local governments) and the role
of women's organizations and the feminist movement.

Raquel Cuentas Ramirez (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú)

Professor of the Social Work Specialty, coordinates the Social Gerontology Line
and the Social Work Research Group at PUCP, with more than 25 years of
experience in managing social policies and social protection. Magister in Social
Welfare State and Title of Expert in Gender from the Public University of Navarra -
Spain. Diploma in Social Gerontology from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile
and Bachelor of Social Work from PUCP. Graduated in Social Work from the PUCP.
Consultant on issues of social protection, social policies, aging, gender, public health, sexual and
reproductive rights. As part of her social volunteering, she is vice president of the Institute for the
Support of the Autonomous Movement of Rural Women - IAMMAC, a space from which she has
been accompanying the sterilized women of the AMHBA since 1996.

Articulo 6: A project on reproductive health, social justice, art, and design

Since 2012, the project "Articulo 6: Narratives of Gender Strength and Politics" has focused on
creating awareness about the Peruvian case of forced sterilizations. This initiative uses wearable
forms, performance, public activations and other formats to engage different audiences with this
conversation..

Lucia Cuba (Parson New School of Design)

Is a Peruvian designer, textile artist, and scholar. Her expanded fashion practices
approach wearable forms as performative and political devices at the intersection
of social justice, design and art. Cuba has developed projects related to health,
activism, and the study of non-Western fashion systems. She is the director of
BASELAT, a database that aims to broaden the understanding of the field of fashion
and textiles studies in Latin America, and Exercises on Health, a long-term research
and art project that explores the connections between fashion, health and wellbeing.
In 2012, Cuba created Articulo 6, an ongoing project that addresses the Peruvian case of forced
sterilizations and its relationship to the eugenics movement across the world. Her works have been
exhibited locally and internationally, at the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, the New York
Museum of Arts and Design, and the Museo Amparo, among many other international venues. She
received the Han Nefkens Award in Fashion in 2014, the United States Artists Fellowship in Design
in 2019, and the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center Residency Fellowship in 2022. Cuba
holds an MFA in Fashion Design and Society from The New School and a BSc in Social Psychology
from Cayetano Heredia University in Peru.
 Eugenics, transitional justice, resistance and transformation in Guatemala

12.15pm-14.30pm… 2 hours 15 minutes

Chair: Alejandro Flores Aguilar

Participants: Alejandro Aguilar, Roddy Brett, Martha Elena Casaus, Feliciana Herrera Ceto, Julie
Gibbings, y M. Gabriella Torres

Abstract… This reflection frames the genocide of the Mayan population in Guatemala (through
mass killings, use of targeted gendered violence and other tools), within a broad and long eugenic-
inspired nation-building campaign across the 20th Century, that although peaking in the 1980s the
remnants of which continue through to today. The reflection will look to processes of coming to terms
with this past and presents, and highlight the work that is being carried out to disrupt eugenic
trajectories moving into the future.
 Panel programme…

• Showing of Tráiler de Chabelu Ju … (5 mins)

• Introduction (5 min) / Alejandro Flores Aguilar

• The case of Guatemala: From the eugenic nation and the racist state to genocide (20
mins) / Martha Elena Casaus (Fundación María y Antonio Goubad)

• Progressive Mothers, Populist Politics: Eugenics, Race, and Progress during Jorge
Ubico’s Guatemala (15 minutos) / Julie Gibbings (University of Edinburgh)

• The Impact of Gendered Eugenics Legacies on US Asylum Seekers from Guatemala

(15 minutos) / M. Gabriela Torres (Wheaton College)

• Killing as Nation-building: Post-Genocide Legacy or Continuity in Guatemala? (15

mins) / Roddy Brett (University of Bristol)

• Time, place, space and community: from cold war infrastructure to the tichajiil tenam
(20 mins) / Alejandro Flores Aguilar (Universidad Landívar)

• Chabela Ju and the Alcaldía Indígena de Nebaj (20 mins) / Feliciana Herrera Ceto
(SitPop)

• Concluding roundtable, inviting participants to discuss how to confront this eugenic past in
Guatemala and what we can do to move forward (20 mins) / Martha Elena Casaus, M.
Gabriella Torres, Alejandro Flores Aguilar, Roddy Brett and Feliciana Herrera Ceto

(In Spanish, with English and Portuguese interpreting)

To return to the overall Eugenic Legacies across Latin America conference programme click here
 Participants and abstracts …

The case of Guatemala: From the eugenic nation and the racist state to genocide
Central America was greatly influenced by racialist positivism and degenerationist theories during
the beginning of the twentieth century, eugenics was the hegemonic thought throughout the region
with special emphasis on the intellectuals and politicians of Costa Rica, El Salvador and Guatemala,
who tried to build a project of eugenic nation, where the improvement of the race and the whitening
of the nation, the progress and development of the region became the central project.
My starting hypothesis for this work is that, the construction of a project of eugenic nation in the 30s,
contributed significantly to the systematic violence against indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples
and without a doubt, was an adjuvant factor, to the policy of genocide and ethnocide provoked in
Guatemala from the 80s,where the public and systematic rape of women had a clear factor of
"improvement of race".

Martha Elena Casaus (Fundacion Maria y Antonio Goubad)

PhD in Political Science and Sociology from the Complutense University of Madrid,
Professor in American History from the Autonomous University of Madrid. Director
of the European Master in Latin American Studies: Social Complexity and Cultural
Diversity (Spain) and the Master in Management for Sustainable Development (
Guatemala). Vice President and Director of the Maria and Antonio Goubaud Carrera
Foundation.
Her main lines of research are the study of family networks and power elites in
Central America, Studies on racism, intellectual elites, formation of the nation and in
recent years she researches intellectual history and conceptual history.
Other research works have been, The diagnosis of racism in Guatemala: Report for the elaboration
of a Public Policy for the elimination of racism and discrimination, six volumes, published in
Guatemala, Serviprensa, 2007 and "Social practices and racist discourse of the power elites in
Guatemala, (XIX and XX centuries)", in a book coordinated by Teun Van Dijk, Racism and Discourse
in Latin America, Gedisa, 2007 and is preparing a volume on Political Cultures in Latin America.

Progressive Mothers, Populist Politics: Eugenics, Race, and Progress during Jorge Ubico’s
Guatemala
Shortly after coming to power, president Jorge Ubico (1931-1944) declared himself the nation’s
“Chief of Sanitation.” Ubico’s emphasis on medical and social sciences reflected his interest in
utilizing eugenics and other so-called normative sciences—such as biotypology, anthropometry and
intelligence testing—as a means of addressing Guatemala’s social, economic, and political crises
in the 1930s. Rather than simply adopting scientific theories from European, North American, or
other Latin American countries, Guatemalan medical doctors adapted scientific ideas and
interventions according to regional and national contexts. Despite contradictory racial ideas and
state policies, Guatemalan eugenicists emphasized puericulture, or “the scientific cultivation of the
child,” along with a pronatalism tempered by biological selection. New discourses of “responsible
motherhood” fostered the nationalization of women’s bodies as vectors of a future race and citizens.
Drawing on a combination of newspapers, municipal, and court records, this paper examines how
Ubico’s emphasis on responsible motherhood and better breeding was taken up by lower-class
ladino and Q’eqchi’ women in the northern department of Alta Verapaz. By 1935, the departmental
governor’s office in Alta Verapaz was flooded with petitions from women who pleaded for the
president’s support in raising their children, gaining employment, and dealing with abusive or
negligent fathers. In the process, they claimed a place in national progress and challenged extant
racial, gender, and class hierarchies. At the same time, these marginalized women separated
themselves from charges of moral laxity, and sometimes supported efforts to police prostitutes and
dishonorable lower-class women.
 Julie Gibbings (University of Edinburgh)
Is a lecturer at School of History, Classics, and Archaeology at the University of
Edinburgh. She is the author of Our Time is Now: Race and Modernity in
Postcolonial Guatemala (Cambridge University Press, 2020), and the co-editor of
Out of the Shadow: Revisiting the Revolution from Post-Peace Guatemala
(University of Texas Press, 2020). She is currently working on a new project on Cold
War cartographies in Guatemala and Latin America more broadly.

The Impact of Gendered Eugenics Legacies on US Asylum Seekers from Guatemala

The legacies of Guatemalan eugenics projects are visible in current asylum cases of Guatemalan
fleeing to the US. Gender based violence as a social practice in Guatemala rests on eugenic
legacies that rely on gendered exclusions and the public punishment of bodies who
transgress socially expected norms. This presentation draws the nexus between
eugenic legacies and gender based violence practices and the impact of this
connection on the lived experience of LGBT and women US asylum seekers.

M. Gabriela Torres (Wheaton College)

Ph.D., is William Issac Cole Endowed Chair and Professor of Anthropology, and
Associate Provost at Wheaton College (MA). She is a cultural anthropologist who
specializes on the impact of the violence—particularly gender–based violence—and
state formation.

Killing as Nation-building: Post-Genocide Legacy or Continuity in Guatemala?

This talk will provide some brief reflections on the links between genocide, state-building and
eugenic thinking, and how such practices were (or were not) addressed in Guatemala's peace
process in the 1990s. The question raised is whether, given ongoing racist practices and narratives
in Guatemala, eugenic thinking remains at the core of building a post-genocidal society in the
country.

Roddy Brett (University of Bristol)

Is an Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Bristol.
His research focuses on the causes, consequences, and legacies of political
violence (particularly mass collective violence), and how states, societies, and
international actors move on from protracted episodes of egregious violence. His
research addresses when, how, why, and to what effect peace negotiations and
transitional justice mechanisms are instituted and whether, if at all, said processes
and mechanisms shape the path of protracted mass violence towards intergroup
coexistence and reconciliation. He has extensive experience as a practitioner and
policymaker, having worked for the United Nations and other governmental and non-
governmental bodies.

Time, place, space and community: from cold war infrastructure to the tichajiil tenam
This paper compares two maps, that reflect spaces and places of the future time. The first one
emerges from the military civic action plans to restructure everyday spaces in Ixil communities.
These maps were produced in the “heat” of the cold war, counterinsurgent, Guatemala. The state
believed that by changing the material living conditions—infrastructures—of the indigenous peoples,
their sympathy towards revolutionary ideology would disappear. These plans were developed as the
second part of the scorched earth campaign, that ended in the implementation of genocidal policies
in Ixil Territory. On the other hand, I analyze a map representing the future, done by students of the
 Ixil University. This map represents the notion of the tichajil tenam, which is an ixil
concept in which the community has reached, in a time to come, a form of balanced
life, in which the relations between humans and no-humans reach a state of
harmony.

Alejandro Flores Aguilar (Landívar University)

Ph.D. Sociocultural anthropologist (UT-Austin) and cultural sociologist (FU-Berlin),
visual researcher on memories of indigenous subversions, lecturer at the Ixil
University, director of the Postgraduate Program at the Humanities School at
Landívar University.

Chabela Ju and the Alcaldía Indígena de Nebaj

With this paper I present the research done by students of the Ixil University regarding the
performative tradition of the Chabela Ju, which represents how the colonial power practiced forms
of institutional rape and how the Ixiles developed strategies to outsmart the conquistadores. Building
upon this, I analyze the work of the Ancestral Authority of Nebaj, and propose that the
representation of the Chabela Ju expresses a system of ixil theorization regarding
power relations in historic perspective within the epistemological specificity of the Ixil
territory.

Feliciana Herrera Ceto (SitPop)

Ixil-Maya researcher at the Ixil University, communitarian journalist, postgraduate
studes in indigenous law at Deusto University, and the first mayor of the Indigenous
Ancestral Authorities in Nebaj (Ixil territory).
 Eugenic legacies, and rewriting the Chilean constitution

14:45-16:30 PT, 12th October… 1hr 45mins

Chair: Andrea Yupanqui.

Participants: César Leyton, Sarah Walsh, Marcelo Sánchez, Andrea Yupanqui y Constanza
Radrigan

Abstract… Taking the mass mobilization in the streets of Chile and the subsequent process of
rewriting the constitution to frame this discussion, this panel explores how, through the lens of
eugenic legacies, we arrived at such a heated and monumental moment, of which we must be
aware. When the principles under which a future Chile will be organized are configured, and the
new constitution rejected, what must happen now to re-galvanize the population around the need
for change.
 Programa…

· Showing of Sentido (En) Comun tráiler … (3 mins)

· Introduction to panel (7 mins) / Andrea Yupanqui

· La eugenesia militar y el camino chileno a la Asamblea Constituyente : Chile 1979 -

2019 (15 mins) / Cesar Leyton (Universidad de Chile)

· De diversos pueblos y naciones: Indigenous Erasure and Inclusion in 20th and 21st
Centruy Chile (15 mins) / Sarah Walsh (Universidad de Melbourne)

· Eugenics, a twilight utopia that never ends. Visions from the margin (15 mins) /
Marcelo Sanchez (Universidad de Chile)

· Violence against women with disabilities in a transitional Chile (15 mins) / Andrea
Yupanqui (Universidad de Magallanes)

· Repertoires in resistance. Embodied memories from the ‘disabled’ body (15 mins) /
Constanza Radrigan (Universidad de Valparaíso)

· Concluding Roundtable discussing where we are now, and what needs to happen around
galvanising the population once more around rewriting of the constitution (20 mins) / Cesar
Leyton, Sarah Walsh, Marcelo Sanchez, Andrea Yupanqui and Constanza Radrigan

(In Spanish with English and Portuguese interpreting)

To return to the overall Eugenic Legacies across Latin America conference programme click here
 Participants and abstracts…

Military eugenics and the Chilean path to the Constituent Assembly : Chile 1979 - 2019
The sociobiological intervention (eugenics) of the Chilean military dictatorship provoked a policy
/science of eradication of marginal populations (mass displacements). It is for this reason that many
of the groups that constitute the Constituent Assembly are territorial expressions and demands of
this policy of exclusion – ethnic, reproductive, sexual, socio-margínales, political, environmental,
housing – Environmental eugenics was an unconventional weapon of the military dictatorship to
establish the principles of a neoliberal model and the foundations of a complex project of naturalized
genocide, with populations considered "subversive" that were contrary to this economic doctrine and
its totalitarian teleology of progress.

Cesar Leyton (Universidad de Chile)

PhD in History. He has developed his historiographical work, first at the National
Museum of Medicine Dr. Enrique Laval and, later, at the National Museum of
Dentistry of the University of Chile. In these spaces, in addition to an intense work
of recovery and analysis of the Chilean scientific and health heritage, he has put in
a line of research in health history has been launched that has allowed to
consolidate an academic program in history of biomedical sciences and public
health, taught at the University of Chile and of which he has been coordinator
between 2013 and 2022. He was also coordinator of the Ibero-American Network of
History of Psychiatry and author or editor of numerous publications including, Industria
del delito. Stories of criminological sciences (2014); Boulevard of the poor. History of Hygiene,
Scientific Racism and Eugenics (2015); Republic of health. Foundation and ruins of a sanitary
country (2016); and The Science of Eradication. Urban modernity and neoliberalism in Santiago de
Chile, (2020). He is currently part of an interdisciplinary team of biopolitical studies in Public Health,
of the Universidad de la Frontera, in the territory of the Mapuche nation. Temuko, Chile.

De diversos pueblos y naciones: Indigenous Erasure and Inclusion in 20th and 21st
Century Chile
The drafting of the new constitution, and indeed the entire constitutional convention process, has
garnered significant attention and media coverage outside of Chile. As the ability of numerous long-
standing democracies all over the world to deliver on their promises seems to dwindle, many
observers hope that there may be a new type of democratic practice for the 21st century on the
horizon developing there. Of course, this isn’t the first time that the world has watched to see what
might emerge from a ‘via chilena’ when it comes to politics. Over the course of the 1960s, Salvador
Allende sought out a means of building up the welfare state through democratic socialism that at
the time was perceived as an existential threat to “true” democracy as practiced in North America
and Europe. Part of what concerned foreign observers at that time was driven by widespread racist
beliefs that socialism was more appealing to non-White people. In the Chilean case, socialism’s
appeal suggested that indigeneity (and indeed indigenous peoples themselves) was not so far in
the nation’s past. This talk will first consider how the current constitution’s emphasis on indigenous
history and identity is informed by a longer tradition of erasure.

Sarah Walsh (University of Melbourne)

Sarah Walsh was a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Race and Ethnicity in the
Global South ARC Project at the University of Sydney between 2013 and 2017. The
following year she served as a Research Fellow in the COLOUR OF LABOUR
Project at the Universidade de Lisboa. Most recently, she was a Postdoctoral
Teaching Fellow in the Roots of Contemporary Issues Program at Washington State
University. Her first book, The Religion of Life: Eugenics, Race, and Catholicism in
Chile, is under contract at University of Pittsburgh Press. She has also published
articles in the Catholic Historical Review, History of Science, and the Journal of Iberian and Latin
American Studies.
The overall question that informs both Dr Walsh's teaching and research is: how do prejudice and
discrimination based on human difference (race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, ability) maintained in
intellectual systems which explicitly reject those concepts? In other words, her research is interested
in better understanding how systemic oppression continues to flourish in modern democracies that
typically celebrate diversity and rely on notional equality for all. In particular, she examines the role
that science and medicine play in this process.

Eugenics, a twilight utopia that never ends. Visions from the margin
Reflections on the utopian hope of the eugenic project in Chile, highlighting the disciplinary and
punitive aspects along with others of optimistic reform. Continuities and ruptures in the 21st century
and the Chilean constituent moment.

Marcelo Sanchez Delgado (University of Chile)

Has a PhD in Latin American Studies. Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and
Humanities of the University of Chile. His works are oriented to the study of the
social and cultural history of health and disease, scientific racism and eugenics in
Latin America. Co-editor of the volumes Bulevar de los Pobres (2015) and
República de la Salud (2016) and author of articles published in the magazines
Dynamis, Asclepio, Manguinhos, Historia UC and Historia 396, among others.

Violence against women with disabilities in a transitional Chile

From a feminist perspective, we examine the national situation of eugenic practices in health
contexts that violate the human rights of women and girls with disabilities. We reflect on these
practices that persist in the context of a country that is moving towards a new constitution.

Andrea Yupanqui (University of Magallanes)

Andrea Yupanqui-Concha is a PhD in Interdisciplinary Gender Studies. MA in
Education, BA in Occupational Science and Occupational Therapist. Since 2005 is
an Associate Profesor and Researcher at the University of Magallanes. She is also
a member of the Review Committee of the Editorial Board of the Chilean Journal of
Occupational Therapy and researcher with the Network of Protection of Rights and
Social Inclusion REPRODIS. Her research interests are disability studies, violence
against women, gender and health.

Repertoires in resistance. Embodied memories from the “disabled” body

The presentation is based on a research that aims to reconstruct and politically interrogate from the
present the medicalization devices of modernity that have produced the "disabled" body, its
historical deprivation and exclusion from what is conceived as "public space"; and its current
repertoires of resistance in social movements and activism in Chile.

Constanza Radrigan (Valparaiso University)

Is a fellow researcher at the National Agency for Research and Development of Chile
(ANID), in the Phd in Interdisciplinary Studies on Thought, Culture and Society of
the University of Valparaíso (2019-21191264). She is a postgraduate student at the
Millennium Institute for Care Research (MICARE), and part of the Critical Disability
Studies Group of CLACSO. She tries to combine her academic work with activism
in the intersectional field of feminism/s and disability.
 Preview of upcoming publications

8.15-9.15am… 1 hour

Abstract… Preview of three upcoming collective publications related eugenics across Latin
America.

Programme…

• New Histories of Disability in Latin America (20 mins) / David Carey (Loyola University)
and Heather Vrana (Florida University)

• Legacies of Eugenics in Mexico and the Americas (20 mins) / Susan Antebi
(Universidad of Toronto) and Beatriz Miranda-Galarza (17' Instituto)

• Challenging National Canons: Revista Brasileira de História's special issue on

Confronting Eugenics: New perspectives and Approaches (20 min) / Marius Turda
(Oxford Brookes University) and Pietra Diwan (Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São
Paulo)

(Spanish with English and Portuguese interpreting)

To return to the overall Eugenic Legacies across Latin America conference programme click here
 Participants and abstracts …

New Histories of Disability in Latin America

Latin America’s disability histories have much to teach us, first, by centering the power of colonialism
and neo-colonialism in disabling people and places; second, by emphasizing the social and political
components of scientific medicine that shaped disability for much of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries; third, by revealing crucial fissures and contradictions in oft-celebrated national projects of
democratic restoration and revolutionary uplift; fourth, by tracing the linkages between racial
capitalism and disability; and, finally, by connecting resource extraction and labor to debility.

David Carey (Loyola University)

In addition to writing some two dozen peer-reviewed articles and essays, Dr. Carey
is the author of Oral History in Latin America: Unlocking the Spoken Archive (2017),I
Ask for Justice: Maya Women, Dictators, and Crime in Guatemala, 1898-1944
(2013)—which was the co-recipient of the Latin American Studies Association’s
2015 Bryce Wood Book Award—Engendering Mayan History: Kaqchikel Women as
Agents and Conduits of the Past, 1875–1970 (2006), Ojer taq tzijob’äl kichin ri
Kaqchikela’ Winaqi’ (A History of the Kaqchikel People) (2004), and Our Elders
Teach Us: Maya-Kaqchikel Historical Perspectives (2001). He also has edited three
books: Violence and Crime in Latin America: Representations and Politics (with Gema Santamaría),
Distilling the Influence of Alcohol: Aguardiente in Guatemalan History (University Press of Florida,
2012) and Latino Voices in New England (with Robert Atkinson) (State University of New York Press,
2009).
Heather Vrana (University of Florida)
Professor Heather Vrana (Ph.D. Indiana University, 2013) is a historian of modern
Latin America with an emphasis on Central America, and joined the University of
Florida in August 2017 after teaching at Southern Connecticut State University.
Vrana is author of This City Belongs to You: A History of Student Activism in
Guatemala (University of California Press, 2017) and Anti-colonial Texts from
Central American Student Movements 1929-1983 (Edinburgh University Press,
2017), and co-editor with Julie Gibbings of Out of the Shadow: Revisiting the
Revolution from Post-Peace Guatemala (University of Texas Press, 2020).

Eugenic Legacies in Mexico and the Americas

The eugenic legacies group is a gathering of scholars focused on diverse areas of
education and health history and disability studies. We examine the histories and
the ongoing permutations of eugenics in Mexican and Latin American contexts, and
focus on ways of working towards greater equity in our evolving present. We are
currently at work on a collective publication in collaboration with the 17’ Instituto de
Estudios Críticos, based on our virtual colloquium from August of 2021.

Susan Antebi (University of Toronto)

Is Associate Professor of Latin American Literature. Her research focuses on disability
and corporeality in the contexts of contemporary and twentieth-century Mexican
cultural production.

Beatriz Miranda-Galarza (17' Instituto)

PhD in Disability Studies from Leeds University, she taught disability and
development at the Athena Institute of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and
International Public Health at Amsterdam University College. She was Project
Manager of the SARI project of the Athena Institute, whose objective was to reduce the impact of
stigma on the lives of people affected by leprosy and associated conditions in Indonesia. Later he
coordinated the "Bridges" project whose objective was to explore, under a comparative perspective
between Brazil and Indonesia, the factors that impact on the sustainability of organizations of people
with disabilities and leprosy. She has been involved in the field of disability and development since
1994, working with international cooperation agencies in Latin America. He has participated in
academic research related to the lives of people labeled as "intellectually disabled" in Belgium, India,
China, Ecuador and Colombia. His main fields of interest and lines of research are family, ethnicity,
postcolonial issues, intellectual disability and ethics. Currently, he coordinates the area of critical
studies of "disability" in 17, Institute of Critical Studies where he also directs 17, Consultancy, the
application arm of the institute.

Challenging National Canons: Revista Brasileira de História's special issue on Confronting

Eugenics: New perspectives and Approaches
The purpose of this special issue for Revista Brasileira de História is to challenge old assumptions
about the history of eugenics and thus contribute to the ongoing global debate about the legacies of
eugenics today. New approaches to the history of eugenics should ideally cross scientific borders
and enter into dialogue with various modes of representation. They should also incorporate different
types of primary sources, from the visual to the testimonial, to unveil the multiplicity of views put
forward by the eugenicists. Another goal of this special issue is to question how and where the
history of eugenics sits within Brazilian national historiography. We want to highlight new possibilities
of interpretation, in consonance with more recent works published outside Brazil, which
promote intersectionality (race, ethnicity, gender, and class) and a transnational
perspective.

Marius Turda (Oxford Brookes University)

Director of the Centre for Medical Humanities. Originally from Maramures, Marius
has been teaching at Oxford Brookes since 2005. He is the founder director of the
Cantemir Institute at the University of Oxford (2012-2013) and founder of the
Working Group on the History of Eugenics and Race (HRE), established in 2006.

Pietra Diwan (Universidad Estadual de Maringá, Paraná/Brasil)

Ph.D. in History (2020) from Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (Brazil)
on history of eugenics, genetics, and transhumanism post 1945. Post-doctoral
research on the sterilization of women in Brazil (1970-the 1990s) as a manner to
establish control over their reproduction, framing them as "incapable" of deciding
by themselves. This perspective incorporate also the global approach to the
"population problem" and the international inference in Brazilian issues.
 Brazilian Eugenic Legacies …and Disability Activism

3hrs 30mins… 9.30am-1pm (with break)

Chair: Pamela Block.

Participants: Jacqueline Brigagao, Marivete Gesser, Alvaro Jarrin, Claudia Malinverni, Nádia
Meinerz, Marcia Moreas and Gislana Valle, Carol Vimierio and Robert Wegner.

Abstract… This reflection in two parts will first explore the long legacies of eugenics and eugenic-
thinking in Brazil, and how these legacies have encountered a surge in this pandemic moment. The
reflection will then look to the work of disability activism, and the role of art in this process, in resisting
and countering these eugenic resurgences, before inviting panellists to consider the work that is
needed in disrupting these eugenic trajectories moving forward.
 Panel Programme…

• Showing of Retratos Deficiencia … (5 mins)

• Introduction (5 mins) / Pamela Block (Universidad de Western Ontario)

• History of eugenics and genetics in Brazil (30 mins) / Robert Wegner (Oswaldo Cruz
Foundation) and Carol Vimierio (Universidad Federal de Minas Gerais)

• Menino 23 (20 mins) / Sydney Aguilar Filho (Universidad de Sau Paulo)

• "The cure of Ugliness": Eugenics, Racialization and Plastic Surgery in Southeastern

Brazil (20 minutos) / Alvaro Jarrin (Colegio de la Santa Cruz)

• Brazilian Public Health, Covid-19 and Pandemic Denialism (20 mins) / Claudia
Malinverni (Universidade de Sau Paulo) and Jacqueline Isaac Machado Brigagão
(Universidade de Sau Paulo)

(((10 minutes break)))

• Offensives against the rights of persons with disabilities: Relations with eugenics
challenges for disability activism (45 mins) / Marivete Gesser, Marcia Moraes, and
Gislana Valle (Universidad Federal de Santa Catarina)

• Disability Activism and Art: Retratos Deficiencia (35 mins) / Pamela Block and Nádia
Meinerz (Mandacaru)

• Roundtable discussion, inviting participants back to discuss eugenics in this pandemic

moment in Brazil and what we can do moving forward (20 mins) / Pamela Block, Robert
Wegner, Carol Vimierio, Jacqueline Brigagao, Alvaro Jarrin, Claudia Malinverni,
Marivete Gesser, Marcia Moreas and Gislana Valle.

(In Portuguese, with English and Spanish interpreting)

To return to the overall Eugenic Legacies across Latin America conference programme click here
 Biographies and abstracts…
History of eugenics and genetics in Brazil
We will explore aspects of the history of eugenics and biotypology in Brazil, considering their impacts
on the formation of state institutions of health and population control. In the 1930s and 1940s, the
populist leader Getúlio Vargas was Brazilian president. During the Vargas Era, state institutions
were strengthened, and eugenics and racialist ideas influenced political and scientific debates about
national identity and the future of the Brazilian population. Biotypology and eugenics were promoted
as sciences at the service of medical-scientific analysis and control of the Brazilian population. From
this historical view, we aim to reflect on the shadows of eugenics in contemporary society, such as
racism and the limits to citizenship imposed on people with disabilities.
In the early 20th century, the eugenics movements divided populations and established a hierarchy
between groups considered “fit” and “unfit.” Eugenicists proposed to improve the race through
increased procreation in the former group; meanwhile, the second group procreated less, or even,
as in the case of eugenic sterilization, did not procreate. After World War II, eugenics was connected
to the atrocities practiced by the Nazi regime and came to be considered a “pseudoscience” that
should be forgotten. However, we are still faced with the same eugenic reasoning – the classification
of people as “fit” or “unfit” – when we are dealing today with social practices such as misogyny,
xenophobia, LGBT phobia, racism, and ableism.

Carol Vimieiro (Federal University of Minas Gerais)

Is a professor of the history of science in the Department of History at the Federal
University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil. Her main research themes include
human biological diversity, racial taxonomies, eugenics and genetics. She was a
research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the Escola
Nacional de Saúde Pública, Fiocruz, and the Consortium for the History of Science,
Technology and Medicine. She has published on the history of body classification,
eugenics, and national identity; her current project focuses on the history of human
genetics in Brazil.

Robert Wegner (Oswaldo Cruz Foundation)

Has a bachelor’s degree (1990) in Social Sciences from the Universidade Federal
do Paraná and a master’s (1994) and PhD (1999) in Sociology from the Instituto
Universitário de Pesquisas do Rio de Janeiro (IUPERJ). He is a researcher with the
Casa de Oswaldo Cruz Research Department and has been a professor with
PPGHCS since its creation in 2001. He headed the Casa de Oswaldo Cruz
Research Department from 2005 to 2009 and has been PPGHCS Program Chair
since 2015. He also teaches undergraduate classes at the Pontifícia Universidade
Católica of Rio de Janeiro, through the departments of Social Sciences and History. His
research interests include intellectual history, historiography, and social theory, especially research
on modernism, eugenics, and social thought in Brazil.

Menino 23
Sidney Aguilar Filho in his doctoral research revealed that entrepreneurs linked to integralism and
Nazism removed 50 orphaned boys from Rio de Janeiro/RJ to Campina do Monte
Alegre/SP in the first half of the 20th century. These boys lived ten years of slavery
and isolation on a farm. The work reconstituted close ties between sectors of the
Brazilian elites and the Nazi-fascist perspectives reflected in a eugenic and slave
project. It presents the history of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s explaining how Brazil
absorbed and accepted theories of eugenics and racial purity to the point of
including them in the 1934 Constitution. The trajectory of the research further
reinforces the theses that the concepts of "white supremacy" and the attempts to
"bleach the population" have marked our society, being racism and – even more so –
its denial, still perennial in the justifications for the forms and mechanisms of slavery in Brazil today.
Sidney Aguilar Filho (University of São Paulo)
Bachelor's degree in History from the University of São Paulo (1991), PhD in Philosophy and History
of Education from the State University of Campinas (2011). Capes Thesis Award 2012 of the area
of Education. Post-Doctorate at UNESP (2016). Postdoctoral researcher in History (UNICAMP).
Author of the book "Entre Integralistas e Nazi", the film "The Child 23" and the series "Historical
Inconveniences". He is professor, historian and documentary filmmaker.

"The Cure of Ugliness": Eugenics, Racialization and Plastic Surgery in Southeastern Brazil
This presentation will focus on how Neo-Lamarckian eugenics influenced the birth of plastic surgery
as a medical practice in Brazil, and continues to influence how Brazilian plastic surgeons think about
beauty, race and national progress. Plastic surgeons argue that they are improving the nation by
“fixing” improper racial mixtures, and they have pushed to make aesthetic surgery widely available
to the poor, with a vision of uplifting populations through beautification.

Alvaro Jarrin (College of the Holy Cross)

Received their Ph.D. from Duke University and they are Associate Professor of
Anthropology at College of the Holy Cross. They are the author of The Biopolitics of
Beauty: Cosmetic Citizenship and Affective Capital in Brazil (University of California
Press), which explored the eugenic underpinnings of raciological thought among
plastic surgeons, and the aesthetic hierarchies of beauty that reinforce racial
inequality in Brazil. They are also co-editor of Remaking the Human: Cosmetic
Technologies of Body Repair, Reshaping and Replacement (Berghahn Books), and
co-editor of Precarious Democracy: Ethnographies of Hope, Despair, and Resistance
in Brazil (Rutgers University Press).

Brazilian Public Health, Covid-19 and Pandemic Denialism

President Jair Bolsonaro's denialist discourse on covid-19 has eugenic roots and has
guided actions of some city managers who have established segregationist
measures of social distancing. Reference: " COVID-19: Scientific Arguments,
Denialism, Eugenics, and the Construction of the Antisocial Distancing Discourse in
Brazil." Available at:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2020.582963/full

Jacqueline Isaac Machado Brigagão (Universidade de São Paulo)

PhD in Psychology. Professor of the Midwifery course and of the Master in Public
Polices Management of the School of Arts Sciences and Humanities of the University
of São Paulo ( EACH/USP).Advisor in the Postgraduate Program in Psychology at
the Federal University of Pará(UFPA).

Claudia Malinverni (Universidade de Sau Paulo)

Journalist and a PhD in public health. Scientific researcher in communication and
health at the Institute of Health of the State of São Paulo and professor of the
Collective Health Program at the same institution.

Offensives against the rights of persons with disabilities: Relations with eugenics
challenges for disability activism
This work aims to characterize the offenses against the rights of people with disabilities that have
been (re)produced in the Brazilian scenario, especially in recent years, from 2016 onwards. with
disabilities from the insertion of a conservative and liberal government in Brazil. Then, we will
establish some relationships between the offensive to the rights of people with disabilities and the
eugenics that this population has suffered throughout history. Finally, we will present
some challenges to disability activists for the construction of a crippled planet, where
disability can be celebrated as one of the multiple possibilities of being in the world.

Marivete Gesser (Federal University of Santa Catarina)

Psychologist (FURB), Master’s in Social Psychology (PUC-SP), Doctor in
Psychology (UFSC), Post-Doctor (State University of New York/USA). Associate
professor at the Department of Psychology at UFSC - where she teaches and
advises at undergraduate and graduate levels (PPGP) - researcher with a PQ-1D
grant from CNPq, and coordinator of the Center for Disability Studies (NED-UFSC).

Marcia Moraes (Federal University of Santa Catarina)

Is a Full Professor at the Department of Psychology at the Fluminense Federal
University/Brazil, teaching undergraduate and graduate strito sensu courses -
master's and doctorate. She holds a master's degree in Psychology from the
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. PhD in Psychology from PUC/SP. She is
currently carrying out postdoctoral research, under the supervision of Professor
Marivete Gesser, at the Center for Disability Studies / Federal University of Santa
Catarina. She develops research related to the following topics: epistemology of
psychology, psychology and studies of science, technology and society (STS),
feminisms and disability studies. Since 2003, she has been carrying out research in the
field of visual disability, using research methods and frameworks guided by disability
studies, in particular, from a feminist perspective.

Gislana Valle (Federal University of Santa Catarina)

Is a blind woman, poet writer, PhD student in Psychology at Fluminense Federal
University /Brazil. Master in Public Policy Evaluation from Federal University of
Ceará. Consultant in public policies and cultural accessibility. Member of the Work
Group titled Ceará Cultural Accessibility. National executive coordinator of the
Brazilian Movement of Blind and Low Vision Women.

Disability Activism and Art: Retratos Deficiencia

Disability studies cultural research and activism have expanded in Brazil in the last two decades.
However, the reach of this approach has had little impact on public disability images and
conceptions. The persistence of religious and charity approaches, biomedical classification, and
offensively inspirational narratives of "overcoming disability" remain restrictive and reinforce
stereotypes that distort the realities of disability experience. The challenge of our outreach activities
will be to expand discourses and representations of disability in Brazil, putting them in dialogue with
North America counterparts, and displacing stereotypical representations of Brazil and Disability in
the Global South.
Using the "Disability Portraits from Brazil" research outcomes as a starting place, we plan to expand
connections and discover new alliances among disabled and non-disabled artists, activists and
scholars in Brazil and North America. "Disability Portraits from Brazil" is a research project initiated
in 2021 involving the production of multi-modal portraits that focus the perspectives of disabled
people: 22 co-creative duos delivered 11 podcast episodes and 11 visual art pieces viewable at
https://www.retratosdeficas.com/. The potential for societal impact is in dialogue with other
decolonial initiatives in Brazilian universities, along with equity and inclusion policies. We will
mobilize our research results and disseminate them internationally. We intend to challenge the
dominance of global north representations of disability and provide alternative intersectional
experiences of Disability from the Global South.
 Pamela Block (University of Western Ontario)
Is a Professor of Anthropology at Western University in Ontario, Canada. She is a
fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology and former president of the Society
for Disability Studies. She is interested in the following themes: multiple
marginalization and the intersections of gender, race, poverty, and disability;
movements for disability liberation (justice and rights) and disability oppression
(eugenics, sterilization, mass incarceration, and extermination) in Brazil, the US, and
Canada. Finally, she is an active participant in discussions about the emergence of
research about neuodivergence and ableism in Brazil and other countries in the Global
South.

Nádia Meinerz (Mandacaru)

Is a professor of Anthropology and an Ethnographer of Mandacaru - Research
Nucleos on Gender, Health and Human Rights in the Federal University of Alagoas,
northeast region of Brazil. She is interested in sexuality, reproductive health and
disability with special attention to the intersection of race, class and regional
inequalities in Brazil; Currently is a visiting professor at the Western Ontario
University, working on the Disability Portraits from Brazil Project.
Legacies of eugenics in Argentina: from the second half of the 19th century to
the present

1 hour 45 mins… 1.15-3pm… 1 hour 45 minutes

Chair: Marisa Miranda

Participants: Ana Laura Bochicchio, Iván Gabriel Dalmau, Héctor Palma, and Gustavo Vallejo

Abstract: The objective is to discuss eugenics, as a problem encompassing multiple spheres of

knowledge-power, based on interpretations developed in Argentina over more than a century. From
there, it is intended to integrate in a long-term view a series of contributions concentrated in
successive chronological instances. Likewise, an attempt is made to shed light on the networks that
integrated Argentine eugenicists with those of other American and European states. In this sense,
it is hoped that the confluence of dissimilar perspectives on the eugenics issue enriches the debates
that, far from being considered concluded, continue to be very present even today, either by
recovering old formulas or through new presentations.
 Panel Programme…

• Showing of clip of Paul Popenoe film (5 min)

• Introduction (5 min) / Marisa Miranda (CONICET y Universidad Nacional de La Plata)

• Repercussions of Darwin's voyage and reception of eugenics in Argentina (15 min) /

Héctor Palma (CONICET y Universidad Nacional de General San Martín)

• Consolidation and integration of Argentine eugenics to international networks: 1918-

1945 (15 min) / Gustavo Vallejo (CONICET y Universidad Nacional de La Plata)

• Argentina in the eugenic networks in the Second World War period: 1945-1970 (15
min) / Marisa Miranda

• Paul Popenoe and the American influence on Argentine eugenics (15 min) / Ana
Laura Bochicchio (CONICET y Universidad Nacional de Tierra del Fuego)

• Neoliberal eugenics? Eugenic discourse and theory of human capital in Argentine

society (15 min) / Ivan Gabriel Dalmau (CONICET y Universidad de Buenos Aires)

• Concluding roundtable : All panellists are invited back to discuss what can be surmised
from the legacies of eugenics in Argentina, and what must we do about it today (20 mins) /
Marisa Miranda, Gustavo Vallejo, Ana Laura Bochicchio, Ivan Gabriel Dalmau and Hector
Palma

(In Spanish, with English and Portuguese interpreting)

To return to the overall Eugenic Legacies across Latin America conference programme click here
 Abstracts and biographies…
Evolutionism, Darwinism & progress: conditions for the emergence of Argentine eugenics
The reception and practical application of eugenics in the different regions and
countries, on a common basic corpus of ideas, acquired diverse nuances. This work
will try to show some peculiarities of the Argentine case.

Héctor Palma (CONICET y National University of General San Martín)

Doctor in Social Sciences and Humanities. Researcher at the Human Sciences
Research Laboratory. National University of General San Martín/National Council
for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET).

Consolidation and integration of Argentine eugenics into international networks

From the creation of the Argentine Eugenics Society in 1918 to the formation of the
Argentine Association of Biotypology Eugenics and Social Medicine in 1932 and its
evolution until the Holocaust. Initiatives, ideological and scientific orientations, social
impact.

Gustavo Vallejo (CONICET y Universidad Nacional de La Plata)

Doctor in History. Postdoctorate in Social Sciences (University of Buenos Aires).
Researcher of the National Council for Scientific Research (CONICET). Faculty of
Medical Sciences/National University of La Plata.

Argentina in the eugenics networks in the Second Postwar period (1945-1970)

Highlight the issue of eugenics in Argentina as a long-term issue, pointing out, from
there, post-holocaust continuities that went against the grain of the legal ethics of
Human Rights.

Marisa Miranda (CONICET y Universidad Nacional de La Plata)

Doctor of Legal Sciences. Postdoctoral student in Social Sciences (University of
Buenos Aires). Researcher at the National Council for Scientific Research
(CONICET). Institute of Legal Culture/National University of La Plata.

Paul Popenoe and the US influence on Argentine eugenics

Exhume homologies between US and Argentine eugenic discourses, through two
emblematic figures: the biologist Paul Popenoe and the lawyer Carlos Bernaldo de
Quirós.

Ana Laura Bochicchio (CONICET y Universidad Nacional de Tierra del Fuego)

Doctor in History. Postdoctoral fellow of the National Council for Scientific and
Technical Research (CONICET). Institute of Culture, Society and State/National
University of Tierra del Fuego.

Neoliberal eugenics? Eugenic discourse and human capital theory in Argentine society
The echoes and distances between the ways in which the eugenic discourse and the
human capital theory problematize education will be investigated. In that sense,
taking as a target the way in which Argentine educational policy was problematized
from these speeches.

Iván Gabriel Dalmau (CONICET y Universidad de Buenos Aires)

Doctor in Social Sciences. Postdoctoral student in Social Sciences (UBA).
Researcher of the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research
(CONICET). Gino Germani Research Institute-Faculty of Social Sciences/ University
of Buenos Aires.
 Puerto Rico, Greater Mexico, and Latinx Reproductive Justice in the US

3.20pm-5.20pm, 13th October… 2 hours

Chair: Iris López.

Participants: Katherine Brewster, Miroslava Chavez-Garcia, Virginia Espino, Esther Vincente,

Alice Colon Warren and Pat Zavella

Abstract… This reflection will explore the complexities of the legacies of eugenics in Puerto Rico,
Puerto Rican diasporas and LatinX communities in the US more broadly – and will explore the work
of different forms of activism in the fight for LatinX reproductive justice. At this perilous political
juncture, it will invite participants and audiences to consider the work that is needed in this moment
and moving forward.

In preparation of this panel, we recommend you watch the following –

Watch No Más Bebés Online | Vimeo On Demand on Vimeo

(((Please email at contact email address, if requesting to see this free of charge)))
 Panel Programme…

• Showing of entrevista con Ariana Gonzalez Stokas as part of Stand Up, Speak OUT (10
mins)

• Introduction (5 mins) / Iris Lopez

• Reproductive Justice in Puerto Rico / Alice Colon Warren and From guinea pigs to
reproductive justice activists / Esther Vincente (Universidad Interamericana de Puerto
Rico) (40 mins)

• Agency and Constraints: Puerto Rican Women’s Struggle for Reproductive Freedom
Iris Lopez (CUNY), Art as a Form of Reckoning with Medical Violence: The Impact of
No Más Bebés Virginia Espino y Reproductive Justice Activism against Eugenics
Restrictions on Women’s Reproductive Rights Pat Zavella (UC Santa Cruz) (45 mins)

• Roundtable discussion, inviting participants back to discuss confronting eugenic legacies in

Puerto Rico and across the US Latinx community and what we can do moving forward (20
mins) / Alice Colon Warren, Esther Vincente, Iris Lopez, Pat Zavella , Virginia Espino,
Katherine Brewster and Miroslava Chavez-Garcia

(In English and Spanish with Spanish/English interpreting and Portuguese interpreting)

To view the broader Eugenic Legacies across Latin America conference programme click here
 Abstracts and participants…

Film Description– Stand UP, Speak OUT: Episode 3 Reproductive Rights- Sterilization
Across Puerto Rico and the United States from 1930-1970, hundreds of thousands of American
women –Black, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Indigenous, Asian, poor, “promiscuous”– were deprived of
the human right to bear children by US government sponsored sterilization programs because they
were judged “unfit” to reproduce. In Stand UP, Speak OUT: Episode 3 Reproductive Rights-
Sterilization, a Latina woman Speaks OUT, sharing the story of how the US government sterilization
campaign from 1930-1970 in Puerto Rico, the longest and largest in the world, impacted her family.
Sterilization by tubal ligation was offered for free, but without informed consent. Women were
subjected to the experimental trial for “The Pill” without knowing the risk to their health.

Katherine J. Brewster (BC Voices)

Katherine Brewster is a 1971 alumna of Barnard College and holds an MBA from
the Columbia University Graduate School of Business, “78. She has 50+ years of
experience in sales, marketing, management, and fundraising for businesses and
arts organizations.
Katherine has been a feminist and social justice activist since she joined the 1968
Building Occupation and Student Strike at Columbia University in NYC during her
freshman year at Barnard College. In 2012, Katherine, along with classmates from the
Barnard Class of 1971, founded the non-profit BC Voices, Inc. to tell the untold story of American
women who came of age during the political, cultural and social tumult of the late 1960s/early 1970s
and have ridden the crest of 2nd wave feminism over the last 50 years, breaking barriers and forging
paths for future generations of women. Under Katherine’s leadership as President, BC Voices has
created The Barnard Class of 1971 Oral History Collection; produced the documentary short,
Making Choices, Forging Paths; and, is currently producing the 6-episode online docuseries, Stand
UP, Speak OUT: The Personal Politics of Women’s Rights. Episode 3 of Stand UP, Speak OUT
tells the story of American women’s fight for control over their bodies from the founding of the USA
to today, and what’s currently at stake.

Reproductive Justice in Puerto Rico

In our presentation we analyze the historical trajectory of birth control in Puerto Rico throughout the
twentieth century as a complex process in which the colonial context, the conditions imposed by the
capitalist economy and the visions regarding women and motherhood have an impact. This in
addition to trends and changes in eugenics and population control practices on the Island. Without
denying that there were abuses, population control policies were able to converge with the needs
and decisions of poor women, but conditions persist that maintain the inequality in the reproductive
practices of women with different resources in Puerto Rico and restrict their full freedom and
reproductive justice.

Alice Colon Warren

Alice Colón Warren has a PhD in Sociology from Fordham University in New York,
and is a Retired Researcher at the Center for Social Research at the University of
Puerto Rico at Río Piedras. She has carried out research, publications and
numerous presentations on the situation of Puerto Rican, Caribbean and Latin
American women, among which the issues of women's employment and poverty, as
well as reproductive health and rights, stand out. Among her publications are: Colón,
Alice, Ana L. Dávila, María D. Fernós, Esther Vicente, Policies, visions and voices
regarding abortion in Puerto Rico, Río Piedras: Center for Social Research, University of Puerto
Rico, 1999 She actively participated in the Gender and International Migration Sections of the Latin
American Studies Association and the Puerto Rican Association for Family Welfare
(PROFAMILIAS). It is part of the Puerto Rican Organization of Working Women (OPMT) and
remains linked to the struggles in defense of women's rights.
From guinea pigs to reproductive justice activists
This presentation will revolve around the transformation of the discourse and practices of women in
Puerto Rico on sexuality and reproduction from the last decades of the 20th century to the present.
It will demonstrate the advancement of women's activism in Puerto Rico and the fight for sexual
rights and reproductive rights. It will offer data on the processes of empowerment in the control of
decisions about sexuality and reproduction. It will highlight the impact of feminism and the gender
perspective in the conceptualization and defense of reproductive freedom by women's activists and
organizations in Puerto Rico.

Esther Vincente (Inter American University of Puerto Rico)

Professor at the School of Law of the Interamerican University of Puerto Rico;
teaches courses on Civil Law, Constitutional Law. He has a Doctorate in Law from
the University of London and a Master of Laws from the London School of
Economics and Political Science and a Juris Doctor from the University of Puerto
Rico. She is a specialist in gender issues, sexual and reproductive rights and
gender violence, on which she has published books, chapters and legal articles.
She is co-founder and president of INTER-MUJERES Puerto Rico, an academic
organization dedicated to the study of the interaction between law, women and gender.

Agency and Constraints: Puerto Rican Women’s Struggle for Reproductive Freedom
My work on sterilization and Puerto Rican women is a case study that illustrates the tension between
the complexity of poor racialized women's desire to control their fertility and the oppressive social
conditions that shape and constrains their reproductive options. The primary questions my
ethnographic research raises are: 1) What constitutes choice and reproductive freedom in the
context of poor women's lives? 2) What maintains and perpetuates the high rate of sterilization
among Puerto Rican and other racialized women in New York? and; 3) In what ways are Puerto
Rican women's experiences similar and unique to other poor and raciailzed women who have been
sterilized in the United States and the world? In the last part of the conference, I will draw upon my
25- year study to address these questions and conclude with some directions for reaching full
reproductive freedom.

Iris Lopez (CUNY)

Iris López is a cultural anthropologist and professor at The City College of New
York/CCNY. She is the director of the Latin American & Latino@/X Studies
Program. Dr. López’s extensive ethnographic research in New York focuses on
Latinos/as/X in the United States where she has worked on Latinas & Reproductive
Justice. Dr. López is a national and international expert on sterilization among
Puerto Rican and other racialized women in the United States. She conducted a
25-year intergenerational ethnographic study on Puerto Rican women in Brooklyn,
New York entitled, Matters of Choice: Puerto Rican Women’s Struggle for Reproductive Freedom
(Rutgers University Press 2008).

Art as a Form of Reckoning with Medical Violence: The Impact of No Más Bebés
Population control rhetoric served as coded language for eugenic beliefs that led to the sterilization
of hundreds of working class ethnic Mexican women at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center
during the 1970s. The documentary, No Más Bebés investigates this tragic history bringing
widespread media attention to this human rights violation and inspiring several efforts at repair and
reckoning including a formal apology, an art installation, and a permanent memorial on the hospital
grounds. This presentation will explore the trajectory of these events highlighting the role of
grassroots activism and organizations in creating a counternarrative to eugenic logics.
 Virginia Espino (UCLA)
Is the daughter of Mexican parents. She grew up in the barrios of northeastern Los
Angeles where she currently resides. She holds a PhD in 20th Century U.S. History
with a focus on the Chicanx experience from Arizona State University. She is an
oral and public historian whose interests include the intersection of race, class, and
gender in working class culture and identity formation. Much of her work over the
past 10 years includes the recovery of lost or hidden histories through oral history
interviewing and making those histories available to the public at large. Espino is a
co-producer and lead historian on the award winning documentary, No Más Bebés.
Based in part on her dissertation research, No Más Bebés investigates the history of coercive
sterilization at the Los Angeles-USC Medical Center during the 1970s. She lectures for Chicana,
Chicano and Central American Studies and Labor Studies at UCLA She serves on the board of the
California Latinas for Reproductive Justice. She is currently an Oral History Association Fellow
collecting interviews for her project titled, Wild Tongue: A Latinx Oral History Archive.

Reproductive Justice Activism against Eugenics Restrictions on Women’s Reproductive

Rights
Activist in the social movement for reproductive justice argue that sterilization should be seen in a
context with other reproductive injustices. The mission of the movement for reproductive justice is
to advocate for people’s access to reproductive health care services that range from birthing justice
to abortion. In the post-Roe era, this movement is organizing strategically to ensure women’s
complete bodily autonomy. I argue that the current post-Roe crisis that limits access to abortion
services is based on eugenic thinking since it disproportionately affects poor women of color.

Pat Zavella (UC Santa Cruz)

Completed her Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. She
is a Professor Emerita of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of
California, Santa Cruz. She publishes in the intersection of Chicanx/Latinx studies,
anthropology, and feminist studies on poverty, family, sexuality, health, work,
transnational migration, and women’s social activism. Her most recent work is
“‘While You Are Struggling, You are Healing’: Latinas Enact Poder through the
Movement for Reproductive Justice” in Ethnographic Refusals/Unruly Latinidades
(edited by Alex E. Chávez and Gina M. Pérez, 2022). Her most recent book is The
Movement for Reproductive Justice: Empowering Women of Color through Social Activism 2020).
Zavella is the recipient of the American Anthropological Association’s Committee on Gender Equity
in Anthropology Award, 2016, the Association of Latina and Latino Anthropologists 2016 ALLA
Distinguished Career Award, and “NACCS Scholar of the Year” by the National Association for
Chicana and Chicano Studies, 2003. She serves on the boards of two non-profits devoted to
reproductive justice.