Festival of Kissing, Festival of Touching
Eduardo Galeano, The Book of Embraces Marginalia and Notes, February 2001 I read this book because, like Arenas’s The Color of Summer, it exemplifies a style and structure that I wish to adapt for my…
Category: Latin America
What Kind of University Does SLU Want To Be?
Reading about SLU’s receiving of Rex Sinquefield’s fifty million dollars reminded me of a letter Mev Puleo wrote to then SLU President Biondi 25 years ago … A School/2 After the exhilarating World Youth…
Our Only Salvation Lies in Words: On Arenas’s Before Night Falls
All dictatorships are sexually repressive and anti-life. All affirmations of life are diametrically opposed to dogmatic regimes. It was logical for Fidel Castro to persecute us, not to let us fuck, and to try to…
Share the Wealth with Brittany, Julia, and Suzy: Reflections from the 2017 Mev Puleo Program
We–Brittany Butler (junior), Suzy Kickham (sophomore), and Julia Nouse (sophomore)–spent 10 weeks studying liberation theology and living in community in Nicaragua this past summer. Now, after six months back in the states, lessons we learned…
Who Is Learning from History?
1. Oscar Romero’s Letter San Salvador February 17, 1980 His Excellency The President of the United States Mr. Jimmy Carter Dear Mr. President: In the last few days, news has appeared in the national press…
The Preferential Option for the Rich
“[You in the Western countries] have organized your lives around inhuman values [which] are inhuman because they cannot be universalized. The system rests on a few using the majority of the resources, while the majority…
El Salvador Connection by Martin Zaldivar
In our current class, I asked if anyone had a strong connection to El Salvador. Martin Zaldivar shared the following, and he gave me permission to post it. El Salvador is the home to half my…
What I’ve Learned from El Salvador by Maria Vazquez-Smith
since August 2011 1. I learned that life is unpredictable and cannot be controlled. 2. I learned that there is a wide, visible gap between life in the United States and life in the many…
Dear “Hermana Ann” by Maria Vazquez-Smith
Maria is taking a class with me based on The Book of Mev. One of the weekly themes was Direct Address, and Maria wrote the following and gave me permission to share it. Dear “Hermana…