LACUSL Speaker Series Brings Awareness to Latin American Issues

Smiles were plentiful on Wednesday as UW-Milwaukee Department of Spanish and Portuguese Senior Lecturer María Estrella Sotomayor made her way around the third floor of the Golda Meir Library’s east wing, expressing personal bouts of gratitude to audience members and supporters before taking the podium to begin her presentation.

The lecture, titled “Reproductive Rights and U.S. Imperialism: The Case of Puerto Rico,” is the third and final installment of the Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latin Studies Program’s Speaker Series, which aims to highlight social and political issues prevalent in Latin American and Caribbean countries.

As a quote from Laura Brigg’s powerful text Reproducing Empire created a glowing backdrop for the speech’s opening, Sotomayor offered a brief but potent anecdote to exemplify the problematic relationship between the United States and its outlying territories.

“I tell people ‘I’m from Puerto Rico’,” said Sotomayor. “People say, ‘That’s by Taiwan, right?’”

Laughter quickly erupted from both sides of the podium before a sobering silence fell upon the audience as Sotomayor confirmed it as a testament to the duality of ignorance.

The lecture continued as Sotomayor offered historical background of the United States’ acquisition of Puerto Rico and the systematic sterilization of high percentages of the population’s women over a period of about 50 years, all in an attempt to control birth rates in accordance with U.S. garment industry production demand, while selling it to Puerto Ricans as a “solution to overpopulation and poverty.”

Although the topic has been explored and brought to the attention of larger audiences in the form of Ana María García’s 1982 documentary La Operación, as well as a few articles that speckled the mid-sections of newspapers over the last few decades, Sotomayor admitted that the topic has gone largely unnoticed by mainstream media.

In Puerto Rico, she explained, it is considerably more well-known, yet still discussed in coded language and rarely finds itself a reasonable topic to discuss publicly.

“You don’t talk about sterilization in Puerto Rico,” she said. “If someone says ‘la operación’, everyone knows what you’re talking about.”

For many Americans, the topic might be difficult to acknowledge or discuss, but according to Puerto Rican UWM graduate Angel Rivera, the same often holds true for Puerto Ricans.

“Puerto Rico is very machismo,” said Rivera. “So to see a Puerto Rican woman talking about these things… It’s rare. It’s refreshing.”

Rivera is using his own experiences to create a documentary titled Boricua en El Medio, which examines Puerto Rican experiences and perspectives in the Midwest.

But Rivera isn’t the only one trying to bring awareness to often marginalized groups in the United States. Kristin Pitt, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and co-coordinator for the LACUSL, is one of a few people within UW-Milwaukee who is attempting to provide the new interdisciplinary major with some much-needed rigidity that other programs are inherently afforded by their curriculum’s structure.

“We thought it would be a nice way for students and staff to come together,” said Pitt, following the lecture. “Especially for those with Latin American backgrounds.”

Although the Speaker Series has been largely successful since its inception in the spring semester of 2013, it still stands as one of few widely organized programs currently established at UWM  to address and honor Latin American issues and heritage respectively. It encompasses many Latin American and Caribbean countries, but with limited resources, can only provide so much to students and staff with over 20 different countries of origin in that region alone.

In 4.5 years of tenure as a student, Angel Rivera has only seen two events that centered specifically on Puerto Rican issues.

“There aren’t many presentations on Puerto Rico,” said Rivera. “So when there are, I jump on them.”

The continued success of the program depends on the participation of students and staff alike, and in the meantime, there will likely be no lack of appreciation for the series’ effort.

The Speaker Series co-sponsored by the Center for International Education and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and is currently hosted in the American Geographical Society Library each fall and spring semester.