Where: Ford Lecture Hall at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art

The Latin American Studies Program oonce again presents the Las Casas Lecture in Latin American Studies. This is an annual event that features prominent scholars, writers, and activists whose work exemplifies a commitment with social justice and human rights. This year, professor Stefano Varese (Native American Studies, UC Davis) will deliver the 2014 Bartolomé de las Casas Lecture in Latin American Studies on "The Right to Resist Development: Ethnocide and Ecocide in Amazonia."

Stefano Varese is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Native American Studies and Director of the Indigenous Research Center of the Americas at the University of California, Davis. He obtained his PhD at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and taught at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, in Lima. In the 1970s Varese worked for the Division of Native Communities of the Amazonia in Peru. Later, he moved to Oaxaca, Mexico, where he headed "Culturas populares," a unit of the Secretary of Education devoted to the promotion of Indigenous development. He implemented a number of projects, from bilingual-bicultural education, to artisan production, and to novel forms of political organization. In the early 1990s he moved to Davis and became a member of the Department of Native American Studies while also continuing his involvement with Indigenous organizations, especially the Frente Indígena Oaxaqueño Binacional (FIOB). His scholarly work has focused on Indigenous community development and self-determination, human rights, transnational Indigenous migration and identity, and Indigenous epistemology. He was the recipient of the 2013 LASA/Oxfam America Martin Diskin Award. His publications include Witness to Sovereignty: Essays on the Indian Movement in Latin America (2006) and Salt in the Mountain: Campa Asháninka History and Resistance in the Peruvian Jungle (2004).