The International Congress of Young Researchers, organized by CALAS in cooperation with the German Historical Institute (UC Berkeley), will focus on a transdisciplinary examination of U.S.-Latin American relations from the past to the present. Perspectives from Cultural Studies, History, Socioloy and Political Science enter into a dialogue.
The International Congress of Young Researchers, organized by CALAS in cooperation with the German Historical Institute (UC Berkeley), will focus on a transdisciplinary examination of U.S.-Latin American relations from the past to the present. Perspectives from Cultural Studies, History, Socioloy and Political Science enter into a dialogue. In the current climate, the entanglements between the United States and Latin America remain evident, as the current U.S. administration pursues a policy of mass deportation of Latino immigrants and an inter-American agenda that signals a return to the era of blatant imperialism, while forging alliances with authoritarian right-wing leaders across the region in an ideological crusade against “woke ideology.” While the responses of social and cultural movements to this hemispheric right-wing “backlash” are only just beginning to take shape, their efforts to defend the achievements of recent decades could very well determine the future of democracy in the Americas. In 2026, the year marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we reflect on two and a half centuries during which relations between the United States and Latin America have undergone profound transformations. The ties that were initially forged on the basis of mutual admiration and solidarity were marked by power imbalances, economic exploitation, and military interventions, as well as by the emergence of (anti-American) anti-imperialism as a common thread among popular movements throughout Latin America, as the United States evolved from a young republic into a global empire in the 20th century. During the same period, South-to-North migration irrevocably changed the demographics of the United States, with Latinos now constituting the country’s largest minority group. Rounding out the picture of multidirectional flows between the United States and Latin America, cross-border dialogues between counterhegemonic movements and popular cultures in the United States and Latin America have shown that relations between the two regions are more complex than one-dimensional narratives of domination suggest.
