Working Group

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The Colombia Working Group

University of California, Berkeley

The Colombia Working Group, created in Spring 2001, brings together people interested in Colombia on the Berkeley campus. It is mainly composed of graduate and undergraduate students, some of whom are Colombian, but it also welcomes faculty members, staff, and people from the community.

The Colombia Working Group aims to promote interest in Colombia on the campus and in the area. It is particularly concerned with increasing awareness about Colombia’s current situation and, most importantly, it strives to provide elements to understand its convoluted realities.

To fulfil these goals, the initial activity of the Group has been to organize the conference Colombia in Context (March 2, 2001), in collaboration with the Center for Latin American Studies. It is the first major event that covers Colombia on the campus in recent years. The conference brings together leading experts from both Latin America and the United States to disentangle the present Colombian crisis, examine its roots, and the possible effects of US policy in the region.

The Group also has a series of talks –Understanding Colombia– in which guest speakers address different topics related to Colombia’s present and to its recent history. For this series we invite people from the area, but also strive to bring scholars from other parts of the United States, or who are visiting from Colombia. The Group is also engaged in carrying out its own discussions, based on the reading of materials that are of particular interest of its members. For this purpose, as well as to serve professors, researchers, or anyone who is interested in Colombia, the Group is putting together a bibliography that ranges from the hot issues of drug trafficking and armed conflict to questions of history and culture.

The Colombia Working Group is interested in joining efforts with other groups or people working on Colombian issues, such as NGOs, and students or institutions from other universities.

The Colombia Working Group is what its members make of it.

Join us and propose activities, or simply come to some of our events.

For more information check our website.

Or contact us directly:

Alejandra Torres: alejaTorres@netscape.net

Andrés Alvarado: a_alvara@uclink.berkeley.edu

Claudia Leal: cleal@socrates.berkeley.edu

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