CENTRE for LATIN AMERICAN
RESEARCH and DOCUMENTATION

La Resistencia de Pirañas Crew: Women Street Artists’ Struggle to Obtain Gender Equality, Security, and Inclusion.

ACTIVITY: CEDLA EXHIBITION 
VENUE: CEDLA, Binnengasthuisstraat 46, 1012 ZD Amsterdam

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Created by photographer Lin Woldendorp and CEDLA PhD candidate Lieke Prins, this exhibition portrays the feminist street art collective Pirañas Crew from Medellín, Colombia. With her lens, Lin has captured the artists’ resistance, the connections between the women, and their creative expressions in public space. Through intimate portraits of the women in their spaces of resistance, the exposition aims to represent the Pirañas and shed light on their ongoing fight for gender equality and security.​​

Life and Death in Latin American Cities

SPEAKER: Dr Christien Klaufus (CEDLA-UvA)
DATE: 25 March 2026
TIME: 12:00 -13:30

ACTIVITY: BOOK TALK
VENUE:  Roeterseilandcampus (UvA) - building B/C/D Room B5.12
ORGANIZATION: Centre for Urban Studies (CUS-UvA), Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR-UvA) & CEDLA-UvA

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Dr Christien Klaufus will present her latest book, "Life and Death in Latin American Cities", in which she explores the intricate dynamics between the living and the dead in six Latin American cities. 

Dr Klaufus' book deals with the infrastructure of death — an essential yet understudied part of urban life. Based on more than a decade of ethnographic fieldwork in Bogotá, Medellín, Lima, Buenos Aires, Quetzaltenango and Cuenca, she investigates how urban death infrastructures — such as cemeteries and spaces for the deceased — are shaped by rapid urbanization, legacies of violence, neoliberal policies and alternative spiritual practices.

The book talk will be followed by a Q&A, with author Christien Klaufus and discussant Karen Paiva Henrique (GPIO/UvA). The conversation will be chaired by Carolina M. Frossard (GPIO/UvA & CUS co-director).

REGISTRATION

Music and political imprisonment in Pinochet’s Chile

SPEAKER: Katia Chornik, University of Cambridge
DATE: 10 April 2026
TIME: 15:30-17:00
​ACTIVITY: CEDLA LECTURE
VENUE:  VOX-POP, Binnengasthuisstraat 9, ground floor. 1012 ZA Amsterdam

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​​​Over 1,000 political imprisonment and torture centres existed across Chile during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990). Music was often present in those centres, both as a response to, and in conjunction with, human rights violations. In her new book Music and Political Imprisonment in Pinochet’s Chile (Oxford University Press, 2025), Chornik explores the intersections between music, politics, memory, and human rights, discussing a broad range of music experiences and repertoire, and how these are remembered, preserved, and disseminated decades later. With a prologue by former President of Chile Michelle Bachelet, the book blends archival sources with personal interviews with ex-political prisoners, agents of secret services, and visitors to prisons. In this talk, Chornik will present an overview of the book and two interlinked initiatives: the digital platform Cantos Cautivos (Captive Songs, www.cantoscautivos.org) and an ongoing UNESCO educational project. The talk will share breakthroughs and challenges of her journey, and the reasons why this work matters today.

Guns, tech and permaviolence in Latin America

SPEAKER: León Castellanos, Asser Institute for International & European Law
DATE: 5 June 2026
TIME: 15:30-17:00
​ACTIVITY: CEDLA LECTURE
VENUE:  VOX-POP, Binnengasthuisstraat 9, ground floor. 1012 ZA Amsterdam

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​​​This talk introduces “permaviolence” – a concept describing the unprecedented ubiquity of harm in contemporary society mediated by digital technology. Permaviolence operates through dual mechanisms: “onboarding violence,” whereby algorithms and digital media normalise violent content through constant exposure; and “outsourcing violence,” where emerging technologies democratise access to harmful tools. Drawing from recent research on gun control, AI-enabled weapons development, and proliferation of 3D-printed guns, the presentation shows how technological advancement outpaces humanity’s moral capacity to adapt. This analysis extends to Latin America, where U.S.-manufactured firearms fuel regional violence enhanced by digital means, creating grounds for strategic litigation against gun manufacturers and online platforms for transboundary harms. Cases from Mexico and other Latin American countries represent novel approaches to corporate accountability, challenging manufacturers’ liability shields by documenting how negligent distribution practices and willful blindness to trafficking patterns contribute to regional instability. The presentation concludes by advocating for innovative governance frameworks to bridge the gap between our technological capacity for violence and our evolutionary ability to adapt.