¡Cómo, hermanos humanos,
no deciros que ya no puedo y
ya no puedo con tanto cajón,
tanto minuto, tanta
lagartija y tanta
inversión, tanto lejos y tanta sed de sed!
Señor Ministro de Salud; ¿qué hacer?
!Ah! desgraciadamente, hombres humanos,
hay, hermanos, muchísimo que hacer.
César Vallejo, “Los Nueve Monstruos” (fragment)
As faculty, graduate students, and staff of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at UC Berkeley, we are taking stock of the new political situation that has emerged on our national horizon and, although it is perhaps too early to predict how this will unfold in coming years, we are all the same deeply aggrieved. That said, we will not allow these days of sadness to linger as a private experience; rather, we are prepared to take an activist stance in order to defend our community as a whole, and especially the many immigrants who form part and continue to build it.
From the historical situation that our discipline allows, as Hispanists and Luso-Brazilianists, we know of dictatorships, political persecutions, a silenced press and censorship; we know of the curtailment of human and civil rights, the threats to citizens and the suppression of rule of law; we know of a broad community of intellectuals from Spain, Portugal, and Latin America who at different moments in the past were forced to abandon their homes and reconstitute their lives in this country and in this Department in particular. Now it is the moral and ethical imperative of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese to stand once again alongside the new generations of exiles and immigrants, those who constitute our work place at Berkeley and who seek a safe place in which to learn.
We are a single community joined together regardless of place of origin, ethnicity, race, religion, gender or sexual choice, and we are committed to help each other in intellectual pursuits and other struggles, which are effectively the struggles of all of us in current times. We want Dwinelle Hall to be regarded as a safe space for dialogue just as we want to join together in order to imagine a future in which all of our contributions are respected and valued.
Please continue to count on us; our doors are open to all. We will begin using this web site to post relevant links that are pertinent to the new situation that we may be facing. Por ahora, adelante!
Ignacio Navarrete, Chair
Diego Arévalo Viveros
Amelia Barili
Emilie Bergmann
Justin Berner
Jacqueline Bialostozky
Yesenia Blanco
Molly E. Borowitz
Megan Briggs Magnant
Natalia Brizuela
Jenny Cole
Justin Davidson
Catarina de Morais Gama
Ivonne del Valle
Jorge Díaz-Vélez
Daylet Domínguez
Clèlia Donovan
Mônica Gimenes Hernández
Azucena Hernández Ramírez
Miriam Hernández Rodríguez
Michael Iarocci
Holly Jackson
Mia G. Lilly
Ivett López Malagamba
Sebastião E. Macedo
Carlos Macías Prieto
Lorena Mancilla
Victoria Martínez Robertson
Francine Masiello
Delia Neyra Tercero
María Camila Nieto
Ana Belén Redondo Campillos
Yairamarén Román Maldonado
Alexandra Saum-Pascual
Candace Slater
Donna Southard
Estelle Tarica
Ana Lucía Tello
Jenelle Thomas
Félix Treviño
Víctor Quiroz Ciriaco
Dexter Zavalza Hough-Snee
Information Posts (11/14/16):
Note that the new contract between the UAW and the University defends the admission of undocumented graduate students:
http://www.uaw2865.org/resources/current-uaw-contract/#appendixh
Janet Napolitano committed nine million dollars to continue financing undocumented students: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/uc-president-napolitano-proposes-multi-year-support-undocumented-students
http://undocu.berkeley.edu/financial-aid-for-undocumented-students/
On the obligation of universities to offer sanctuary space: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/colleges-and-universities-should-become-sanctuaries_us_58291be8e4b02b1f5257a57b?
For questions regarding DACA, now more than ever, students and parents should contact the following: http://bit.ly/uspattorney, email plal@ebclc.org or call 510-269-6675 to make an appointment for an immigration screening.
We ask that those who support the protection of undocumented students to sign the following petition currently in circulation among faculty and students at Berkeley: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Kfnc2CfrQFqp5pBkmImJN5zQsicVUTtzqErn0tOA5kA/viewform?edit_requested=true