SU Abroad Santiago Director to Speak Thursday

SU Abroad Santiago Director Mauricio Paredes will be on campus to talk to students, meet with faculty and staff members and give a lecture in Spanish to the University community about the enduring legacy of Chile’s military dictatorship.

Mauricio Paredes

Paredes will give a public lecture in Spanish titled “Student Movements in Chile: Confronting the Legacy of the Dictatorship,” on Thursday, Oct. 1, at 4 p.m. in Maxwell Room 204.

The SU Abroad center in Santiago, Chile, is a two-site program, where students can advance their Spanish language skills while taking a wide range of courses, from anthropology to studio and visual arts. Coursework at the center, the Universidad de Chile and the Pontificia Universidad Catolica is all conducted in Spanish. Students live with host families, giving them a rich, immersive experience in Latin American culture.

Students may begin with a pre-semester, 4-credit language immersion program in Cuenca, Ecuador, before doing a full semester in Santiago, Chile.

Paredes is uniquely positioned to guide SU Abroad students in discovering and navigating the complexities of Chile: Santiago as the modern, secure city of gleaming skyscrapers and a bustling downtown, and the ongoing effects of the 17-year long reign of military dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet that left the society deeply divided, with Chileans continuing to reconcile the torture and human devastation carried out by the regime,

In his courses, students examine the dictatorship, the transition to democracy, and historical memory in contemporary Chile through multiple sources: primary sources drawn from U.S. archives; the few Chilean primary sources that survived the dictatorship’s censorship and destruction of files and evidence; specialized secondary sources, both Chilean and international; and through in-depth study of sites of historical memory located in the city of Santiago. He introduces students to the rich social and political history of former military dictatorships in the Southern Cone during a week-long travel seminar spanning across Chile, Argentina and Uruguay.