More than 30 scholars from six different countries met at York’s Glendon College and at the University of Toronto last week to discuss issues related to Mexico’s social, cultural, historical and esthetic revolutionary movements and practices from the 16th century to the present.
This trilingual conference (Spanish, English, French) was an interdisciplinary venue for reflection on “Mexican revolutions” taking place at the margins of the nation’s dominant narratives and which, even if anonymous and lacking heroes or glory, have confronted the Mexican status quo and its power structures in one way or another. They include esthetic and artistic, social, urban, racial, sexual and gender revolutions, as well as those waiting to happen and still to come.
Invited speaker Professor Daniela Spenser of the Center for Research & Higher Studies in Social Anthropology of Mexico, lectured on “The Shock Absorbers at the Disposal of the Mexican State to Muffle the Dirty War.” The sessions covered topics on revolutionary poetics, identities in revolution, female revolutionary voices, subversive epistemologies in narrative and art, and others.
During closing ceremonies, Mexican composer and cellist Gustavo Martin talked about the impact of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 on Mexican chamber music and performed works by composers such as Enrique Santos, Eduardo Gamboa, Arturo Márquez and Emmanuel Arias.
The conference organizers included the Department of Hispanic Studies at Glendon, the program in Latin American Studies at the University of Toronto and the Consulate General of Mexico in Toronto.