an interview with Professor Langland by Bruno Renero-Hannan Dr. Victoria Langland—historian of Latin America and social movements expert—talks about Latin America, women in revolution, breastfeeding rights in Brazil, as well as the importance of history in the Trump era, and more, in this interview with a former GSI. LACS Course Spotlight for WInter 2017 Who is Dr. Victoria Langland? And low cost way, and they've been how did you come to teach this modeling this technology and this class on revolutionary movements process to other places around in Latin America? the world. So the book asks what these transformations have meant I'm a historian of 20th century for various groups of women, for Latin America with a focus on infants, for society more generally, Brazil, and I wrote a book about and what these changes reveal student activists under the Brazilian about different understandings military dictatorship (from 1964 about race, gender, women's to 1985). So I was interested in bodies, collective health, the role social movements and the ties of transnational infant formula between student movements marketing, and so forth. There’s and revolutionary movements a lot in there that I think is really in Brazil—although the Brazilian important, especially as we grapple student movements and the with the current situation in the revolutionary movements were not U.S. where the fact that we have Speaking of Flowers: Student Movements and the same thing. They don't stand in no legally guaranteed parental the Making and Remembering of 1968 in Military for each other; but there are some leave means that breastfeeding Brazil (Duke University Press 2013). connections there, and some of the Speaking of Flowers is an innovative study is effectively impossible for most of student activism during Brazil’s military counter-revolutionary repression families, with truly negative dictatorship (1964–85) and an examination that impacted the armed left also consequences for maternal and of the very notion of student activism, which impacted university students. changed dramatically in response to the student infant health. protests of 1968. Looking into what made So I don't study revolutionary students engage in national political affairs as movements per se [for my book], Are you thinking of integrating this students, rather than through other means, new research into a future class? Victoria Langland traces a gradual, uneven shift in but they were important within how they constructed, defended, and redefined that project. Yes, I have a class I've been developing their right to political participation, from emphasizing class, race, and gender privileges And my current research seems very with a PhD candidate in History to organizing around other institutional and different! I’m currently researching and Women’s Studies, Diana Sierra, symbolic forms of political authority. although it's not on the books for next the history of breastfeeding in year, but hopefully the subsequent Brazil, basically from the early 20th year. [It’s] a class about motherhood, century to the present. [There] maternalism and maternal and infant I'm really looking at changing health in Latin America. understandings, beliefs, practices and policies around breastfeeding. Let’s get back to revolution. What And one of my overarching is the “Revolutionary Movements” questions is: How did breastfeeding class about? And in what ways do change from being seen as a kind of you think this subject is relevant menial, undervalued labor that elite to the lives of Michigan students in women would push off onto more 2017? vulnerable female populations, Content-wise, the class really is to being something that is now a way of exploring the history of celebrated by many as an essential, Latin America in the 20th century almost sacred part of one’s through the lens of revolutionary experience of motherhood? At the movements. One of the ways I see same time, how do we account 20th century Latin American history for the important development of is as [a series of] struggles against Memorias de la Represión Vol. 5: Monumentos, human milk banking in Brazil? For inequality, as that [inequality] has memoriales y marcas territoriales (Madrid: Siglo today Brazil is a leading innovator XXI Editores 2003). been a persistent structural feature in human breastmilk banking—in The fifth volume in a series of publications resulting of Latin American society. But it from the SSRC program on Collective Memory of collecting donated breast milk, has also been one that people Repression. The entire multi-volume series consists pasteurizing it, and distributing have been finding inventive and of work produced by program fellows and faculty it, free of charge, to infants who and has been released simultaneously in Madrid and creative ways to push against, Buenos Aires and distributed throughout the world. need it. They do this in a very throughout the full 20th and 21st century. Not all of those efforts are revolutionary—so we're not Content-wise, the class [Revolutionary Movements in looking at all ways that people Latin America] really is a way of exploring the history have pushed to create social justice in Latin America: we're focusing of Latin America in the 20th century through the lens exclusively on revolutionary of revolutionary movements. movements. I also don't mean to characterize revolution as the only way that people seek social create? In some cases, yes; in some who have been committed to justice, but nonetheless there are cases, no, in very different ways. this and who have undertaken a a series of really significant and We look at women protagonists, variety of different means for doing quite fascinating revolutionary what roles they played in what this. So even though the theme is movements that occurred in they did, and how those (roles) got revolutionary movements, these Latin America over the twentieth understood and recognized, or not. revolutionary movements are very century. So this course begins with different—and they evolve; they And we look at the way that the Mexican Revolution [1910-]— learn from each other; they try revolution is often mythologized and it goes up to the present and things that worked in one place, and celebrated in very gendered asks: What are some of the social and try not to replicate things terms, from the hyper-masculinity movements taking place today? And that didn’t work so well in another of Ché Guevara to the ways in in what ways might we consider place. And, you know, there’s not which the front-and-center some of them revolutionary? And it one kind of model that just gets participation of women in the looks at everything in between. So enacted again and again and again Sandinista revolutionary movement that's one part of the course. in different sites. These are, in fact, becomes part of the way Nicaragua diverse and dialogical, right? They Then the other part of the course, is understood. So that’s kind of one move off of one another. So that alongside that, is that we look at place [we’re] seeing all that working would be one piece of it. how historians approach this study together. of revolutionary movements. We're Another piece is that to be a Since [2014, when] you GSI’ed with often thinking about how you globalized citizen, to understand me, I’ve made gender more and think about the past, so students our hemisphere, and to understand more central—because I care about are reading primary sources and our world, we need a better it. So I keep finding ways to make thinking about what we learn understanding of various regions of this part of every conversation. And about them—and they write about the world, including Latin America. now my students are like, “You can’t primary sources. We're talking And revolution is one of the tropes think of revolution without thinking about how revolutions have been and the caricatures through which about gender!” Because I sort of defined and re-defined over time, Latin America is often understood insert it—some questioning of it—in and how they're been represented. and misunderstood by US all of our lectures in some way. So So we look a lot at film and at Americans. Or it’s often presented I’m very happy with that. art and at other media that have in a kind of simplistic way that created an iconography of tropes, Could you say more about there is one kind of revolutionary and sometimes caricatures, of the ways in which this topic— model, all Latin Americans—or all revolution, that get re-written and revolutionary movements in Latin of Latin American history, is kind of used in a variety of ways. America—can be relevant to the brushed with this simple brush of, lives of your students? “Oh, they all have a revolutionary To give you an example of how we background or past,” and that’s not treat all of this together, one of the I think anyone who is interested really understood, what that meant themes that threads through the in social justice is interested in for each context. So I think it gives class is the question of gender— the various efforts that people on people a better understanding of and looking at, what were some this planet have taken to create what’s at stake in Latin America and of the aspirations of revolutionary some kind of social justice—how what people have done. societies? To what extent were they’ve defined it, what they think changing gender relationships is just and for whom, the steps Thinking of the Trump era, do you on their radar? Was that part of that they’ve taken to try to reach see new significance or urgency the new utopian societies that that.