Latina/o Religion, Culture, and Society Unit and Religion, Holocaust, and Genocide Unit

Genocide, Human Rights, and Religion in the Latina/o Americas
For possible co-sponsorship, the Latina/o Religion, Culture, and Society Unit and the Religion, Holocaust, and Genocide Unit invite paper proposals that connect religion, the Latina/o Americas, and human rights—with particular attention to genocide and genocidal acts. We invite analyses of ways in which governments and religious institutions influence one another in their conceptualizations of and justifications for violence. We are interested in proposals that evaluate Holocaust comparisons and connections. For example: the rhetorical force and practical implications of referring to the Guatemalan genocide as "the silent Holocaust"; debates concerning the description of U.S. border detention centers as "concentration camps"; the 2016 opening of a Holocaust Museum in Guatemala; and the 2018 meeting of the Latin American Network for Education on the Holocaust and Genocide. Additionally, we are particularly interested in papers that attend to the intersections of religion and authoritarianism, human rights, and post-conflict reconciliation and healing. For example: the roles that religious leaders played in the 1996 Guatemalan Peace Accords; the reactions of religious communities to Efrain Rios Montt's genocide and crimes against humanity conviction in 2013; the ritual practices surrounding Ixil Mayan genocide victims, particularly mourning and funerary practices without a body (the disappeared) or an identifiable body (mass graves); the November 2019 lawsuit submitted by Rohingyas and Latin American groups in Argentina under the principle of "universal jurisdiction"; the mass killing of Machupe peoples of Chile in the late 19th-century and their ongoing struggles; the Catholic Church and "Dirty War" of the 1970s and 80s in Argentina; and how Catholics, and increasingly, Evangelicals and Pentecostals, have defended human rights or contributed to coup attempts and human rights abuses in Latin American countries.