Exhibitions

"The Braceros and the Rubber Soldiers: A History of labor and power in the Americas" 

TRAVELING EXHIBITION

Want to host this show at your space/institution? Please contact us! 

*the exhibition is tri-lingual (English, Spanish and Portuguese) 

WHERE  CAN I SEE THIS EXHIBITION?

University of California, Berkeley 

Feb 15th - March 15th, 2024 

Location: Bauer Wurster Hall, UC Berkeley (Lobby)

Opening events [free and open to the public]: 

Feb 15th

4:30pm, Bauer Wurster Hall, Elevator Lobby - Exhibition opening

5:30pm, Bauer Wurster Hall, Room 172- Panel and reception

6:30pm, Bauer Wurster Hall, 112 Auditorium - Documentary Screening

Launching events include the exhibition opening, followed by a panel featuring guest speakers Dr. Ignacio Ornelas Rodriguez (Stanford University) and Wolney Oliveira (Federal University of Ceará/ Brazil), mediated by Dr. Lorena Oropeza (Chicanx Latinx Studies Program/UC Berkeley). After the talk, there will be a screening of the documentary "Soldados da Borracha" (Brazil, 2019/ 90min/ Director Wolney Oliveira) + talk with the director.

Co-sponsors @ UC Berkeley: 

Department of Architecture, UC Berkeley; The Joan E. Draper Architectural History Research Endowment; Townsend Center for the Humanities; Berkeley Food Institute; Chicanx Latinx Studies Program UC Berkeley;  The Latinx Research Center; Global Metropolitan Studies UC Berkeley; Center for Race and Gender UC Berkeley; Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies UC Berkeley; Department of Spanish & Portuguese; Department of Ethnic Studies

Participants' bios:

[curator] Laura Belik is a doctoral candidate in Architecture at UC Berkeley. Laura holds an MA in Design Studies from Parsons- The New School (New York) and a B.Arch in Architecture and Urban Planning from Escola da Cidade (São Paulo- Brazil). Her current doctoral work delves into the histories and memories of early twentieth-century migrant labor camps established for Retirantes das Secas (drought refugees) in Northeast Brazil, investigating the role of the built environment in shaping the modern Brazilian state. Laura has curated and co-curated exhibitions in Brazil and the U.S., including the recent "Bunker: the optimism of the pessimistic" (CED Berkeley/ Fall 2023). Her latest publications include the book chapter “Mobilizing Labor for Infrastructure in Northeast Brazil, 1915–1932” in The Routledge Handbook of Infrastructure Design (2022), and the paper “Paxiúba: Traditional Housing in the Western Amazon” published at the Architectural Theory Review (2021).  

[mediator] Lorena Oropeza is a professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, who arrived on campus two years ago to co-lead the Latinx and Democracy cluster hire of seven professors charged with invigorating Latinx research across campus. Trained in the history of American foreign relations, she has been on the Chicano movement channel for nearly 30 years looking at social protest through the dual lens of race and empire. Her first book, “¡Raza Sí! ¡Guerra No! Chicano Protest And Patriotism During The Viet Nam War Era” (2005),  focuses on the Chicano Movement’s protest to the Vietnam War. Her second book, “The King Of Adobe: Reies López Tijerina, Lost Prophet of The Chicano Movement” (2019), is an award-winning biography of a Chicano Movement leader who rose to fame by decrying the legacy of the U.S. takeover of northern Mexico in 1848.  She is currently working on A Mexican History of the United States for Beacon Press. It is aimed at sharing the sweep of Chicanx history to a non-academic audience, including the contours of the Bracero Program and on-going immigration debates.

[guest speaker] Ignacio Ornelas Rodriguez, Ph.D., is a historian who conducts research on civil rights, social justice movements, and electoral politics. He is a lecturer at the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford (CCSRE). He previously worked in the Department of Special Collections and University Archives at Stanford conducting research and led projects procuring archival research collections surrounding literature, ethnic history, civil rights history, and social justice history. At Stanford he founded the Bracero Legacy Project, a public history and educational outreach venture that incorporates archival material from the Ernesto Galarza Collection and oral history interviews Ornelas Rodriguez conducted with former braceros. On September 14, 2013, Ornelas Rodriguez was recognized by the California Assembly for his work as an organizer of the Bracero Memorial Highway Project.

[guest speaker] Wolney Oliveira is a Brazilian filmmaker from Ceará. He currently serves as the director of Casa Amarela Eusélio Oliveira at the Federal University of Ceará, Brazil, and holds the position of executive director at the Cine Ceará Ibero-American Film Festival. Oliveira earned his degree in Business Administration from the State University of Ceará, Brazil, and in Cinema from the International School of Film and Television in San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba. As a filmmaker, Oliveira directed nine short films and six feature-length films, receiving recognition at various film festivals in Brazil, Italy, Cuba, Mexico, Uruguay, Portugal and Spain. Notable accolades include include winning Best Short Film at the 30th International Documentary Film Festival in Bilbao, Spain, for "The Martian Invader" in 1988; receiving the Best Documentary award at the 33rd International Festival of New Latin American Cinema in Havana in 2011 for the feature-length documentary "The Last Cangaceiros"; and earning over fifteen awards for his latest feature film "Rubber Soldiers," which premiered at the It's All True Documentary Film Festival in São Paulo in 2019.