José Manuel Valenzuela Arce holds a PhD in Social Sciences with a specialization in Sociology from the Colegio de México. He has been a current scholar in the Departamento de Estudios Culturales in the Colegio de la Frontera Norte sin 1982. His work interweaves topics related to culture and identity, cultural border, social movements, youth cultures, urban sociology and popular culture. Over the years, his extensive books, article and chapter publications have earned him the international “Casa de las Americas” 2001 prize. His work is imprescindible for the understanding of sociocultural and political processes that have defined the Mexico-United States border zones, especially the various youth movements from the US and Latin America that collide in these regions.
For more information, click here.
Isabel Velázquez (Ph.D. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), is Harold E. Spencer Professor in Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her area of research includes sociolinguistic variation, Hispanic linguistics, bilingualism and language acquisition, heritage speaker pedagogy, language contact on the U.S./Mexico border, and the role of language in identity formations of US Latin@s. Her current research focuses on linguistic maintenance and loss among Latinx families in the Midwest.
Dr. Velázquez is the director of Cartas a la Familia/Family Letters. On the Migration from Jesusita to Jane a digital archive that preserves, digitizes, analyzes and makes public a collection of the correspondence and other personal documents of a Mexican American family that migrated from the state of Zacatecas, Mexico, to the states of Colorado and Nebraska during the first half of the twentieth century
A morir en los desiertos (dir. Marta Ferrer, 2017) is an award-winning documentary about the Cardenche song and their singers. Northern Mexico is home to the last singers of Cardenche Song, a nostalgic melody of love, wailing and tragedy. This is a journey in search of this musical tradition, rooted in cotton farmers and miners now on the verge of extinction. Cardenche is sung a cappella in groups of three and has been shared from generation to generation. It takes the name of a cactus whose thorn — like love, the Cardenche singers note — goes in too easily but hurts like hell to take out. To Die in the Desert (A morir a los desiertos) is a dazzling new documentary that features heartbreaking musical performances that capture why this howl of a singing technique is so unique and important.
The screening will include a presentation by the director and count with the presence of 4 Cardenchero singers.
For the trailer and more information, click here.