Will Venezuela cause a domino effect?

Announcement Date: March 1, 2019

Join Aynn Setright, SIT Academic Dean for Latin America, from noon-1 p.m. on Friday, March 15, for a brown bag lunch conversation at the Robert H. Gibson River Garden in downtown Brattleboro. Aynn will discuss the current political and social crises in Venezuela -- with the disputed presidency of Nicolás Maduro and Juan Guaidó -- within the framework of larger social and political changes in Latin America.  She will also discuss U.S. intervention in the region as well as the role of other global powers including China and Russia. 

As a graduate student, Aynn went to Nicaragua with a social justice organization called Witness for Peace. She became a long-term volunteer with Witness for Peace, and from 1985-87 she drove an ambulance in the war zone and worked with a rural Catholic parish in the northern mountains of Nicaragua. From 1987-93, she was coordinator of a small development organization, Proyecto Cristo Rey, working with 800 war refugee families in 16 resettlement communities in Matagalpa and what is now known as the North and South Autonomous Caribbean Coast Regions. This project was awarded the Institute for Policy Studies Letelier-Moffit Memorial Human Rights Award in 1991.

A native of Wyoming, Aynn earned a BA in international studies from the University of Wyoming and an MA in Latin American and Caribbean history from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua (UNAN), Managua. She is a doctoral candidate at the University of Zulia, Venezuela, and is currently completing her dissertation on Central American ecofeminism. She was appointed academic dean for Latin America and the Caribbean in September 2016. Prior to this position, she served as academic director for SIT Study Abroad in Nicaragua since 1999. She is a member of the Latin American Studies Association and participates in the Central American Studies Section of LASA as well as in the Central American Historians Association.

The Robert H. Gibson River Garden is located at 157 Main Street, Brattleboro. Vermont. For questions about accessibility or disability-related accommodations for this event, please call 802-258-3527.