For the first time in more than 40 years, Cuba’s most important living playwrights from the 1960s will gather at a conference that will explore a unique and paradoxical decade in Cuban theater through its living protagonists.

Protagonistas de Los 60 will take place on Saturday, March 27 (International Theater Day) at 9:30 a.m. in the Roberto C. Goizueta Pavilion in the University of Miami’s Otto G. Richter Library.

UM’s Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS) and Florida International University’s Cuban Research Institute have collaborated to present the event, which will include playwrights Antón Arrufat (Cuba), Carucha Camejo (Cuba-USA), Abelardo Estorino (Cuba), Eduardo Manet (Cuba-France), and Matías Montes Huidobro (Cuba-USA).

The morning session, led by designers Eduardo Arrocha (Cuba), Jesús Ruiz (Cuba), and Rafael Mirabal (Cuba-USA), will be dedicated to stage and costume design in the 1960s theater movement, focusing on the collaboration of visual artists and theater designers.

The afternoon panels will address the Cuban theater’s early paths, splendor, and obstacles from the perspective of playwrights who emerged in that period (Camejo, Estorino, and Montes Huidobro) and playwrights who returned to Cuba in 1959 to join the theater movement (Arrufat and Manet).

Lillian Manzor, director of UM’s Latin American Studies Program and the Cuban Theater Digital Archive; Uva de Aragón, associate director of FIU’s Cuban Research Institute; Alberto Sarraín, theater director of La Má Teodora; and Dinorah Pérez Rementería, art critic and UM graduate student, have organized the conference.

The event is sponsored by UM’s CLAS, the Joseph Carter Memorial Fund in Modern Languages and Literatures, the University of Miami Libraries’ Cuban Heritage Collection, and FIU’s Cuban Research Institute.

Seating is limited. RSVP to d.perezrementeria@umiami.edu. For more information, call 305-284-1854.

As part of the University of Miami Center for Latin American Studies’ Distinguished Speaker Series, noted international studies scholar Anthony Maingot will present “Exploring Haiti’s Underdevelopment: Past Challenges and Future Prospects” on Wednesday, February 24 at 6:30 p.m. at the School of Communication’s International Building, Room 4053.

Maingot, professor emeritus, National Security Scholar-in-Residence, and recipient of the Distinguished Service Medallion at Florida International University, will address critical issues concerning Haiti’s historic underdevelopment. His talk will cover the role of France, the U.S. occupation, the influence of ‘Voodoo,’ and the impact of the Duvalier dictatorship.

The event is free and open to the public. For more information, call 305-284-1854 or e-mail umclas@miami.edu.

The Center for Latin American Studies-sponsored Interdisciplinary Research Group on Dictatorships, Illiberal Democracies, and Democratic Transitions in Latin America will present “A Panorama of the American Hemisphere: U.S.-Latin American Relations and Security in Latin America” on Wednesday, January 27 from 5 to 7 p.m. in the Learning Center (LC), room 140. Panelists will include Eduardo Gamarra, a professor at Florida International University and former director of that school’s Latin American and Caribbean Center; Susan Kaufman Purcell, director of the University of Miami’s Center for Hemispheric Policy at University of Miami; and Bruce Bagley, professor and chair of UM’s Department of International Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences. Magdalena Defort, codirector of the Interdisciplinary Research Group on Dictatorships, Illiberal Democracies, and Democratic Transitions in Latin America, will moderate.

Claudia Kedar, visiting scholar from the University of Michigan’s Latin American and Caribbean Studies Center and postdoctoral fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations, will lecture on Argentina during Juan Perón’s rule. Kedar will reveal that the tendency to describe populist Perón as the archenemy of the IMF and the World Bank as instruments of U.S. imperialism is no more than a myth promoted by Peronists and anti-Peronists alike. The lecture takes place on Monday, November 30 at 4 p.m. in the Richter Library, third-floor conference room. The event, a presentation of the University of Miami’s Center for Latin American Studies, is free and open to the public.