LIFE BEYOND DEATH: The story of the Latin American Working Group

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John W. Foster with members of the LAWG history project (*)

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Notes for a presentation to: Canada’s Past and Future in the Americas: An International Workshop,  Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, March 27-28, 2017

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Introduction

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This presentation has two sections, the first a sketch of what and when was the Latin American Working Group (hereafter LAWG), the second a description of current efforts to recapture and make accessible its history and its records.

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First a brief remark about the context of this presentation: At  the recent inauguration of the LAWG documentary collection at the Centre for the Study of Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC) at York University, Prof. Luis van Isschot, a former LAWG volunteer, quoted the Haitian scholar Michel Rolph Trouillot on silences and the breaking thereof:

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“Silences enter the process of historical production at four crucial moments: the moment of fact creation (the making of sources); the moment of fact assembly (the making of archives); the moment of fact retrieval (the making of narratives); and the moment of retrospective significance (the making of history in the final instance).”[1]

 

LAWG

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The Latin American Working Group was initiated in 1966 as an international affairs committee of the youth movement of the United Church of Canada. Four of its first members were delegates to a pan-Latin American Protestant youth conference in Puerto Rico, that year, and there they encountered youth from the Dominican Republic who had recently experienced the assassination of their long term dictator, Trujillo and a sizeable invasion by U.S. Marines.

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The crisis in the Dominican Republic not only had formative effect on this nascent Canadian initiative, but simultaneously stimulated the formation of an American counterpart body, the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) in Chicago in  attended by one of the Canadian youth. Relations between the two infant bodies began, characterized by a common critique of U.S. imperialism, an emphasis on research and material support by Protestant churches.

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LAWG which became the name of the Canadian working group, began as a voluntary body, with members in southern Ontario and Quebec, periodic meetings, and initiatives including sending young Canadians to counterparts in Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Cuba.

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Response to the 1973 military coup in Chile transformed LAWG into a more professional team and a tighter organization overall. The addition of Chilean Canadian members in the early 70s and veterans of the Roman Catholic youth corps in Toronto strengthened the organization and it took on the characteristics of a collective with a self-selected membership.  A number of members contributed previous experience with NGOs in the region or went on to that work. The Toronto-based members began meeting every Monday evening for the following two and a half decades, hired staff and published several books and a variety of newsletters. Close reciprocal relations with civil society bodies in the Hemisphere enriched the day to day activities. Strong relations with academics at home and abroad continued to develop.  LAWG continued activities until 1996, and involved as volunteers and staff several scores of members.

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Many faces

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Information and orientation: LAWG maintained a resource centre and library as well as a continuing and varied programme of research, and contributed to public education about the hemisphere through the organizing of numerous tours of Canadians to Central America and Mexico, and visits from political, union and civil society figures from the south to Canada. LAWG contributed to orientation for fact-finding missions of other organizations, as well as detailed information for refugee lawyers and tribunals. A close working relationship with a number of development NGOs was a central part of the growth of the multi-faceted Central American movement in Canada, including collaboration with Tools for Peace across the country.

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Policy advocacy: initiating and/or partnership in Mission for Peace and the Roundtable on Negotiations for Peace in Central America; Canada-Central America Policy Alternative (CAPA), Chile-Canada Solidarity, etc.

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Labour solidarity: tours, exchanges and campaign support with progressive sectors of Latin American trade unions and Canadian counterparts.

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Engagement with the churches: membership in, research and writing for ecumenical bodies like the Task Force on the Churches and Corporate Responsibility, the Inter-Church Committee on Human Rights in Latin America and Ten Days for World Development.

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These diverse activities contributed to the creation of a bookstore service, a resource centre, library and publications.

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Further life: the archive

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On February 19, at CERLAC at York University, the collection of thirty years of the LAWG enterprise was inaugurated.  Tribute was paid to CERLAC and to two people – Professor Liisa North and former LAWG librarian Caese Levo who had negotiated the new home and curated the materials.

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LAWG was virtually unique among solidarity organizations in that it employed a librarian with professional qualifications for a number of years, Caese Levo. I will let her pick up the story:

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LAWG  felt it was important that Canadians learn about what was really happening in the region. They focused their research and publishing on Canada’s role – on Canadian foreign aid, foreign investment and the activities of Canadian corporations like INCO and Falconbridge.

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Over the years LAWG members worked in the region and made connections with other organizations. They set up exchanges of publications and brought materials back from their travels. They subscribed to key journals like the Latin America Weekly Report, the Central America Report from Guatemala and the ISLA clipping service from Berkeley. The periodicals from the LAWG Library have been integrated into the CERLAC country and subject sections. The church, trade union and human rights sections have especially grown as a result.

 

Two new sections have been created from the LAWG materials – one for Canadian solidarity with the different countries and the other for materials produced by Latin Americans in exile. Following military coups in the region Latinos often found themselves in many different countries and they created their own publications.

 

The LAWG Library reflects the focus of LAWG’s research and solidarity work over the years so that you will find more material for example on the DR, Chile and Central America. LAWG worked closely with the Canadian churches, trade unions and NGOs. The collection is unique because it has gathered together publications and ephemera from these sectors and preserved them.

 

The richness of these materials is found in the country and subject files which are well organized here. When you look in this room you will see rows of boxes – but when you open those boxes you will hear the voices of those who worked for social justice in Latin America and also the stories of the Canadians who supported their struggles.

 

New life: continuing the narrative

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Through two reunions of former staff and volunteers in 2014 and 2015, a project in recuperation of history developed.  The context was still that of the Harper government and a sense of hostility to non-governmental organizations and a potential loss of history and experience. So a group of us initiated what we call “Si Hay Camino” The LAWG History Project. It is an enterprise of six, now five, volunteers, including one part-time staff.

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• We continue to assemble documents, publications, recordings and photos to fill in gaps in the collection at York.

• We have undertaken oral history interviews with a number of former staff and volunteers, which has become more urgent with the recent loss of several.

• We are initiating several further research investigations, on specific aspects of LAWG’s work and on issues like the role of the security services and RCMP in surveillance of solidarity activities.

• We continue to engage our colleagues in identifying what we conclude were the top takeaways of the experience, items like action-oriented research; sustained collective commitment; trusting relationships; conjunctural analysis…

• We have established a web-site in which these new materials and findings can be found.

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At this point we are moving toward a cross-roads, a moment of evaluation of what has been accomplished and what remains to be done. To return to the quotation with which I began, the creation of narratives and the evaluation of significance, the  making of history, that really moves to others, other students, researchers and academics and those who pick up the torches of solidarity, human rights and social organization.

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Thank you.

 

John W. Foster (Dr.) is currently teaching (distance education) in the Department of Justice Studies, and the Department of Politics and International Studies, at the University of Regina.  This paper makes extensive use of the work of Janice Acton, Betsy Anderson, Louise Casselman, Suzanne Dudziak and Caese Levo.  Useful background was found in the work of  Dr. Bruce Douville of Algoma University and commentary by Prof. Luis van Isschot of the Department of History, University of Toronto.

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[1] Trouillot, Silencing the Past, 26.