Latin-American Studies

Puerto Rico has the highest incidence of female sterilization in the world. Over one-third of all Puerto Rican women of childbearing age have been sterilized. So common is the operation that it is simply known as ‘la operacion.' Using newsreels and excerpts from government propaganda films, plus interviews with Puerto Rican women, doctors, birth control specialists and politicians, this film explores the controversial use of sterilization as a means of population control.

Dramatizes the life and work of Luisa Capetillo (1879-1922), a Puerto Rican journalist, writer, suffragist, and labor organizer.

Examines the U.S. Navy's control and use of Vieques, a satellite island and municipality of Puerto Rico, as a military training, exercise and deployment base.

Examines the centuries-old tradition in Puerto Rico of using hand-carved santos in Catholic religious practices. The film visits an elderly santero (carver) and his teenage apprentice, revealing the skill and artistry of this ancient craft as well as the importance of the saints in the lives of the faithful.

Surveys the activities of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party in the 1950s, including the background to the shooting incident in the U.S. Congress by four Puerto Rican nationalists in March 1954, and the contributions of the movement's leading figure, Don Pedro Albizu Campos.

Examines the history and present-day reality of Puerto Rico, including the history and the contemporary relationship between the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the U.S.; the impact of industrialization on the island's economy, ecology and social life; economic exile and life in New York City; and the history of the Puerto Rican independence movement.

Examines Puerto Rico's `Operation Bootstrap,' the highly vaunted economic development plan undertaken in the 1950s to provide a role model for economic development throughout Latin America.

Chronicles the life stories of four individuals from New York's Puerto Rican community, each of whom has attempted to assimilate to life in America, but who also maintain strong ties to their cultural heritage.

This documentary, featuring interviews with industrialists, economics, and government officials, analyzes the economic development of Puerto Rico, from 1940 through 1994, including the impact of NAFTA on the Commonwealth's economy.

This short drama portrays the efforts of a young woman photographer to uncover the fragmentary and little-known history of an early nineteenth-century Puerto Rican feminist and political activist who was deported for her nationalist beliefs by the Spanish colonial government of the era.

An investigative (but frequently humorous) documentary on the surveillance activities of the New York City Police Department's Bureau of Special Services, known as the Red Squad.

Chronicles the history and contemporary lifestyle of the Carib Indians who dominated the West Indies centuries before the arrival of Columbus, but whose sole survivors today number less than 3,000 farmers and fishermen on a small reservation on Dominica.

Follows the five month journey of Mike Auger, a Cree Indian from northern Canada, who travels to Bolivia to live and work with the Aymara Indians. During his visit, Mike rediscovers his native cultural roots. This strengthening of his identity enables Mike to overcome a troubled, poverty-ridden youth fueled by self-denial.

Examines American media coverage of the war in El Salvador and how journalists cover a war in which the U.S. is deeply involved.

This video examines award-winning broadcast journalist Amy Goodman, of New York's WBAI-FM radio, at work covering the February 1994 emergence of Zapatista rebels in the Mexican state of Chiapas.

This film by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Nigel Noble documents the workaday lives of Brazilian peasants who cut down trees in the Amazon rain forest and burn the wood in earthen kilns to make charcoal, an essential ingredient for the manufacture of pig iron in the U.S

An intimate portrait of the filmmaker's immigrant Central American family-in particular the macho traditions of his grandfather-woven from childhood memories and family reminiscences, revealing how exaggerated expressions of male identity can cost a man the love of his entire family.

This video examines the educational system in Cuba, visiting a preschool, elementary school, middle school, a boarding school for special education students, a ballet academy and a sports academy.

Examines the recuperacion movement among the Indian communities in Colombia where an Indian rebel army is engaged in guerrilla warfare with a Colombian Army counterinsurgency force.

Portrays daily life in a mountaintop slum in Rio de Janeiro, featuring interviews with residents who discuss police harassment, the lack of educational and employment opportunities, problems of sanitation, violence, drugs and alcohol in the community, and social and racial discrimination.