***NOTE NEW LOCATION - McElroy 237

With Dr. José Luis Rocha.

Marx understood revolution as a “tiger’s leap into the past.” In April’s turmoil, the Nicaraguan tiger, its insurrectionist youth, grounded itself in the past to leap toward a future that must not repeat the present. How did the unimaginable become reality? April 2018 would have been impossible without social media. Nicaragua’s leaping tiger is wholly a creature of the Information Age and an unusual political conception of how to change a corrupt regime. Rocha will explore these dynamics in his presentation to be followed by conversation with attendees.

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José Luis Rocha is a researcher at Envío, journal of the Central American University (UCA) in Managua, Nicaragua and associate Researcher with the Brooks World Poverty Institute at the University of Manchester. 

He holds a PhD in Sociology from the Philipps-Universiät Marburg, Germany. His work focuses on issues relating to youth gangs, social movements, political analysis, and migration. He is a member of the editorial committees of the academic journals Envío and Encuentro (Nicaragua) and Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos (Costa Rica) and was also the Research Coordinator of the Central American Jesuit Service for Migrants in Central America and Director of that organization in Nicaragua from 2004 to 2012. Some of his recent publications include the books Autoconvocados y conectados. Los universitarios en la revuelta de abril en Nicaragua (2019); La desobediencia de las masas. La migración no autorizada de centroamericanos a Estados Unidos como desobediencia civil (2018); Expulsados de la globalización(2011); and the bilingual Spanish/English book Central Americans Redefining the borders (Envío, 2008), and A Region Torn Apart: The Dynamics of Migration in Central America (San José: Lara Segura, 2006).

Rocha recently co-authored an article on the rebellion and the repression which fueld it in a recent article.

A light lunch will be served.  RSVP for lunch at tinyurl.com/BCRocha or at the red Register button at the right of the event listing.