Cheryl Jimenez Frei, UCSB, “Shaping and Contesting the Past: Monuments, Memory and Identity in Buenos Aires”

UCSB History Associates invites you to attend the Fourth Annual Van Gelderen Graduate Student Lecture 

Cheryl Jimemez Frei, a PhD Student in Latin American History, will be giving a lecture related to her work on memory and the built environment in Argentina.  A luncheon will follow.  To attend the luncheon, please fill out the form here: 2017-Frei flyer-3

In 2013, then-President of Argentina Cristina Fernández de Kirchner sparked both protest and praise after announcing the removal of a nearly century-old monument of Christopher Columbus in Buenos Aires. It had been a gift from Argentina’s prominent Italian immigrant community, to celebrate the nation’s centen-nial of independence. After two years of contentious public debates, Kirchner celebrated the inaugural of the massive monument that replaced it—a sculpture of Jua-na Azurduy de Padilla, a nineteenth-century female rev-olutionary fighter of indigenous heritage, and a histori-cal figure previously unknown to most.

The controversy over these statues provides a flashpoint to examine the history and iconography of monuments in Buenos Aires’s commemorative core, to question how history, identity, and memory are pro-duced and internalized through public spaces. How did monuments perform specific didactic functions in the past, and do they continue to do so in the present? If so, who has authority in representation? What should be-come of monuments to now-questionable heroes and narratives of the past?

Cheryl Jimenez Frei is completing her PhD dissertation in Latin American History. Her research specialties include Argentina, memory, and the built environment, visual culture, and public history. Her article, “Contesting Columbus: Monuments, Memory and Identity in Buenos Aires,” was recently accepted by the Journal of Latin American Studies.