Vanessa Freije, University of Washington, "A Cornucopia of Technology": Representations of Mexico's First Satellite Launch"
Abstract: In 1985, Mexico launched its first satellites into outer space, making possible the provision of myriad new services. The Secretariat of Communications and Transportation, responsible for the management and operation of the communications satellites, rolled out an extensive public relations campaign to publicize the nation’s new advancement in technology. Analyzing maps, pamphlets, and the collectible items used to publicize and commemorate the launch, this paper examines the aesthetics of satellites in Mexico.
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Julie Gibbings, University of Edinburgh
"Viewing Genocide's Aftermaths from Above: Aerial Photography and the Rio Chixoy Dam in Guatemala"
In February 1982, a Guatemalan military commander ordered 72 Maya Achi men and women from the village of Rio Negro, located along the Chixoy river, to report to a neighbouring village, Xococ. Accusing the villagers of Rio Negro of affiliation with Guatemala's armed insurgency for their peaceful resistance to a proposed hydro-electric dam, the military and paramilitary unleashed unthinkable violence on the men and women of Río Negro. Only one person escaped the massacre. The massacre in Xococ was the first in a series of brutal slaughters involving torture and rape that left over 400 dead or approximately half of the population of Río Negro. Survivors fled into the treacherous mountains and canyons above the Chixoy river valley. Within a year, the valley flooded with water effectively erasing any structures that remained at Rio Negro.
World Bank development officers, who partially funded the Chixoy hydro-electric dam, argued that the dam would provide cheap and reliable electricity for all Guatemalan citizens. The horrific violence that marked these events also revealed that the military saw the dam as a matter of life and death. The violence began, however, long before the waters flooded the valley in 1983 and even before a helicopter full of Guatemala state officials landed in Río Negro in 1976 to announce the village's demise. It began, this chapter argues, with a series of aerial photographs in 1972 that marked the areas to be flooded, including the planned displacement of 3400 Maya Achí inhabitants from the Chixoy river valley. In 1985, the National Geography Institute once again undertook aerial photography illustrating the completed dam and flooded valley. As the views from above marked by distant observation and dehumanized landscapes ready for intervention, the Chixoy dam aerial photography pushes the boundaries of when and where genocidal violence began. Drawing on oral testimonies from survivors and a critical reading of the aerial photography, I examine how aerial photographs also evidence, in unintended ways, the aftermaths of genocide.
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