COMMENT: Spring 2011

Michelle Bachelet teaches a class at Berkeley as Harley Shaiken looks on,  April 2011. (Photo by Brittany Gabel.)Michelle Bachelet is once again making history. The Chilean political leader who left the presidency in 2010 with an 80-percent-plus approval rating now heads UN Women, a mega-agency that addresses women’s rights globally. She returned to UC Berkeley in April to speak about the challenges of her new position and her vision going forward. She also taught a special seminar on Women, Development and Democracy organized by the Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS).

The course was a tour-de-force as President Bachelet drew on her own unique biography and experience in government to address central questions facing women throughout the world today. She led an open, insightful discussion that generated a palpable sense of excitement and engagement among the faculty and students sitting in the seminar. As one graduate student put it in a comment echoed by many, “The seminar with President Bachelet was one of the most incredible academic opportunities I have been offered.”

This issue of the Review also features a special section on the U.S.–Mexico Futures Forum, jointly organized by CLAS and the Instituto Tecnológico de México (ITAM), which took place against a backdrop of unfolding economic uncertainty in both countries and a debilitating drug conflict in Mexico. The Forum sought to provide fresh perspectives on the issue of security and also engaged two themes that have received far less public attention but which have long-term consequences: climate change and the rise of China in the global economy. This year, a number of new participants, including Attorney General Kamala Harris, State Controller John Chiang and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, brought a unique California perspective to the discussions.

The Center was also proud to host Spanish jurist Baltasar Garzón who discussed universal jurisdiction, an area in which his pioneering and courageous 1998 indictment of Augusto Pinochet set a critical precedent. In his talk, Garzón placed the concept in both a historical and a contemporary setting.

Roberto Hernández, the director of the documentary “Presumed Guilty” and a Berkeley graduate student in Public Policy, describes the remarkable impact the film has had on Mexican political life in an article for the Review. As we go to press, the documentary has been nominated for three Emmys in the United States.

We are especially pleased to present, in the center of this Review, a painting from a powerful new series by acclaimed artist Fernando Botero, which will open in October at The Marlborough Gallery in New York. Titled “Via Crucis” (The Way of the Cross, in Latin), the new series conveys unusual depth and emotion through the lens of Mr. Botero’s unique vision.

We close with another unique perspective: two Robert Harris photographs of Havana taken through the windshields of 1950s American cars, an unusual view of the city, the country and the cars.

— Harley Shaiken