The Calloway County Public Library is pleased to announce the annual Murray State University Department of History and Calloway County Public Library Community Spring History Lecture Series. The first of the three-part 2024 series is scheduled for Sunday, February 11, at 2:00 pm at the Calloway County Public Library. It will feature guest speaker Dr. Tamara Feinstein, who will present her lecture entitled The Fate of Peruvian Democracy: The Tragic Case of Maria Elena Moyano.

This talk will draw from Dr. Feinstein's new book, The Fate of Peruvian Democracy, which investigates the bloody Shining Path conflict's effect on the legal Left in late-twentieth-century Peru, illustrating the catastrophic impact state and insurgent violence can have on the growth and the resilience of democratic political actors during times of war. Using a combination of oral histories, archival documents, contemporary media accounts, and participant observation of commemorations, this book maps the trajectory of the Peruvian Left's rise and fall by analyzing two emblematic human rights cases that occurred at the Left's zenith and nadir: the state based the violence of the 1986 Lima prison massacres and the 1992 Shining Path assassination of leftist shantytown leader Maria Elena Moyano. This talk will focus on the latter case of Moyano, an Afro-Peruvian activist of the popular women's movement who rose to become the Vice-Mayor of Villa El Salvador. Aligned with the legal Left for over a decade, Moyano's outspoken criticism of Shining Path tactics put a target on her back. Not deterred by death threats and a concerted defamation campaign by the Shining Path to discredit her, Moyano continued to call for peaceful means of protest against the economic austerity and inequality faced by her community. At a community fundraising event in February 1992, the Shining Path brutally assassinated her in front of her two small children. Her death caused both national outrage and a chilling effect on local activism in her community. This talk will discuss the Arpillera movement, its connection to the Catholic Church, and the role of international sister organizations, which distributed the artwork abroad.

Dr. Tamara Feinstein is an Assistant Professor of History at Murray State University, with a focus on political violence, human rights, and memory in Latin America. Her book, The Fate of Peruvian Democracy, was released by the University of Notre Dame Press in 2023, and she is currently working on a new project on Chilean arpilleras, a form of protest art produced during the brutal Pinochet dictatorship. Dr. Feinstein received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2013, a Master of Arts from the George Washington University, and a bachelor's degree from Wayne State University. She also worked for half a decade as an analyst at the D.C.-based nonprofit organization and research institute, the National Security Archive. She has taught at Murray State since 2020.

The lecture is presented free of charge, and all interested community members are invited to attend.

For more information, please email contactccpl@callowaycountylibrary.org