LATINA & LATINO STUDIES PROGRAM

After Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico last month, second-year graduate student and Puerto Rico native Zorimar Rivera Montes said she went a week before hearing from her family. “I wasn’t able to contact them to know if they were OK or alive,” Rivera Montes said. “For me, it’s been a very distressing situation.” Weeks after the storm, Rivera Montes said communications are still “inconsistent and erratic,” adding that her family — along with many others in Puerto Rico — is without electricity or running water.

Actor, author and activist Diane Guerrero visits Northwestern to share her family’s story of immigration and deportation. In the midst of the heated national debate over immigration, actress, author and activist Diane Guerrero arrived at Northwestern University on Oct. 3 to provide the keynote talk for the University’s Latinx Heritage Month.

“Orange is the New Black” actress Diane Guerrero began her speech Tuesday night by calling attention to those affected by natural disasters in Latin America, the Caribbean and the southern United States as well as the “unnatural disaster” in Las Vegas.

As a daughter of deported parents, Hollywood star, Diane Guerrero, 29, spoke “for and to all the shadow children, the kids that split between the cracks,” she said during a talk at Northwestern University as part of their Latinx History Month celebration on October

LLSP Community member, Graduate student Verónica Dávila is in Puerto Rico with her family. Her family has been hard hit by the devastation caused by Hurricane Maria. The Department of Spanish and Portuguese has started a GoFundMe for Veronica and her family. We encourage you to contribute and to share the link far and wide. The web address for the campaign is https://www.gofundme.com/lopez-ellis-family-and-levittown-pr. Donations of any amount are welcome… big or small, everything counts! 

LLSP Faculty Part of 2016-2017 Fellows for the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities. LLSP congratulates Hector Carrillo and John Alba Cutler, for receiving a Kaplan Faculty fellowship for next academic year!