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Six more students are taking their interest in social justice to the Southern Hemisphere as in a unique study abroad opportunity that furthers their research skills and broadens their knowledge of an important period in Chilean history.

The students, based at the Syracuse Abroad center in Santiago, are continuing work initiated by two previous student fellows last fall. They are exploring the human rights violations of the Pinochet dictatorship in that country and contributing to work that is underway at the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in documenting the stories of victims and creating biographical profiles in their memory. During Pinochet’s 17-year reign, more than 3,000 people died or disappeared, 200,000 suffered exile and over 30,000 were tortured.

The fellows are working with Mauricio Paredes, director of the Santiago center,  a scholar on Chilean internment camps, nationalism and U.S. involvement in Chilean politics, and are learning skills with the museum’s archivist and collections manager. The fellows are:

• Madiou Bah ’27, economics () and broadcast and digital journalism (); the media’s role in generating support for the regime.
• Jherlyn Brady ’27, communication and rhetorical studies (); the dictatorship’s impact on education and how institutional reforms, including both explicit and hidden curriculums, were used to implement social control.
• Grant Montonye ’28, international relations (Maxwell School); how the country’s legal system and constitution were used to install and validate authoritarianism.
• Sophia Ortiz-Heaney ’27, economics and international relations (Maxwell School); the dictatorship’s impact on the labor force and unions; forced relocation cases; the neoliberal narrative of individual success.
• Mason Rosenbaum ’27, international relations (Maxwell School); state repression and power and the perception of citizens as threats to the government, with historical comparisons to the current government and police.
• Laila Terrell ’27, international relations (Maxwell School); gender-based violence against conservative and far-right women from a historical perspective, and how gender may be seen as a threat to authoritarian control.

The second group of global fellows broadens the project’s scope while providing unique research opportunities specifically aligned to students’ interests in an abroad setting, says Kendall Phillips, director of the Lender Center for Social Justice. “There is such a deep and complex legacy to the dictatorship [period] in Chile that we wanted to engage a wide interdisciplinary perspective.”

The fellows will present their research findings at a symposium held at the museum on Tuesday, May 5, in concert with a planned discussion led by Syracuse University Artist In Residence . Weems will discuss her work around monuments and “Contested Sites of Memory” in relation to the projects of the Lender Global Fellows.

Fall Fellows’ Experiences

Ayanna (AJ) Hyatte G ’25 and Ohemaa Asibuo ’27, who were Lender Global Student Fellows in Santiago last fall,  say their experiences in Santiago and working at the museum provided sobering but valuable knowledge that has informed their views of social justice and impacted their plans for international relations careers. They studied with Paredes and worked with Museum of Memory archivist Rodolfo Ibarra and collections manager Maria Luisa Ortiz.

Hyatte analyzed the museum’s database for victims not involved in the left-wing politics that typically made people targets of the dictatorship. Those individuals “exemplified how the loss of the rule of law affects everyone,” Hyatte says. “Most of our host families and professors had their own firsthand or familial experiences with [the dictatorship] and provided testimonials and that definitely changed how I engaged with the subject … [and] permanently changed how I view historical events.” Hyatte completed a master’s degree in international relations and is pursuing public policy career options and doctoral programs.

Asibuo, a junior dual major in international relations and Spanish, scoured victim databases to identify how various social groups were affected and categorized them by their ages, jobs and how they died.

“It was pretty heavy to deal with, especially when I came to people who were [my age] or even younger. I motivated myself by remembering that the goal was to spread the victims’ names, not let them be forgotten, and to use commemorative education to prevent these types of things from occurring again. Now, I hope to continue to advocate for using past historical events as warnings to help us navigate how we approach our futures,” she says.

Paredes says the impact of the students’ work is clear. “Without a doubt, this research will help Chilean society understand how the loss of democracy and the rule of law affect everyone equally, regardless of political preferences,” he says.