FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Human rights activist to speak at Bates

LEWISTON, Maine -- Poet and scholar Marjorie Agosin, a renowned human rights activist, will discuss "Tapestries of Hope: The Arpillera Movement in Chile" at noon Friday, Nov. 5, in Room 204 of Carnegie Science Hall at Bates College. The public is invited to attend free of charge.

From 1980 to 1985, Argosin returned often to her native Chile to visit the Arpillera workshops of the Association of Families of the Detained Disappeared. "The more I learned about what the military could do, with absolute impunity, the more terrified I became," wrote Agosin, who despite her fear, pledged to tell the stories of women who made Arpilleras, the embroidered and appliqued pictures that tell the story of those relatives who disappeared without trace during the reign of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Agosin is chair of the Spanish department at Wellesely College and the author and editor of many books of poetry, fiction and critical essays on Latin America, including "Scraps of Life: Chilean Arpilleras: Chilean Women and the Pinochet Dictatorship" (1996), "Magical Sites: Women Travelers in 19th-Century Latin America" (1999) and "The House of Memory: Stories by Jewish Women Writers of Latin America" (1999).

Agosin has received many awards for her work, including the Distinguished Fellow Award from the Urban Morgan Institute for Human Rights at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, the New England Foundation of the Arts Award, the Good Neighbor Award and an award from the National Association for Christians and Jews.

The presentation is sponsored by the Bates College humanities division chair's fund and Solidaridad Latina.