Participant Bios
Tanalís Padilla (2023 Speaker)
AUTHOR, UNINTENDED LESSONS OF REVOLUTION
Tanalís Padilla is a historian of Latin America at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Padilla’s work focuses on political and agrarian movements of modern Mexico. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego in 2001 and her B.A. from Pomona College in 1995.
Her first book, Rural Resistance in the Land of Zapata: The Jaramillista Movement and the Myth of the Pax Priísta, 1940-1962 (Duke University Press, 2008) recounts the history of an agrarian movement that turned to armed struggle during an era of Mexican history previously considered one of social and political stability.
She is co-editor and contributor of a 2013 special issue of the Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research (JILAR), which analyzes the implications of Mexico’s recently declassified intelligence documents for postrevolutionary historiography.
Her newest book, Unintended Lessons of Revolution: Student Teachers and Political Radicalism in Twentieth-Century Mexico, traces the history of Mexico’s rural normales, training schools for teachers.
In Mexico, Prof. Padilla is a frequent contributor to the national newspaper La Jornada and has published an edited volume entitled El campesinado y su persistencia en la actualidadmexicana (Conaculta and Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2013), an interdisciplinary and bi-national work on the Mexican countryside and it’s recent past. Después de Zapata: El movimiento jaramillista y los orígenes de la guerrilla en México (1940-1962), the Spanish translation of her first book, was published by Akal in September 2015.
Professor Padilla has received fellowships from the Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Texas, Austin, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation and the Ford Foundation.
Padilla is currently working on a book about Cuba’s medical internationalism in Latin America.
Anayansi Diaz-Cortes (2022 speaker)
SENIOR REPORTER AND PRODUCER
Anayansi Diaz-Cortes is a senior reporter and producer for Reveal. Her work has been featured everywhere from All Things Considered to Radio Ambulante and This American Life. She is a recipient of the Overseas Press Club Award, the Edward R. Murrow Award, and the Third Coast/Richard H. Driehaus Foundation award. Previously, she produced for Radio Diaries and has done extensive reporting in both the U.S. and Mexico.
[email protected]
@anayansi_dc
Kate Doyle (2022 speaker)
Kate Doyle is a senior analyst of U.S. policy in Latin America at the National Security Archive. She directs several major research projects, including the Mexico Project, which collects U.S. and Mexican government documents on the countries’ shared histories. Since 1992, Doyle has worked with Latin American human rights groups, truth commissions, prosecutors and judges to obtain government files from secret archives that shed light on state violence.
Jan Nimmo (Creator of ¿Dónde Están? Art Exhibit)
Jan Nimmo was born in Campbeltown, Argyll. She still regards Kintyre as home. Her parents, Neil Nimmo and Jean McCulloch, both local to Kintyre, had an important influence on how Jan sees the world today. Neil, who left school at 11 to work on farms near his birthplace of Drumlemble and went on to work as a miner, lorry driver and shotfirer, was an enthusiastic painter of seascapes in his spare time. Jan's interest in art and manual labour stem back directly to her father. Jean, her mother, worked part time in local shops including the book shop. Jean instilled a sense of fairness in Jan which she believes still underpins and guides her work today.
Jan left Campbeltown when she was 17 to study at Glasgow School of Art where she graduated with Honours and went on to complete a Postgraduate Diploma. She became a professional artist and designer in 1986. Since then Jan has worked as an artist, exhibiting paintings, woodcuts and installations regularly. She also works as a designer and has sold textile designs in the UK, Australia, Hong Kong and New York. Her interior design commissions include a Mexican restaurant complete with artefacts and popular art which she sourced herself in Mexico (trading fairly). She has worked on many graphics and illustration projects.
Jan started to travel to Spain in 1986 and since then has returned to University to study Spanish. She is now fluent in both Iberian and Latin American Spanish and has often worked as an interpreter for Latin American visitors on speaker tours. As well as travelling through many regions of Spain, Jan has travelled extensively throughout Mexico and Cuba where she has researched popular arts and music.
Stephen Lee (Producer)
Steve serves as dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Utah Tech and is the producer of the "Remember the 43 Students" art installation and campus engagement. He designed and built the installation in late 2015 for its first public exhibition in January 2016.