Join us for a conversation with Karen Kieffer about the Columbus-Copapayo Sister City Project and her experiences in El Salvador as a student activist and later as a human rights worker.
In 1984, the small village of Copapayo, El Salvador was targeted by a military operation that sought to depopulate the regions where guerrilla insurgents were operating. Survivors of this massacre fled to Honduras, and later repatriated their village during the last years of the Salvadoran Civil War. During this time, movements and organizations developed in Columbus, Ohio that stood in solidarity with the small, war-torn village. When residents repatriated Copapayo during the last years of the war, delegations of volunteers traveled from Columbus to El Salvador and served as human shields, providing protection from the military during the journey back from Honduras, and sponsored the sanctuary of Copapayo residents in the U.S.
Former OSU student activist, Karen Kieffer, was one of the first members of the Columbus delegations to travel to El Salvador to establish a relationship with the residents of Copapayo. In this colloquium, Karen will discuss her experiences building solidarity networks as a student, and subsequently as a human rights worker living in El Salvador.
With funding from CLAS, Karen spent the first week of this spring semester working with Folklore Archives GRA Amelia Mathews-Pett to expand the Columbus-Copapayo Sister City Collection. Karen gave interviews and offered her records, photographs, and memories of OSU solidarity activism during the Salvadoran Civil War, all of which will soon be made available to the public.
This is event is co-hosted by the Center for Latin American Studies.
More information about the Columbus-Copapayo Sister City Project collection, housed at the OSU Center for Folklore Studies Archives, can be found here.
