Last edited: 11 October 2010

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Announcements

Mario Vargas Llosa: Nobel Prize and Interview

SILAS welcomes the news that Peruvian-born Spanish citizen Mario Vargas Llosa has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 2010 in Stockholm. An interview with Vargas Llosa on his upcoming novel El Sueño del Celta/Celtic Dream, based on the life of Roger Casement, was published in the July 2009 issue of Irish Migration Studies in Latin America and is available here. In the forthcoming edition of the same journal, we will be publishing the translation of an article written by the Nobel Laureate on Galgorm Castle in Ballymena, County Antrim, originally published in Spain’s El País newspaper. As Vargas Llosa stated in his interview with Angus Mitchell: "I believe in the unity of the human kind, I think literature is the best demonstration of the universal experiences that can be understood and shared among people of very different extractions and very different identities".

SILAS expresses its regret at the death of human rights advocate Patricio Rice

SILAS is very sad to learn of the death of human rights advocate Patricio Rice. Patricio had been editing a special edition of our on-line journal 'Irish Migration Studies in Latin America' on the topic of human rights, which was due to be published later this year.

Patricio was a survivor of torture and imprisonment under the military dictatorship in Argentina during the 1970s On his release he devoted his life to campaigning for human rights. He was founding chair-person for the Committee for Human Rights in Argentina and helped organise the US congress hearing on the ‘Disappeared’ in Argentina. He went to found FEDEFAM (the Latin American Federation of Association of Relatives of Disappeared-Detainees) and served as its Executive Secretary from 1981 to 1987 and acted as senior advisor to its Executive Committee from 1999 to 2010. He was recently appointed as Coordinator of the International Coalition against Enforced Disappearances.

He will be deeply missed by all at SILAS, who had the pleasure of working with him. We at SILAS wish to extend our sympathies to Patricio's wife Fatima and their three children, Carlos, Amie and Blanco.

Local Group Remembers the Kilrane Boys

In July 2009, a group met in Kilrane, County Wexford to “clink” glasses and remember the Kilrane Boys. Stories were exchanged about “The Boys” and they pondered making a trip to Murphy in the Province of Buenos Aires.

Pictured here are:

Back Row: Diarmuid Anglim, Phil Berry, Paul Ironside, Liam McCormack, Tom Stafford

Middle Row: Marian Murphy, Paddy Berry, Derek Murphy, John Lambert, Bridie Stafford, Pat Sills, Larry Doyle

Front Row: Aileen Ironside, Fran Doyle, Mary Anglim, Margaret Lambert, Christine McCormack

The Society for Irish Latin American Studies, 2005