Susanne L. Jonas, 1941-2022.
Date | 22 December 2022 |
Susanne Jonas passed away at the age of 80 on August 31. She joined the Social Justice editorial board in 1986, a natural progression after a long association and many shared projects. More recently, she contributed to the advisory board. Along with numerous articles, she assembled special issues ranging from Latin America Faces the 21st Century (1992, with Ed McCaughan) to Immigration: A Civil Rights Issue for the Americas in the 21st Century (1996, with Suzie Dod Thomas), Beyond the Neoliberal Peace: From Conflict Resolution to Social Reconciliation (1998, with Ronnie D. Lipschutz), and Latin America Revisited (2014, again with Ed McCaughan).
Susanne brought to the table half a century of research and publications covering the decisive moments in the troubled history of US relations with its neighbors south of the border. It was not unusual for her to know the president of Brazil or Mexico's foreign minister. She was keenly aware of developments concerning the Mexican Left. For example, she and fellow board member Betita Martinez traveled to Mexico and accompanied democratic, independent Mexican union activists outside the capital to observe voting in Cuauhtemoc Cardenas' unsuccessful presidential bid in 1994. Close acquaintances included artist Rini Templeton and Alejandro Alvarez, who was associated with the Mexican journals Corre La Voz and Punto Crltico, the latter a publication initiated by student movement leaders imprisoned following the repression of 1968.
Susanne completed her doctoral work during the tumultuous late 1960s and early 1970s at UC Berkeley, focusing on US hemispheric strategy in Guatemala from 1950 to 1974. That brought her together with like-minded scholar-activists. Her publications on Guatemala with NACLA-West in the 1970s caught the attention of the late Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton, who cited her work in his book on US imperialism in Central America. She, in turn, was associated with Brigada Cultural Roque Dalton from the early 1970s onward. Susanne regularly contributed to Latin American Perspectives and supported a host of organizations dedicated to helping people in the region. Among the latter, she was a long-time supporter of Central American Resource Center, CARECEN SF, located in San Francisco's Mission District. Her article "City of Refuge, City of Survival Struggles: Contradictions of San Francisco for Low-Wage Latino Immigrants" (LASA Forum, 2012) reflects those concerns.
News of her death on August...
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