MATHIEU ASSELIN


Joaquin Chavez ’03 is a peacemaker. The native of El Salvador was in his twenties when he “endured watch- ing my country devastated by civil war” in a 1980–92 struggle between the government and a guerilla coalition including the Farabundo Martí Na- tional Liberation Front. Chavez represented the FMNL in negoti- ations toward a peace agree- ment ultimately brokered by the United Nations. In 1996 he left the FMNL to help found and serve as president of the Centro de Paz (Peace Center), a multisector effort “to pre-


serve the historical memory of the Salvadoran peace process and to share this experience with people from all over the world.” Also a poet and novel ist, Chavez discovered Skidmore in 1996, during a stay at the Yaddo artists’ colony in Saratoga. He enrolled in UWW in 2001. He says, “Skidmore enabled me to integrate in a very fluid manner my life experience and knowledge of Latin American history, politics, art, and cul- ture with my research on social violence and crime and my work on peace pro - cesses.” He went on to earn a PhD in Latin American history at New York Uni- versity, where he is now a lecturer. He works 12- to 14-hour days, teaching, writing, and, most recently, applying his expertise and influence as a peace facili- tator to Nepal. “I think a lot about the future of children and young people around the world,” Chavez says. “Work- ing toward world peace requires patient study, daily work in our personal interac- tions, self-reflection, and a clear sense of the shared destiny of humanity.”


SPRING 2011 SCOPE 29


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