Art, Culture, and Technologies for Peace

UAEMéx Participates in the Latin American Congress on Peace Research
To reaffirm the commitment of Latin American academic communities to building more peaceful and just societies, researchers and students from the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico (UAEMéx) participated in the 14th Latin American Congress on Peace Research. "Heartbeats of Hope: Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation through Peaceful Means" was held at the Externado University of Colombia.

During their presentation on the topic "Art, Culture, and Technologies for Peace," Guillermina Díaz Pérez and Natalia Ix-Chel Vázquez González, researchers from the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, presented the paper "Drawing Peace in the University Context." They emphasized that, as part of an exercise motivated by the International Day of Peace, the student community was asked to draw their emotions and link them to peace.

“The participants' drawings showed that students have an understanding of what peace is. These types of playful and artistic practices encourage reflection, creativity, and hope about one's capacity for peacemaking,” they mentioned.

For her part, Itzel Jazmin Rangel Castelán, a PhD student in Social Sciences from the same academic institution, along with Guillermina Díaz, presented the paper “A theoretical approach to the use of silence by Mexican men in conflict. Its connection with attitudes toward peaceful communication.” The results show that men use silence in violent or peaceful ways depending on the attitudes they adopt toward the conflict; the uses men make of their own silence in shaping attitudes toward the conflict do not necessarily correspond to the meanings the interlocutors construct.

“The study concludes that to observe the connection between silence and attitudes as a component of conflict, it is necessary to consider the role of emotions; it proposes considering culture and gender as non-limiting frameworks in the processes of redefinition and use,” they stated.

Finally, Natali Ixchel Téllez Colín, a Master's student in Peace and Development Studies, accompanied by Natalia Vázquez, participated with the presentation “University radio stations as peacebuilders: a proposal for XHUAX UniRadio 99.7 FM.”, in which they addressed the need for youth to seek a more egalitarian and peaceful world, in need of alternative spaces in their media consumption. Their voices must be reclaimed to build a present where they can find each other and their expressions are validated.

“The presented diagnosis served as a first exercise in recovering the status of youth from university radio, since after conducting this research, more youth were incorporated into production, writing, social media, and other areas of work in different areas of UniRadio,” they noted.

The 14th Latin American Congress on Peace Research, “Heartbeats of Hope: Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation through Peaceful Means,” was held from April 1 to 4, 2025, in Bogotá, Colombia.

At this edition, the Transformative Peacebuilding Award was presented for the first time to Úrsula Oswald, former professor of the Master's Program in Peace and Development Studies at UAEMéx, for her invaluable contributions to Peace and Conflict Studies, crystallized in the concept of Engendered and Sustainable Peace.

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