MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — Middle Tennessee State University’s Department of History is set to host historian and journalist Lina Britto, who will present her March 5 guest lecture, “The Drug Wars in Colombia: An American History.”

Rescheduled from the fall as part of MTSU’s Strickland Distinguished Scholars Series, her lecture will take place at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 5, in the Business and Aerospace Building State Farm Room with a book signing to follow.

Light refreshments will be provided and a QR code will be available to student attendees for class credit. The event, which is free and open to the public, will also be livestreamed via True Blue TV.

Britto is an associate professor of history at Northwestern University and affiliated faculty in the university’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Latin American and Caribbean Studies program.

During her MTSU lecture, Britto will discuss how Colombia and its drug wars played a vital role in the rise of the United States as a superpower in the Americas during the 20th century. The lecture argues that elevating the drug wars to the forefront of U.S.-Colombian relations and enacting state policies to carry out its agenda contributed to the reinstatement of U.S. hegemony in Latin America and the Caribbean at different critical moments.

MTSU history professor Lynn Nelson encourages anyone interested in trans-American drug trade to attend Britto’s talk.

“(The lecture) will be of great interest to students, faculty and members of the community who are interested in the enormous impact of the drug trade between Latin America and the U.S. on private and state violence, government policy, and the fate of democratic government in the region,” said Nelson.

Britto authored the book “Marijuana Boom: The Rise and Fall of Colombia’s First Drug Paradise,” which received an honorable mention from Colombia’s Fundación Alejandro Ángel Escobar National Book Awards in 2021.

“We are so delighted to host Dr. Lina Britto this spring semester," said Emily Baran, chair of the MTSU History Department. “The generosity of the Strickland family allows us to bring in top-notch scholars to share their historical expertise with the MTSU and Middle Tennessee community.”

MORE INFORMATION: MTSU’s Business and Aerospace Building is located 1642 MTSU Blvd. To find parking near the building, a campus parking map is available at https://bit.ly/MTSUParking and more information is available at https://mtsu.edu/parking/.

For more information about the MTSU Department of History, visit its website at https://history.mtsu.edu/.