Abriendo Brecha XV conference: Black Central America

It is an unique moment in UT history. A group of graduate students from Central America, many of whom are black, have taken the responsibility to  study with the objective of transforming our countries or communities. We want to honor and take advantage of this coyuntura. 

 

1. Background:

Abriendo Brecha is an annual conference at the University of Texas at Austin promoting activist scholarship. The Colectivx Centroamericanxconceived the idea of including Black Central America in the Abriendo Brecha conversation. As a collective, our mission is to identify and create spaces of action concerning contemporary Central American social struggles. The objective of these spaces is to construct alternative ways of thinking about pressing issues in the region that challenge dominant discourses whose homogenizing character reproduces historical forms of oppression in terms of gender, race, class, sexuality, spirituality, and other social identities.

 

2. Objectives: 

• Discuss new avenues for acknowledging complex, fluid, and transnational identities in Central America, and the implications for a new theory of the diaspora that includes, and reclaims, territoriality, political participation, as well as citizenship in Central America.

• Visibilize the Black presence in a region traditionally represented as mestizo criollo-indigenous, as well as the possibilities of voicing social justice from the participation and affirmation of dynamic and heterogeneous identities.

• Identify political routes and actions from a collaborative stance of researchers, organizations, activists, local, and transnational networks for anti-racist struggle and the construction of more just societies.

3. Program: 

2:00–2:15 pm: Welcoming and presentations 

2:15–2:45: Opening and framing conference: “Afrodescendencia y Ciudadanía enCentroamérica (1948–1966)” by Dr. Diana Senior Angulo

2:45–3:00 pm: Comments and questions

3:00–4:00 pm: Black Central American Panel: How does being Black and or Central American(s) inform my research and expand Central American scholarship? (15 min. each)

• "The memory of Garifuna Women: Their movement from Livingston to New York," Daisy Guzmán (Spanish and Portuguese)

• "Autonomy and Higher Education: The Garifuna Experience in Honduras," Rony Castillo (LLILAS)

" "Queering Garifuna: The Diasporic Politics of Black Indigeneity in New York City," Paul Joseph López-Oro (AADS / Via video conference)

• "Black Masculinity: Notions and expressions of love, gendered violence and sexual abuse in Bluefields Nicaragua," Eva Hodgson (AADS).

4: 00–4:50 pm: Questions and conversation

4:50–5:10 pm: Moving forward: Ideas for future (academic) collaborations and knowledge production through the LLILAS Benson Black Diaspora Archive and Central American Post Custodial Archive

5:10–5:30 pm: Concluding Remarks: ColectivxCentroamericanx.

5:30–6:00 pm: Final comments and refrigerio / refreshments

Friday, April 13, 2018 at 2:00pm to 6:00pm

Perry-Castañeda Library (PCL), Learning Labs 2
101 21ST ST E, Austin, Texas 78705

Event Type

Academics

Departments

College of Liberal Arts, Division of Campus and Community Engagement

Target Audience

Students, General Public

Website

http://diversity.utexas.edu/abriendob...

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