Latin American Diasporas and the Defense of Territory

CERLAC, the Spanish & Portuguese Department and the Ethnography Lab at University of Toronto present:

Open to students and academics from the Latin American diaspora, this gathering is an invitation to rethink academic environments in multimodal (re)creations through a pedagogy of experience that expands understandings of collaboration through a politics of roots and remembrance.

Going beyond “narrativized testimony” by elaborating on and flourishing from researcher / subaltern inquiries grounded in diasporic positionalities, the space is an invitation to those interested in learning and sharing insights on how to connect with and support struggles for human, land, and environmental rights across Latin America.

The event will feature virtual presentations from defenders of territory across Latin America, followed by an open roundtable of short presentations by students from the Latin American diaspora to share their research/work and provide insights on ways to engage in the defense of territory across the region.

Remote Presentations: (in Spanish)

• Lucía Ixchiú (Festivales Solidarios, Co-Founder): K’iche Woman, artist, singer, cultural manager, community journalist, Indigenous feminist, architect, currently exiled and criminalized by the state of Guatemala.
• Karen Córdoba (ASODEMIA, Co-Founder): Psychologist, community leader and organizer using psychosocial approaches focused on territorial accompaniment in the Colombian Chocó region, supporting community empowerment and transformation.
• Stacey Noelia Velasquez Vasquez (Otrans, Director), community worker, activist, philanthropist, national representative of the Latin American & Caribbean Network of Trans People, LGBTIQ+ human rights defender, living in exile from El Salvador post the country’s internal armed conflict.

Roundtable Presentations: (in English)

• Luisa Isidro Herrera (PhD Student, Department of Anthropology, York University)
• Laura Lorena de Souza Carvalho (PhD student, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto)
• Juan Carlos Jiménez (PhD candidate, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto) TBC
• Este Orantes Migoya (PhD student, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto)

This event is made possible through a LAS Undergraduate Engagement Award and is co-sponsored by: The Center for Research in Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC) at York University, the Department of Spanish & Portuguese and the Ethnography Lab at the Department of Anthropology at University of Toronto.