The yearlong Sawyer Seminar seeks to understand contemporary contestation over citizenship and belonging by Afrodescendants in Latin America, situating these struggles within long-term, historical patterns of nation building, racial stratification, and political mobilization. It will explore the struggles and experiences of citizenship of this vastly heterogeneous group, which have been starkly uneven across time and across (and within) countries. The Seminar will also ask what these differences can teach us, including how these Afro-Latin American perspectives can help inform our understanding of race and racism. To do so, the proposed seminar will examine four interrelated questions that will guide our comparative analysis of what we believe are three pathways to Afrodescendant citizenship that have guided, and continue to guide, experiences in Latin America.
#VidasNegrasImportam: Racialized State Violence
Speakers:
Professor Amarilys Estrella
Amarilys Estrella is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and a faculty affiliate for the Center for African and African American Studies at Rice University. Her research interests broadly focus on the intersections of race and gender within transnational movements, Black Latin American and Latinx identity, as well as human rights and anti-racist activism. Her first book project investigates how Blackness and Black identity, is produced, employed and transformed through everyday encounters among stateless Black grassroots activists of Haitian descent in the Dominican Republic. In her article, “Muertos Civiles: Mourning the Casualties of Racism in the Dominican Republic” she examines mourning as a practice of resistance within anti-racist movements.
Dr. Etyelle de Araujo
Doutora e Mestre em Estudos da Linguagem pela PUC-RIO, com período sanduíche em dois centros de pesquisa: no departamento de Sociologia da Boston University, com a bolsa CAPES/PDSE (2018-2019) e no Instituto de Estudos Afro-Latino-Americanos da Universidade de Harvard, sob orientação de Alejandro de la Fuente (2019-2020); pós-graduada em Educação e Contemporaneidade pelo CEFET Unde Nova Friburgo; licenciada em História pela Faculdade de Filosofia Santa Doroteia. Interesses de pesquisa na área de Estudos Afro-Latino-Americanos, Antropologia das Emoções e Linguística Aplicada, com foco em Análise da Narrativa, gênero construções identitárias e relações raciais de mães negras participantes de movimentos sociais que lutam contra a violência policial. Interesse mais recente em estudos comparativos dos discursos de mães afro-brasileiras e afro-americanas engajadas na luta contra a brutalidade policial em seus respectivos países. Estágio pós-doutoral na PUC-Rio, com bolsa da FAPERJ iniciado em 2021 – projeto: A Violência policial nas Américas e a luta por justiça das mães: um estudo comparativo entre Brasil e Estados Unidos. Atualmente é Professora Permanente do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Humanidades, Culturas e Artes da UNIGRANRIO.
Alí Bantú Ashanti
Alí Bantú Ashanti is an Afro-Colombian lawyer born in Colombia’s Pacific Coast in Timbiquí, Cauca. He is an expert in strategic litigation, criminal defense, criminology, and constitutional law. He is Co-founder and Director of the Racial Justice Lawyers Collective, an organization that links more than 100 black lawyers who work pro-bono in defense of victims of police and military abuse including arbitrary arrests, false charges, racial profiling and extrajudicial murders of young, Black, and poor people. In 2022 Alí organized and led the Pacific Vote campaign which brought together 350 lawyers in a highly successful campaign to promote turnout and defend voters against coercion in Black communities along Colombia’s Pacific Coast. Last December, Alí was appointed to serve as an Expert Commissioner for Justice Reform in Colombia by the government of President Gustavo Petro.
Moderator: Eduarda Araujo, Afro-Latin American Research Institute
