A Love Letter to Our Raíces Celebrating Our Indigenous & Afro Latino Roots

Catarina's plática, entitled La Cosmovisión y La Resistencia del Pueblo Maya en Guatemala, will be held primarily in Spanish.

Catarina is a Maya-Q'anjob'al woman from Guatemala. Growing up in a small town in the mountains of Guatemala, she was the first person in her family and one of the first in her community to graduate from college. In Guatemala, Catarina worked in various organizations that defend human rights, women's rights, and indigenous rights.

Since moving to Rhode Island, she has worked as a community organizer, and in June 2017 she began working as the director of AMOR. Catarina also actively participates in the large transnational community of Guatemalan migrants from her region of origin, producing and hosting a weekly radio program called "Rights in Action" that is broadcast online and via FM in Guatemala.

Elvys's plática, entitled La Negrofobia en el Contexto de las Relaciones Raciales en La República Dominicana, will be held primarily in Spanish.

His presentation will address how in the Dominican Republic the education system as an ideological apparatus of a State where the white population is very minimal, has denied the Dominican people the right to know the contribution of blacks. Ruiz will analyze negro-phobia in the context of racial relations, demystifying racial categories that have endowed the Dominican with a false identity and will discuss the impact of claiming an Afro identity against nationalist phobias.

Elvys Ruiz is a writer, playwright and cultural essayist. He studied Anthropology at the Antropología en la Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (UASD) and graduated with honors obtaining a Bachelor of Science with distinction "Summa Cum Laude" and a Master of Science from Springfield College, Boston Campus. Ruiz is the author of the books: “Café y Domino”, “Latin American Theater of the Diaspora” and “The Black Imaginary in Dominican Collective Memory.

Felipe's plática, entitled Colombia: Historias y Literaturas del Trópico, will be held primarily in Spanish, with some translation.

Felipe Martinez-Pinzon has had a lifelong fascination with stereotypes and the development of cultural identity. He examines how literature, cinema, and other elements of history and culture can affect the identity and perceptions of whole regions in Latin America — Colombia in particular.

As a child growing up in Bogotá, Colombia, he observed that people from other Colombian cities were often perceived differently. Bogotá, at more than 8,500 feet above sea level, was cooler. Its residents were considered more active, more productive than, say, residents of Cartagena, a much warmer place.

Mar's plática will talk about the Afro-Taino Culture. It will be in both English and Spanish.

Born and raised in Borikén (Puerto Rico), she moved to NYC where she pursued a Master's degree in Dance Education from New York University. Parrilla is a Luminary Artist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. She is a proud recipient of several grants from the New England Foundation for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Boston Foundation. Parrilla was awarded a Creative Development Residency at Jacob's Pillow, and a Brother Thomas Fellowship by the Boston Foundation. Parrilla’s work has been featured at Jacob’s Pillow, The Yard, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston- among others. Most recently (2019), Parrilla was awarded an Outstanding Community Arts Collaboration Award in Dance from the Arts/Learning Organization.

Iris Barrera, Dance performer and instructor. Live from Lima, Perú

This session will feature Afro-Peruvian music, dance and culture. It will be in Spanish, with translation available if needed.

El afroperuano es más que un color de piel, el afroperuano es historia, es memoria, es aporte, es cultural, es vida.

La música afroperuana es nuestra identidad, nuestra esencia, nuestra raíz.

La música afroperuana me representa.

Iris's plática, entitled Nahuatl: Other Histories of México, will be in both English and Spanish.

Iris Montero is a Mexican historian of science fascinated by the relationship between knowledge and power. Growing up in an industrial town in Northern Mexico, she always wondered why some knowledges were more valued than others, and how that hierarchy had come to be. These questions brought her to specialize in Colonial Latin America, and to focus on what exactly happened when indigenous ways of knowing were confronted with European science. She teaches in the Department of Hispanic Studies at Brown University.

Daniel's plática will talk about the Cuban Culture. It will be in both English and Spanish.

Daniel A. Rodríguez is the son of Cuban immigrants, and grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, where he was surrounded by Cubans, Dominicans, Chileans and Puerto Ricans who loved to argue about politics and history. The experience nurtured a lifelong interest in history, and eventually led him to graduate school, where he received his PhD. from New York University in 2013. In 2014, he became the first U.S.-born Latino hired as a professor in the History Department at Brown University. His research examines the history of Latin America and the Caribbean, with a focus on 19th and 20th century Cuba. His first book, The Right to Live in Health: Medical Politics in Postcolonial Havana (published by the University of North Carolina Press, 2020), looks at how struggles over disease and health shaped the lives of Havana's residents in the early decades of the twentieth century.

Pronoun Him, He

The Garifuna Rhythms conversation will consist of a dialogue of the threads of the African diaspora across the Americas, with a particular focus on the evolution of tap dance and how it may relate to Afro-Latin dance. More specifically, I am interested in exploring the distinctive customs and native art forms of Honduran culture, and the possible commonalities that connect the African diaspora across border lines. At the heart of this conversation, I hope to engage and spark an interest for Garifunas’ unique history and culture in music and dance.