“Nos toca crear nuestras narrativas y la academia puede ayudar mucho.” That is how Alí Bantú Ashanti, Director del Colectivo de Justicia Racial (Colombia), defined our work. As scholars and members of the academy, he suggested, our main task is to create spaces and opportunities for Afrodescendant communities to share, disseminate and reflect on their own narratives.
I love to ride the bus in Latin America. The range of parcels, the crammed-in commuters, the drivers outside my window swerving through city streets, and the criers announcing routes in sing-song tones make the experience better than any amusement park ride. But at some point, what always strikes me about the bus are the people who stay on long after all others have departed.
“I came to Comala because I had been told that my father, a man named Pedro Páramo, lived there.” Thus, Juan Rulfo began Pedro Páramo, one of the masterpieces in Spanish-language literature. In this Mexican novel, the past continues to influence the present up until the point where the two of them overlap. The line that differentiates them subtly vanishes.
Tatiane Flores, a physical therapist in her early twenties, arrived at the place where her first-floor apartment used to stand. All she saw was a pile of mud and debris. The acrid smell of dirty water still lingered in the air. “ Now I come here and don’t even know if I have a home anymore.
Lima is a harsh, hostile, implacable, misunderstood and constantly changing city. You can get into a car and move forward, walk through its streets looking straight ahead, as if you were going through a tunnel. I think it demands an additional interest to stop and observe what surrounds us.
In Peru, economic fractures are a historical constant, starkly evident in the Andean region. Since colonial times, mountain communities have been marginalized by a centralized model that prioritizes urban and coastal growth, leaving high Andean populations on the margins of development.
Cusco is a cosmopolitan, touristic, traditional city, linked to Catholic religiosity and ancestral Andean practices. It is home to a fervent syncretic cosmovision and a permanent spirituality, linked like any growing city to a galloping economy and an effervescent commerce.
On the iconic Jirón de la Unión street, tour guides emphasize the area, the architecture, the cultural heritage, etc., but deep down, the forgotten echo of the conomic and social contrast
