Eduardo Restrepo (Universidad Católica de Temuco): ‘“Blancos” en un mundo negro: marcaciones raciales y distinciones de clase en Tumaco, Pacífico sur colombiano’

Talk delivered online on 8 November 2023 as part of the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies research seminar series.

Eduardo Restrepo is Investigador Adjunto at the Universidad Católica de Temuco.

Abstract: Tumaco es un poblado costero del Pacífico sur colombiano con cerca de unos ciento cincuenta mil habitantes en su casco urbano, de los cuales la inmensa mayoría se percibe como negra. Desde el siglo XXI se instaló una élite comercial y política blanca, descendientes de europeos y algunos asiáticos, que establecieron una sociedad racializada, con claras distinciones espaciales y de clase. Esto contrasta con la Tumaco de hoy, donde las relaciones de poder se han transformado sustancialmente y en donde los “blancos” no se encuentran necesariamente en un lugar del privilegio racial. En esta charla se abordarán las marcaciones raciales y las distinciones de clase que operan hoy en Tumaco, mostrando cómo el contraste blanco/negro se queda corto ante las múltiples articulaciones racializadas y enclasadas que consitituyen las experiencias y subjetividades de los tumaqueños.

Update from Peter Wade re. research activities

We are posting some updates re. research activities by members of the University of Manchester’s Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. This time, from Prof Peter Wade, co-director of CLACS.

After the success of the Festival of Latin American Anti-Racist and Decolonial Art held as part of our CARLA project (Cultures of Anti-Racism in Latin America), a series of events have been organised by our collaborators in Argentina, Brazil and Colombia to promote CARLA’s online exhibition and showcase the work of our artistic partners. In Argentina, for example, a second edition of the book Marrones Escriben has been produced by the artistic collective Identidad Marrón, and launched in various places, including Hamburg. In Argentina too, the occasion of the Dia Nacional de lxs Afroargentinos y la Cultura Afro (8 Nov) was used to show the play No es país para negras, II, presented by Teatro en Sepia. This was followed by a debate on structural racism, which featured special guest Lorena Cañuqueo, of Teatro Mapuche El Katango, a company that, as part of its participation in CARLA, has been collaborating with Teatro en Sepia. 

In Brazil, an exhibition and talks on anti-racist Indigenous art are being held until 2 December at the Museo de Arte Sacra of the Universidade Federal da Bahia. In Colombia, a major event with the title Entrecaminos Antirracistas y Feministas was held on 3 November under the aegis of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia’s Escuela de Estudios de Género. 

The CORALA project (Comics and Race in Latin America) has also been active, with a research trip to Lima that brought together the UoM project team and the six comics artists that are collaborating with the project – two each from Argentina, Colombia and Peru. One outcome was a zine to which we all contributed. We are currently planning another trip to Cali, Colombia, where we will all meet up again with a packed agenda of public engagement activities, organised in conjunction with the local branch of the Área Cultural of the Banco de la República, two local universities and some local cultural centres.

PG Symposium in Latin American and Caribbean Studies

The Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Manchester would like to invite PhD students working in Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the Universities of Manchester, Liverpool and Lancaster to participate in a PG symposium funded by the North West Doctoral Training Centre and the North West Consortium Doctoral Training Partnership.

The event will take place on Tuesday 16 May at the University of Manchester and will provide PhD students with the opportunity to present papers on their research in a friendly and constructive environment, and to get feedback from peers and staff. Dr Paulo Drinot (UCL) will be giving a keynote talk as part of the day.

If you are interested in participating, please submit a 200-word abstract to Prof Peter Wade (peter.wade@manchester.ac.uk) and myself (ignacio.aguilo@manchester.ac.uk) by the end of Friday 5 May.

There are funds available for train travel, and lunch will be provided. The event is free but registration is required. You can register here: https://tinyurl.com/lud6e2p

PG Symposium: Research Trends in Latin American Studies

On 26 April, CLACS organised a symposium for PhD students working in Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the Universities of Manchester and Liverpool. The event was funded by the North West Doctoral Training Centre. The event built on previous symposia organised in Manchester and provided PhD students with the opportunity to present papers on their research in a friendly and constructive environment, and to get feedback from peers and staff.

Linda Avendano (HCRI) kicked off the symposium with a presentation on child soldiers and miners in Colombia. Linda discussed the current academic interpretation of ‘child soldiering’ and its implications in terms of human rights violations and policy interventions. She argued for a wider comprehension of the multiple roles performed by children in current conflicts and outlined a theoretical framework that can help address gaps in theorising and practice.

Carole Myers (SALC) discussed elective cosmetic rhinoplasty in contemporary Brazilian women, focusing on the appropriation of cultural influences and their significance in contemporary Brazilian society.

Luis Eduardo Pérez Murcia (SEED) shared the results of his ethnographic work among displaced people in Colombia. He explained the multiple ways in which they construct narratives of home that are crucially shaped by the experiences of conflict and Displacement.

Nicola Astudillo-Jones (SALC) gave the first of two presentations dealing with cinema. She showed how British spectators of Latin American films at Manchester’s Viva Festival perceive Latin America-ness in terms of imagined cosmopolitan communities.

Nicola Runciman (SALC) continued with the topic of cinema, but moved from reception to film analysis, examining the narrative, aesthetic and socio-political functions of the Chilean landscape as it emerges in two recent films: El año del tigre (Sebastián Lelio, 2011) and Matar a un hombre (Alejandro Fernández Almendras, 2014). Nicola demonstrated how these films engage with nationally specific concerns about the social order while also articulating a troubling dimension of the body’s relationship to the external world, a dimension which connects the particular and the universal.

After lunch, Dr. Jon Beasley-Murray (University of British Columbia) gave a keynote talk on Latin American literature and infrapolitics as part of the day, entitled “What’s the Use of Literature?  Machinery and Mechanism in the Latin American Canon”.

The afternoon session was devoted to literature. María Montt Strabucchi (SALC) explored Colombian author Santiago Gamboa’s novel Los Impostores (2002) in dialogue with the work of Sara Ahmed, Homi Bhabha and Jean-Luc Nancy, in order to draw out the challenge of essentialist views as well as the understandings of community that the novel suggests.

Ailsa Peate (Liverpool) analysed Rogelio Guedea’s Detective Trilogy and demonstrated how the Mexican author presents an original interpretation of the genre, achieved in part by creating a distressing plot based on historical events, which draws our attention to the corruption currently at the heart of the Mexican political elite.

Finally, Rafael Argenton Freire (SALC) looked at Brazilian Romantic poet Gonçalves Dias (1823-1864). Rafael explored how Gonçalves Dias self-fashioned himself as a poet in relation to European models and as a poet writing within and against the ideology of a Romantic, post-independence Brazil. Moreover, he look at how and to what extent his role within the literary relations of production contributed to his literary success and public recognition as a poet.

Prof. Peter Wade closed the symposium with a talk on how to get published in Latin American Studies, which provided very useful tips.

In sum, it was a long but fulfilling day in which we all engaged in exciting and stimulating discussions and that demonstrated the excellent research being carried out by our PhD students.