Conferences

CLAS will be hosting their Research Symposium on Friday, November 15, 2024 from 12:30 to 3:30 PM which lunch provided. This symposium, led by CLAS Director Aldo Lauria-Santiago, will host a cohort of graduate students and CLAS faculty who received funding from CLAS and RAICCS. They will be presenting their work according to their assigned panel, as seen below:

The titles and abstracts for each presentation are written below:

Panel 1: Politics and Power

Laura De Moya-Guerra [PhD Candidate, Dept. of History]
Title: From Laundromat to Congress: The Rise of Anti-Chinese Discourses and Laws in Early 20th-Century Colombia (1903-1931)
Abstract: 
In the early 20th century, Chinese immigrants established communities along Colombia’s Caribbean and Pacific coasts. Despite their shared ethnic background, these immigrants had significant economic differences: in the Caribbean, they were primarily poor laundry workers, while in the Pacific, they were affluent merchants with social recognition. Initially, anti-Chinese sentiment targeted laundries, framing them as a danger to public hygiene and health. Consequently, while Caribbean laundrymen faced accusations of endangering society, their Pacific counterparts largely enjoyed recognition for their economic activities. However, as eugenics gained influence, these health concerns were redefined in racial terms. Increasingly viewed as a racial threat to the nation, Chinese immigrants—regardless of wealth or occupation—became targets of restrictive legislation. A series of laws and decrees aimed to limit or even prohibit Chinese immigration. This paper reconstructs the diverse but interconnected experiences of Caribbean laundry workers and Pacific merchants, using newspapers, public health reports, and visa petitions to trace this shift. It argues that Chinese immigrants in Colombia went from being perceived as a localized health concern to a national racial concern that allegedly endangered the Colombian nation.

Sandra Acocal [PhD Student, Dept. of History]
Title: The Indian Nobility of Tlaxcala in the 16th Century. The Institution of the Noble House and the Government of the Towns
Abstract:
Thanks to the CLAS grant I received in the spring of 2024, I had the opportunity to work this summer in two Mexican archives: The Archivo Histórico de Tlaxcala (San Bernardino Contla, Tlaxcala) and the Archivo General Municipal de Puebla (Puebla City). My objective in the Tlaxcala Archive was to review the institution's database and locate documents such as wills, lawsuits, proofs of merit (probanzas de méritos) and town council minutes (actas de Cabildo), both in Spanish and indigenous language (Nahuatl) that somehow explained the noble House and the Indian nobility of Tlaxcala. Fortunately, the results were the desired ones, I located and acquired the electronic formats of several records not only from the sixteenth century, but also from the eighteenth century.
My objective in the Archive of Puebla was to make a first review of the archive's database and locate records that could somehow explain the Indian nobility of Tlaxcala, which geographically neighbors Puebla. Although the archive has an extraordinary collection, the documentation of the 16th century is reduced and that involving Tlaxcala is minimal. Thus, the results were not as productive. Why are these records important to my research? Because they will help me understand and explain my research questions: how was the noble House of Tlaxcala organized in the 16th century (before and after the Spanish conquest)? And, how did the Indian nobility rule in the towns of Tlaxcala? In our conference I will elaborate on the results of my archival work and make my research project more understandable. 

Vierelina Fernandez [CLAS Post-Doctoral Associate]
Title: Insurgent Feminism: An Empirical Comparative Analysis of the Colombian FARC and Kurdish PKK-YPG Guerrillas
Abstract:
Can the Colombian FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and Turkey-Syria PKK-YPG (Kurdistan Workers Party-People’s Defense Units) guerrillas be considered feminist groups? What factors or mechanisms led to the development of the gender-equal views within their armed insurgencies? And how do the feminist stances and strategies of these two groups – Latin American and Middle Eastern – compare? This research employs a mixed-methods (quantitative-qualitative) research design and utilizes quantitative surveys, qualitative interviews, and a comparative content analysis to answer these questions. Data collection for this project took the form of 13 months of in-person fieldwork with excombatants and current members of the FARC and PKK-YPG in four countries: Colombia, Turkey, France, and Germany, along with 11 months of virtual fieldwork with YPG fighters in Syria. Further data collection consisted of the review of 93 political party speeches and communiqués from four ideologically similar parties in Turkey and Colombia: the HDP and CHP (in Turkey) and the FARC and Alianza Verde (in Colombia). Overall, the major findings from this study are that both the Colombian FARC and Kurdish PKK-YPG guerrillas can be considered feminist forces within their respective societies, in both quantitative and qualitative terms. The mechanisms by which both cases arrive at their gender progressive character is attributed to a combination of “bottom-up” and “top-down” factors, including communal living arrangements, normalization of birth control and abortion, women in non-traditional roles, a rigid culture of imposed discipline, pink-washing, and a true commitment to gender equality. Finally, a phenomenon of “feminist backsliding” is identified among the FARC but not the PKK-YPG, along with a parallel rejection of the term “feminist” in both cases. 

Gabriela Duncan [MA Student, Bloustein School Of Planning & Public Policy]
Title: Critically Examining Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) Of The Anglophone Caribbean
Abstract:
In the Spring Semester, I had the opportunity to participate in the Spring Embedded Program, Critically Examining Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) of the Anglophone Caribbean, with the help of the CLAS and RAICCS Grant Fund. This course focused on non-profits in the developing world, with St. Lucia as the case study. Included in the curriculum of this course was a one-week trip to St. Lucia, during which we had a more comprehensive understanding of the subject matter due to the itinerary of interactive activities during the trip. During the week in St. Lucia, there were excursions to visit the island's natural geography, museums, and NGOs, allowing us students to apply the theory we learned to a practical context. The non-profits visited were The Holy Cross Children's Home, Helen's Daughters, Saint Lucia National Trust, Saint Lucia Development Fund, Saint Lucia National Community Foundation, and Upton Gardens Girls Center. These non-profits all focused on different avenues of social and economic justice (feminist agriculture, youth empowerment, community economic empowerment, etc.). They combined beautifully to paint a picture of the local experiences on NGOS, providing an idea of the challenges, such as lack of funding and the ever-changing global political environment, and potential solutions from implementing policies across borders.

Jian Ren [PhD Candidate, Dept. of History]
Title: Processing the Early Cold War: Latin America and Hong Kong in the 1950s
Abstract: 
Upon the end of WWII, many Latin American governments began to expand their foreign service outreach to underexplored regions. The Korean War, Japan's economic recovery, and the rise of Chinese communism made East Asia a focused area. As they considered the future of trade and political connections, many chose to initiate their preliminary networks in Hong Kong, the English-speaking British colony. Drawing from findings in Argentine and Uruguayan archives in summer 2024, this presentation explored how diplomats and businesspeople from South American countries understood political dynamics in East Asia and the beginning of the Cold War from their observations and everyday experience in Hong Kong during the 1950s.

Javier Gonzalez [PhD Student, Dept. of History]
Title: Beyond Hippos: The Lives and Fate of the Other Animals of Pablo Escobar

Nia Cambridge [PhD Student, Dept. of Geography]
Title: Banking on Blue: Debt Restructuring, Carbon Crediting, Climate Mitigation and the Financialization of Marine Ecosystem Services in The Bahamas
Abstract:
Small island developing states (SIDS) are increasingly turning to the private sector for climate finance. This presentation examines how markets for private investment in national climate action are being negotiated, built and maintained through case studies of two climate mitigation projects in The Bahamas: The Bahamas Blue Carbon Project and marine debt-for-nature swap. Through an analysis of the Bahamian case, I explore how the Caribbean's marine spaces are being positioned for value extraction and the potential implications of these deals on local livelihoods.  

Javiera Barrientos [PhD Student, Literatures in English]
Title: Te saqué de la basura para tornarte a nacer". Waste Paper in Colonial Limp-Bindings at the Biblioteca Patrimonial Recoleta Dominica (Santiago, Chile)
Abstract:
Anyone who has handled a seventeenth century book may notice how the backing of spines, the making of pasteboards, and the reinforcement of endleaves and hinges, required the remains of other books or, in other words, the presence of waste paper or binder's waste. Waste, understood as a moving category, circulated not only from one volume to another; it was also traded between print shops, binderies, auctioned or expunged libraries and bookshops across borders. This paper will showcase and examine the waste paper contained in colonial vellum limp-bindings from the collection of the Biblioteca Patrimonial Recoleta Dominica de Santiago, one of the oldest colonial teaching conventual libraries in the Capitanía General de Chile. The purpose of this survey is to create a taxonomy of these case studies and to compare them to metropolitan European examples, to argue the importance of de-centralizing the study of book’s materiality and circulation during the early modern period, as well as to forefront Latin American materials in the subfield of waste’s social history. This research will help situate colonial bookbinding practices within, on the one hand, the Transatlantic oceanic book trade in the Carrera de Indias, and, on the other, criollo recycling streams of conventional waste.

Panel 2: Regions and Places

Alexander Liebman [PhD Candidate, Dept. of Geography]
Title: ¿Fugas de Mateo Mina? Interrogating the legacy of Taussig's "Esclavitud y Libertad en el Valle del Rio Cauca"
Abstract:
Our edited volume of academic essays, activist interventions, archival material, and interviews with residents of Puerto Tejada and Villa Rica in northern Cauca critically examines the legacy of Michael Taussig's (written with his first wife and research partner, Anna Rubbo) first book Esclavitud y Libertad en el Valle del Rio Cauca (1975). The volume examines the legacy of the popular Spanish-language text that described the racialized dispossession of Black peasants in northern Cauca with the expansion of sugarcane monocultures during the 1960s. Our project traces the somewhat unexpected legacy of the text as a central discursive component of Black social movements in the region, while also discussing troubling dimensions around the book's authorship and gendered and colonial labor processes in ethnographic research more broadly. Rather than a celebration of the book's 50th anniversary, we use the event to gather a range of voices that speak critically on the current political-ecological historical conjuncture in northern Cauca and the varied mutations of the 'plantation bloc' in the region. A book-in-progress (anticipated publication in 2025 with Universidad del Cauca Press, Popayan), I will introduce the impetus behind the text, the collaborative labor undertaken, and initial perspectives.

Jennifer Vilchez [PhD Candidate, Dept. of WGSS]
Title: Latinx Maternity: Paradoxical Data on the Latinx Population
Abstract:
This paper is about the Latina paradox: the scientifically “unexpected” association between being Latina women and the low prevalence of unfavorable birth outcomes. Health research has upheld this paradox and even in its subsequent disavowal maintains Latina women as fertile and reproductive. Analyzing papers published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, I interrogate medical discourses on Latina maternity to show how their demographic assumptions exacerbate certain medical knowledges about racialized women that lead to incomplete and inadequate health assessments. Applying Latinx to medicine would complicate the issue of gender, not to obfuscate gender or sex, but make the role of gender more apparent in terms of how medicine approaches the reproductive body.

Anderson De Andrade [PhD Student, Dept. of Sociology]
Title: Annunciation House: Preliminary Ethnographic Research at the US-Mexico Border
Abstract:
This project and presentation are the first steps in an ethnographic study centered on the Annunciation House, a volunteer-run organization in El Paso, Texas, located just blocks from the US-Mexico border. In response to a significant increase in migration, the Annunciation House has called for more volunteers to support its mission of providing hospitality to migrants, refugees, and immigrants. The volunteer program involves living, eating, and staying among those that have recently arrived in the United States. This project, although in its early stages, seeks to capture the dynamic environment within the shelter, offering scenes from daily life and interactions among the individuals who inhabit it. Additionally, the project to be presented explores themes of volunteerism, the blending of research and activism, and plans for the next steps in this study. 

Mildred Lopez Escudero [PhD Student, Dept. of Spanish & Portuguese]
Title: Storytelling for Sustainability: Resilience and Response in Sechura, Peru
Abstract:
Environmental issues are often presented through scientific reports, data, or news articles, which can feel disconnected from our daily lives. By sharing personal narratives and highlighting the human faces behind the statistics, we can humanize these challenges and illustrate how communities demonstrate resilience by pursuing sustainable solutions, even in the face of opposition from central authorities. The city and province of Sechura in Northern Peru have compelling stories of social-ecological changes and the diverse responses this has elicited from the community. In my presentation, I will share my initial findings from interviews with various local stakeholders in the health, education, tourism, and environmental sectors. This first step establishes the context for a place-based research approach, which is the intended direction of my dissertation. 

Nathan Darmiento [PhD Student, Dept. of History]
Title: Gertrude Duby, Na Bolom, and Environmental Activism in 20th Century Chiapas
Abstract:
Situated in the quiet suburbs of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Na Bolom (House of the Jaguar) stands as a cultural and tourist attraction for visitors worldwide. However, behind its lush garden, colorful courtyards, and small museum, Na Bolom holds archival material that documents its founder’s (Franz Blom and Gertrude Duby) anthropological studies of the Lacandon Jungle in the first half of the 20th century, as well as Gertrude Duby’s fight to save the jungle from deforestation until her death in 1993. Her story illustrates how environmental activism in Mexico was a transnational process, and one that identified agrarian reform issues among Indigenous communities and the natural environment.  

Gloria D'Alessio [PhD Student, Dept. of Anthropology]
Title: The production of Darien jungle as a migrant corridor
Abstract:
The Darien Gap, a sixty-mile-wide jungle between Colombia and Panama, became a crucial place in Latin America over the last five years. The increase of worldwide migrants crossing the Darien on their way to the United States enabled a “connection” to a wider migrant corridor with different routes through South and Central America. Necoclí, the last town where migrants stay before crossing the Urabá Gulf in Colombia, has been transformed by the migration flow, changing the local economies and the sociopolitical life in this fishing and tourist town. At the same time, as many migrants stay in Necoclí for days, weeks, and even months depending on their resources to cross faster, living in Necoclí and crossing the Darien also transformed migrants. What are the events, relations, news, stories, ideas, and everyday interactions that produce the Darien Gap as a migrant corridor? Through the preliminary ethnographic fieldwork held for a month in the Summer of 2024 in the towns of Necocli, Capurganá, and Acandí, I aim to analyze how local residents, companies and entrepreneurs involved in the migration business, public servants, and migrants produce the Darien space as a migrant corridor in the everyday life of migration.

Laurian Rosa [PhD Student, Dept. of Geography]
Title: From Military Past to Tourist Future: A History of Development and Exclusion at Roosevelt Roads Naval Base, Ceiba, Puerto Rico
Abstract:
On the easternmost part of mainland Puerto Rico, in the municipality of Ceiba, lies what used to be a naval base occupied by the United States Navy. Houses overgrown with foliage, abandoned supermarkets, gas stations, and submarine ports are all remnants of the infrastructure that once made up the Roosevelt Roads Naval Base, originally built during World War II to protect U.S. interests in the Western Hemisphere. Operations ceased in 2003, following massive social and environmental movements demanding the Navy's withdrawal from the island municipality of Vieques. While considered an environmental and anti-imperialist victory, the departure of the NAVY left behind a weak economy in Ceiba and a new responsibility for the local government: planning for 8,720 acres of prime coastal land. In accordance with the Base Realignment and Closure Act (BRAC), Puerto Rico established the Local Redevelopment Authority for Roosevelt Roads (LRA) to manage redevelopment efforts at the military base. The LRA’s Master Plan for redevelopment envisions various tourism and commercial facilities. Many community members argue that the Master Plan does not account for the needs of the aging and poor communities adjacent to the base and further reproduces the same exclusionary politics on which the naval base operated. This research marks the early stages of a larger dissertation project that draws on interviews with community members and archival work to reconstruct the history of communities displaced by the U.S. military and Puerto Rico’s colonial government in the 1940s, while examining how redevelopment in Ceiba may perpetuate politics of exclusion. The case of Roosevelt Roads contributes to broader debates on political ecology, development, tourism, and displacement in Puerto Rico and the wider Caribbean.

Clive Echague Alfaro [PhD Student, Dept. of Anthropology]
Title: Border Affects: The Role of Aymara Feelings in the Securitization of the Colchane's Northern Chilean Border
Abstract:
This ethnographic project explores the role of the feelings of insecurity among Chilean Aymara residents in Colchane, a northern border town, and their participation in border securitization processes. Against the backdrop of a neoliberal crisis and rising social unrest in South America, this study addresses a significant gap in scholarship by examining how border residents contribute to the hardening of Chile's borders, particularly given the historical role of Andean Indigenous groups in national projects (Ortega-Perrier 1998; Canessa 2007). Using various methods such as participant observation, interviews, and media analysis, this project aims to shed light on how borders become affective spaces, exploring the complex interplay between emotional narratives, border securitization, and the involvement of Indigenous borderland communities in securitization policies.

Tamara Velasquez Leiferman [PhD Candidate, Global Urban Studies]
Title: Transnational Gentrification and Short-Term Rentals in Mexico City
Abstract:
This paper aims to contribute to a growing body of scholarly literature on short-term rentals in the Global South by examining the phenomenon’s presence in one of Latin America’s largest cities, where Airbnb is increasingly seen as a flashpoint of gentrification. Building on prior research (Velasquez Leiferman 2023), this paper will examine the spatial distribution of short-term rentals in Mexico City and its relationship to a variety of key spatial and demographic variables at the neighborhood level. Through a mix of GIS methodologies, linear regression, and exploratory analysis, I seek to understand how the short-term rental market is distributed spatially and what factors correlate to its presence. In particular, I seek to explore the platform’s relationship to new construction and urban redevelopment, the traditional hotel market, and urban displacement. Likewise, I use qualitative interviews of neighborhood residents to illustrate how the platform’s presence is felt on the ground by local people.  

Diana Iturralde [PhD Candidate, Art History]
Title: Liminality as Survivance: Contemporary Amazonian Art Scene in Lima, Peru in 2024