Panel 1 – Black and Indigenous Resistance in the Americas: From Multiculturalism to Racist Backlash

my name is stephanie larue i am the associate director at csrea the center for the study of race and ethnicity in america csria is an interdisciplinary hub that aims to build community with the public and among scholars and students working on race and ethnicity in and around the united states today's event entitled black and indigenous resistance in the americas from multiculturalism to racist backlash is a two-part event featuring a panel of experts that have contributed to a newly edited a ne

wly edited and published volume by the same name the effort is the product of a multi-year transnational research project by the anti-racist research and action network of the americas the volume charts the rise of racial recalcitrance and of anti-racist resistance in black and indigenous peoples in seven countries of the americas brazil bolivia chile colombia guatemala mexico and the united states this presentation is a csra faculty grant event organized by juliette hooker professor of politica

l science at brown university please note that the book that is the focus of today's discussion is available to purchase conveniently via link available through the chat function we also hope that you will join us for the second panel of this event that begins promptly at 2pm this afternoon through zoom csrea also invites you to attend our other events you can find more information on our website www.brown.edu race at this time i'd like to invite dr juliette lewis sorry dr juliette hooker to int

roduce our guests thank you thank you stephanie and thank you to csria for hosting this event and for their um especially i want to thank all the staff including um particularly trey caitlin for their wonderful work making this event happen i want to say a little bit about the project before i introduce your panelists um this and say a little bit about um the the volume as a whole and before i begin that i also want to acknowledge that of course we are in our various places in which we are locat

ed and in which we're participating in this event um uh that this is indigenous land and so i want to take a moment to acknowledge indigenous dispossession as well as black dispossession and continued anti-black racism which are both formative for the volume that we that we can are happy to celebrate here but also our forces that shape our world wherever we are located this volume was the result of a deeply collaborative process which began not necessarily in the academy but as a collaboration b

etween scholars and activists in multiple countries of the americas as well as activist organizations and i would like to name the organizations that were in dialogue with us and helped us produce the research that's collected in the volume as their insights and their practices were central to the development of the and the work that we're presenting here and they are the community and located in chile copera in mexico the observatory in bolivia the observatory discrimination in colombia and the

process of communism in colombia the movement for black lives in the united states criolla in brazil and the observatory in guatemala this research took shape over many years and many meetings at various universities in the u.s and in latin america and the insights that we are presenting are definitely the result of collective reflection and but we need to think in particular many people who were in dialogue with us and who helped organize activities were part of the the research and the worksh

ops that produce the volume who are not a part of the panel and we want to acknowledge that greater radar community that is is is really um being honored here the activities that took place over the course of this research project were supported by various organizations whom i want to briefly acknowledge um including brown university the city university of new york new york university university of california santa barbara university of texas at austin the andrew carnegie foundation the winner g

rand foundation the inter-american foundation and the latin american studies association so as i said we are absolutely delighted to be able to feature many of the authors of the chapters in the edited volume but before but not all of them are here and so i want to um list those authors um so that we know that they're all part of the volume and the contributors to the volume were jaime anti-milk and eileen ford jaime garcia leila charles or hell and so the one of the things that i think is i wan

t to spotlight about the volume is that it is really an attempt to reflect on the state of racial politics and in particular we began from this understanding that um there had been a break in the expansion of that had been taking place over more than three decades of recognition of difference and collective rights for indigenous and black populations throughout the americas and drawing on collaborative activists research which black and indigenous movements in brazil bolivia guatemala colombia m

exico chile and united states the contributors to this volume argue that racial retrenchment did not come out of nowhere that it's the result of contradictions and trust and tensions already present during the era of expansion of anti-racist rights that multiculturalism went hand in hand with a neoliberal economic project that concentrated wealth in the hands of the few and threatened the health of the planet yet the reaction to it has paradoxically targeted racialized communities such as black

and indigenous movements struggling to preserve their lives and territories immigrants etc face resurgent racism black and indigenous movements continue to resist however and drawing on their creative strategies of resistance we argue that progressive anti-racist activism must center a critique of racial capitalism in order to successfully confront white supremacy um and so the volume was completed before the current round of racial of anti-racist uprisings and so um we are we see it both as a c

ontinuation of the trends that we identify both of backlash but also of resistance to that backlash and i want to um introduce our panelists today who are mariana mora who is a professor of anthropology at the css mexico luciani rocha who is an assistant professor of anthropology at kennesaw state university and in malicia velazquez who is a visiting professor at stanford university um before i turn things over to them though i i have the um the sad duty of noting that we want to dedicate this e

vent to a member of the um who has recently passed away andres kaya who was a co-founder of the servatorio racism in bolivia he was a sociologist and activist whose work focused on anti-racism extractivism and climate change he was a researcher at the center of the studios he was a dear father of sylvia lara he and his partner cantu tamarucci as well as their colleagues and sociology cohort in the observatory of olivia became central to the foundation of rayar andres we miss you and we dedicate

this book launch to you and i will now turn things over to mariana mora good morning it's an honor to be here and i want to to thank everyone at the center for the study of race and ethnicity in america brown for making this event possible it's i'm very excited to be here with with all of my colleagues and and friends from from that participated in the book and that are part of who is part of rayara and part of this book and and is part of the team from bolivia asked me to read something before

i start um that the observatory on race embassies in bolivia wrote in dedication in an honor to andres who as juliet mentioned recently passed away so i'm going to read this before i start and they have sent the following message the defeat of capitalist system won't be reached by overtaking the power or by means of police policies developed by the state rather it will come as a product of disobeying the individualistic consumering logic this is an excerpt from the last letter andres wrote to so

me of us in the observatory of bolivia during the pandemic he took some time to return to some of his political and academic concerns that for him always were tied together in his letter he recalls gandhi once again we several times referred to him as gandhi it was gandhi who inspired andres since disobeying was his weapon of choice a weapon that hurts no one but the power this is one of the main features in andhra's way of acting it is possible to defy the injustice and oppression and at the sa

me time to recognize everyone's dignity never violent yes never yet never passive the quest was to change the world with generosity determination and avoiding the pursuit of state power as well as revolutionary violence for almost a decade a decade this ideas propelled his position in the observatory he brought this action and dialogue perspective and he remained hopeful when some of us felt hopeless some of us at the observatory were more academic while others were more activists political but

we were always in what in aimara we call gamasa that energy that ties things together putting action and theory together now that andreas has is gone we kept his memory as a token to keeping on acting and thinking without negotiating principles nor leaving the tenderness behind andres we miss you and we are grateful for the time you walked along and and i'm going to let pamela when she when she presents in the next panel um state what she wrote to andres to make sure that in both of the panels w

e are having him present so um with that introduction there's a lot of of mourning in the times that we we are living right now and i think it's an important to to have that carry with us as we speak but keeping andres in in this space with us i'm going to be speaking about the chapter that i wrote with jaime garcia who is a nassavi academic who teaches and does research in the region of la montagna which is uh the a primary indigenous and afro-mexican region though the afro-mexicans in guerrero

are more on the coast in in mexico so we wrote a chapter that is um entitled racist criminalization anti-racist pedagogies and indigenous teacher descent in la montagna guerrero and this research project as juliet said had to do with a collaborative research agenda like that and so that was carried forth through copera the collective to eliminate uh racism in mexico which i'm a part along with uh kawasi sikhi was an indeed which is an indigenous and activist teachers collective based in la mont

ana de guerrero and we decided to collaborate together on a series of workshops that kawasi tsiki was was conducting at the time between 2014-2016 with the objective of of reflecting on how to create a new curriculum based on indigenous epistemologies on nasavi mepa and nawa indigenous epistemologies in la montana and at the same time push forth a different type of intercultural educational pedagogies at the local state and national level and and so i want to start by saying that because when we

started to do this these series of of of the intercultural and anti-racist workshops with kawasi sikhi it was at a moment where pena nieto the the pre-president was still in power he was in power until 2018 and there was a moment where he was pushing an educational reform agenda that uh was based roughly i'm going to synthesize on standardized tests and on generating an increased precarious working conditions for teachers both of which have detrimental implications for black and indigenous comm

unities in mexico so at that moment there was a dissident teachers union that's called lacente which mobilized this primarily in indigenous states so in the state of oaxaca aguerrero of chiapas a fairly large afro-mexican population um it's the it's a dissented teachers union that mobilizes in those states so they were pushing to try to get a reversal of that educational reform that benanito had had implemented through a presidential decree but kawasisiki who was working as part of la centes so

they were part in all of these mobilizations and these marches they were blocking roads they were had a it was a very energized time they were saying a reversal of this educational reform is not enough what we need to talk about is how to have an educational curriculum and and pedagogies that are based on our own indigenous epistemologies right so so the idea of these workshops was to generate um an effervescence of of political reflection and of collective um knowledge production to push forth

an agenda beyond that which placenta was having it's also at a time when if you recall it was around ferguson just to situate those that are listening from the united states um where there's a lot of police violence in in that was very visible in the united states but at that time there was also um those indigenous black and peasant and mestizo peasants that were teachers in training that were at the teachers college of ayotsi napa were were forcefully disappeared on the night of the 26th and 27

th of september of 2006 so the the anniversary is coming up shortly um so at that moment you had a lot of repression against the teachers union the dissident teachers union and you're also having these massive these waves of extreme violence perpetrated against against youth male youth in regions like la montagna the the most extreme of which was the forced disappearance of the 43 students of ayotsi napa so that was the moment we were doing research and and we were we were trying to work through

um a puzzle right so if you think in mexico it's probably one of the states uh in latin america that that refuses both at an a state level and academic level and even within left circles there's not much talk about racism right uh and certainly none of these events the state repressive actions against lacente in indigenous states nor the forced disappearance of the students in nagos tinapa apparently will had any racist intention or racist motivation but listening to the students from the teach

ers from kawasi sikhi and listening to the students from adiosi napa listening to at their their their subjective experience of living these events as if as a reinforcement that their lives are waste that they are garbage and and that they have been treated as criminals as if they were worse than narco-traffickers so if they were by default already excluded from the political community they're certainly a racist and a racialized machinery that's underplayed so so what jaime garcia and i were try

ing to do within this workshop within the series of workshops and the research that we conducted for this chapter was then to see what's the racialize and the racist machinery that's underneath um that renders permissible and justifies and continues to nourish and feed the type of events that we're witnessing that have to do with with extreme levels of violence and extreme and and state repression in regions like so i'm going to focus on on three elements that four four elements briefly that we

touched upon in our book in our chapter um that i the and i want to highlight so as to put in dialogue with the other different cases and as part of a general reflection that i think we is fundamental right now in academic and in activist settings in terms of what's the racist motor racialized motor at play in the current moment so the first is is seeing this machinery at play um forces to revisit as as juliet said in her introduction forces to revisit the past right um the recent past the multi

cultural period and what we realized in in in our re-excavation um was that we as academics and i think this was a general um obstacle or blind spot that that was shared amongst mexican academics that we focused a lot between the relationship between multicultural reforms that were taking place and neoliberal political economic policies right as two fundamental pillars of state formation during that particular era but what we left to the sidelines and did not pay sufficient attention to was that

at the same time that neoliberal policies were being implemented at the same time as watered-down multicultural reforms were being implemented the state security apparatus was fundamentally being reconfigured and that that has fundamental implications for what we were to see later during the so-called undeclared war against organized crime that began in 2006 under felipe calderon right so so doing this re-excavation of the multicultural period we realized that the three branches of government b

oth the executive legislative and the judicial branch implemented a series of reforms that they created a very robust security apparatus that had yet to have the criminal type that it was supposed to be acting against right um there was it was the moment of sabbath so there was political dissent within that context there was the narco trafficking or the criminal criminal organizations were reconfiguring so there was already potential criminals to be um to be created right as part of the justific

ation for the robust um security apparatus but we wouldn't pay sufficient attention to it until it started hitting us in the face after 2006 with uh with calderon and then later with the during the presidential administration of pena nieto so that's the first thing is i think that we need to revisit what we were looking at and what we weren't looking at during the multicultural neoliberal period and see if there was perhaps other pillars of state formation that then became evident that were alre

ady being reconfigured in that particular moment the second element that that i want to to present here for for our discussion has to do with what that means in terms of biopolitical investment in biopolitical divestment on the part of the state right so if you have multiculturalism you have neoliberalism and you have the security apparatus all being reconfigured then how does that play out in terms of the different types of investments bioinvestments and biodiversities that the state has and an

d what we we located was that there is this profound divestment in in aspirational capacities as as a padre i once stated right so in education in health in um that we know that that happens during the neoliberal period but that was fought that was in a strict cover correlation to a strong investment in the security apparatus so just to give you a figure between 2000 and 2012 while the funding for education increased in relative terms by 54 the public security apparatus increased in funding by 3

34 percent right so you had this investment in in the security apparatus which was which then gets um get materialized in people's everyday experiences so you have um students in iot napa for example they could try to be a teacher but it was much easier to try to be a policeman or or in the army and several of the students that were disappeared had actually tried to become policemen or to be part of the army um and then by default became teachers right so so in in so i think that that that's par

t of the elements that seem that have an implicit racializing and racist effect which is part of the arguments of this chapter and and that becomes visible because it generates if you have an investment in the security apparatus you need to create certain criminal types and it generates a very what we refer to as an implicit racial racist anxiety on the part of the state so that you end up having teachers that were dis in the dissident teachers union being treated as if not they were narco traff

ickers right so indigenous teachers become treated as if they were by default going to be the utmost threat to the political community and and that's an effect that's a racialized effect of these biopolitical investments and divestments um the third point and i'm going to to go a little bit faster since i have four more minutes um was that this this implicit racialized anxiety that has to do with these biopolitical investments and divestments have lead to these bursts of explicit racism that tha

t were present against the dissident teachers union because they started to equate and especially on social media la cente as the same as being indian a bunch of indians so you start to see the circulation of racist discourses that justifies and asks asks the state to to take repressive measures against the teachers through explicit racism um that they're a bunch of filthy indians that that they they are backwards in civilization a series of tropes that are very familiar um and the two of them a

re at play so what i'm trying to understand and this is i pose for for a reflection in our chapter we're trying to figure out is what's the interplay between this implicit race racial anxiety and these bursts of explicit racism through particular discourses that then materialize in police repression how is that interplay working out in this particular historical moment and what does that have to do with racialized formation and so the last part of that i want to focus on is that if you see that

that's what was happening in in the moment we were conducting research then what does alternative pedagogy is what do they have to do with potential anti-racist horizons and anti-racist actions right so um there it was for us it was very important in the anti-racist and inter and and indigenous epistemology workshops that we had with kawasi siki was to see that uh at the subjective level the level of pain and the profound trauma that all of these events um were were sparking both in the immediat

e memory and in memories of lingerie right and that there was a need then to produce collective knowledge that could name what what these feelings were being how they were being expressed onto the body through memories with with ancestors through um other life experiences and and for that reason uh coming up with an alternative curriculum that is based on specific epistemologies but that also is is allowing a collective naming of what these acts of state repression look like becomes takes takes

pedagogy and and the work of teachers into an anti-racist sphere of action and so that was that's something that we also touch upon as fundamental and that i think has forces us to rethink some of the uh assertions that many of us have made where during the multicultural period and the cultural reforms and especially intercultural education were more light in nature in comparison to what would be more profound reform of the state say through the recognition of autonomy and self-determination tha

t when education as something that's being appropriated by the teachers as part of this quest for alternative curriculum and pedagogies is outside of the sphere of the state and becomes a place of naming of working through trauma of working through pain and of coming up with a curriculum that allows that type of of discussion and collective knowledge to be worked through along with the students and with the parents of the students in indigenous communities that's a fundamental anti-racist horizo

n that plays a critical role in the historical times that we were under which we were conducting research and so just to close because i finished my 15 minutes i want to say where we're at in the current moment so so first of all uh i want to recognize that um that we were in around the mid of the of andreas manuel lopez obrador uh left of center president so well so he is called uh left the center president but in this moment and i think that this in um plays in dialogue with with luciani's res

earch in brazil um i think what we're witnessing is the level of intolerance of and and and underlying and explicit racism um of populist governments can unite the center left and the extreme right which would be the case in war tornado and brazil so what we're witnessing in in mexico is um is an intolerant political climate that that situates indigenous and black communities within a type of reloaded misty sachi that is not allowing for dissent it's not allowing for critique it's not allowing f

or the the blocking of state initiatives which continue to be centered on extractivist policies so so even though there's a recognition of of black communities in mexico now and and supposed constitutional reforms that will be most robust in nature for the collective rights of indigenous peoples all of them the administration is is focusing on extractivist policies and on mega development projects as the motor behind the current administration and that that is occurring alongside acts of extreme

violence so so i think the question is in what are the continuities um between the calderon and the penance administrations from 2006 to 2018 under andres manuel lopez obrador and in what ways are these types of populist governments uniting left of center and extreme right forms of in of intoleration and in bordering on neo-fascism i wouldn't say that that's the case of andres lopez administration but certainly intolerance is and a lack of of effective and substantial discussion around race and

racism so with that i'll believe that and thank you very much for listening to me hi hello uh i guess it's my turn to present it's nice to be here i'd like to start by thanking juliette hooker and all the brown community for organizing this book lunch today i will be presenting the chapter is thomas and masha and racism political struggle and the leadership of brazilian black women i'm here representing criolla and all the black women that participated in the i also would like to start by honor

ing the memory of andres let me show i forgot to show my powerpoint just a minute so i would like also to honor the memory of andres who was a very good friend and researcher and they also would like to acknowledge other members of higher higher is not the only there's not only the ones participating this in these two panels happening today but it's a collective of activists and scholars the different countries in this research okay i will i will talk a little bit about the political context um

while we were conducting this research so when this research project began the political context in the americas was one of the dominant center-left block in power throughout the region this left leading government which included lula obama dima his representative was uh from from from historic historically marginalized marginalized groups and classes in these countries and had transformed the political orientation and profile of latin america yet the question remained would these rise of leftis

t government be enough to promote structural changes in these countries so in brazil for example as a result of the activism by various black movements especially black women through mobilizations lobbying lobbying and articulation with government officials various race conscious political policies and and government minister minister were created yet the these institutions face challenges and obstacles in the implementation of legally maintaining actions in favor of racial equality okay so our

researcher questions related to this contest first we decide to conduct a research analyzing the political action of black women because we see black women as political activists that um work throughout the years uh to push for change in this society and here i highlight the the um by this group is uh showing this picture he's from bahia the um um let's do a march a um so we asked um what led black women to hold the massachusetts negros the black women's march and invite the political the govern

ment and civil society to another civilizing anti-racist and anti-sexist pact in 2015 our demands for rights is still the most effective strategy for controversies struggles and what challenges to the political scenario that fortified reactionary groups posed to black women okay so we asked uh this questions about our methodology our aim was to document the martial the black women's march in the context of activism from our positionality as activist researchers as a way to contribute to collecti

ve national and international international reflection about gender racism and racist activists activism as black intellectuals we agree with patricia collins when she argued that one role of black female intellectuals is to produce facts and theories about the black female experience that will clarify the black women's standpoint for black for black women okay so we positioned ourselves as activists and also as researchers while uh participating in the masha articulating strategies and also con

ducting our research in this slide here you can see a representation of uh analysis of intellectual production uh by black activists and researchers and it's not intended to suggest that there there uh have been uh separated waves of black women activism this is just to show the continue and how our strategies change depending in the context in the in the political scenario so i divided into black women's activism into five phases or five five uh four eras uh but it they are uh combined okay so

first you can see here in the nation the national national context of the brazilian constitutional era from 1985 to 88 when the current brazilian constitution uh was published and agreed and then we have the first democratic era from 88 to 2001 where you could see the consolidation of constitutional rights in brazil the second democratic era from uh 2001 to 2015 in this long period we we could see uh state led affirmative actions uh push by social movement in particular black women movement and

finally this last era from 2015 to 2018 uh which we are calling here as third democratic era in which we locate the cope that our president dilma rousseff faced um and also marked the dismantling of rights in in brazil so we can see that black women are were collecting its strategies from this period in this first period you can we can see several mobilizations and meetings organized by uh black women in order to analyze the the the the contest the political context and also to strategize so the

ir demands would be included in the brazilian constitution in the second the first democratic area we can see uh uh that they deepen this strategy and create forums networks marches black women institutes and also several ngos including the ngo crayola in which i participate and then they said in the second demo democratic area we can see the management of government policies uh in this area many uh black representatives and black women were part of the government including uh minister uh minist

er for racial equality okay uh black women representing here and in now in the third democratic era uh as a new strategy we can see uh black humans as being candidates to uh in the political arena as recuperating recuperating this strategy and also strengthening the the political memory and political uh possibilities i will talk about that um soon so about that tonography conducted uh a black woman organized uh through in three different levels the the black women march uh the first one and and

and biggest one was the local arena and then the states arena and the national arena in the local several meetings thematic meetings um in the state uh arena for forums and in the national the main one was the uh the actual march okay and you can see uh it's important to to uh to understand that these uh strategies of having representative in the national arena was more important to whom we were uh interacting to the women um themselves okay so here are some also pictures from the uh ethnography

one important part of this mobilization was our participation during the carnival as a political act we have an entire section represented by women from different brazilian states and and black women organizations we held meetings different meetings and also we had a state march in rio de janeiro talking specifically about the teams in the march urban violence and incarceration was uh uh one team included in the manifesto that that black woman published to mobilize for the march so here you can

see a picture of um i forgot her name sorry ah i forgot her name but and i'm i'm so sorry for that but you can see here uh you know she was one mother front of favela in rio de janeiro and she was brutally murdered and her body was dragged and and uh by a police car so this is our representation of our body being receiving violence and also uh these other picture here show uh a woman who had children either killed or mutilated by by police i need to go faster because my time is up another impor

tant team um during the black woman's march was maternal mortality and here you can see uh aline pimentel uh you know who represent this struggle for equality and and health in brazil and also one important thing during the march is the religious racism that several yelorishas faced we can see nowadays several tejus being burned and people receiving rocks turning you know into their bodies in the streets of of brazil and specifically rio de janeiro so uh to to to conclude i would like to talk ab

out the breast the coup and how it changed our strategies so here uh in 2015 during the march the brazilian woman uh um went to a meeting with jim rousseff the the former president and they uh um gave her a letter asking uh the brazilian government and also civil society to create another pact to include the black women in disney in political actions and also to overcome racism sexism and all forms of oppression okay what we could see was uh a and through the the coop we can see that the coop wa

s against us black woman this is a representation here you can see in the bottom at the bottom uh the mean uh uh juma's minister ministers and we can see one representation one black woman representation here at uh here in the bottom uh left we can see the minister for temer uh he didn't include any woman and any black person and now we have bolsonaro and we can see that we can we don't have intellectuals in these uh governments anymore about political possibilities and strategies in 2016 as an

evaluation we decided that we would have black candidacies so several black women run for deputies and uh and in the local local uh chamber as well and marieli franco was one of the woman elected and she was uh murdered in 2018 in this political context of showing black women's demand so the political strategies that i could see while while conducting the research was the return to roots awareness and strategic strategic political alliances uh black candidacies and also this view that we are see

ds we are the ones that build uh strategies and the main political actors in brazil so i would like to conclude with a quote from jose savaristo where she says that they agreed to kill us but we agreed to not die thank you very much and i'm sorry for the relax thank you good morning i want to thank the center for the study of race and ethnicity in america at brown university and my colleague juliet hooker for argan for organizing these events i make this presentation as part of a team made up of

ricoberto choi aileen iv and myself and myself who worked on chapter four that correspond to guatemala in this chapter we analyzed the consequences of official multiculturalism and the neoliberal regime on the economic and political lives of the achieve population of ravinal and kubuco two municipalities located in the department of bahabella pass in guatemala these communities are notable because the leaders of local organizations are also survival of the internal arm conflict that officially

lasted in guatemala from 1916 to 1996. despite the repercussions of this era's repression survival have attempt to rebuild their lives in the beginning of the 1990s at the down of the multicultural era they achieved perceived convenient climate to advance the political agendas and struggle for justice racial equality and the construction of cultural elements among other important considerations propelled by multiculturalism they began to collectively mobilize to claim some of the rights such as

denouncing and demanding judgment of the material outdoor of the massacres rapes and enforce disappearances that have taken place in the community this objective yet she used the legal framework created during the negotiation process that lead to the 12 accords that formed the visa course rainfall by the signing of the female final pisa core on december 1996 between the government and the guatemalan guerrilla which formally ended the conflicts two key references points of different world were co

nvention 169 regarding indigenous peoples of the internal labor organization with guatemala ratified in 1996 and the called on the identity and right of indigenous people signed between the government and the gorilla in 1995. nevertheless immediately after the press agreements were signed the guaranteed state continuing with his neo-liberal agenda private privatizing public services and opening the country to national and transnational capital while also promoting multicultural multicultural pol

icies that work as a governance platform to maintain internal and conflict survivor impermanent inequality methodology in the field research of this chapter began in march of 2015 and ending in june 2017. in abinal and it is based on free work that included formal and informal interviews with 50 community leaders male and female indigenous professionals merchants latino business people academics and state workers in the two municipalities it all even also requires archival work and the consultat

ion of state national and international reports and documents in addition studies of the region and legal documents related to transitional justice cases in guatemala were reviewed as well the inter-american court's rulings in the case of hc communities which were brought before this body by survivors due to the lack of justice within guatemala finally participant observation was a key part of all methodology as a research an activist team or experience in your region began in 2005 working with

local organizations to support an investigative process that intended to bring to court those responsible for the crime of genocide against the achievement since then we have slowly built bonds of truth and collaboration with local actors returning to ravinal and kubulco to contribute to to work to research for the recovery and the communication of achieve historical memory and another transitional justice code case propelled by survivors about about the war in this chapter we explore the curren

t status and reach of the achieved people and the achieve people's collective rights and the factor that currently we meet the recognition and fulfillment of the rights as indigenous people or study rewards around the following questions first what is according to status of the political economic and state rights of the population in radinal and second what mechanisms reforms social racial certification in these communities and third how do the official multicultural regime and male liberalism r

einforce their social stratification and contribute to the permanence of racial hierarchies to answer this question we analyze four interrelated issues multiculturalism and its paradoxes everyday experiences of races and gender ladino identity and racial reaction to achieve demands and anti-racist resistance and its strategies and achievements through the chapter we attempt to understand how each of these issues demonstrates multiculturalism limits and transformation in the achieve region as a r

eflection of overall trends in guatemala our argument is that despite the creation of the multicultural palaces after the peace accord were signed the survivor in public living condition of poverty and extreme parity due to the fact that these policies have no iterate these states structural races or analysis suggests that this is clear to survival which is why they have not focused their struggle exclusively in language traditional clothing or spiritual demands as prominent feature features of

multiple tournaments varrated on the recognition of racial inequalities that led them to face acts of genocide simultaneously they question development strategies driving by the elite and the state such as the checksuit in order to try to alter the course of official politics in the communities as we will show this research for alternative paths encompasses the recognition of ancestral achieve authorities political power in the municipalities of marina the creation of non-profit organizations to

address residents to address residents socioeconomic and legal needs widen education educational opportunities through the creation of the center for the formation of rural and urban leaders linguistic studies about the acid language and scholarships for students the creation of entrepreneurial and resource conservation projects within their own cultural french works a negotiation process and pressure so that the guatemalan state will take responsibility for having executed crimes against human

ity against the achieve during the armed conflicts in general we considered that guaranteed culturalism was the result of at least two process on the one hand it was a state response to the demands put forward nationally by the resistance movements and long and standing struggles of indigenous people in the response to the exclusionary projects of cultural assimilation of past centuries when there was a push to have them organizedly embrace the nation and accept a form of citizenship that obscur

e inequalities behind a meaning of diversity [Music] on the other hand vari argued that multiculturalism was an elite game plan to modify and break apart indigenous struggles in this context multiculturalism expressed itself in the creation of estate agencies tantania's indigenous indigenous great ways that during this research were on the side lines of government operation whenever core institution worked in clientele's way and processed few resources for the operation most of which came from i

nternational donations although some of some of them might have begun their work with the intention of creating change example included the academia of maya languages of guatemala the advocate office for indigenous women and the presidential commission against discrimination and races the multicultural project cleared a space in a contradictory manner for the emergence of a new form of neoliberal governance that simultaneously articulates the recognition of indigenous rights and identities while

in parallel bringing about a way a wave of neoliberal reforms that perpetuate the economic and political merchant marching marginalization of indigenous peoples at the same time it excluded or attacks political identities and mobilization that defies structural races historical colonialism and the free circulation of capital analyzing the hcks it becomes clear that multiculturalism has no generating transformation aimed at generating profound structural equality because it was never really desi

gned to do that although it encouraged an inclusive discourse and the recognition of indigenous people's rights multiculturalism has coexisted with the denial and violation of the economic political and civil rights of these same people simultaneously indigenous anti-racist resistant efforts question that is status quo and struggles to build more juiced alternatives while the survivors of the armed conflict were able to use some of these spaces created by multiculturalists after the signing of t

he pisa port to launch the demands for for transitional justice national nationally and internationally it was a slight opening which nevertheless allowed world chaomas and past sexual violence to be faced regarding economic rights however multicultural policies have changed very little because the survivors living condition in these two municipalities are marked by parroting and extreme poverty this is not surprising given that multicultural policies were not created to modify the structural ra

ces on the guatemalan states indeed in ravennal and the type of multiculturalism we identified is that which recognized recognizes a specific indigenous rights but only windows when those rights wherever they may be do not intimidate the political and economic interests of dominant sectors locally and nationally another characteristic of this moment in these two municipalities product of multiculturalism is the dipping of community while divisions the same multicultural multiculturalism dispersi

vely grow morris collective projects of national unity around extractive investments such as these courses food functioned to conceal the fact that the estate and private companies through the repressive forces have used criminalization and violence against the integrity and dignity and dignity of indigenous people who oppose their developments plans based on mega projects and who are simply defending their rights it is a brutal offensive against indigenous leadership and social movement matalde

[Music] it is a brutal offensive against indigenous leadership on and social movements that has reached such extreme levels that the cheerleaders have received that threats and sold as asylum abroad this demonstrates that the struggle for justice also entails risking one's life in the process nevertheless despite these setbacks and challenges we can glimpse in the region a context where a character have tools many acquired during the multicultural period with which they will continue to foster

social political and economic change and to bring up long-term forms of resistance that will endure this resistant effort we carry on because they don't they do not depend on the growth empty promises or false rights of multiculturalism but already they are projects for a different kind of country one where life in all his forms together with human dignity can prevail thank you so much thank you very much irma luciani and mariana for presenting your work and your analysis of where we are and whe

re we have been in terms of black and indigenous rights and resistance in mexico i mean mexico brazil and guatemala we have a number of questions um and so i'm going to begin asking those um one question that we got um for you mariana with how is the investment and expansion from luis sanchez lopez is how is the investment and expansion of the mexican repressive apparatus linked to what some scholars have referred to as the growing authoritarianism in the united story authoritarian turn in the u

nited states some roxanna courier also asked to know more about what you mean by reloaded mestiza and how indigenous and black communities are portrayed in that narrative for luciani i'm just going to go through and read the questions we have and then you all can answer how do you see luciani the internal differences and challenges for organization within the black women's movements themselves for example during the preparation of the black women's march and between photo national and i mene but

also the more subtle differences in vocabularies and strategies we see among different generations of black women activists in brazil in your opinion what is the role of race and gender violence and the current political backlash in brazil that's a question from julia abdullah and another question for luciani is how do you keep well this is a broader question about challenges for black and indigenous women how do you keep the movements active in the black women's groups when they're being murde

red why is there no solidarity with the other groups allyships that's from sonja brooks and another question for maniana is if your research captures attempts at solidarity within the different populations that historically complies the snt for example it has a broad membership um where class in mexican society work class characterized by the low status of the teaching profession and race have intersected in meaningful ways how are these different groups mobilized in relation to the marginalizin

g discourses and practices described and in terms of the bureaucratic reconfiguration of the teaching profession in mexico um how do you understand this in relation to the marginalization of the snf members um and this has to do for example um the increasing qualifications for the teaching profession from normal list and casio how does the enhanced status of the profession play out and by a disinvestment of the state that's from laura lopez sanders my colleague in sociology here at brown and i h

ave a question from irma from tata who is also um involved in helping us um bring this value together tata saryapan revenge how does multiculturalism deepen existing community divisions in guatemala and um a question that i think um for everyone from maylie blackwell um that the asking how if you can all speak to how the rise of gendered violence is tied to racialized state repression so i'm gonna that's that's a lot on the table for you to answer so um uh luciani if you're ready do you wanna go

ahead yes thank you thank you for the questions so first i would like to give some names that i forgot uh while i was presenting first uh i showed you a picture from the imanda da boa mochi beaumont sisterhood a group of elderly women women in recon the bahia and also i forgot uh the name of claudia fehera silva the woman who were murdered uh in in rio's favela in in a rios favela uh i got lost here between two screens and two programs and chat and sorry for that okay so to answer the questions

first i would like to highlight another uh point that is informative to answer the question the first is through the brazilian constitution of 1988 all people in brazil people from the different races uh got their rights secured okay but it didn't mean that uh we would assess this right so the black woman's uh struggles throughout this year was to uh to consolidate these rights secured in the brazilian constitution okay so while mobilizing through the uh through the march that happened happened

in 1915 we could see the uh diversity and the the combination of various groups uh women's groups uh organized through uh ngos forums collectives organizing the march so the to answer the question about the internal difficulties among women and specifically among the imab and foreign one thing that was very important during this mobilization is the call that the march is uh belongs to everyone to every woman so there was a strategy of not having one specifically ngo or one specific public figur

e representing the march so in terms of research and positionality it was a struggle for for me and and and jeremiah also who was who was part of the research to uh to create our positionality during that so i was asked several times so is this research for for creola who who will publish this so whose name is going to be there no because there was distinction about uh who will create the political intellectual material about the march so that's why we position ourselves as activists and and and

scholars working together along with the women in order to produce this material uh with them okay and not speaking uh for them uh so yeah so we could see tensions but this uh uh collective uh will to um to spread the knowledge and the the outcomes to everyone uh so how do you keep the group motivated while someone has been killed well black people has been killed since you know the beginning of this african diaspora so um and also we can see our resistance throughout the years so we are we're

formed as political subject as resisting to massive violence uh and towards the black body and specifically towards the black woman's body um so it is important to us to not um so it's very important in this context our motivation we motivate looking through the through looking to the uh other generations and the struggles uh black women face in the past and also trying to protect the next generations okay so we see ourselves in this role of protecting the next generation and being enlightened b

y the previous one thank you mariana do you want to answer this yes i can answer next um there's a lot of questions thank you very much and i don't think we're going to have time to cover them very thoroughly but let's see i'm going to try to answer them by grouping them a bit together in terms of the messi sake reloaded i i would i would just um the current administration i would invite anyone who's interested to see a mural of diego rivera right so you can look say the one of parque la mera an

d put that next to the image of the inauguration the taking of power of manuel andres the the day that he took the presidency in in the socal from the main plaza so it was him and his wife and and then in the background um different representatives and of indigenous peoples and and for the first time and i must say that's important afro-mexican populations but they were all in the background while they're in the center as the president that that's surrounded by by the representatives of the root

s of the history of the foundation of mexico so i i take those images and you and it looks very similar like the diego rivera paintings which is sort of what it minimizes um the misty sake ideal in the post-revolutionary period so that just in terms of representation but in terms of very concrete things there is things that have mobilized in terms of there's um there's uh afro-mexican populations which is the the term that has been decided to be used for black communities primarily ingredients t

hey're now recognizing the constitution so i think that's important um they're supposed to be a reformulation of constitutional reforms and indigenous collective rights um but what we're seeing but that is insufficient because what we're seeing is that indigenous um indigenous leadership indigenous representation and certain indigenous rights are being refolded into a state project but there's not a questioning of what that project is made of right so so what you see on the other hand is why whi

le there's this um discursive play of of recognition um there's a uh the the the policies that continue to gender indigenous and black peoples in mexico irrelevant for the state or or as part of this eliminatory principle of the state if you're to think of colonialism that is is is being um in place during the pandemic one of the essential industries or economics is mining so that was never stopped during the pandemic right while the the current administration did revoke the educational reform i

t refused to revoke other reforms that are central the mining law the water law hydrocarbon laws all of those that have devastating environmental and social and cultural impacts as irma alicia pointed out in her presentation for for indigenous and afro-mexican communities so that goes and the mega development projects go so the three yeah this um mega development project that will have the a tourist train that will go through most of the mayan region goes even with through a false consultation t

hat was so false and in its inability to recognize or to respect the terms of consultation as established in international law um it was refuted and by the the u.n and lopez obrador refused to to recognize that the u.n was saying this consultation was not is not correct so that's just sort of the terms and then and then i think in and and this is getting at another question um the way that i mean after colombia according to human rights defenders after colombia mexican mexico has the highest lev

el of of environmental human rights defenders that have been assassinated in the past years in in latin america right and most of those are indigenous and in some cases are afro-mexicans as well so so you need to see the way that this repression is playing itself out on the ground of those that are that are struggling against these extractivist policies and what are the real impact in the people's lives in terms of this authoritarian turn uh i would i just i have a question that i don't have an

answer to but i'm going to answer the question by throwing it back in terms of another question is uh the what is it about the current moment that left of center presidents or or people authorities and power are are exacerbating and are demonstrating the same level of intolerance of extreme right so i think the way that that can be reflected is the way say the new york times has been covering the way the bolsonaro trump and lopez labrador have responded i think that there's a microphone that's u

m have responded to the pandemic in very similar sorts of ways right a negation that there's a problem uh and just a stubbornness if we're going to move forward with my predescribed plans regardless of whether they're viable in this moment or not and of eliminating the types of racialized vulnerabilities that a large section of the populations are are are are living and as a consequence dying from so i would and i think that that's just a question to reflect on um and then i think i'm i'm out of

time to think of the but i do think that uh what i wanted to to highlight is that there's this um i think the anti-police violence and and uh anti-white supremacy mobilizations in the united states have and have been very contagious on this side of the border so there's there's a new discussions about racism and police brutality that has been largely silenced or have been in very low level uh denunci denunciations in the past decade so i think that that's something that um to to pay attention t

o and then i think the answer of the la cente is a lot of there's a lot to say there but i don't think i have enough time i in but i do um but then in terms of uh maylie's question on the rise of gendered violence it's tied to state repression i think that the the what we've been seeing in the past years in terms of the levels of feminist side and the forced disappearance forced disappearance being mainly though not exclusively focused on youth males and it's differential the forced disappearanc

e for women usually has to do with human trafficking and and youth males um something for other reasons um but i think that there's a gendered analysis would would have us be focusing on what's the what's the production of the disposability of racialized masculinities happening as part of this machinery and in what ways does that then tie in back to the effects that it has of the women of the family members of those disappeared and in what ways is this disposability of racialized masculinity um

generate a type of compensation on the part of those males that sometimes gets enacted through a retrenchment of domestic violence and other forms of violence on their women counterparts so i think that that's uh and the relationship between the two i think is something that we need to really put a lot of attention to thank you great thank you both you want to jump in and okay um about the question thank you for the question about the multiculturalism and the division in the in the communities i

will give you some of the examples of this division and how this division works for example the communities are divided with the introduction of the mega projects in the communities the companies when they arrive to the communities they give jobs to some members of the communities with very very low wages but as the communities are living in poverty they ended up defending the compounds so this is this is one example another example is the government the national government the president or the

ministers some position to some indigenous leaders women and men indigenous from different communities where they don't have much responsibilities and they ended up defending the neo-liberal governments and in india when they do this they are against their own communities in other words the multiculturalists uses uses the indigenous people women and men only for the fourth other example is the social programs the government in guatemala has a lot of social programs for for especially for indige

nous people for women for children for communities so the government use these social programs for in order to divide the communities the people that that are with the government they receive these social problems and the people that confront always pick up against the government they don't receive the social problems so this is another um problem and another division is provoked another division inside the communities inside also inside the families and the last example that i will share with y

ou is uh the survivor of the estradiol of the survivor of the armed conflict they they they have a very long uh struggle for for justice in guatemala but these the estates use the same institution that are in the communities in order to sabotage the survivors so this is another form that the division and we can find many many different uh examples and forms i think the the government in countries like guatemala where the majority of the population is indigenous they have more elements to divide

the communities because the majority of those communities live under poverty or extreme poverty and the majority need the jobs the majority live in in very rural communities and depends on the on the government in in different ways and and also in very important areas for example health for example education for example drugs so this is this is one of the example that i can share with you thank you everyone thank you to all of our panelists this book has been a labor of love and we look forward

to seeing you at the second panel this afternoon at um at 2 pm eastern time thank you luciani mariana for sharing your research with us thank you juliet thank you mariana luciani thank you irma nice to see you you