Panel explores Indigenous voices in Abiayala/Latin America

How Indigenous peoples represent themselves in Abiayala, the region also known as Latin America, will be the topic of a roundtable featuring leading scholars in the field. "Indigenous Voices in Abiayala/Latin America" will be held on April 9 at 4:45 p.m. in room 108, A.D. White House, followed by a reception. The event is free and open to the public.

"Indigenous cultural production offers crucial critiques of and responses to exclusionary mainstream media. Indigenous creators and thinkers have fought to represent themselves on and in their own terms," said Polly Lauer, Klarman postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Romance Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, the event organizer. "This panel's stakes are clear in its name, too - Abiayala is a territorial term in the Guna language used by many Indigenous thinkers to reimagine and reclaim the region otherwise called Latin America."

Roundtable participant Luis E. Cárcamo-Huechante, Ph.D. '01, will discuss his recent book, "Acoustic Colonialism: Acts of Mapuche Interference." The book is a groundbreaking work, said Lauer, that highlights how Mapuche creators have produced multiple expressions in the form of literature, radio, music and more that disrupt ongoing acts of "acoustic colonialism" in the settler-colonial Chilean mediascape.

María de los Ángeles Aguilar Velásquéz, another participant, will focus on her work as a Maya K'iche' historian from Guatemala. She spent nine years as a columnist discussing perspectives on everything from film to law for Guatemala's major opposition newspaper, el Periódico, before the outlet was forcibly silenced in 2023.

Read the full story on the College of Arts and Sciences website.