2022 JLAG Lecture: Black women organizing against genocide and fascism, and the 2022 presidential elections in Brazil
Type: Virtual Panel
Day: 2/26/2022
Start Time: 5:20 PM
End Time: 6:40 PM
Theme: Ethnonationalism and Exclusion Around the World
Sponsor Group(s):
Latin America Specialty Group
, Black Geographies Specialty Group
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Organizer(s):
Andrea Marston
, Priscilla Pinto Ferreira
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Chairs(s):
Gabriela Valdivia, UNC Chapel Hill
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Description:
Latin America has experienced a violent backlash of right-wing conservatism and fascism across the region. Violent anti-Black and anti-indigenous politics and rhetoric have shown up unhampered in every scale of intimate and public life.
In Brazil, in March 2018, a few months after Jair Bolsonaro took power as the president, Brazilians mourned the brutal and cowardly assassination of the leftist, socialist, Black, queer, and favelada city councilwoman of Rio de Janeiro, Marielle Franco.
Despite distress and discredit, Afro-Brazilian women organizing has shown the insurgent power of creative survival and imaginative strategies in everyday lives and institutional politics. For instance, in the last election, all three of Marielle Franco's cabinet assistants- Black women- got elected as city council women in Rio de Janeiro, responding to the entrenchment of racial violence.
In the 2022 presidential election in Brazil, we will see the dramatic scenario of a dispute between Lula da Silva and Bolsonaro. If the left is to have any chance of a return to power, it must learn from Black women insights and analysis based on their everyday struggles against fascism.
In the plenary of the JLAG, feminist Afro-Brazilian activist-geographers show the short documentary titled Mar de Elas (Ocean of them-Black women) about the public mourning around the assassination of Marielle Franco. They will also show some clips of the film Sementes (Seeds) about the election of Black women who represented a collective claim to multiple the seeds of Marielle Franco's legacy. Following the film screening, they will reflect on Black feminist radicalism prompted by Black women's creative writing excerpts. The speakers will discuss the different scales and scope of Black women organizing and their grassroots spatial struggles and reflect on the interests and role of Black women in the presidential elections in Brazil 2022. Finally, they will invite the audience to think of strategies of hemispheric solidarity against fascism and for life-affirming struggles across Améfrica Ladina (Gonzalez, 1981).
Speakers:
Dr. Priscilla Ferreira is an Assistant Professor in Geography and Latinx and Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. She has been organizing with communities of color inside and outside the university over the past twenty years. Her current research engages collaborative work with Black women residents in majority-Black geographies in Rio de Janeiro to map Black community economies and understand how they enact grassroots urban planning and community-driven development initiatives.
Dr. Geny Guimarães holds a PhD in Geography at Universidade Federal da Bahia. Dr. Guimarães teaches Geography at Colégio Técnico da Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ). She coordinates the Geography Lab and the Black Geography Research Group in the same institution. She has been teaching geography since 1998. Her work is informed by Black creative writing, and over the past 15 years, she has published on Black literature, Black heritage, ethnic-racial relations, Black and anti-racist methods, and methodologies in Geography. Since 2018, she has been part of the Brazilian Black Geographers Network.
Ana Beatriz da Silva is a long-time activist in the Black women's movement in Brazil. She is a doctoral student in Geography at the Fluminense Federal University (POSGEO-UFF) and holds a master's in education at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO). Da Silva is a researcher at the Center for Studies on Territory, Collective Actions and Justice-NETAJ/UFF. She is currently the coordinator of the grassroots research initiative at the renown Afro-Brazilian women organization-Coisa de Mulher/Casa das Pretas in Rio de Janeiro. She is also a researcher at Uniperiferias. Her work is at the intersection of Black Geography, Black feminist social movements, decolonial Geography and the teaching of Geography in peripheries.
Presentation(s), if applicable
Non-Presenting Participants Agenda
Role | Participant |
Introduction | Gabriela Valdivia |
Introduction | Andrea Marston Rutgers University |
Panelist | Geny Guimarães Colégio Técnico da Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ) |
Panelist | Ana Beatriz da Silva Fluminense Federal University (POSGEO-UFF) |
Discussant | Priscilla Pinto Ferreira Rutgers University |
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2022 JLAG Lecture: Black women organizing against genocide and fascism, and the 2022 presidential elections in Brazil
Description
Virtual Panel
Contact the Primary Organizer
Gabriela Valdivia - valdivia@email.unc.edu