Author: Rojo Robles

Asynchronous Assignment

Instructions:

1. Watch the documentary The Uprising of Dignity

2. Pick ONE of the following options and respond in the comment section down below. The deadline is 3/30 before the class. (200-word minimum)

OPTION ONE

Pick ONE of the topics down below and discuss:

How do the Zapatistas create alternative practices to improve the living conditions and sovereignty of the indigenous people in Chiapas? Which of the approaches and ideas interested you the most and why? Do you think these ideas and models could help marginalized communities in the U.S.?

Topics:

.respect for the land and ecological consciousness

.community self-rule structure

.healthcare

.education

.agriculture

.collective work

.women’s rights

.global solidarity network

OPTION TWO

Respectfully interact with ONE of your classmates’ responses. Do you agree with their arguments and interpretations? Do you disagree? What other observations about The Uprising of Dignity do you want to bring into the discussion?

I. Entry Engagement

Propose a question on “Maroon Logics” for Pedro Lebrón Ortiz. (Re: Presentation: “An Indestructible Life: Reflections on Marronage”)

I. Review

In five groups, discuss the following key points from our sources and class discussions.

Euro Modernity: Enter the West

.Conquest (war against the natives) and Imperialism (turning lands into territories) (Lenape/ Zavala Guillén)

.Indigenous genocide and displacement (Lenape)

.Cultural erasure

.Ecological catastrophe

.How to return/regenerate cohabitate in ancestral lands? How to recuperate and center on ancestral knowledge and ways of being in the present? (Lenape/Gumbs)

The Slave Trade

.Labor shortage (mining and agriculture) due to indigenous genocide and displacement.

. European powers decide to capture Africans to supply a forced workforce in the Americas. Race as a modern phenomenon/construct emerges (Mbembe)

.Indigenous and African people become the other to whiteness (Mbembe/ Girmay)

.Slavery changes from an institution based mainly on the subjugation of prisoners to the subjugation of racialized people. (Mbembe)

The Subject of Race

.The noun Black is conceived of through two distinct perspectives/discourses:

(1) less than human (those who are not us [European men]); objects; brute workforce; those without culture, language, civilization, beauty; those we don’t need to document in the official archive. (Mbembe/ Zavala Guillén/ Lebrón Ortiz)

(2)Africans and Afro-descendants in cultural and socio-political solidarity. How to return/regenerate ancestral cultures/languages/ecosystems? How to recuperate and center on ancestral knowledge and ways of being in the present? (Mbembe/ Lebrón Ortiz/ Diegues and Gil/ Girmay/ Brown)

Black Resistance and Rebellion

.Marronage: self-emancipation; fleeing from the plantation; waging war on colonial authorities or creating remote settlements without confrontation (Zavala Guillén/ Lebrón Ortiz/ Diegues and Gil/ Brown/ Girmay)

.Analectical marronage:  It is an affirmation of the humanity, knowledge, and value of African people. Made manifest in the exteriority of Euromodernity. (Lebrón Ortiz/ Diegues and Gil/ Girmay)

.Communities of in-betweenness: hybrid cultural spaces (Black, indigenous, marginalized/radical criollos); negotiations with colonial authorities (freedom and political power at the price of being co-opted) (Zavala Guillén/ Diegues and Gil)

The Past is the Present is the Future

Anti-blackness and nationhood: the possibilities of national belonging are fractured because of racism (micro and macro aggressions), state-sanctioned violence, and socio-cultural erasure (Girmay/ Brown)

*the issue is NOT the color of anybody’s skin but race as a structure of power (Mbembe/Girmay)

Learning from Maroon Communities: survival skills, creativity, resourcefulness, drive towards freedom and worlds otherwise, cut the dependency on the state and coloniality at large (Lebrón Ortiz/ Girmay/  Brown)

Maroon communities and ecological thought/practices:  relating not just between humans but between all living organisms. Recognizing the duty to take care of life, the whole of life on the planet. (Lebrón Ortiz/ Girmay)

III. Midterm Workshop: In Pairs

Instructions:

1. Think about these questions:

What project are you inclined to do?

What question are you planning to choose?

Where are you at in the process? What steps do you need to take to complete the project?

2. Share your plans with a partner

3. Report on the plans you heard.

Entry Question

What topics from the sources we have discussed during the first half of the semester would you like to see included in the midterm? Propose a preliminary question

Maroon Logics as Ecological Thought- Pedro Lebrón Ortiz 

[Maroon communities] break down notions of individualism, the foundational fallacy of Euromodernity, in the sense that maroon logics are guided by the primacy of the community for the sake of survival. (11)

Poet Aracelis Girmay is of Eritrean, African American, and Puerto Rican heritage. Her poems trace the connections of transformation and loss across cities and bodies. Her poetry collections include Teeth (2007), Kingdom Animalia (2011), and The Black Maria (2016).

In the essay “From Woe to Wonder,” Girmay reflects on how to equip her Black children to fight for racial justice and “dreaming in the long, constant work of our trying to get free.” She equates the work of poets with that of maroons. In these ancestors who flew the euromodern institution of slavery (Lebrón Ortiz), she finds inspiration. She wants her and other Black children to learn that “there were people who, even while under the most unimaginable duress, had the mind to find and keep refuge.”

Girmay is also interested in educating her children on the “subjects of race” (Mbembe) so that when they are told a Black man was killed because of his skin color. He is able to say something like, “Well, actually, there is an idea called Whiteness. Some people think that they are better and deserve more of everything because they are White and their ancestors are from Europe. Their ancestors hurt people and hurt the land to get the power that they gave to their children and that their children keep keeping, and keep using to hurt, even today.” Just like we have seen so far, Girmay understands race not as biology but as a societal construction that allows hierarchies of power and privileges.

Class Presentation(s):

Ortiz,Jacquelyn

Pacheco,Emily Anais

Discussion Activity

In groups or individually pick ONE of the following quotes and “translate” it into your own words. Trace a connection with one of the previous readings.

1. When a White person with a White child points to my child, even lovingly, as an example of a Black life who matters, I would also like that person to teach their White child about White life and history, and about how they are going to have to work really hard to make sure that they are not taking up more air, more space, more sidewalk because they have been taught wrongly that the world is more theirs.

2. This year we go to the marsh. It is cold and so windy that almost no one else is out there, so we take off our masks and turn our backs to the wind. What was here before us? Who was here? What is here still though we maybe cannot see it? We are teaching the children to ask. This is Lenni Lenape land. There was a wilderness once. When the Dutch arrived in the seventeenth century, they began their colonial project by waging war with the land and its people. The tide is high, and we do not see the crabs or clams or snails, but we know that they are there.

3. Whenever it is that my partner and I begin to teach our children about the brutality, by design, of this moment and this country, the continuum of catastrophe we are alive and loving and breathing in, I know now that a vital part of what we teach them must have to do with the beauty and power of the imaginative strategies of Black people everywhere. Maroons planting cassava and sweet potato, easily hidden, growing secret in the ground…The mind that attempts, and attempts again, to find a way out of no way.

Asynchronous Assignment

Instructions:

1. Read the essay “From Woe to Wonder” by Aracelis Girmay. Pay special attention to the second half of the text.

2. Pick ONE of the following prompts and respond in the comment section down below. The deadline is 3/9 before the class. 200-word minimum.

OPTION ONE

Reflecting and responding to racially motivated crimes in the US, Girmay suggests learning about “an idea called whiteness.” What is Girmay’s logic?

OPTION TWO

As part of an education that emphasizes social and racial justice, Girmay wants her children to learn about the invisibilized indigenous world in NYC and its ecosystems. Explain.

OPTION THREE

Girmay says that she considers that “a vital part of what we teach [children] must have to do with the beauty and power of the imaginative strategies of Black people everywhere.” How she incorporates maroons into this idea.

OPTION FOUR

Respectfully interact with ONE of your classmates’ responses. Do you agree with their arguments and interpretations? Do you disagree? What other observations about “From Woe to Wonder” do you want to bring into the discussion?

Historical Context

What are your takeaways?

What connections do you notice with previous sources?

Keywords

Euromodernity- the multiples structures (political; social; racial; legal; religious; economical; philosophical; educational; discursive, etc.) established in Europe, especially after 1492, and brought to the Americas via conquest (war) and colonialism.

Marronage-consists in flight from the plantation, in many cases, without any confrontation, and the establishment of a new society that was a product of the fugitives’ syncretic social and political imaginary. But it also refers to flight from oppressive institutions through permanent institutional reconfiguration (revolutions) as well as to an existential state of Being outside of colonial estrauctures (coloniality.) (2)

Sociogenic Marronage-It operates within Euromodernity, seeking to excise remnants of coloniality through permanent institutional change. It refers to permanent institutional change. It seeks a material restructuring through a reconfiguration of the foundations of the Euromodern world (for example the Haitian Revolution). (2,3,8)

Analectical Marronage- denotes resistance to the coloniality of being. The coloniality of being refers to the degradation of the racialized/colonized Other to the realm of the sub-human. It is an affirmation of the humanity, knowledge, and value of African people. Made manifest in the exteriority of Euromodernity. (2-3)

Group Question

Asynchronous Assignment

Instructions:

1. Watch the film Quilombo (Carlos Diegues, 1984) through Baruch’s Library or Amazon .

2. Read the essay “Maroon Logics as Flight from the Euromodern” by Pedro Lebrón Ortiz.

3. Pick ONE of the following prompts and respond in the comment section down below. The deadline is 3/2 before the class. 200-word minimum.

OPTION ONE

OPTION TWO

Lebrón Ortiz defines marronage as “a distinct manner of embodying freedom inasmuch as it was a struggle for life and an affirmation of a way of life within the material limits of the sociopolitical context of the enslaved. Enslaved subjects of African descent collaborated and mixed in with indigenous subjects in solidarity, which resulted in the development of new practices and institutions. This combining of cultural elements was caused by the sociopolitical context in which both groups, with all their complexity and diversity, faced annihilation.” (Page 3)

How does the film Quilombo illustrate this definition? Refer to specific scenes, songs, choreographies, or ideas presented by the film.

OPTION THREE

OPTION FOUR

Respectfully interact with ONE of your classmates’ responses. Do you agree with their arguments and interpretations? Do you disagree? What other observations about Quilombo and/or “Maroon Logics as Flight from the Euromodern” do you want to bring into the discussion?

Entry Questions

What historical and cultural perspectives from the video stood out?

The people of San Basilio de Palenque understand their history as part of an ongoing global struggle. Why?

San Basilio de Palenque as a case study of syncretism, geographical and political negotiation

Class Presentation (s)

Cruz,Valerie L

Fernandez,Bryan

Keywords

Territory: an appropriated space for achieving political purposes. Such navigation recalls notions that embrace opposition and fissure between disparate elements without suppressing or reconciling them. (Page 16)

Asynchronous Assignment

Instructions:

1. Read the essay “Afro-Latin American Geographies of In-betweenness: Colonial Marronage in Colombia” by Ana Laura Zavala Guillen. Pay special attention to pages 18-22.

2. Pick ONE of the following prompts and respond in the comment section down below. The deadline is 2/23 before the class. 200-word minimum.

OPTION ONE

Discuss the negotiations and complex alliances between maroon communities in Colombia and the Catholic Church.

OPTION TWO

Why does the author, Zavala Guillen argue that the conversion (co-optation) of Palenques from clandestine spaces to a poblazion (a town) was beneficial to some formerly enslaved people but also to the Spanish colonial authorities? How does the incorporation of palenques by colonial powers obstructed Black mobilization?

OPTION THREE

What elements of defiance continued after the transition from Palenques to towns according to the author Zavala Guillen?

OPTION FOUR

Respectfully interact with ONE of your classmates’ responses. Do you agree with their arguments and interpretations? Do you disagree? What other observations about “Afro-Latin American Geographies of In-betweenness” do you want to bring into the discussion?

Entry Question

Ariana Brown starts her section on Gaspar Yanga by quoting Afro-Canadian poet, essayist, and documentarian Dionne Brand:

“Black Experience in any modern city or town in the Americas is a haunting. One enters a room and history follows; one enters a room and history precedes. History is already seated in the chair in the empty room when one arrives. Where one stands in a society seems always related to this experience.”

What do you understand by this quote? and How it helps to illuminate Ariana Brown’s intentions with this section?

Introduction

Published in 2021, We Are Owed, is the debut poetry collection of Ariana Brown. Brown is a Black-Mexican-American poet-performer and educator. Many of the poems in this collection are about the author’s childhood in Texas and a trip to Mexico as an adult. This collection interrogates accepted origin stories of Mexican identity and asks readers to reject U.S., Chicano, and Mexican nationalism and to confront anti-Black erasure and empire-building and discourses. Brown places her experiences of Blackness in conversation with the histories of formerly enslaved Africans in both Texas and Mexico. These figures serve as protective and guiding forces in particular Yanga, a maroon that founded the first Black liberated town of the Americas

Mexicanidad, just like most of the national identities in Latin America, has been defined as a mestizaje (mixed race-ness/ mixed culture) in which the African heritage and blackness are diluted. Through these discourses la hispanidad is centered and indigeneity is seen as a fixed folk culture of the past. Facing this, Brown decides to center instead of the figure of Gaspar Yanga, a maroon, or self-emancipated African. The poet sees Yanga as the true origin of her Afro Mexican American identity. She doesn’t identify with brownness but with blackness.

Minutes 11:00-16:25

Class Presentation (s)

Aucapina,Daysi O

Cepeda,Liliana

Analysis

Read the statement and looks for evidence quotes in the poems that would support these claims:

.The poems in this section of We Are Owed establish a conversation with Yanga inserting him into personal memories.

.For Brown, studying abroad in Mexico, her ancestral homeland seems precisely haunting as she needs to interact with being fetishized as a Black woman and anti-blackness in the form of being separated or erased from the historical constructions of Mexicanidad.

.The experiences of maroons, these self-emancipated Africans who flew the colonial status quo and regenerated their culture in a new space resonated with the poet as an Afro-descendant haunted by history. 

.The poet wants to recover Yanga’s body and his gestures as a way to trace an origin.

.Although she understands Yanga as a kindred spirit of sorts, the poet is also critical about the historical figure and questions him about his alliances with the Spanish colonial government and how he compromised the lives and liberty of other maroons. However, she finishes on a hopeful note. 

Asynchronous Assignment

Instructions:

1. Watch the following video about Gaspar Yanga

2. Read the selected poems from We are Owed by Ariana Brown

3. Pick ONE of the following prompts and respond in the comment section down below. The deadline is 2/16 before the class. 200-word minimum.

OPTION ONE

Analyze the juxtaposed texts in the poem “Field Notes.” Why do you think the poet intercalates her experiences as a Black Mexican-American in Mexico and the biographical notes on Yanga? How do the experiences of maroons (self-emancipated Africans who flew the colonial status quo) resonate with the poet? Why the poet ends the text by saying that she would look for Yanga everywhere? (Pages 68-70)

OPTION TWO

By referring to Dionne Brand’s quote at the beginning of the Yanga section (Page 62), discuss the notion of the Black experience as “a haunting” in  Brown’s poems. Refer to specific poems and/or lines.

OPTION THREE

Elaborate on how the poet humanizes Yanga in various poems and inserts him into personal memories. What do you believe is the intention behind this poetic approach to the historical figure?

OPTION FOUR

Respectfully interact with ONE of your classmates’ responses. Do you agree with their arguments and interpretations? Do you disagree? What other observations about Ariana Brown’s Yanga poems do you want to bring into the discussion?