Resistance and Activism

Presentation Location

VSU University Center, Magnolia Room 1

Document Type

Event

Start Date

11-3-2023 11:30 AM

End Date

11-3-2023 1:00 PM

Description

Resistance and Activism (Marcos Mendoza, Session Chair)

  • Marcos Mendoza. (University of Mississippi) Liberation Shrines: Narco-Power, Mundane Aesthetics, and Territorial Reclamation in Mexico.
    The scholarship on narco-aesthetics has largely focused on political messaging between criminal groups (narco-mantas, propaganda videos, and public violence), culture industry products related to organized crime (films, music, television), consumer lifestyles that draw upon narco-styling, and tourism venues selling proximity to narco-spectacle. What has rarely received close attention is how populations have developed their own everyday aesthetic responses to organized crime and the drug trade that highlight the territorial politics of reclamation. Based on ethnographic research in western Mexico, this study contributes to understanding the mundane aesthetics of rural communities affected by narco-power and how they work to define the boundaries of political community, memorize popular struggle, reclaim territory for civil life, and envision liberation from widespread criminality.
  • Mandy Muise. (Davidson College) Education in the New Latino South: Activism in (Post)Pandemic Charlotte.
    This paper examines how the work of the Latin American Education Committee, a grassroots activist organization in Charlotte, North Carolina, has encouraged and strengthened agency and activism within the Charlotte Mecklenburg School System (CMS) and in the broader the Latin@ community of Charlotte. I take an engaged, activist approach to ethnography as a means of analyzing my collaboration with educators in the Committee, evaluating the Committee’s challenges to xenophobic rhetoric directed toward newcomer Latin@ students along with the group’s role in providing external resources to individuals within CMS. I argue that the work of the Committee is most impactful to student experiences when it challenges prevalent discourse around the Latin@ educational achievement gap, identifying structural inequities, rather than cultural deficit, as the origin of achievement gaps between Latin@ students and their white counterparts in Charlotte. By analyzing the Committee’s work, this project pays homage to the often-unrecognized work of Latin@ activist-educators in Charlotte, individuals who have shaped educational policy and fought for equity throughout CMS from within spaces that have historically excluded their voices. Ultimately, this ethnographic work consolidates and contextualizes the Committee’s work in an effort to strengthen the group’s impact as its members continue to advocate for equitable educational policy reform. Key Words: Engaged Anthropology; Grassroots Activism; New Latino South; Latinx Education; Educational Policy
  • Matthews C. Samson. (Matt) (Davidson College) Maya Identity, Peruvian Protests, and Indigenous Responses to Social and Environmental Injustice in Latin America.
    This paper is an exercise in reflexive ethnography considering how Maya ethnic identity in Mexico and political protests in Peru emphasize issues of extractivist development and the desire to affirm cultural rights in Latin America. It begins in Mesoamerica with the so-called Maya train megaproject in Mexico, a project promoted as a way of harnessing cultural tourism for economic development in the southeastern part of the country. Interviews with a Maya activist foreground resistance to what this activist refers to as the “no-Maya train”—and to government agendas that exclude Indigenous peoples in their conceptualization and execution. The analysis turns to the recent political and social conflict in Peru where an elected president was deposed for trying to close the national congress and the newly installed president has declared a state of emergency that has resulted in the deaths of several dozen protesters. The social concerns of rural and Indigenous populations are accentuated when protesters challenge the legitimacy of the political system and reject the current congress with the demand “Que se vayan todos!” (“That they all go!”). Keywords: Peru, Mesoamerica, no-Maya train, extractivism, cultural rights
  • Cheyenne Bennett. (New South Associates) Liberated Spaces: Accumulation by Dispossession in Tellico.
    Drawing upon the notion of accumulation by dispossession (ABD), this paper aims to describe and analyze how the history of displacement and migration in the Little Tennessee River Valley is associated with the creation and accumulation of different forms of capital. ABD is the process by which private or government entities ‘liberate’ spaces through the dispossession of people from their land. State entities transform these liberated spaces to facilitate new methods of accumulating capital. This paper investigates the various processes of ABD the Tellico landscape has experienced to understand the current power dynamics between the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), Tellico Village, and those displaced by the Tellico Dam. I argue that the past and contemporary processes of capitalist expansion in the Tellico Valley have caused the valley to become a palimpsest upon which different visions of capitalist progress have been layered.

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Mar 11th, 11:30 AM Mar 11th, 1:00 PM

Resistance and Activism

VSU University Center, Magnolia Room 1

Resistance and Activism (Marcos Mendoza, Session Chair)

  • Marcos Mendoza. (University of Mississippi) Liberation Shrines: Narco-Power, Mundane Aesthetics, and Territorial Reclamation in Mexico.
    The scholarship on narco-aesthetics has largely focused on political messaging between criminal groups (narco-mantas, propaganda videos, and public violence), culture industry products related to organized crime (films, music, television), consumer lifestyles that draw upon narco-styling, and tourism venues selling proximity to narco-spectacle. What has rarely received close attention is how populations have developed their own everyday aesthetic responses to organized crime and the drug trade that highlight the territorial politics of reclamation. Based on ethnographic research in western Mexico, this study contributes to understanding the mundane aesthetics of rural communities affected by narco-power and how they work to define the boundaries of political community, memorize popular struggle, reclaim territory for civil life, and envision liberation from widespread criminality.
  • Mandy Muise. (Davidson College) Education in the New Latino South: Activism in (Post)Pandemic Charlotte.
    This paper examines how the work of the Latin American Education Committee, a grassroots activist organization in Charlotte, North Carolina, has encouraged and strengthened agency and activism within the Charlotte Mecklenburg School System (CMS) and in the broader the Latin@ community of Charlotte. I take an engaged, activist approach to ethnography as a means of analyzing my collaboration with educators in the Committee, evaluating the Committee’s challenges to xenophobic rhetoric directed toward newcomer Latin@ students along with the group’s role in providing external resources to individuals within CMS. I argue that the work of the Committee is most impactful to student experiences when it challenges prevalent discourse around the Latin@ educational achievement gap, identifying structural inequities, rather than cultural deficit, as the origin of achievement gaps between Latin@ students and their white counterparts in Charlotte. By analyzing the Committee’s work, this project pays homage to the often-unrecognized work of Latin@ activist-educators in Charlotte, individuals who have shaped educational policy and fought for equity throughout CMS from within spaces that have historically excluded their voices. Ultimately, this ethnographic work consolidates and contextualizes the Committee’s work in an effort to strengthen the group’s impact as its members continue to advocate for equitable educational policy reform. Key Words: Engaged Anthropology; Grassroots Activism; New Latino South; Latinx Education; Educational Policy
  • Matthews C. Samson. (Matt) (Davidson College) Maya Identity, Peruvian Protests, and Indigenous Responses to Social and Environmental Injustice in Latin America.
    This paper is an exercise in reflexive ethnography considering how Maya ethnic identity in Mexico and political protests in Peru emphasize issues of extractivist development and the desire to affirm cultural rights in Latin America. It begins in Mesoamerica with the so-called Maya train megaproject in Mexico, a project promoted as a way of harnessing cultural tourism for economic development in the southeastern part of the country. Interviews with a Maya activist foreground resistance to what this activist refers to as the “no-Maya train”—and to government agendas that exclude Indigenous peoples in their conceptualization and execution. The analysis turns to the recent political and social conflict in Peru where an elected president was deposed for trying to close the national congress and the newly installed president has declared a state of emergency that has resulted in the deaths of several dozen protesters. The social concerns of rural and Indigenous populations are accentuated when protesters challenge the legitimacy of the political system and reject the current congress with the demand “Que se vayan todos!” (“That they all go!”). Keywords: Peru, Mesoamerica, no-Maya train, extractivism, cultural rights
  • Cheyenne Bennett. (New South Associates) Liberated Spaces: Accumulation by Dispossession in Tellico.
    Drawing upon the notion of accumulation by dispossession (ABD), this paper aims to describe and analyze how the history of displacement and migration in the Little Tennessee River Valley is associated with the creation and accumulation of different forms of capital. ABD is the process by which private or government entities ‘liberate’ spaces through the dispossession of people from their land. State entities transform these liberated spaces to facilitate new methods of accumulating capital. This paper investigates the various processes of ABD the Tellico landscape has experienced to understand the current power dynamics between the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), Tellico Village, and those displaced by the Tellico Dam. I argue that the past and contemporary processes of capitalist expansion in the Tellico Valley have caused the valley to become a palimpsest upon which different visions of capitalist progress have been layered.