Ongoing Writing Projects
They All Wear Boots:
Empire, Mercenaries and Colombia’s Antiblack Terror Surplus (article submitted)
Abstract
The assassination of Haitian President Jovenal Moses, on July 7, 2021, revealed an intricate international enterprise, with the participation of mercenaries from at least four countries (the US, Colombia, Haiti and Venezuela). How might we draw connections between enduring violability of Black bodies in Colombia and the geopolitics of empire in Haiti and beyond? In this work I move away from the traditional and all-familiar narratives that portrays Haiti as a “failed state” and its people as bearing some sort of pathology, and instead look at the order of empire and its attending geographies of antiblackness enforced by soldiers, mercenaries and police officers. The article is focused on Colombia's ordinary wars on Black and poor people. Yet, by placing the killing of President Moses in relation to enduring forms of antiblack violence in this South America country, the political work of empire is set in sharp relief. It is argued that in the post/colony, violence is overdetermined by antiblackness as the 'centripetal force of antiblackness' drags other bodies (youth killed in the US war on drugs in Colombia, displaced victims by paramilitary violence in the country's 50+year-long conflict, and victims of mercenaries elsewhere) into the global plantation’s spaces of death. Empire is this transnational political milieu. Policing is the technology of its enforcement. Abolition is the black-centered, all-encompassing, response to it.
Blackscapes (book in preparation)
My current research focuses on geographies of policing and black spatial insurgency in the urban margins of Latin American cities. It builds on my engagement with Brazilian and Colombian activists to engage with the 'urban question' from a black-centered perspective. This is both a Fanonian-based spatial reading of Latin American cities as colonial geographies of state-making and a Lelia Gonzalez's inspired answer to the 'urban question' through her alternative reading of the Americas as polis amefricana. What are the limits and possibilities to decolonize the city? How might we bring the Black city (blackpolis) into existence? More specifically, I am interested in exploring how black life is sustained and lived in the intersections of infrastructural violence, racialized policing practices, and broad urban security dynamics in Colombia and Brazil. The core of his long-term political project, which I name as Blackpolis, is to identify unapologetic forms of (black) ungovernability comprised by mundane outlawed practices - such as gang territorialities, informal housing settlements, bus fare-evasion, drug-dealing, and countless self-help-initiatives - that challenge the security state and that create conditions for livable black life within antiblack urbanities constituted by/in black (social) death.
Concluded / Download inform here
Black Communities’ Responses to the “COVID-19 Crisis” in Brazil, Colombia and Kenya
What are the pre-existing structural conditions that influence how Black communities are impacted by Covid-19? How do Black communities disproportionately affected by Covid-19 respond to the compounded insecurities exacerbated by the pandemic? What pedagogies of everyday resistance have these communities developed to counter the social/racial impact of the virus? How may their local responses inform broader activism, knowledge production and governance in post-pandemic temporalities? These questions anchor our research project, and we will explore them by using Brazil, Kenya and Colombia as case studies. These countries were chosen because they are shaped by pernicious human rights records and income disparities while simultaneously being home to strong activist communities whose engagement allows many to survive the systemic challenges produced by state negligence and violence. Moreover, as countries with large Black populations that are enduring the structural inequalities produced by colonial legacies, centering their experiences will allow us to understand how Covid-19 is impacting Black communities outside of the U.S. and on a global scale (Co-PI with Terrance Wooten, Raquel Luciana de Souza, Angela Muñanga, Amanda Pinheiro and Wangui Kimari).
Concluded
Constructores de Paz: Estrategias de jóvenes y mujeres afrodescendientes para la paz sostenible en la Colombia urbana el pos-acuerdo
Esta investigación-acción tiene como objetivo analizar los factores estructurales de las dinámicas de la violencia racial, juvenil y de género en tres ciudades en Colombia, para identificar respuestas innovadoras en la construcción de territorios de paz y ciudadanía en el contexto urbano del postacuerdo. Buscase reconocer la agencia política y potencializar la participación de jóvenes y mujeres afrodescendientes de los sectores históricamente marginados de Santiago de Cali, Buenaventura y Puerto Tejada, a partir de la construcción de nuevas tecnologías de inclusión social y participación ciudadana. Las preguntas que orientan la investigación son: a) ¿Cómo crear ciudades socialmente inclusivas, racialmente justas y sexualmente seguras? b) ¿Cuál es el papel de las/los jóvenes y las mujeres negras en la construcción de territorios de paz y de oportunidades en el contexto urbano de reconfiguración de disputas territoriales? Y finalmente, c) ¿Cómo desarrollar tecnologías sociales capaces de potencializar la participación juvenil y femenina en la producción y acompañamiento de políticas públicas de reducción de homicidios y de promoción de la igualdad racial y de género en un contexto de postconflicto? (Investigadores: Inge Valencia, Jaime Alves, Enrique Caporali, Alejandra Alzate, Andrea Moreno, Zulma Mosquera).
Bookoutlet:
Constructora y constructores de paz: Qué quieren y que piensan los y las jóvenes de la Colombia urbana del posconflicto [Peacebuilders: Youth Agency in Post-conflict Urban Colombia]. Cali: Editorial Universidad Icesi.
Empire, Mercenaries and Colombia’s Antiblack Terror Surplus (article submitted)
Abstract
The assassination of Haitian President Jovenal Moses, on July 7, 2021, revealed an intricate international enterprise, with the participation of mercenaries from at least four countries (the US, Colombia, Haiti and Venezuela). How might we draw connections between enduring violability of Black bodies in Colombia and the geopolitics of empire in Haiti and beyond? In this work I move away from the traditional and all-familiar narratives that portrays Haiti as a “failed state” and its people as bearing some sort of pathology, and instead look at the order of empire and its attending geographies of antiblackness enforced by soldiers, mercenaries and police officers. The article is focused on Colombia's ordinary wars on Black and poor people. Yet, by placing the killing of President Moses in relation to enduring forms of antiblack violence in this South America country, the political work of empire is set in sharp relief. It is argued that in the post/colony, violence is overdetermined by antiblackness as the 'centripetal force of antiblackness' drags other bodies (youth killed in the US war on drugs in Colombia, displaced victims by paramilitary violence in the country's 50+year-long conflict, and victims of mercenaries elsewhere) into the global plantation’s spaces of death. Empire is this transnational political milieu. Policing is the technology of its enforcement. Abolition is the black-centered, all-encompassing, response to it.
Blackscapes (book in preparation)
My current research focuses on geographies of policing and black spatial insurgency in the urban margins of Latin American cities. It builds on my engagement with Brazilian and Colombian activists to engage with the 'urban question' from a black-centered perspective. This is both a Fanonian-based spatial reading of Latin American cities as colonial geographies of state-making and a Lelia Gonzalez's inspired answer to the 'urban question' through her alternative reading of the Americas as polis amefricana. What are the limits and possibilities to decolonize the city? How might we bring the Black city (blackpolis) into existence? More specifically, I am interested in exploring how black life is sustained and lived in the intersections of infrastructural violence, racialized policing practices, and broad urban security dynamics in Colombia and Brazil. The core of his long-term political project, which I name as Blackpolis, is to identify unapologetic forms of (black) ungovernability comprised by mundane outlawed practices - such as gang territorialities, informal housing settlements, bus fare-evasion, drug-dealing, and countless self-help-initiatives - that challenge the security state and that create conditions for livable black life within antiblack urbanities constituted by/in black (social) death.
Concluded / Download inform here
Black Communities’ Responses to the “COVID-19 Crisis” in Brazil, Colombia and Kenya
What are the pre-existing structural conditions that influence how Black communities are impacted by Covid-19? How do Black communities disproportionately affected by Covid-19 respond to the compounded insecurities exacerbated by the pandemic? What pedagogies of everyday resistance have these communities developed to counter the social/racial impact of the virus? How may their local responses inform broader activism, knowledge production and governance in post-pandemic temporalities? These questions anchor our research project, and we will explore them by using Brazil, Kenya and Colombia as case studies. These countries were chosen because they are shaped by pernicious human rights records and income disparities while simultaneously being home to strong activist communities whose engagement allows many to survive the systemic challenges produced by state negligence and violence. Moreover, as countries with large Black populations that are enduring the structural inequalities produced by colonial legacies, centering their experiences will allow us to understand how Covid-19 is impacting Black communities outside of the U.S. and on a global scale (Co-PI with Terrance Wooten, Raquel Luciana de Souza, Angela Muñanga, Amanda Pinheiro and Wangui Kimari).
Concluded
Constructores de Paz: Estrategias de jóvenes y mujeres afrodescendientes para la paz sostenible en la Colombia urbana el pos-acuerdo
Esta investigación-acción tiene como objetivo analizar los factores estructurales de las dinámicas de la violencia racial, juvenil y de género en tres ciudades en Colombia, para identificar respuestas innovadoras en la construcción de territorios de paz y ciudadanía en el contexto urbano del postacuerdo. Buscase reconocer la agencia política y potencializar la participación de jóvenes y mujeres afrodescendientes de los sectores históricamente marginados de Santiago de Cali, Buenaventura y Puerto Tejada, a partir de la construcción de nuevas tecnologías de inclusión social y participación ciudadana. Las preguntas que orientan la investigación son: a) ¿Cómo crear ciudades socialmente inclusivas, racialmente justas y sexualmente seguras? b) ¿Cuál es el papel de las/los jóvenes y las mujeres negras en la construcción de territorios de paz y de oportunidades en el contexto urbano de reconfiguración de disputas territoriales? Y finalmente, c) ¿Cómo desarrollar tecnologías sociales capaces de potencializar la participación juvenil y femenina en la producción y acompañamiento de políticas públicas de reducción de homicidios y de promoción de la igualdad racial y de género en un contexto de postconflicto? (Investigadores: Inge Valencia, Jaime Alves, Enrique Caporali, Alejandra Alzate, Andrea Moreno, Zulma Mosquera).
Bookoutlet:
Constructora y constructores de paz: Qué quieren y que piensan los y las jóvenes de la Colombia urbana del posconflicto [Peacebuilders: Youth Agency in Post-conflict Urban Colombia]. Cali: Editorial Universidad Icesi.