A meditation on Afro-Latinx nationalism: This meditation was prompted by the Acentos call for submission for the special issue: Black and Glorious, Towards Liberation.
What is an Afro-Latinx nationalism?
What does that look like?
Is it inviting Afro-Latinx writers to
celebrate Black liberation? Yet only citing George
FloydBreonnaTaylorandAhmaudArbery as Black lives lost to the police state,
white supremacy and antiblackness? Is that what Afro-Latinidad is? A seeing and
a doing that are incongruent. That don’t go together. That say it wants one thing
but really wants this. This that wants inclusion but doesn’t really want
revolution.
What is an Afro-Latinx nationalism? If it misses TonyMcDadeNinaPopYahiraNesbyBrianna“BB” HillItaliMarloweMuhlaysiaBookerBeeLoveSlaterBaileyReevesPebblesLaDime“Dime”DoeKiki FantroyBubbaWalkerTracy SingleDenaliBerriesStuckeyBrooklynLindseyZoeSpearsChanel ScurlockLayleenPolancoXtravaganza?
What is a call for celebrating global
liberation, global emancipation, if it doesn’t include. If it doesn’t
say.
If it doesn’t hold.
I think
that’s right.
If it doesn’t hold.
If it doesn’t grasp. If it doesn’t
carry or support with one’s own hands.
If it doesn’t embrace.
If it doesn’t hold.
What does it mean to hold George FloydBreonnaTaylorandAhmaudArbery’s names and not TonyMcDadeNinaPopYahiraNesbyBrianna“BB”HillItaliMarloweMuhlaysiaBookerBeeLoveSlaterBaileyReevesPebblesLaDime“Dime”DoeKikiFantroyBubbaWalkerTracySingleDenaliBerriesStuckeyBrooklynLindseyZoeSpearsChanelScurlockLayleenPolancoXtravaganza?
What about Tony McDade? What happened to Tony McDade? Y Dominique “Rem’mie” FellsandRiahMilton?
I guess
they passed today. Three days before this submission was due. You could not
have known about them.
You could
not have known about them.
You could not have known about them?
As children of the Black diaspora, our job is to testify, witness, betray, and undo the imprints the police state, white supremacy, light skin valorization, antiblackness, transphobia, classism, cis-hetero patriarchal nationalism has left on our being. What is an invitation to participate in celebrating Black Liberation, Black Nationalism, that calls for something and states another? What are we demanding? What are we asking for? What kind of freedom and liberation are we seeking? Is it the same? I’m not quite sure. I’m not quite sure. I’m not quite sure.
BIO
Jennifer Uribe (they/she) is a blackqueerdominican poet and eco-artist from Highbridge, the Bronx, New York (Wappinger and Lenape Lands). Jennifer is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles (Tovaangar Lands). Their research is concerned with the living conditions of Black girls who are trans, cis, non-binary, womxn, and femmes across the Black diaspora.
Jennifer can be found on Instagram @jenncerity and on Twitter @jennifromthebx untangling what it looks like, feels like, smells like, to be themself, in this life.
What being Afro-Latinx means to me: To me, Afro-Latinx means to make space. It means consenting to no degree of harm. Surrendering to the Earth, the universe, and learning to hold the particularities and distinctions. It means that there is nothing to prove and everything to gain. Afro-Latinx means taking the time to tend to my garden to plant, to surrender to love, patience, and time. To be unmovable unsilenceable, unshakeable, invincible.
A Black feminist futurity is “that which will have had to happen” for the future to exist (Campt 2017:17). May it live in us who are crafting an equitable future centered in care and accurate and accountable historical redress. May it live in us. May it live in me.
Because de lo diente pa’ fuera no vale na’. Hay que masticar. Hay que masticar. Hay que masticar.
Citation:
Campt, Tina. Listening to Images. Duke University Press. 2017.
Reading and listening list:
Ile. Almadura Album. 2019.
Sharpe, Christina E. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Duke University Press. 2016.
Snorton, C Riley. Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity. Minnesota Press. 2018.
Tometi, Opal. “BLACKTRANSLIVESMATTER.” Instagram, 06/13/20, https://www.instagram.com/p/CBbRCrUJ2UF/.