Season 1
08 Anti-racism in the arts
In the eighth episode, Miriam Álvarez and Alejandra Eguido talk with Mónica about how art can open paths for anti-racist collaborations between Afro and Mapuche women, through theater, memory, and listening.
About the episode
In the eighth episode, Miriam and Alejandra share the process of creating two plays that open a powerful dialogue on how to weave anti-racist collaborations between the Mapuche, the Afro and the artistic. From their careers as stage creators – one Mapuche, the other Afro-Cuban – they share with us how these works were conceived within the framework of the CARLA project (Cultures of Anti-Racism in Latin America), crossing Patagonia, Buenos Aires and the United Kingdom.
We reflect on art as a way to heal what history wanted to erase, and as a political tool that gives shape to pain, memory and possibility. We also talked about structural racism in Argentina, the lack of spaces for Afro and indigenous voices, the role of language, and what it means to sustain collaboration based on listening, care and mutual recognition. Overall, it is an intimate and courageous conversation about how the process can be just as important as the outcome.
Mentioned in this episode:
Cultures of Anti-Racism in Latin America (CARLA)
Teatro en Sepia / Teatro El Katango (Collaboration)
Lullaby for a Child (Canción para Dormir a un Niño) (also known as a Mapuche lullaby or the Song of the Fox) - Beatriz Pichi Malen (Youtube, Spotify)
About the speakers
Miriam Álvarez
Miriam Álvarez is Mapuche, born in the city of Bariloche, in Argentine Patagonia. Miriam is the director of the Mapuche theatre group El Katango, Doctor of Arts with a mention in Theater from the National University of Córdoba (2022). Professor of Arts in Theater at the National University Institute of Art, (ex - IUNA. Buenos Aires) (2003). She is also a Theater Teacher from the Provincial School of Theater of La Plata, Buenos Aires (2000) and at the same School she completed her Acting Training career (1997). She currently works as a university professor and researcher.
Website
Alejandra Eguido
Alejandra Eguido is an Afro-Cuban actress, director and playwright, trained in Cuba and with extensive experience in Havana. Alejandra has worked on various theatre projects in Barcelona and is the founder of the Teatro en Sepia company in Buenos Aires, focused on presenting black women as heroines in their plays.
WebsiteAbout the hosts
Mónica Moreno Figueroa
Mónica G. Moreno Figueroa is a Black, mixed-race Mexican woman who has lived in the United Kingdom for over 25 years. She is currently a Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. In 2010, she co-founded the COPERA Collective, an initiative dedicated to making racism in Mexico visible and transforming it from a collective, emotional, and structural perspective. Through COPERA, she promotes public campaigns, media interventions, training programs, and consulting services to advance an anti-racist agenda.
Her research explores the lived and intersectional experience of race and racism in Mexico and Latin America, with a particular interest in anti-racism and its impact within and beyond academia. She also works on feminist theory, intersectionality, and the emotional effects of oppression. She is an expert in qualitative methods and visual methodologies and is known for fostering interdisciplinary collaborations that link critical thinking with social action.
She is currently leading the creation of the Global Racisms Institute for Social Transformation (GRIST), a space for research, collaboration, and action aimed at imagining and building anti-racist futures from a global perspective.
Website
Fabiola Fernández Guerra Carrillo
Fabiola Fernández Guerra Carrillo is a Mexican, mestizo and white woman, researcher and lecturer on issues of gender, racism, and discrimination, and social communicator. She is the founder and director of the communication agency 11.11 Cambio Social, founding partner of Comparte una Ola A.C., member of the COPERA collective and the REIR Network.
She works on issues of anti-racist communication, gender and discrimination, strategies and new anti-oppressive and anti-racist narratives, and family trees, ancestors and processes of collective healing. She is currently doing a postdoctoral degree at the Center for Transdisciplinary Research in Psychology at the UAEM.
WebsiteThe Structure Within podcast was conceived by Mónica Moreno Figueroa and produced by Fabiola Fernández Guerra Carrillo and Arfaxad Ortiz. The opening credits are voiced by Gabriela García.
