Season 1
01 What are the Structures We Carry Within?
In this first episode, Monica and Fabiola talk about what are the structures we carry inside, what internalized oppressions and racism are, and why all this should matter to us.
About the episode
In this first episode, Monica and Fabiola open an intimate and urgent conversation about what the structures inside us are and how oppressions—especially racism—manifest themselves in our daily lives. From a perspective situated in the work for social justice, they reflect on internalized racism, the pain it leaves and how these experiences mark our way of acting, thinking, relating to others and organizing ourselves for action.
This podcast invites us to ask ourselves: why should all this matter to us? How can we recognize these internal structures and transform them into capacities to collaborate, organize and build fairer relationships? In this episode, we embark on an emotional, political, and collective exploration of what happens to us when we internalise oppression—and what we can do about it.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Doll experiment Mexico (Youtube video)
Colectivo para Eliminar el Racismo (COPERA) Website, Facebook, Instagram
About 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.
