Arón Montenegro | Remnants of War and Displacement: Black and Brown Solidarities Expressed through Testimonial Literature

The Global Studies in Migration & Diaspora Research Workshop is excited to announce that the second Fall quarter meeting will feature Arón Montenegro, PhD in Culture and Performance.

The Caribbean basin, Central American isthmus, and their respective diasporas continue to confront the legacy of colonial violence through the War on Drugs, extractive industries, unnatural disasters, austerity measures, and increased militarization. Populations in these regions face precarious conditions due to political and economic instability exacerbated by ongoing foreign interventions, while carrying the traumas of structural violence embedded in recent collective memories. Whether through the experiences of the US-sponsored wars of the 1980s, paramilitary groups along migration routes, interpersonal violence, or the targeting by Border Patrol agents and confinement in migrant detention centers, many refugees forced to flee their homelands carry deep-rooted trauma. Coupled with forced assimilation, traumas and silences impact the cultural memory and social identities of migrant populations.  To combat such concealed histories, Caribbean and Central American poets in the U.S. diaspora, June Jordan and Maria Guardado, attempted to heal from the generational pains of war and displacement, underscoring the complexity of collective memory-making through literature. Through the genre of Testimonial Literature, this work-in-progress contends that such literary productions help sustain a cultural memory of resistance among diasporic communities. This presentation is based on a chapter of the book project entitled Entre Flor y Fusil/Between Flower and Rifle: Caribbean and Central American Cultural Memory in the Late and Post-Cold War Era (1968–2020) and includes an interactive component with audience members.