"Balance the Nations: Latina/o/x, Black, and Native Solidarity Movements," Jessica Lopez Lyman
In this paper, I investigate transnational solidarity movements between Latina, Black and Native artists fighting on the frontlines for water. I focus specifically on the Balance the Nations tour established to bring awareness to the fight for water rights in Minnesota and Puerto Rico. The tour provides insight into contemporary cross-racial and cross-tribal movements. I argue these movements are rooted in intergenerational solidarity models and shared consciousness established through the arts. These foundations inform a pathway for deep social movement work to protect water across the Américas. Here protection of water incorporates the protection of land, other natural elements, and Latina/o/x, Black and Native bodies.
“La Merma: Tranfronteriza Punk Sensibility,” Susana Sepulveda
This paper centers the borderlands as a site traversed by punk culture and subjects who are rarely seen or recognized as part of the border landscape. Focusing on the Nogales based transfronteriza punk band La Merma, I ask how their cultural work offers a sense of community and collective border feeling that expresses a transfronteriza punk sensibility and identity. My objects of analysis include the band’s name, songs, musical events, and documentary films. I argue that these cultural texts exemplify a transfronteriza punk sensibility, a way of being and navigating through punk that exceeds the borderlands.
Respondent: Mike Amezcua, Georgetown University