Book release of Racial Subordination in Latin America and Film Screening of: “To the Mountains"

Saturday, April 18, 6:00pm - 8:00pm
La Casa Azul Bookstore
143 E 103rd St, New York, NY 10029
Free event.

Tanya Katerí Hernández will celebrate the paperback release of her book Racial Subordination in Latin America: The Role of the State, Customary Law, and the New Civil Rights Response with a discussion of the status of Afro-descendants in Latin America and brief screening of the documentary "To the Mountains: A Story of Travel and Transformation” by documentary filmmaker Sisa Bueno.  

Please join Tanya Katerí Hernández, Sisa Bueno and Executive Director of the AfroLatin@ Forum Miriam Jiménez Román, as they converse about their mutual interest in social justice and the recognition of Afro-Latinos during this first year of the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent, proclaimed by General Assembly resolution 68/237 and to be observed from 2015 to 2024.

About Racial Subordination in Latin America
There are approximately 150 million people of African descent in Latin America.  Yet, Afro- descendants have been consistently marginalized as undesirable elements of the society.  Nevertheless, Latin America has long prided itself on its absence of U.S. styled state- mandated Jim Crow racial segregation laws.  This book disrupts the traditional narrative of Latin America’s legally benign racial past by comprehensively examining the existence of customary laws of racial regulation and the historic complicity of Latin American states in erecting and sustaining racial hierarchies.  Hernández is the first author to consider the salience of the customary law of race regulation for the contemporary development of racial equality laws across the region.  The book has a particular relevance for the contemporary U.S. racial context in which Jim Crow laws have long been abolished and a “post-racial” rhetoric undermines the commitment to racial equality laws and policies amidst a backdrop of continued inequality.

About “To the Mountains: A Story of Travel and Transformation”
In 2006, filmmaker Sisa Bueno embarked on a South American adventure in Bolivia. As an Afro-Latina herself, Bueno sought to tell this story of Bolivian social change via the severely marginalized Afro-Bolivian people, which also had a critical stake in creating a new nation where their community is visible and legitimized for the first time. 

About the Speakers

Tanya Katerí Hernández
Tanya K. Hernandez, is a Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law.  Professor Hernandez, was awarded a 2015 Fulbright Specialist Grant to be consult on racial equality projects at the Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, in Paris and the University of the West Indies Law School, in Trinidad.  She has previously served as a Law and Public Policy Affairs Fellow at Princeton University, and as an Independent Scholar in Residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.  Hispanic Business Magazine selected her as one of the 100 Most Influential Hispanics of 2007. Professor Hernandez serves on the editorial boards of the Law and Social Inquiry Journal of the American Bar Foundation, the Revista Brasileira de Direito e Justiça (Brazilian Journal of Law and Justice), and the Latino Studies Journal published by Palgrave-Macmillian Press.

Sisa Bueno
Originally from New York City, Sisa Bueno is a filmmaker of Cuban and Dominican descent who is intrigued by both the complex and stories that are untold. She studied film production at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University (NYU). She also studied sociology, which helped develop her artistic vision of creating media projects that explore underrepresented cultures and social issues. Sisa honed her production skills over the years by working as a camera operator for Cablevision, an Associate Producer at A&E Television Networks, and as a freelance Producer/Shooter/Editor. Due to her work producing and
directing her first feature-length documentary entitled "To The Mountains" (formerly titled "We of the Saya"), as well as her tireless advocacy, she was named a 2013 Latino Innovator by the NBC Network for introducing fresh ideas and pioneering change in the Latino community. Sisa lives between New York and La Paz, Bolivia.

Miriam Jiménez Román
Executive Director of afrolatin@ forum.   For over a decade she researched and curated socio-historical exhibitions at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, where she also served as the Assistant Director of the Scholars-in-Residence Program. She was the Managing Editor and Editor of Centro: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies. She has taught courses on race, ethnicity, and gender in Latin America and the Caribbean at Binghamton, Brown and Columbia universities.  A frequent speaker and consultant on African American and Latino issues, her essays on diasporic racial formations and inter-ethnic relations have appeared in a number of scholarly publications. A visiting scholar in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University, she is co-editor of The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in The United States (2010), which received an American Book Award.