The mass consumption of particular kinds of Latinx popular culture can play a role in the erasure of blackness and perpetuate a sentiment of anti-blackness in Latinx communities. How can we reverse the top-down movement of culture, which begins with cultural industries and trickles down to the consumers, and instead create cultural flow from below by using popular culture to have difficult conversations about issues of importance to us? We model what this looks like during this conversation, where we’ll dig into our Abuelas’ complicated love for Celia Cruz. 

Laura G. Gutiérrez
Laura G. Gutiérrez is Associate Professor in the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at The University of Texas at Austin, with affiliations in CWGS, LGBTQ studies, LLILAS, CMAS, and the Latino Media Arts Program. Her research and teaching interests are in Mexican and Latinx performance studies and visual culture studies; popular culture; feminist theory; queer theory; critical race theory. Gutiérrez is the author of Performing Mexicanidad: Vendidas y Cabareteras on the Transnational Stage and she is completing a monograph on queer intimacies in contemporary Latinx visual art, performance art, and video/film work, as well as another one on racial and sexual panics in mid-twentieth century Mexico through an analysis of films from the era. 

Jesús I. Valles
Jesús I. Valles is a queer Mexican immigrant writer-performer from Cd. Juarez, México/El Paso, TX. Jesús is a 2019 Lambda Literary fellow, a 2019 fellow of the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, a 2018 Undocupoets fellow, and a 2018 Tin House scholar. They have received support from Fine Arts Work Center, Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, Idyllwild Arts, and The Poetry Incubator. Their work is published in The New Republic, Palabritas, The Acentos Review, Quarterly West, Tin House, and BOAAT. They are the author and performer of the solo show, (Un)Documents.

For additional information, reading materials and resources, please visit:

1. Miriam Jiménez Roman and Juan Flores, The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States, Duke University Press, 2010
   
2. Afro-Peruvian Music, Art, Performance: Nicomedes Santa Cruz, Victoria Santa Cruz, Susana Baca. Victoria Santa Cruz, “Me gritaron Negra” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZBHvMaTiuU
   
3. The African Presence in Mexico: From Yanga to the Present, an exhibit organized by the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago: https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/releases/african-presence-m-xico-yanga-present-opens-anacostia-community-museum-nov-8
   
4. Alan Pelaez López, “The Principles of Pride: The Riot Black and Indigenous Trans People Deserve.” Autostraddle  Follow Alan @migrantscribble on Instagram and @MigrantScribble on Twitter
   
5. Eduardo Cepeda, “Cri-Cri El Grillito Cantor is Beloved by Mexican Children, But It Has an Unexamined Problematic Past” Remezcla  Follow Eduardo on Twitter @EduardoSCepeda