Mapping Colonial Logics: Surviving (Un)natural Disasters throughout Central America and the Caribbean

Diana Gamez
Anthropology
UC Irvine

Climate change and natural disasters are unnatural phenomena and an outcome of ongoing colonial projects. This seven-campus transdisciplinary working group of graduate students explores how colonial logics of extractive economies and security regimes drive environmental degradation and displacement throughout Central America and the Caribbean. The working group’s project also explores visual and auratic modalities of resistance that respond to forms of structural violence and the formation of transnational networks of care by impacted communities, highlighting the role of humanistic research in capturing the localized dynamics of global processes of dispossession and resistance. We ask: what are the colonial dynamics that drive climate change and displacement in the region? How are carceral regimes utilized against Black and Indigenous populations in the region and in the US to “manage” these unnatural crises? How do communities adapt and resist? How can these epistemologies of resistance inform climate policies? Project outcomes include creating a multimedia digital archive of art and interviews with frontline communities in Central America, the Caribbean, and the US, as well as a podcast featuring artists and showcasing research conducted by our working group. This list is accompanied by a digital interdisciplinary curriculum accessible to both college-level and broader public audiences.