Welcoming Dr. Mariana Mora, the 2022 Bacardi Family Eminent Scholar

January 7, 2022

The UF Center for Latin American Studies welcomes the 2022 Bacardi Family Eminent Scholar, Dr. Mariana Mora. Dr. Mora joins UF-LAS from the Center for Research and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS) in Mexico City, where she has served as an associate professor and researcher.

Dr. Mora’s research centers on struggles against violence and the continued processes of colonization as part of State formation in Latin America. Integrating critical race theories, gender studies, decoloniality, and politics, Dr. Mora’s scholarship seeks to identify methods of transformative justice in the face of territorial dispossession and racialized violence.

Author of the book Kuxlejal Politics: Indigenous Autonomy, Race and Decolonial Research in Zapatista Communities (2018), Dr. Mora is currently working on her next book, Ayotzinapa, racialized violence and a sense of justice. She is part of the continental Anti-Racist Action Research Network (Red Investigación Acción Anti- Racista, RAIAR), the Collective to Eliminate Racism in Mexico (Copera) and the Decolonial Feminist Network in Mexico.

In the spring 2022 semester, Dr. Mora is teaching the course “A Sense of Justice: Afro-descendent and Indigenous anti-colonial struggles in Abya Yala.” The term “Abya Yala” originates as the name of the land inhabited by the Indigenous Guna people in the Darién Gap, and has evolved to assert the broad concept of independent Indigenous territory separate from the term “America.” Dr. Mora’s seminar will examine the current historical conditions and ask questions such as:

• What critical questions do anti-racist and anti-colonial actions pose for thinking through current expressions of State violence?
• How are these mobilizations theorizing the political and on what aspects of political action to they place emphasis?
• In what ways are understandings of justice emerging from and enacted by these struggles?

Dr. Mora’s course is available for both undergraduate and graduate students. 

About the Bacardi Family Eminent Scholar Chair

The Bacardi Family Eminent Scholar Chair in Latin American Studies was established in 1991 with a gift from Bacardi Imports and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Bacardi endowment enables the Center to invite distinguished scholars and public figures to teach, lecture, mentor students and carry out research at the University of Florida. Since 1992, 18 individuals have held the chair with expertise in diverse fields, such as economics, politics, tropical conservation, history, dance, and literature.

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