About this event

Session Block B, 9:45-10:45

Room 402
 

(Panelist 1)

Title: Emerging HSIs amidst Latinx Faculty Departures

Description: This presentation highlights the urgent need for improved financial literacy in Latino communities, where many families face over $500 million in debt (excluding mortgages and student loans). The session underscores how limited financial knowledge contributes to cycles of poverty and instability. Speakers will emphasize the importance of understanding financial tools like insurance with living benefits and share lessons from the National Literacy Campaign’s workshops. The initiative proposes using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to strengthen debt relief programs and deliver tailored financial education, empowering individuals to achieve long-term financial security.

Presenters: Jafeth E. Sanchez

(Panelist 2)

Title: Liminal Spaces and Invisibility. Solo Kalunga, by José Bedia Valdés, at The Joslyn.

Description: This presentation examines the absence of Latin American and Latino art at The Joslyn Museum in Omaha, Nebraska, which has struggled to engage its growing Latino community as legitimate patrons. While some staff work to meet bilingual students’ needs, the museum lacks a dedicated collection, with only two works by Latino artists in its permanent holdings. A central focus is José Bedia Valdés’s Solo Kalunga, which explores boundaries, migration, and Afro-Cuban spiritual traditions through layered symbolism and imagery. Yet, placed within the Hawk Pavilion’s “Migration” room, its specific cultural context is diluted, rendering its unique Afro-Cuban narrative homogenized within a broad global migration theme. This analysis underscores the need for greater recognition and contextualization of Latino art in major U.S. museums.

Presenter: Claudia García

(Panelists 3)

Title: Expanding Nuestra Presencia through STEM and Health Careers with CBESS

Description: This presentation examines the Community of Bilingual English-Spanish Speakers (CBESS) Program at the University of Nevada, Reno, which integrates bilingual coursework, community engagement, and interdisciplinary collaboration to advance equity in education and professional preparation. Funded by an NIH Science Education Partnership Award, CBESS has supported six student cohorts, showing how bilingual programming shapes learning, career pathways, and civic engagement. We also discuss the program’s interrupted and reinstated funding, highlighting challenges in sustaining equity-focused initiatives. Findings demonstrate how community partnerships reduce linguistic and cultural barriers in healthcare, education, and social services while affirming bilingualism as both an asset and a pathway for advancing equity.

Presenters: Aileen Cruz, Carolina Rocha, Rubén Dagda, & Jafeth Sanchez

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Room 403, The Great Room, Gilberto Cárdenas Panelists

(Panelists 1)

Title: Latinidad y El Nuevo Sur: An Examination of Latinx Arts in Southern Art Worlds 

Description: Memphis has long reflected the complexities of America’s Black–white racial binary, but in recent decades its growing Latino/a population has begun reshaping the city’s cultural identity. Despite this demographic shift, Latinx artists remain largely invisible in local arts institutions, with limited recognition beyond events like Día de los Muertos and the under-supported work of groups such as Cazateatro. This paper, based on oral histories and ethnographic research in Memphis and Hattiesburg, examines how Latino/a artists express cultural identity through their work and the barriers they face in pursuing artistic careers in the South. It highlights both the challenges of exclusion from institutional art worlds and the strategies artists employ to create visibility and opportunity. Ultimately, it situates Latinx art in the South within broader histories of migration and cultural transformation.

Presenters: Michael Pérez & Simone Delerme 

(Panelist 2)

Title: The Struggle to Exist and Know Our Name: With Gratitude and Foundational Direction from Our Elders

Description: The editors of Keywords for Latina and Latino Studies (2017) describe U.S. Latina/o identity as “Just Becoming,” highlighting centuries of struggle against being reduced to “recent arrivals,” rather than recognized as rooted in the Americas. This presentation reflects on how such identity struggles are heightened under the Trump Administration’s deportation policies and erasure tactics. It also honors Dr. Gilberto Cárdenas for his lifelong advocacy in building cultural infrastructures that document and celebrate the complexities of Latina/o culture, offering a powerful counter-narrative to simplistic depictions of our communities.

Presenters: Alberto López Pulido

(Panelist 3)

Title: Gil Cárdenas: Reshaping the Smithsonian into a Latino-Serving Institution

Description: Dr. Gilberto Cárdenas, renowned immigration scholar and Latino art collector, was instrumental in advancing Latino Studies at the Smithsonian. Beginning in the early 1990s, he worked both externally and internally to push the institution toward greater inclusion. As part of the Smithsonian’s Task Force on Latino Issues, he helped produce the landmark Willful Neglect report, which called on the Smithsonian and Congress to address the absence of Latino representation. His efforts highlighted gaps not only in collections but also in staffing, research, exhibitions, publications, and educational programs, helping transform the Smithsonian into a more Latino-serving institution.

Presenter: Eduardo Díaz

(Panelist 4)

Title: The Batey as Laboratory: Digital-Age Adaptations of TransIndigenous Knowledge Production in Puerto Rican Bomba

Description: This paper theorizes Bombazo epistemology as a decolonial research methodology rooted in Puerto Rico’s 500-year Bomba tradition. It positions drumming, dance, and sung narratives not as folklore but as knowledge production—where performance itself becomes research question, analysis, and dissemination. By centering the Batey, or ceremonial circle, the method disrupts Eurocentric academic hierarchies and demonstrates “research as aesthetic intervention,” where beauty functions as political resistance and intellectual rigor. Historical roots in Taíno and African alliances and contemporary applications, such as Puerto Rico’s 2019 protests, show how Bombazo epistemology embodies community knowledge, resilience, and innovation. Ultimately, it expands academic definitions of legitimate knowledge, affirming TransIndigenous heritage and intellectual sovereignty through embodied practice.

Presenter: Armen Álvarez

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Room 419, Ballroom A/B

Title: From Struggle to Stategy: Empowering Latino Communities Through Financial Literacy - Bridging Knowledge Gaps for Economic Security

Description: This presentation highlights the urgent need for improved financial literacy in Latino communities, where many families face over $500 million in debt (excluding mortgages and student loans). The session underscores how limited financial knowledge contributes to cycles of poverty and instability. Speakers will emphasize the importance of understanding financial tools like insurance with living benefits and share lessons from the National Literacy Campaign’s workshops. The initiative proposes using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to strengthen debt relief programs and deliver tailored financial education, empowering individuals to achieve long-term financial security.

Presenters: Dolly Amaya, Ismael Ortega, Marisol Diaz, & Chester Ruiz

Format: Panel Session

Complexity: Introductory

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Room 422

Title: Puerto Ricans, Past and Present: Historical and Contemporary Social Dynamics

Description: This panel features three papers on the social and political conditions of Puerto Ricans in both the U.S. and Puerto Rico. It examines displacement in New York City during Urban Renewal, where Puerto Rican communities were replaced by elite institutions like Lincoln Center and Fordham University. It also explores current challenges in Florida—the state with the largest Puerto Rican population—across education, economics, healthcare, and housing. Finally, it challenges the myth of racial democracy by analyzing how race influences political participation in Puerto Rico, particularly through patterns of racial identification and voter turnout.

Presenters: Damayra Figuero-Lazu, Fernando Rivera, Carlos Vargas-Ramos

Format: Panel

Complexity: Intermediate

Additional information

• Attendance type: In person