Focusing on the lived experiences of Afro-Colombians who resist violence against their ecological communities, Alex Huezo’s new book employs accounts of the supernatural narratively and analytically to frame a contemporary struggle for environmental justice. The book applies Achille Mbembe’s theorization of necropolitics to the environmental racism of the US War on Drugs in Colombia, specifically the aerial eradication of coca in the comunidades negras of the Pacific Coast. The book creatively guides us toward a broader understanding of environmental racism and justice.
Speaker:
Alexander Huezo, an alumnus of UCLA’s MA program in Latin American Studies, employs ethnographic and cartographic methods to theorize the multi-scalar dimensions of environmental racism and justice. His research examines how socio-ecological communities of the Americas are trans-nationalized through environmental crises and the war on drugs. Conversely, my research challenges the erasure and displacement of peoples, cultures, and species by paying attention to the geopolitics of knowledge production.