Afro-Latinx Digital Connections

“An important compilation of original essays and interviews on the Afro-digital—its meaning, its manifestations, its limits, and its impact on digital humanities. A significant contribution to the fields of digital humanities, Afro-Latinx studies, and ethnic studies.”—Jessica Marie Johnson, author of Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World

This volume presents examples of how digital technologies are being used by people of African descent in South America and the Caribbean, a topic that has been overlooked within the field of digital humanities. These case studies show that in the last few decades, Black Latinx communities have been making themselves visible and asserting longstanding claims and rights through digital tools and platforms, which have been essential for enacting discussions and creating new connections between diverse groups.

Afro-Latinx Digital Connections includes both research articles and interviews with practitioners who are working to create opportunities for marginalized communities. Projects discussed in this volume range from an Afrodescendant digital archive in Argentina, blog networks in Cuba, an NGO dedicated to democratizing technology in Brazilian favelas, and the recruitment of digital media to fight racism in Peru. Contributors demonstrate that these tools need not be state-of-the-art to be effective and that they are often most useful when employed to sustain a resilience that is deep and historically grounded.

Digital connections are shown here as a means to achieve social justice and to create complex self-representations that challenge racist images of Afrodescendant peoples and monolithic conceptions of humanity. This volume expands the scope of digital humanities and challenges views of the field as a predominantly white discipline.  

Eduard Arriaga, assistant professor of Spanish at the University of Indianapolis, is the coauthor of Las redes del gusto: la novela en Colombia 1990–2005. Andrés Villar is a writer, artist, and independent scholar based in Ontario, Canada.