José Manuel Baeza-Zúñiga

Currently in my fourth year at Stony Brook’s History Department, my work looks to be part of the recent studies that account for the presence of Black people in South America, particularly in Chile. I am interested in the different perceptions over race during the mid-twentieth-century, a period that has been overlooked by academics of the African diaspora in the country. To do so, I look into the exciting lives of afro-descendant people that moved across the continent, relating to Chile in different ways. In their travels, Black college students, basketball players, Black Power activists, and soul musicians reshaped ideas over race and “blackness” in this southern nation. This year, I’m also working as assistant to the director at the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Center (LACS). From there we promote the debate and collaboration among the Latino/a/x community of students and scholars at our University.