Intervenxiones
My colleague and co-author, Professor Annie Mendoza, published a wonderful article with Intervenxiones, as part of the NYU Latinx Project. She interviews an artist that we have both worked with, Gonzalo Fuenmayor, featured in our co-authored article, “Literary and Visual Rememory at the 90th Anniversary of the Banana Massacre in Colombia,” published by the peer-reviewed, Zapruder World, An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict.
I especially appreciate this part of the introduction as she states, “Fuenmayor’s work reflects our current reality as rooted in colonialist history and ideology. This amnesiac attitude towards the past is probably best exemplified by the viral reactions that were spun on social media to the recent domestic terrorist attack at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. “This is how election results are disputed in a banana republic—not our democratic republic," were the words of former president George W. Bush, while #bananarepublic quickly began trending. Originally coined by short story writer O. Henry in 1901 to describe nations that were forced to become economically dependent on US imperialist presence through the United Fruit Company, the term “banana republic” has continued to be used as a derogatory term for nations in the Global South to characterize and caricaturize political instability. Fuenmayor, who has used the theme of the “banana republic” to reflect the false ideology of a superior US moral code, also took to Instagram to draw attention to the ironic attempt of using this term to emphasize a supposed US American exceptionalism.”
Here is Mendoza’s, “Reappropriating Impositions: A Conversation with Gonzalo Fuenmayor.” Enjoy.
Annie Mendoza is an Associate Professor of Spanish in the Department of Modern Languages, Philosophy and Religion at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania. She received her PhD at the University of California, San Diego in 2010. She is the author of Rewriting the Nation: Novels by Women on Violence in Colombia (AILCFH, 2015) and has published essays in peer-reviewed journals such as Revista de Estudios Colombianos, Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict, Voces del Caribe: Revista de Estudios Caribeños and the anthology Poemas y cantos: antología crítica de autoras afrodescendientes de América Latina. Mendoza’s current book project is on Colombian diasporic representations in literature, film, and theater.
