José Antonio Figueroa Pérez is Doctor in Social Anthropology. He finished his doctoral thesis in Latin American Cultural Studies and Hispanic American Literature at Georgetown University. And a second doctoral thesis in Social Anthropology from the Rovira I Virgili University in Tarragona, Spain. He currently works as a professor and researcher at the Faculty of Arts, Central University of Ecuador, and hisdo. He is the director of the project Afro-esmeraldeños: memoria intelectual, social, cultural y apropiación territorial (Afro-Esmeraldeños: intellectual, social, cultural memory and territorial appropriation). He is a researcher at the Center for Advanced Latin American Studies, CALAS in Hannover, and director of the project.

Publications

Monographs (selection)

(In evaluation) Desposesión, racialidad y guerra privatizada en la frontera Ecuador- Colombia. Libro Colectivo sobre el pos acuerdo entre el gobierno de Colombia y las FARC. Bogotá: To be publish by the University of Santo Tomás.

Articles / Chapters (selection)

2019. "Guerra privatizada, movilización social y estados en la frontera Ecuador-Colombia." In: David Díaz Arias y Christine Hatzky (coords.), ¿Cuándo pasará el temblor? Crisis, violencia y paz en la América Latina Contemporánea.  San José, Costa Rica: Universidad de Costa Rica, CIHAC. 

2019. "Etnicidad, esencialismos de izquierda y democracia radical". En: Luciana Cadahia, Valeria Coronel y Franklin Ramírez (coords.) A contracorriente: materiales para una teoría renovada del populismo. Bogotá: Editorial Pontificia Universidad Javeriana.

2018. "Horamen de Adrián Balseca y la desposesión neocolonial en la Tolita". En: Esmeraldas (05). 102-110.

2017. "Register: inquietudes de la cultura en la era digital". En: Register. 41-49.

2016 "Las debilidades de la industria cultural del Ecuador y del Quito moderno". En: Revista Temas. (85-86).43-50.

Project as a Fellow of CALAS

Title: Situated Universalism: Radical Liberalism, Afro-descendants and Nation in Cuba and Ecuador.

Abstract: This project analyzes 2 events that show the complex relations between Afro-descendants and the nation in Latin America: the massacre of the members of the Independent Party of Color of Cuba, which occurred in 1912, and the guerrilla warfare led by radical black liberals in Ecuador, in the episode known as the War of Concha that took place between 1913 and 1916. From these cases, it is shown how, while Afro-descendants design strategies that seek to guarantee equal participation in the political community, power excludes them through open repression or through ideological mechanisms aimed at building them as a cultural other, radically different from the nation. The project contrasts the political proclamations of the PIC and the Afro-Esmeralda guerrillas with the racist and culturalist arguments used to exclude them from the political community through sources such as press archives, libels, correspondence, and cultural artifacts such as novels, essays, songs. and poetry. The articulation of Afro-descendant movements with radical liberalism, biologically-based racism, and cultural relativism that began to emerge at that time is investigated. It is argued that the recognition and visibility of the role of Afro-descendants in the construction of the nation in Cuba and Ecuador can be an effective element to build a critical social fabric of racism and exclusion and to establish lasting peace in subject countries to a dense colonial experience.