Archives in Common: Migrant Practices/Knowledges/Memory is led by Mellon Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research Faculty Leader Ángeles Donoso Macaya (Borough of Manhattan Community College, Department of Modern Languages) an immigrant professor, researcher and organizer based in New York City. She is the author of The Insubordination of Photography: Documentary Practices under Chile’s Dictatorship (2020) and co-editor of Latina/os of the East Coast: A Critical Reader (2015).

Archives in Common: Migrant Practices/Knowledges/Memory brings together community organizers, members of immigrant communities, and members of the university community to 1) assist in the support and expansion of undocu-immigrant-led initiatives (cooperatives, workshops, and gardens) devised in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and 2) think collectively about how to build an archive of the commons during a crisis. The archive’s form, structure, and contents will emerge out of the collaborative process of thinking, working, creating, and sustaining life together. Click here or below to visit the Archives in Common website: www.archivesincommon.org

Events, Articles, Research & Scholarship:

This is an Archive in Common: The Book of Beans by chef Natalia Méndez

About this book launch celebration & conversation

Watch the video recording of this event here or below (please note the default for this video is in Spanish. To hear the English version of this video, you'll need to click the 'gear' icon [settings], select Audio and choose: English):

Come at 5:30 pm to get a copy of your book (all 3 books in the Sisters of the Milpa series will be available), and other goodies, as well as art prints and photos from collaborators and artists from this project Marco Saavedra, Cinthya Santos-Briones, and Zahara Gómez, as part of a mutual aid fundraiser for La Morada Mutual Aid Kitchen.

The event will begin at 6:00 PM, and will be followed by food served by La Morada restaurant in DGSC Student Lounge Room 5409, then a reception at the GC Dinning Commons, which will also feature:

• Pop-art show with works by Marco Saavedra, Cinthya Santos-Briones and Zahara Gómez

• Mutual aid Migrant Solidarity Table Session
  

*If you are a monolingual speaker (of English or Spanish), make sure to indicate if you will need a headset device for interpretation.

BOOK LAUNCH EVENT DESCRIPTION
[texto en Español abajo]

From its inception, the Public Seminar Archives in Common has sought to facilitate spaces that promote the transmission, exchange and dissemination of indigenous knowledge, practices and traditions. Conceptually, this collaborative project has attempted to answer: What is an archive in common? How to create an archive in common consistent with the ethics of mutual aid? What should an archive created in common collect, and for what purpose? Who is this archive addressed to?

One of the initiatives that emerged from the sustained conversations attempting to answer to these questions is the bilingual recipe book series The Sisters of the Milpa, which seeks to disseminate indigenous knowledges and practices, and at the same time to conceptualize and expand the ways of doing mutual aid. In the first volume, It begins with the squash, illustrated with artwork by Marco Saavedra and photography by Camila Falquez, chef Natalia shares recipes that use all the parts of the squash plant in its different stages and teaches us how to take care of the soil. In the second book, Longing for the Corn, also illustrated by Marco Saavedra and accompanied with images made by photographer Zahara Gómez (who is behind the photographic, gastronomic and social project Recetario para la memoria), chef Natalia shares recipes that center the corn (including the recipe for nixtamal, the base of all tortillas), and takes us back to her hometown, San Miguel de Ahuehuetitlán; she evokes memories of her childhood, growing up among the milpa crops, and describes the lessons she learned from her mother, grandmothers and her aunts.

Now, after two years of work, The Sisters of Milpa series is finally completed! The Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center is thrilled to invite you to the CUNY launch of both Longing for the Corn (which was launched last November at Word Up Community Book Store) and the The Book of Beans! This last volume in the series features images by photographer Cinthya Santos-Briones, who has been collaborating with Archives in Common since the beginning and colorful artwork by Marco Saavedra; as the previous volumes, this book has also been carefully designed and printed in riso by Amanda Chung of Lucky Risograph Press. This launching will be celebrated with a bilingual conversation (English/Spanish) between food critic (and long-time friend of La Morada) Chris Crowley, photographers Zahara Gómez and Cinthya Santos-Briones, artist Marco Saavedra and chef Natalia Méndez. The conversation will be moderated by Archives in Common Faculty Lead Ángeles Donoso Macaya, who did the transcription and editing of the texts and coordinated the production of the series.

Click her for more info about this book launch event, and the Sisters of the Milpa series!

Book Launch: Celebrating The Sisters of the Milpa: Longing for the Corn / Celebrando Las hermanas de la milpa: la añoranza del maíz by chef Natalia Mendez of La Morada Mutual Aid Kitchen

About this book launch

Join as we celebrate the launching of Las hermanas de la milpa: la añoranza del maíz / The Sisters of the Milpa: Longing for the Corn, the second volume in the bilingual and indigenous (Mixteco) cookbook series by chef Natalia Méndez of La Morada Mutual Aid Kitchen. Author and chef Natalia Méndez will be joined at the book launch by collaborators of this project: Marco Saavedra (La Morada Mutual Aid Kitchen), Yajaira Saavedra (La Morada Mutual Aid Kitchen), Karina Ciprian (WordUp Bookstore), Amanda Chung (Lucky Risograph), and Ángeles Donoso Macaya (CUNY, Archives in Common). The book will be available at the event.

We will also be accompanied by friends from the Herbarium + Community Garden Initiative, coordinated by Audrey Jenkins (The New School) in collaboration with the NYBG Humanities Institute, Bronx Green-Up, and William and Lynda Steere Herbarium. Audrey, along with Matthew Pace (Assistant Curator of the Herbarium) and Kenneth Reginald Otero Walker (Project Manager in Biocultural Collections at NYBG), will be present at the book launch with specimens of corn, squash, and other preserved plants from the New York Botanical Garden's Herbarium related to Mixteco heritage.

REGISTER HERE TO ATTEND

In this second book, Chef Natalia goes back to the root, and that root is San Miguel de Ahuehuetitlán. Here, besides delicious recipes that center the corn (including tips to make nixtamal, the base of all tortillas), chef Natalia shares memories of her childhood, growing up among the milpa crops, and of the lessons she learned from her mother, grandmothers and her aunts.

As with It Begins with the Squash, this second book is also an art project: it includes colorful illustrations by artist Marco Saavedra and photos by photographer Zahara Gómez. The second volume has again been beautifully designed by Lucky Risograph.

The sisters of the milpa is a collaborative project co-sponsored by Social Practice CUNY and Archives in Common part of The Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research, an initiative of The Center for the Humanities, The CUNY Graduate Center, funded by the Mellon Foundation. This project was made possible thanks to a Humanities New York Action Grant.

This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket with 50 max attendees. Please register here in advance.

Book Launch: Las hermanas de la milpa: comienza con la calabaza / The sisters of the milpa: it begins with the squash

About this book launch

Archives in Common is thrilled to invite you to the launching of Las hermanas de la milpa: comienza con la calabaza / The sisters of the milpa: it begins with the squash, a bilingual and indigenous (Mixteco) cookbook by chef Natalia Mendez of La Morada restaurant.

Like other initiatives devised by La Morada, this book seeks to disseminate indigenous knowledges and practices, and at the same time to conceptualize and expand the ways of doing mutual aid. Chef Natalia shares eight Oaxacan recipes that use all the parts of the squash plant, in different stages; teaches us, readers, how to take care of the soil; and also gives tips to grow food at home!

The book is also, in and of itself, an art project: it includes illustrations by poet, artist and activist Marco Saavedra, photos by photographer Camila Falquez, and has been beautifully designed by Lucky Risograph.

In the words of Professor Ángeles Donoso Macaya, who assisted with the transcription, edition, and translation of the texts, Las hermanas de la milpa / The sisters of the milpa “is the embodied memory, in narrative form, of the chef of one of the most important mutual aid hubs that emerged during the pandemic in NYC (and perhaps the only one that still continues to operate as such), and an eloquent document of the ongoing struggle for food sovereignty led by migrant indigenous communities.”

no + porque somos + Expanding Feminist Ways of Thinking-Feeling-Doing

Wed, Oct 19, 2022,

This event will take place in the Martin E. Segal Theatre at the CUNY Graduate Center. The event will be in Spanish with English interpretation.

Join us for "no + porque somos + Expanding Feminist Ways of Thinking-Feeling-Doing," a conversation with three prominent feminist activists, archivists, educators, artists, and thinkers, Lucía Egaña (Musea M.A.M.I., CENEX, Pluriversidad Nómada), Javiera Manzi (Coordinadora Feminista 8M; Red de Conceptualismos del Sur, Brigada Laura Rodig), and Sibila Sotomayor (LASTESIS), moderated by Professor Ángeles Donoso Macaya, as part of "expanding feminisms / feminismos en expansión" a week-long series of activities with these inspiring Chilean feminists inside and outside the brick walls of New York City’s public university, CUNY. This conversation will center the role of archival practices, collective memory work, and transnational/internationalist network formation within current feminist movements in Chile and beyond. The three guest speakers have participated in the collective creation of situated practices to synthetize feminist theories; disseminate feminist demands; educate around feminist ideas and issues; recover, make memory and archive ways of doing and knowing formulated by previous feminist collectives. Their work has also attempted to put forward different ways of relating to, and inhabiting, institutions—universities, museums, and political movements.

Click here for more info about this event.

Expanding Feminisims Series

This event is part of expanding feminisms / feminismos en expansión which brings together a series of activities inside and outside the brick walls of New York City’s public university, CUNY, for a week. The different events center distinct aspects of the activist, archival, and artist practices of three inspiring Chilean feminists, Lucía Egaña, Javiera Manzi, and Sibila Sotomayor (LASTESIS). This week-long event includes in-person conversations with CUNY students at BMCC and lectures and remote/online visits to classes; an in-person conversation between these three archivists, activists, and artists, open to the general public moderated by Professor Ángeles Donoso Macaya and hosted at the CUNY Graduate Center; a round table with GC postgraduate students and the guests, organized in collaboration with LAILAC and OpenLAB students; a memory and arts workshop at the Bruckner Mott Haven Community Garden, in The Bronx, facilitated by food educator, sou-chef of La Morada restaurant and Archives in Common collaborator chef Carolina Saavedra, with the participation of the three guests; a panel discussion on feminist books (co)written or (co)edited by the guest speakers, at Recirculation/A Word Up Project, a community bookstore and cultural space located Washington Heights; a performance workshop facilitated by Sibila Sotomayor and a workshop on collective creation/reflection lead by Lucía Egaña.

"Meet the Mellon Seminar Cohort: Ángeles Donoso Macaya"

In this interview, Ángeles Donoso Macaya and Queenie Sukhadia discuss questions and concerns arising from Ángeles's project Archives in Common, including how to share "knowledges, experiences, and memories [of immigrant communities] in a way that is non-extractive, where these knowledges, experiences, and memories don’t then become data," the relationship of these forms of sharing to mutual aid, and imperatives to transform both the university and practices of academic work. Click here to read the full interview.

The Undocumented-Led Struggle for Freedom: A Conversation with the Authors of Eclipse of Dreams (Wednesday, October 14th, 2020)

Watch the video recording of the event here:

Join us Wednesday, October 14th for The Undocumented-Led Struggle for Freedom, a conversation with 4 of the 6 authors Marco Saavedra, Claudia Muñoz, Mariela Nuñez-Janes, and Stephen Pavey of Eclipse of Dreams, a timely book which recounts, via self–authored testimonial narratives and collective storytelling, the journey of six activists who met “somewhere in between classrooms, academic conferences, and organizing for the DREAM Act.” Their paths crossed in 2010, the year when the Senate failed to pass the DREAM Act. For this heterogeneous group comprised of undocumented youth activists and activist-scholars, the notorious failure of the DREAM Act revealed the paradoxical position of immigrants in their struggle for “inclusion.” As they poignantly ask in the Introduction: “What if our dreams, the very scope of our horizons, what we hoped for ourselves and others, was limited by the framework in which we expressed them, the American Dream itself?"

This event will be ASL interpreted.

Read Ángeles Donoso Macaya's own words on the importance of her project Archives in Common: Migrant Practices/Knowledges/Memory two inaugural events "The Undocumented-Led Struggle for Freedom," a conversation with authors of Eclipse of Dreams, and “Brewing Memories,” an outdoors community workshop about medicinal plants, food justice, and indigenous food traditions:

"As Faculty Seminar Leader of Archives in Common, for me it is extremely significant to launch the project with this collective conversation. In both theory and practice, Archives in Common refuses the divisions created by institutions of higher education as colonial and imperial projects—above all, the position of the 'expert' and the notion that 'He' is authorized to produce and disseminate knowledge about determined 'subjects.' Moreover, the events and activities organized as part of the Archives in Common project seek to challenge the operations and framings deployed by 'the Archive,' also understood here as a colonial and imperial operation that produces 'knowledge' about certain individuals—in this particular case, immigrants and immigrant communities. Not only the authors of Eclipse of Dreams directly address some of the central issues I want to explore, learn more about, and discuss with the participants of the Archives in Common project, but also the book in and of itself can be seen as an 'archive' created 'in common:' through personal narratives, photographs, and quotes. Eclipse of Dreams offers counter-framings of immigrant and undocumented-led organizing, reflects critically about the struggle for racial and immigration liberation, formulates a collaborative methodology based on witnessing and accompanying, and, more importantly, weaves immigrant activists’ memories as a collective memory—this memory, active and dynamic, can help to activate others in joining the struggle for real liberation, justice, and dignity." -Ángeles Donoso Macaya

Sat, October 3rd, 2020, 11:00 AM: Brewing Memories: A Free Workshop to Learn About Medicinal Herbs with La Morada Chef Carolina Saavedra

As part of the Archives in Common project, chef Carolina Saavedra will facilitate workshops, starting with "Brewing Memories," centered on food traditions, food justice, and urban farming.

This series will begin with an outdoor workshop on medicinal herbs at Brooke Park, a community garden in the South Bronx where Carolina grows many of the delicious chiles and herbs she and her mom, Natalia Mendez, use in their traditional recipes at La Morada restaurant. The workshop is called “Brewing Memories" because Carolina will invite us to “draw” a memory using herbs and honey, which we will then brew into our own tea! In this hands-on workshop, we will not only learn about different herbs we can easily grow at home (and perhaps use to brew more tea), but also about different knowledges and traditions linked to medicinal herbs.

Carolina Saavedra is an educator at Stone Barns Center, a nonprofit organization working to bring about a healthy and sustainable food system. She is also the sous chef at La Morada restaurant, where the Saavedra family fights to ensure equality and social justice and to preserve their indigenous roots within the community of the South Bronx.

Click here for more information about this event, Carolina, and more.

View photos from the Brewing Memories workshop held on Saturday, October 3rd, at Brooke Park, facilitated by La Morada chef Carolina Saavedra. Photos by Cinthya Santoa-Briones.

"Brewing memories, sustaining life in common"

Read Archives in Common project leader Ángeles Donoso Macaya's essay "Brewing memories, sustaining life in common", reflecting on the Brewing Memories workshops and it's origins and the significance and impact of this collaborative and generative process of creating and learning together.

A Review of Netfilx's "Immigration Nation" by Ángeles Donoso Macaya

What's wrong about Netflix's Immigrant Nation? Plenty! Read Ángeles Donoso Macaya's critique which takes it apart and rebuts it point by point arguing the Netflix documentary adopts the dangerous viewpoint of ICE agents, portraying immigration raids and deportation proceedings as banal, bureaucratic procedures.

"The documentary shows us time and again the opinions and views of ICE officers. But this close view is not offered of the communities and activists resisting the racist practices of the state," and "According the point of view that the series reproduces, migrants are never the agents of their own destiny," writes Ángeles Donoso Macaya.

Read the review here on The North American Congress on Latin America report.

More About Ángeles Donoso Macaya

Ángeles Donoso Macaya is an immigrant professor, researcher and organizer based in New York City. She is Associate Professor of Spanish at BMCC/CUNY. Her research centers on Latin American photography theory and history, counter-archival production, human rights activism, and feminisms. She is the author of The Insubordination of Photography: Documentary Practices under Chile’s Dictatorship (2020), co-editor of Latina/os of the East Coast: A Critical Reader (2015). Ángeles has been involved in sanctuary work in NYC since 2017 and is also member of colectiva somoslacélula, which creates video-essays about pressing political issues.