ABOUT MEMORIA DECOLONIAL
(Re)thinking (patri)mony to (de)colonize our collective memory through a critical and (anti)racist lens.
VISION
We envision a society with a critical and reflective understanding of national narratives, where communities actively participate in constructing their own histories through decolonial and antiracist perspectives.
MISSION
We interrogate the legacies of colonialism in Puerto Rican cultural patrimony through public humanities initiatives in order to interrupt the coloniality of collective and historical memory. We transform how history is told, remembered, and experienced in Puerto Rico by developing educational and cultural projects using participatory methodologies to incarnate history in its places of memory and democratize the production of knowledge.
PROGRAMS
We share the findings of our archival and literary research through two core programs:
Our journey
Memoria (De)colonial was founded in 2020 as a digital humanities platform created by Dr. Rafael V. Capó García to map commemorative spaces in Puerto Rico that reinforce or challenge colonial hierarchies of race, gender, spirituality, and citizenship. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the project emerged as a way to break through isolation and activate critical conversations about cultural heritage.
In 2022, with support from the Mellon Foundation through the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities administered by Humanidades Puerto Rico, we launched our main public humanities initiative: (de)tour. These walking workshops were collaboratively developed with an interdisciplinary team of educators, researchers, and cultural workers, and are offered free of charge to public schools in the Department of Education.
Today, Memoria (De)colonial continues to grow as a collective, expanding its routes, archives, and participatory methodologies to accompany more communities through critical memory and transformative education.