Thread by @mariliacout

1. This reminds me of my 20+ years in Latin American studies, in which I had the privilege to learn about the "Latinamerican" identity of students from so many countries.

2. The first time I taught LA studies classes was in 1999-2000 at the @UF . Several of us, students and professors (or just me?), used to sit to eat at the open spaces in the campus and talk about our own "latinidad".

3. But it was only after I moved permanently to the US in 2016 that I realized how stripped of their #Indigenous identities were the Latin American immigrants here.

4. I live in Oklahoma. I look at them, in my neighborhood, and I can take a pretty good guess about where they came from. I see their original nations on their faces and their bodies. It makes me very sad to realize that they don't.

5. Not only that: because of the virtual apartheid that countries like Peru or Bolivia experienced, they have a higher genetic contribution from their original nations than from the European rapists that "bleached" people from my country, Brazil, for example.

6. The "color of rape", the indelible mark that black and brown Latinos and not-Latino minorities carry.

nytimes.com/2020/06/26/opi…

7. When we compare relative demographic prevalence, with around 2% #Indigenous and almost 20% Latinos, we're actually looking at an over 20% #Indigenous presence in the US.

iwgia.org/en/usa.html#:~….

8. It makes me think that #LatinAmericanStudies focusing on Indigenous heritage is more needed in community programs than in universities. Not doing that feels like being complicit with the white supremacist "identity theft", or ID gaslighting.

9. Elders from Brazilian Indigenous nations point out that their brotherhood extends from Alaska to Patagonia.

10. Now that we are discussing race in education, I believe it's time to return that History to its protagonists. It's time to help Latino immigrants in the US know where they come from and the wisdom their ancestors left them.

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