Frances Negrón-Muntaner investigates how multiple forms of translation, of language but also form, ideology, technology, class, colour, and gender played a pivotal role in a context where an emerging tech entrepreneurial class had developed autonomous political aspirations.
In 2013, the young philologist Yoani Sánchez was "Cuba's most famous person not named Castro" and one of the world's most famous bloggers. Although, at the time, very few people in Cuba had access to the Internet, a legion of volunteers worldwide translated her "Generation Y" blog into 18 languages, reaching over a million internauts every month.
Sanchez's rise has generally been met with awe in Europe and the US, particularly by the press, who have described her as a "girl genius" and a "star." This is not an entirely unreasonable response—a 34-year-old woman who built her computer from scratch in a country ruled undemocratically by octogenarian Raúl Castro—Sánchez's writing constituted a daily defiance of the Cuban state. Yet, her success raises multiple questions: Why did so much attention flow to Sánchez rather than the dozens of hunger strikers in and out of Cuban jails during this critical period? Why was Sánchez the one to speak for Cuba to the world?
Frances Negrón-Muntaner is a filmmaker, writer, scholar, and professor at Columbia University, where she is also the founding curator of the Latino Arts and Activism Archive and the Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities. Among her books and publications there are: Puerto Rican Jam (1997), Boricua Pop: Puerto Ricans and the Latinization of American Culture (CHOICE Award, 2004), The Latino Media Gap (2014), and Sovereign Acts: Contesting Colonialism in Native Nations and Latinx America (2017). She has also contributed articles to The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and Public Books. Negrónp-Muntaner has received various recognitions, including the United Nations Rapid Response Media Mechanism designation as a global expert in the areas of mass media and Latin/o American studies; the Lenfest Distinguished Columbia Faculty Award, the Latin American Studies Association Frank Bonilla Public Intellectual Award, and the Premio Borimix from the Society for Educational Arts in New York (2019).
Negrón-Muntaner served as director of Columbia’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race from 2009-2016, was a co-director of Unpayable Debt, a working group that studied debt regimes in the world and is the current director of the Greater Caribbean Studies Program at Columbia’s Institute for Latin American Studies. Her most recent art project is Valor y Cambio, a digital storytelling and just economy experience in Puerto Rico and New York (valorymcambio.org).
Edit: Communications and PR Centre, University of Lodz
