The Latinx Visions: Speculative Worlds in Latinx Art, Literature, and Performance conference will be held March 9-11 at The University of New Mexico. The Latinx Visions conference is focused on developing the growing field of Chicanx and Latinx speculative fiction, art, and performance. This will be the first time that the scholars working on this topic will convene.

Approximately 70 scholars and artists will give presentations at the conference. The conference will be Thursday through Saturday, March 9-11, on the UNM campus and other local venues. Click here for a full schedule of presentations and events. The conference is free and open to the public, both virtual and in person. For conference details and to register, visit the conference website

The Latinx Visions: Speculative Worlds in Latinx Art, Literature, and Performance

  • Thursday-Saturday, March 9-11 · UNM campus and other local venues
  • ​Free and open to the public

Latinx Visions: Speculative Worlds in Latinx Art, Literature, and Performance kicks off at the Student Union Building on the UNM campus Thursday, March 9, starting with registration 8:30-9:30 a.m. in Ballroom C.

Lysa Rivera, associate professor and director of Graduate Studies at Western Washington University, will give the keynote presentation starting at 4 p.m., speaking on the topic of Latinx Speculative Fiction and the Decolonial Imaginary.

Assistant professor Matthew David Goodwin of the Department of Chicana/o Studies, Santiago Vaquera Vásquez of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and Cathryn Merla-Watson from the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley are coordinating the event.

Along with the conference are three performances and two futurist exhibitions held at locations throughout Albuquerque.

Cancion Cannibal Cabaret
Cancion Cannibal Cabaret

Performance schedule
Thursday, March 9, 5:30-7 p.m. at the Chicana/o Studies Casita

Amalia Ortiz: Performance of the Cancion Cannibal Cabaret, a punk rock dystopian musical. Focused on the theme of revolution and inspired by current issues of social injustice, The Canción Cannibal Cabaret is set in a not-so-distant dystopian future. After an environmental apocalypse, a refugee raised under an oppressive State, La Madre Valiente studies secretly to become the leader of a feminist revolution. While the revolutionary figure remains in hiding, her emissaries, Las Hijas de la Madre, roam the land telling her story, educating others, and enlisting allies in the revolution.

Ilan Stavans
Ilan Stavans

Friday, March 10, 6:30-8:30 p.m. at The Outpost
Performance by Ilan Stavans: The Oven: An Anti-Lecture, a one-act play about taking ayahuasca in Colombia, followed by a discussion. After a chance meeting with a shaman in Colombia, Stavans, a highly regarded literary scholar, found himself in the Amazon rainforest. He had reluctantly agreed to participate in a religious ceremony that involved taking the hallucinogen ayahuasca. Even though he considered himself a skeptic and a rational intellectual, as someone whose worldview was defined by his education and his heritage as a Mexican Jew, Stavans found that the ritual pushed him to reconsider many of his basic understandings, including his perceptions of indigenous cultures in Latin America, as well as his career as teacher, thinker, and artist. This one-act play is delivered in the form of a lecture that mimics the author's startling spiritual journey. The performance will be followed by a discussion.

Guillermo Gomez Pena
Guillermo Gómez-Peña

Saturday, March 11, 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the National Hispanic Cultural Center
Keynote address by Guillermo Gómez-Peña: Performance of The Pandemia Chronicles, a brand new spoken-word monologue and “live-action juke-box” by Gómez-Peña and Balitronica Gómez. “My new performance represents the fruit of my life’s work in all its iterations: live performance, lecturing, archiving, literary work, mentoring, community activism, all coming together to address the dangers of the times we live in with its disregard for human life and insidious undermining of democracy,” Gómez-Peña said.

Exhibitions
Futurist exhibits during the conference include:

  • Milenio: Chicanismos of Tomorrow, organized by Bianca Camarillo, a Museum Studies M.A., at the 6th Street Harwood Studio. This exhibit already has another showing in Santa Fe, and there will be a small satellite exhibit at Zimmerman library.
  • Fronteras del Futuro exhibit, at the National Hispanic Cultural Center. 

Finally, following the conference, the project team will arrange the conference papers into a volume of revised and peer-reviewed chapters. The Latinx Visions project will forge a vital arena for understanding Latinx speculative worlds, significantly advancing the state of this rapidly growing field.