The Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department invites you to a public to a talk by Dr. Roberto "Cintli" Rodriguez from the University of Arizona. 

UTSA Downtown Campus

Thursday, February 27, 2020

10:30 a.m. - 11:45 a.m.

Durango Building, 3.216

Dr. Rodriguez will be speaking about his body of scholarship, including his new book "Yolqui: A Warrior Summoned from the Spirit World." His talk will actually include his two other books: Our Sacred Maiz is our Mother (UA Press 2014) and Smiling Brown: Gente de Bronce; People the color of the Earth (UA Press, forthcoming).

This trilogy of books are all related; his Sacred Maiz book speaks to the 7,000-year history of maiz and also speaks to the unity of this continent, based on this ancient sacred sustenance, birthed from a germinational seed in Southern/Mexico/Central America. Yolqui is both a memoir, but also a book of testimonios that examines violence against the red-black-brown peoples of this country/continent, tracking it to 1492, but also, emphasizing the past 5 years, since the killing of Michael Brown in 2014 (In 1986, he was recognized as the jourmalist of the year by the California Chicano News Media Association, for his defense of the 1st Amendment, after nearly being killed for his coverage of police brutality). Smiling Brown is a book on the topic of color and color consciousness and its relationship to Indigeneity and Indigenous consciousness.