I am a historian of the African Diaspora in Colonial Latin America and the Caribbean. My research looks into the subjectivity, intellectual creativity, and the political imagination of enslaved and free women of African descent (mostly), who lived in Caracas-Venezuela, during the eighteenth century. I explore how these historical actors envisioned, aspired, and negotiated their rights, autonomy, freedom(s) papers, social and political membership, and dignity. My work seeks to unmask the reasons why most of Latin American historiography did previously dismiss the intellectual contributions these social actresses gave to the region, the Atlantic world, and beyond.  While my work is anchored in the eighteenth century, it is in conversation with the present, as I trace how the sequelae of implicit, insidious, and discursive forms of violence from that past, still linger and continue devaluing and racializing Blackness in our present days.

I am a Venezuelan of Haitian descent and I am also a person shaped by larger worlds. Thanks to a never-ending curiosity, I spent two-plus years in Socialist Eastern Europe. My early passion did lead me to earn a Licenciatura degree at the Universidad Central de Venezuela in Conservation biology/behavioral ecology. That brought me to the U.S. and a year later took me to Cameroon-West Africa, where I came across the roots of several Venezuelan and Latin American cultural elements. I began to question silenced African contributions to the hemisphere and the world.

I have lived for many years in the Northeast of the United States. In Philadelphia-PA, I created the Annual Arturo Schomburg Symposium (going to its 26th consecutive year), at Taller Puertorriqueño, Inc. http://tallerpr.org/  This event brings together scholars, professionals, activists, and artists who gather on the last Saturday of February to share, with a wide audience, their expertise about the African presence in Latinx and Latin American history and cultures. Creating this venue connected me to trans-national Afro-Latin American and Afro-Latinx activism. After participating at several Afro-Latin and Afro-Latinx venues, I felt the movement needed to better understand how Latin American/Latinx unsung racialized pathologies had evolved across time. I became a historian.

• Andreina Soto

More broadly I am interested in:

• The political imagination and aspiration of enslaved and free people of African descent everywhere. Afro-epistemology, and Black Feminist Thought.
• The complexity of the unsung Black intellectual tradition in Spanish America and their contribution to the world.
• Unmasking how historic, insidious, and implicit forms of violence have shaped and naturalized systemic, and structural forms of racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression.
• Underscoring our responsibility, as historians, to grapple with our own internalized ways of perceiving Blackness and gender, so that our work contributes to dismantling all forms of oppression.

I am finishing my first manuscript, tentatively titled: Claiming Dignity: Black Women’s Intellectual Contribution to African Diaspora’s Epistemologies in Colonial Venezuela. 

Author: Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, the Quintessential Maroon: Toward an African Diasporic Epistemology. Small Axe, A Caribbean Journal of Criticism. 61. 2020. 132-141. https://read.dukeupress.edu/small-axe/article-abstract/24/1%20(61)/132/160594/Arturo-Alfonso-Schomburg-the-Quintessential-Maroon?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Author: Esclavizadas litigantes, ideas y praxis de una modernidad silenciada. Studia Iberica et Americana Journal of Iberian and Latin American Literary and Cultural Studies. Las Otras Modernidades de Venezuela. Issue December 2018. 31-48. https://www.studia-iberica-americana.com/issues/issue-5-december-2018-ref100056528.html

Author/Essayist, “Esclavizadas, cimarronaje y la ley en Venezuela, 1760-1809.” Ch 2. 77-108. In anthology Demando Mi Libertad. Mujeres negras y sus estrategias de resistencia en la Nueva Granada, Venezuela y Cuba. Editorial Universidad Icesi. Cali-Colombia. 2018. Second Edition: https://www.icesi.edu.co/editorial/demando-mi-libertad-2ed/.Awarded by the LASA Colombia Section, The Monserrat Ordóñez award as the best book on women and gender in Colombia.

Nov. 2015. Book Review, Ann Twinam, “Purchasing Whiteness: Pardos, Mulattos, and the Quest for Social Mobility in the Spanish Indies.” Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 2015. E.I.A.L (Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe) Instituto Sverdlin de Historia y Cultura de América Latina, Tel Aviv University.

2014. Author/Essayist, “Debates públicos de la afrodescendencia hacia el fin de la colonia.” In Memorias 1er Foro Internacional de Afrodesendencia y Descolonización de la Memoria. Homenaje a Juan José Rondón. (August 2012). Caracas: Ministerio del Poder Popular para la Cultura – Fundación Centro Nacional de Historia – Archivo General de la Nación. Caracas, Venezuela.

2010. Author/Essayist, “Invoking Arturo Schomburg’s Legacy in Philadelphia,” in The Afro-Latin@ Reader, History and Culture in the United States. Eds. Miriam Jimenez-Román and Juan Flores. Duke University Press. Durham, NC.

2011. Author/Essayist, “A Life’s Spiral: Journeys of an Afro-Latina Activist,” in Women Warriors of the Afro-Latina Diaspora. Eds. Marta Moreno Vega, Marinives Alba, Yvette Modestin. Arte Público Press, Houston, TX.

• HITS 149AD. Blackness in Latin America, An Introduction.
• HIST 153 Honor, Race, and Gender in the Americas
• HIST 151R Latin America Research Seminar
• HIST 8 Introduction to the History of Latin America
• Independent courses on Blackness, Gender, African Diaspora Epistemology

• 2020-2021 UC President’s Faculty Research Fellowship
• 2020-2021 UC Faculty Career Development Award
• 2020-2021 John Carter Brown Library – Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellowship-African Diaspora (short-term), 
• 2016-2017 CUNY Graduate Center-Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas & the Caribbean Post-Doctoral Fellowship
• 2013 New York University Margaret Brown Dissertation Fellowship
• 2012 Ford Foundation Dissertation Writing Fellowship
• 2012 NYU Warren Dean Fellowship for Dissertation Work in Latin American Studies.

I also hold a Licenciatura degree in Biology (Behavioral Ecology and Conservation Biology) from the Universidad Central de Venezuela. I studied Ceramic/Stoneware/Terracota clay art for more than 10 years and I am passionate about documentary photography. I have made artwork with clay (stoneware and terracotta), which I hope to retake one day. I also explore jewelry making with silver and bronze wire and sheets. 

I am a very curious person. I love to travel. I love dancing salsa, merengue, Kompá, Kizomba, African music, and any type of African-derived music. I also love to listen to Irish and Scottish music. I love good food, no boundaries attached!