

CENTRO x Cumbre – Sites of Black Memory: Our Ancestors, Archives, and Arts
Cost: Free
March 21 @ 6:00 pm – March 22 @ 9:00 pm EDT
Cumbre Afro is coming to New York for the first time and will be ending in East Harlem, nestled between two prominent archives, The Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College (CENTRO) and the NYPL’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. This year’s theme for Cumbre Afro, Sites of Black Memory: Our Ancestors, Archives, and Arts, dedicated to Arturo Schomburg and produced in collaboration with PR-AFRO at UPR, is an opportunity to celebrate afrolatinidad memory in the age of divisiveness; a reminder of our shared experiences as Black Diasporic peoples. By recognizing the privilege of academics in universities and non-profit organizations, the Afro Summit makes resources available to communities to form alliances, establish networks, and share historically invisibilized and marginalized experiences.
March 21, 2025 | CENTRO in El Barrio & via Zoom
Keynote Presented by Vanessa Valdés | Conversation Featuring Yomaira Figueroa-Vásquez, Joy Bivins, and Vanessa Valdés
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM | Hybrid
Professor Vanessa Valdés, author of Diasporic Blackness: The Life and Times of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, kicks off CENTRO x Cumbre with a poignant keynote address based on her book which examines the life of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg through the lens of both Blackness and latinidad. After this keynote, Valdés is joined by CENTRO Directora, Dr. Yomaira-Figueroa-Vásquez, and Schomburg Director, Dr. Joy Bivins for a conversation building on the themes found in her book.
March 22, 2025 | CENTRO in El Barrio & via Zoom
Diasporic Memory Keepers: The Labor of Archiving & Counter Archival Practices
10:00 AM – 11:15 AM
Start CENTRO x Cumbre with a timely panel featuring several stewards of archives responsible for maintaining black historical artifacts during a time where DEI initiatives and ethnic studies institutes are under attack. Listen as they share their responsibilities and experiences in the face of powerful institutions, such as the US Archivist, purportedly “sanitizing” exhibitions that may upset visitors and politicians. Our panelists from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Dominican Studies Institute, The Haitian Studies Institute, and CENTRO, will discuss their historical counter-archival practices and the histories we tell that disrupt common narratives. How do these archival practices contend with the rise of AI, a powerful tool in the revision of history, and how can you bring these practices into your life?
Lieu de Mémoire: Recalling and Responding: Ancestral Memory & Living History
11:45 PM – 1:15 PM
Sites of memory of the Black Diaspora are all over. From the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute (CCCADI) in Harlem to Puerto Rican Organization for the Performing Arts (PROPA) in Orlando, FL, these places have been created to honor our histories. How do natural sites of memory compete with curated ones? How have these sites and their meaning changed over time with input from new historians and archivists? How are these spaces disrupted by gentrification and the commodification of these histories (i.e. weddings at plantations)? How do these black cultural organizations work together in East Harlem and beyond to help define our history and shape the present and future of Black Diasporic communities?
Black Diasporic Photography, Altaring, & Spirit Practices
1:30 PM – 2:15 PM
After a morning filled with insightful and thought provoking dialogues on the power and responsibility of archiving and maintaining our living history, join us for lunch and a conversation between our featured artist for Cumbre Afro, Jose Arturo Ballester Panelli and Diogenes Ballester. Their work will be featured in the lobby of the building and the auditorium lounge, respectively.
José Arturo Ballester Panelli (Ballesta 9) is an Afro-Caribbean artist based in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. His work explores the connections between photography, Afro-Caribbean aesthetics, history and the racial, social and ecological system in the Caribbean and its diasporas.
Diogenes Ballester is a painter, printmaker, and teacher. His work combines organic elements and forms that might be considered part of a symbolic language created by the artist. It draws on references to history, mythology, spiritual and spiritualist rituals, individual and collective memory, oral history, and Caribbean identity.
New Directions: Hemispheric Afro-Latine Studies from the Miriam Jiménez Román Postdoctoral Fellows at the Latinx Project at NYU
2:30 PM – 3:45 PM
Miriam Jiménez Román was an Afro-Puerto Rican scholar, activist, and author on Afro-Latine culture. Her legacy is forever enshrined at the Latinx Project at NYU under the Miriam Jiménez Román Fellowship, designed for post-doctoral candidates and junior scholars whose research advances the study of Afro-Latine communities in the U.S. This panel brings together the most recent recipients of this fellowship and asks the question: what questions does Afro-Latine scholarship seek to answer? Join us in exploring what upcoming projects we can expect from these up and coming scholars.
Cafecito con… Mayra Santos Febres: La Otra Julia
4:00 PM – 5:15 PM
Mayra Santos-Febres is a Puerto Rican author, poet, novelist, professor of literature, essayist, and literary critic and author of children’s books. Her work focuses on themes of race, diaspora identity, female sexuality, gender fluidity, desire, and power. Her latest book, La otra Julia (The Other Julia), a fictionalized account of the emblematic and controversial Julia de Burgos. What began as a simple assignment, writing about Julia, ends up as a map to understand the lives of so many Latin American authors, including her own. Join Santos-Febres at Cumbre for a behind the scenes look into her latest book.