Piloting the Counter-Memorias Digital Testimonio Project

Abstract

The vision for the Counter-Memorias Digital Testimonio Project is to create an online non-custodial archive of video-recorded testimonios and pedagogical resources centered on the memories and experiences of women from Latin American and Caribbean diasporas living in Southern California. The project centers on those with social identities traditionally excluded from homogenous conceptualizations of latinidad, including, but not limited to Afro/Black, Indigenous, Asian, Central American, Muslim, Queer, Trans, and multi-racial/ethnic identities. In doing this, the project seeks to reformulate the Latin American oral history methodology of testimonio to engage the voices of those often excluded from U.S. Chicana/Latina theorization of the genre, while critiquing colonial power relations. As a part of this process, the project de-centers Western digital archives methods by employing the everyday technologies used by diasporic migrant women (e.g., mobile phones and WhatsApp) to forge networked connections with loved ones. Currently, in its pilot phase, this essay focuses on the process of recording the project’s first testimonies, which come from two Garifuna women, a grandmother and a granddaughter. Garifuna (or Garinagu) are an Afro/Black Indigenous people descended from Carib and Arawak peoples and West Africans who escaped colonial enslavement during a shipwreck in the 15th century near the Caribbean Island known today as St. Vincent. The intervention made here is an attempt to highlight the stories of those who have been systemically erased, guided by the principles of reciprocity and redistributive relations to achieve social transformation even in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. In this regard, I hope that our testimonio process will enact new modes of storytelling that move us further toward a translocal ethical-political strategy of liberation.