As an African Brazilian dramatist, professor, visual artist, activist and author, Abdias Nascimento’s first commitment was to use every tool to confront and combat bigotry and oppression. The scope of his activity reached beyond his native land, embracing Africa and its diaspora as he conceptualized his people’s experience in the world and its history. Nascimento’s PAN-AFRICAN vision was one of living solidarity and active participation in a broadly defined unity of resistance and resonstruction. This was complemented by his idea of a wider America that is less “Latin” than composed of majority Black and original peoples, in dialogue with Leila Gonzalez’s notion of AMEFRICA that embodies this idea. Thus, the term PANAMEFRICAN fits both Nascimento and QUILOMBISMO, his cal to anticolonial and decolonial struggle founded on traditional balues. This proposal for egalitarian organization of pluriethnic, multicultural societies with economies derived from the mercantile slave system is both a tool of analysis and a model for social change.

Elisa Larkin Nascimento holds a PhD in psychology from the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil and MA and JD degrees from the State University of New York, USA. Co-founder and director of the Afro-Brazillian Studies and research Institute (IPEAFRO), she conceptualized and organized the Sankofa Educational Action Workshop (1984-2010). She has curated exhibitions of IPEAFRO’s Abdias Nascimento | Black Art Museum collectionat major museums, and she has written and edited publications, including the 4-volume Sankofa collection; THE SORCERY OF COLOR; ADINKRA – AFRICAN WISDOM SYMBOLS; and ABDIAS NASCIMENTO, A LUTA NA POLITICA [Abdias Nascimento, the Political Struggle].

Sponsored by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, The African Studies Center.