This month we're getting to know geographer and curator, Diana Negrín da Silva, whose research explores intersections of race, space, and identity, with a focus on Indigenous rights and activism in Latin America and the United States.
Thanks for taking the time to chat! Can you share why you chose to pursue an academic career in Geography?
I chose Geography because of its interdisciplinary nature and its ability to include the spheres of human and environmental sciences. I have always cared deeply about social and environmental justice and found Geography to be a place where I could bring my passions together. I was partially raised in Mexico where Geography was taught in elementary school, and I remember really loving “History and Geography” classes as a way to understand the world.
Your passion for Geography continued well past elementary school, leading you to complete your PhD in Geography here at UC Berkeley. How have you seen the department change?
I was a PhD student in Berkeley Geography from the Fall of 2006 until the Spring of 2013. Over the course of that period, the department saw some shifts in thematic focus and the arrival of new faculty. The recent growth of Black Geographies is definitely the biggest and most exciting shift I have seen occur in our department. New classes are always being offered and we have also attracted a lot of brilliant students over these past years whose research reflects many of the urgent questions that we face today in both human and physical Geography.
Recently you were chosen as a Flourish Fellow for the Psychedelics in Society and Culture Program. Congrats! What is your project and why is it so important?
I am leading a project called “Psychedelic Cultures and Extractivism in Sacred Territory,” which emerges from research that I initiated in 2015. The objective was to document the cultural and political articulations between the Wixarika Indigenous people and their non-Indigenous allies as they pursue the protection of their sacred pilgrimage destination in the state of San Luis Potosí, where the peyote cactus grows endemically. However, land use changes fueled by agro-industrial expansion and peyote tourism have brought new actors, economic networks, and challenges to this ancestral landscape in central Mexico. With support from the Berkeley Psychedelics in Society and Culture program, I am producing a multigenre project consisting of text, film, and cartography that will bring together perspectives on this embattled territory and offer a vision for the shared geographies that comprise Wixarika territories.
That sounds facinating. How does your research align with the classes you teach for undergraduate students? What do you think students, even those who don’t study a subject in the social sciences, can gain from taking classes in Berkeley Geography?
During the past three years I have been teaching Global Environmental Politics, Decolonial Border Geographies, and Geographies of Race and Ethnicity in Latin America. These classes touch on many important contemporary matters, but I always try to give a historical perspective for understanding their roots coupled with a lot of current stories from around the world, especially Latin America, which is my expertise. My classes delve into really important issues that include the politics of land use, environmental justice movements, the histories behind our contemporary borders, and the way that race and ethnicity have shaped and been shaped by the geographies of Abya Yala or Latin America. I always tell students that the subject matter in my classrooms can help them navigate many of the thorny issues we are dealing with in our political, ecological, and social worlds.
Final question: What book would you recommend to everyone reading this interview?
Each Fall I assign a couple of chapters from a book called Plants and Empire by Londa Schiebinger. The book never gets old for me and my students. It is a really great dive into the birth of European bioprospecting and modern science in the Caribbean, and looks in particular at the reasons behind why African, Indigenous, and female knowledge of plants was foreclosed from botanical gardens and pharmaceutical sciences in Europe.
Check out Negrín's book, Racial Alterity, Wixarika Youth Activism, and the Right to the Mexican City and learn more about her work here.