Haunting the archives: forced migration and Afro-Latinx resistance

This article examines how contemporary artists Liliana Angulo Cortés and Karina Aguilera Skvirsky narrate Afro-Latinx histories of forced migration and resistance through visual and performative practices. Angulo Cortés’ ¡Quieto Pelo! documents Afro-Colombian hair design traditions that encode ancestral stories of survival and escape, while Aguilera Skvirsky’s film The Perilous Journey of María Rosa Palacios retraces her great-grandmother’s migration across the Andes, bringing Afro-Ecuadorian histories often absent from the archival record into view. Drawing on Saidiya Hartman’s concept of critical fabulation and Ursula K. Le Guin’s ‘Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction,’ the article argues that both artists create counter-archives that repair the silences of colonial and patriarchal histories. Through speculative narrative, oral tradition, and embodied performance, Angulo Cortés and Aguilera Skvirsky transform gaps in the historical record into spaces of Afro-Latinx survivance, illuminating the enduring creativity and resilience of women who have shaped collective histories of resistance across the Americas.