[Commlist] CFP: Streets of Latin America: New battlegrounds of change

Call For Papers: Alternautas Special Issue "Streets of Latin America: 
New battlegrounds of change"

Deadline: 30th April 2023

Email: (streetsoflatam /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(streetsoflatam /at/ gmail.com)>

Latin American streets have historically been the centre of revolts, 
protests, and mass demonstrations of culture and religion (Gilbert, 
1994). The recent wave of unrest in Bolivia and Peru and protests in 
Ecuador have made world headlines. From the corta ruta in Argentina to a 
series of upheavals in Brazil, recent events show how the street has 
characterised a scenario of hope and fear, opportunity and repression, 
creativity and precariousness (Boggerts, 2022). The media portrayal of 
urban life in the region is often predicated on chaos, violence, and 
submission. Still, the democratic possibilities of Latin American 
streets as a politico-performative stage for social change remain 
under-explored, except for contentious events.

Alternautas 
<https://journals.warwick.ac.uk/index.php/alternautas/announcement/view/45>calls 
for papers that will add to the growing scholarship about urban life in 
the Global South and expand on the Latin American street as the 
quintessential space for political and creative expression: occupying, 
crafting, or staying in the streets, parks, and squares can pave social 
and cultural transformation. Knowingly, these interventions have 
empowered ulterior notions of citizenship as a form of public sphere 
(Dabène, 2019). It includes social movements that not only react but 
enact creative forms of resistance (Ryan, 2018), as users consistently 
employ trending technologies to reinvent a received notion of space 
(Levy, 2018).

 From the pixadores in Sao Paulo to the murals of Oaxaca, urban 
interventions provide unique examples of the living consciousness of the 
Latin American metropolises

This open-access special issue aims to enable discussions about new 
intersections between political and creative aspects that stem from 
spatial and digital interventions in Latin American cities. It seeks to 
unearth social justice demands that come from and reach the street 
thanks to new practices, movements, or technologies. This issue also 
aims to investigate how actors can re-orient or repurpose digital 
technologies to place their critique of the public space in the region.

We pose the following questions: To what extent can artists, 
practitioners, activists, and citizens shape the Latin American street 
of the 21st century into a creative, digital, and political centre of 
continuous demonstrations? To what degree can these actors render the 
city into an enhanced battleground for renewed demands of socioeconomic, 
ecological, racial, and gender equality? What are the current 
limitations to forging more street-based, politically-driven creativity 
towards democratic consolidation? As an interdisciplinary area of 
interest, we invite contributions from areas that include, but are not 
limited to:

Activist media in the city

Alternative media in both digital and analogical formats

Cinema or audio-visual in the city

Communist and Marxist media in the city

Ecological movements

Favela media studies

Feminist urban studies in Latin America

Folklore and traditional storytelling in the city

Geotagging and counter-mapping

LGBTQ+ or queer media in Latin America

Mural communications and art

Projection and light studies

Protest or counter-hegemonic communication

Public speaking or oral history traditions

Social movement media and the city

Sound art studies

Street art and unauthorised graffiti

Surveillance and society in Latin America

Technology, society and culture in Latin America

Urban public policies

Urban history revisited

250-word abstracts should be sent to (streetsoflatam /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(streetsoflatam /at/ gmail.com)> by the 30th April 2023. Submission is 
free, and we encourage papers sent by media and communications scholars. 
No article processing or any other charges are expected from prospective 
authors.

References

Bogerts, L. (2022). The Aesthetics of Rule and Resistance: Analyzing 
Political Street Art in Latin America. Germany: Berghahn Books.

Dabène, O. (2019). Street Art and Democracy in Latin 
America. Germany: Springer International Publishing.

Gilbert, A. (1994) The Latin American City. London: Latin American Bureau.

Levy, H. (2018). Disrupting the old periphery: Alternative media, 
inequality and counter-mapping in Brazil. Westminster Papers in 
Communication and Culture, 13(2).

Ryan, H. E. (2018). Political Street Art: Communication, Culture and 
Resistance in Latin America. United Kingdom: Routledge.


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