Mar 11 2026

These Seasons | Permaneciendo: Presence as Environmental Repair in Puerto Rico with Christopher Loperena

Wed | 7PM

For the next installment of These Seasons, please join us for a lecture by scholar Christopher Loperena who will present on ecologically-attuned forms of ongoing anticolonial resistance and grassroots organizing in Puerto Rico.

“For people throughout the Caribbean the climate crisis is not forthcoming, but a deeply rooted and ongoing condition that is as much about changing weather patterns as it is about colonialism and race. In the face of tremendous loss and displacement, creating community spaces to increase historical and environmental awareness is of growing import. In Loíza, Puerto Rico, these small-scale initiatives and the individuals behind them mobilize presence in ways that defy the persistent erasure of Black life and futures. “

-Christopher Loperena

These Seasons is an ongoing transdisciplinary public program that invites artists, scholars and writers to explore theories of nature, landscape, ecology, human and non-human life forms and climate action.

Please RSVP to rsvp@swissinstitute.net.

Christopher A. Loperena is Associate Professor of Anthropology at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His research examines Indigenous and Black territorial struggles, land, environmental loss, and the socio-spatial politics of economic development. His expertise spans Honduras, Caribbean Central America, and Puerto Rico. He is the author of The Ends of Paradise: Race, Extraction, and the Struggle for Black Life in Honduras (Stanford, 2022). In addition to his scholarly work, he has provided expert testimony at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and in support of US asylum claimants from Central America.

Image: Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Gosila, 2018 (still). 16mm and HD video transferred to video. 10 min. Courtesy of the artist.