This podcast accompanies the work Pájaro, cómeme (2022) by artist Beatriz Santiago Muñoz. Hosted by María Montero Sierra, head of program of TBA21–Academy, this conversation deals with the role of the Ocean in the practices of decolonization in the Caribbean, and how these affect Puerto Rico specifically, today a non-incorporated territory of the USA, a free associated state with self-governing status. Montero Sierra is joined by contributors Reniel Rodríguez Ramos, doctor of anthropology at the University of Florida and professor at the Social Sciences Program at the Universidad de Puerto Rico, who specializes in Isthmo-Colombian and transatlantic precolonial connections; and Nicole Cecilia Delgado, a poet, translator, and co-founder of the printing workshop La Impresora, as well as author of adjacent islands | islas adyacentes (2022), which gives the podcast its title and encompasses the bodies of work subtropical dry (La Impresora, 2015) and Amoná (artist book, 2013). Delgado is interviewed by Urayoán Noel, who translated islas adyacentes into English, and is a poet, critic, and teacher at New York University and Stetson University. 

These conversations explore how the archaeological evidence inscribed in natural spaces and the nomadic writings inspiring the recuperation of Indigenous languages are two different strategies with a shared goal: decolonize the Caribbean. Both processes situate the Ocean not just as an atemporal space that links the prehistoric and foundational past of the Caribbean with the current moment, but which broaden the identities of the region by bringing in an oceanic vision.

Audio transcript in English HERE.