Who Gets to Define “Latino”?
Part of the (In)Justice Series & UMN Conversations at Northrop
Thu, Dec 4, 3:30–5:00 pm
In-person / Livestream
Free Event, Registration Requested
What does it mean to be Latino, and who gets to decide? This conversation challenges the flattening of Latinidad in the United States and makes space to explore its complexity, power, and contradiction. Too often, Latino communities are reduced to trauma, immigration headlines, or abstract data. These narratives are real and urgent, but they are incomplete. They reflect the weight we carry but not the worlds we are creating in spite of it. They miss the agency, imagination, and leadership Latines bring to culture, politics, the economy, and daily life.
This event invites participants to move beyond simplified categories and limited frames. Together, we will ask: What narratives emerge when we honor the full depth of Latino identity? How are our histories, geographies, racialized experiences, genders, and languages shaping who we are and where we are going? Through spoken word, storytelling, and discussion, panelists and participants alike will reflect on what it means to be Latine in the Midwest in 2025—not as a static identity, but as a force for transformation.
With a spoken word introduction by Lupe Castillo.
Presented in partnership with the Movida Initiative.
Image courtesy Olivia Levins Holden. "We Heal Together." 2020. Mural located at Take Action Minnesota.
The 2025–27 (In)Justice Series on Data & Power presented by the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota critically examines data: how it’s collected, who controls it, and what it reveals (or conceals) about power, identity, and justice. Supported by the MnDRIVE Human in the Data Initiative.
Institute for Advanced Study (In)Justice Series events are professionally CART captioned and are available in person at the Best Buy Theater at Northrop or online via Zoom. Some accommodation requests may take us time to arrange, so please make requests for this event by Thu, Nov 13. If you are registering after this date, please still reach out to us so we can explore available options. Contact Carolina Maranon-Cobos at gust0952@umn.edu.
Julio Murphy Zelaya is the Director of Advocacy at the ACLU of Minnesota. He is deeply rooted in the rural immigrant experience within the American judicial system and recognizes that those most impacted by laws are essential to creating a better legal ecosystem. In his ACLU role, he established a new model that merged impact litigation and community organizing to address unconstitutional immigrant detention in Minnesota. This model is now being used to address issues of policing and housing. Zelaya was a 2023 Bush Fellow.
Veronica Mendez Moore is a community organizer and co-founder of Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha (United Workers’ Center, aka CTUL), a worker-led organization that partners with other leaders on movements for racial, gender, and economic justice. After serving as co-director for 16 years, she stepped down in 2024, partly to spend more time with her two young children.
Jessica Lopez Lyman is an interdisciplinary performance artist and Xicana feminist scholar interested in how Indigenous and People of Color create alternative spaces to heal and imagine new worlds. She received her PhD in Chicana and Chicano Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Jessica has published poetry and scholarship in Chicana/Latina Studies Journal, Label Me Latina/o, and Praxis: Gender and Cultural Critiques. Her manuscript Midwest Mujeres: Chicana/Latina Art and Performance explores racialized and gendered geographies of urban Minnesota. Jessica’s second project focuses on climate justice. She built La Luchadora, a mobile screen printing cart, and prints political posters with communities across the state. She currently serves on the Academia Cesar Chavez Board of Directors and is the Board Chair of Serpentina Arts. Jessica is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chicano and Latino Studies at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities.
Arianna Genis is a first-generation Latina from Minnesota and the founder of The Movida Initiative, a Midwest platform that transforms narrative and research into media and data power for Latino organizing. The eldest daughter in a Mexican immigrant family, she cut her teeth on the Minneapolis campaign that won paid sick leave before leading national efforts to elect first-time progressive leaders of color and expand Latino voter turnout in communities historically excluded from investment and representation. At Johns Hopkins University’s P3 Lab, she worked with Dr. Hahrie Han, the nation’s leading scholar of grassroots democracy, to identify movidas, everyday strategies of Latino agency, now central to Movida’s work. Today, Arianna is a Visionary Community Fellow at the University of Minnesota.
UMN Conversations at Northrop is a collection of lectures, panel discussions, and other conversations focused on important and timely issues presented in collaboration among numerous University of Minnesota departments and held at Northrop.
