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BRIEF BIO

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Hi! I’m Angélica, a social scientist curious about climate justice, Caribbean political philosophies of the environment, and the dynamics between traditional ecological knowledges (TEKs) and mainstream climate sciences. I have over a decade of experience designing, implementing, and evaluating a diverse range of research from wet-lab experiments to community focus groups. 

 

My professional and personal work is guided by a responsibility to and love for the archipelago of Borínken (so-called Puerto Rico); the ancestral home of my father’s people. As a prima de afuera, or Boricua who grew up “across the waters”, I am deeply drawn to questions about intergenerational and long term work that move us (diaspora + islanders alike) beyond the many violences of settler nationhood and towards climate justice, Black liberation + Indigenous sovereignty, and healthy (is)lands in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. 

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I’m currently working and teaching as a doctoral student at Michigan State University (MSU). You can find me IRL visiting the rivers with my wonderful child Kira or virtually at @prima.de.afuera (IG) and through my blog.

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A DEEPER DIVE:

 

Angelica was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to an immigrant mother from Michoacán, Mexico and father from rural farming community in the mountains of San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico. She moved around a lot and missed her family a lot and learned to write letters and draw maps as a way of building community across distance of diaspora.

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In 2010 Angélica did two big things: she started training as a research scientist at a lab bench and, most significantly, she joined a collective of multi-racial, transnational, and LGBTQ Southerners organizing for liberation.  Each of these two distinct learning-paths fed into the other. What  she learned  in organizing spaces about building campaigns and shifting narratives kept her curious about knowledge production in STEM (how does knowledge move, who moves it, and why?) and in search of anti-colonial research practices & ethics. What she learned in research labs about grant writing and data analysis/ visualization, kept her curious about how research could be used to support the brilliant work of her community. Together, these two paths helped Angélica develop a queer, decolonial Black and Indigenous feminist politic that shapes her research and her mamíhood. 

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In 2014 Angélica moved from Richmond, VA to Michigan where she joined the Indigenous Youth Empowerment Project (IYEP) as a youth mentor and worked in the non-profit and public sector as public health researchers on interdisciplinary projects and campaigns ranging from Medicaid/Medicare policy analysis, maternal and child health improvement, sexual health and STD/STI support programs, water equity, and urban planning. 

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During her first year as a graduate student, and three months after giving birth to her first child, Angélica joined millions of diasporic, displaced, and island-based Boricuas in providing support to relatives in the after-math of Hurricane Maria in the winter of 2017. This grassroots work solidified her commitment to working towards climate justice through transnational food sovereignty and agroecological work that acknowledges and addresses all harmful aspects of white settler-colonialism.

 

In her position as prima-de-afuera (cousin from the outside of the island, outside the settler-conquistador imagination ) and descendant of rural farmers and migrant farmworkers, Angélica works in a PhD program at Michigan State University studying the impacts of settler-colonial governance on food and other eco- systems in the Caribbean and is focus building towards climate justice and critical sovereignty in our respective and related communities across the globe.

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