Adela Amaral is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at The College of William & Mary and the author of the children’s book Valentina y la historia de Amapa. Through historical anthropology and archaeology, her research examines the dynamic relationships between race and material practices in colonial Mexico and in Mexico’s colonial present. During this event, she will read selections from her book and discuss her research, both based on extensive archival research and excavations in Amapa—a town in the state of Oaxaca founded in 1769 by black runaway slaves who fled sugar plantation slavery in present-day Veracruz.  By considering how social categories are ideologically and materially created, her book and research demonstrate how the political failures of the colonial past extend into Amapa’s present in the form of structural ruins left behind by state projects. The event will be in Spanish.