Elena Vanasse Torres

Elena Vanasse Torres [she/ella/ela] is a graduate of the MA program at the Roger Thayer Stone Center for Latin American Studies and is a cultural worker in her community of Jayuya, central Puerto Rico. Prior to her time at Tulane University, she received a bachelor’s of science in biology & society with honors, and served as a Fulbright Fellow in Belém do Pará, Brazil (2020). Elena is currently working with territoriality and race in Latin America and is particularly interested in mapping land/sea-based (re)territorialization between Brazil and the Antilles. Her thesis research focuses on the impacts of protracted military occupation and environmental trauma facing Vieques, Puerto Rico and its effects on viequense cultural production. This work locates the social practice of resistencia as one that actively (re)maps the material and imaginative geographies of past colonial encounters. In her spare time she keeps a garden and dances.