Please join the Latin American Library in welcoming Gina Ruz Rojas, a 2018-2019 LAL Richard E. Greenleaf scholar, who will be giving a work-in-progress talk titled Cartagena de Indias y el Caribe: Carnavales y Fiestas de Independencia/Cartagena de Indias and the Caribbean: Carnivals and Independence Festivities on Thursday, March 21, from 3:00 – 5:00 PM in the Latin American Library seminar room.

The talk will be in Spanish.

Resumen Desde 1812, la ciudad caribeña colombiana de Cartagena de Indias ha celebrado su independencia de España con fiestas de independencia locales en torno al 11 de noviembre. Estas Fiestas de Independencia coexistieron, desde el siglo XIX hasta la década de 1930, con un carnaval ligado al calendario litúrgico y que se remonta al período colonial. Sin embargo, algunas manifestaciones de ese carnaval siguen presentes en la fiesta patriótica, es decir, que en Cartagena de Indias coexisten elementos de unas fiestas de procedencias distintas – por una parte, la celebración republicana, y por otra, las prácticas propias del carnaval tradicional que se erigen en contraposición al orden establecido. La investigación busca identificar matices, hibridaciones, huellas de contribuciones, tradiciones, y vasos comunicantes entre el carnaval y las Fiestas de Independencia de Cartagena, y de estos con otros carnavales y sus manifestaciones a través de un análisis comparado entre diversas experiencias.

Gina Ruz Rojas es Abogada de la Universidad de Cartagena, y Magister en Desarrollo y Cultura de la Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar. Es docente universitaria e investigadora asociada del Laboratorio de Investigación e Innovación en Cultura y Desarrollo LiD de la Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar. Ha ejercido, además, como gestora cultural a cargo de varios proyectos culturales en Cartagena. Ha publicado Fiestas de Independencia: el tambor que no calla, en Los desterrados del paraíso: raza, pobreza y cultura en Cartagena de Indias (2015); y Cartagena: reinas, fiesta e independencia, en La Fiesta en Colombia (2017). Es coautora de Las Fiestas de Independencia de Cartagena como patrimonio cultural inmaterial de la Nación colombiana, documento base para la postulación de las Fiestas de Independencia a la Lista Representativa de Patrimonio Cultural Inmaterial de la Nación (2016).

Abstract Since 1812, the Colombian Caribbean city of Cartagena de Indias has celebrated its independence from Spain through local Fiestas de Independencia, or Independence Day festivities. From the early 19th century to the 1930s, this festival coexisted with carnival traditions in tandem with the Catholic calendar and stemming from the colonial period. Even though disappeared, some of these carnival traditions continue to be present in the patriotic festival as celebrated today. In other words, in Cartagena de Indias we have elements of two different traditions – on one hand, the Independence festivities while, on the other, festival practices stemming from carnival traditions, which tend to disrupt the established order. My research will identify nuances, hybridizations, traces of contributions, traditions, and modes of communication between carnivals of the Caribbean and their manifestations in Cartagena through a comparative analysis.

Gina Ruz Rojas is a professor and research associate at the Research and Innovation Laboratory in Culture and Development  L+iD of Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. She holds a Law degree from Universidad de Cartagena and a Master‘€™s degree in Development and Culture from Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar. She has spearheaded various projects promoting culture and the arts and is the author of several articles on festivals and culture, including Fiestas de Independencia: El tambor que no calla, in Los desterrados del paraíso; Raza, pobreza y cultura en Cartagena de Indias (2015) and Cartagena: reinas, fiesta e independencia, in La Fiesta en Colombia (2017). She also co-authored a study, Las Fiestas de Independencia de Cartagena como patrimonio cultural inmaterial de la Nación colombiana, which is part of a dossier presented to the Colombian Ministry of Culture to include Cartagena’s Fiestas de la Independencia as Intangible Cultural Heritage of the Nation (2016).

The Richard E. Greenleaf Fellowship Program at the Latin American Library is made possible by a generous gift from the late Richard E. Greenleaf.

About Richard E. Greenleaf (1930-2011)

Until his retirement in 1998, Richard E. Greenleaf served as the France Vinton Scholes Professor of Colonial Latin American History, and as the Director of the Center for Latin American Studies at Tulane University. He also served as Chair of the Department of History. Dr. Greenleaf grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and took his Bachelors, Masters and Doctoral degrees at the University of New Mexico, where he studied under the dean of Inquisition scholars, France V. Scholes. Greenleaf’s doctoral dissertation, Zumárraga and the Mexican Inquisition 1536-1543, served as the basis for his many excellent publications on the history of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Latin America. Greenleaf authored eleven major scholarly books, co-authored or contributed to seventeen others, and published almost four dozen articles in the field of Latin American and New Mexico history. He was the recipient of many distinguished awards, among them the Silver Medal, the Sahagún Prize (Mexican National History Award), and the Serra Award of the Academy of American Franciscan History for Distinguished Scholarship in Colonial Latin American History. In his long and distinguished teaching career in New Mexico, Mexico City and New Orleans, Greenleaf served as mentor to 34 doctoral students at Tulane, and countless masters and undergraduate students. Richard E. Greenleaf died on November 8, 2011.