Achievements and challenges related to confronting racism by the State will be addressed by Francia Márquez, Vice President of Colombia, Anielle Franco, Minister of Racial Equality in Brazil (both in remote participation) and Agustin Lao-Montes, professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, on August 5th, at 9 am, at the Grand Conference Confronting racism by the State, challenges and achievements.

Promoted by the CALAS-IEAT Chairs program, the event will take place in the UFMG Rectory auditorium. Anyone who registers for free on the UFMG Event Management website and signs the attendance list will be entitled to a certificate.

The opening of the event will feature the participation of the rector of UFMG Sandra Regina Goulart Almeida and the director of IEAT, Patrícia Kauark Leite. Professor Marlise Matos, from the Department of Political Science at the Faculty of Philosophy and Human Sciences (Fafich) at UFMG, will mediate.

Brazil and Colombia are the two countries with the largest Afro-descendant population in Latin America and are also those with the most robust and vibrant black movements that for decades have influenced the course not only of racial politics, but of politics in general.

As Agustin Lao-Montes explains, the current governments of both countries are at the forefront of a wave of state policies that are called new progressivism, where one of the explicit objectives is to combat racism and institute racial equality policies. “At the conference, the principles, perspectives, achievements, challenges and possibilities of racial equality policies in Brazil and Colombia will be presented, in general terms. We intend to compare them and also analyze the current policies and collaboration projects between the two countries, which have been coordinated in a significant way,” – he highlights.

About the professor
Agustín Lao-Montes is an Afro-descendant intellectual activist of Puerto Rican origin, with a doctorate in historical sociology and currently works as a professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he is also a researcher at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and professor of the doctorate in African-American Studies. He has published several books and a large number of articles on topics such as Globalization, Social Movements, Urban Issues, Ethnic-Racial Identities and Racism, Caribbean and Afrodiasporic Critical Thought, Decolonial Theory and African Studies and Intercultural Education.

IEAT 25-year cycle
The conference is part of a cycle of activities celebrating 25 years of IEAT. By adopting the theme “Paving the Future”, IEAT intends to assume a reflective and prospective character, offering a space for the debate of ideas and the exchange of experiences with a view to building a fairer and more sustainable future.

The invitation to participate in the cycle is not restricted only to members of the university, but extends to everyone interested in exploring new approaches to contemporary challenges, whether scientific, social, economic or environmental.

The conference is a realization of the CALAS-IEAT Chair program, promoted by IEAT in partnership with the Maria Sibylla Merian Center for Advanced Latin American Studies (CALAS), and has the support of the Center for Studies and Research on Women (Nepem) from UFMG.