TBD

The Program in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies, the department of Political Science & the Center for Africana Studies, are pleased to welcome Juan Francisco Martínez Peria (History, University of Buenos Aires) for a conversation about his book

George Padmore: la tradición radical negra y la liberación del Sur Global

(Prometeo, 2024)

White and Western: The hegemonic social theory presents the West as the world, its problems as universal, and its authors as the intellectual Olympus. Colonialism, slavery, and racism—structuring aspects of modernity—are barely addressed by the dominant canon, which marginalizes the thinkers from the Global South who analyzed these issues.

Unfairly silenced, George Padmore is one of the victims of Eurocentrism and epistemic racism. Famous during his lifetime, from 1930 to 1934 he was the Afro-descendant leader of the Third International. After breaking with the USSR, he became one of the most prominent theorists and builders of Pan-Africanism, Black Marxism, and anti-colonialism. He worked alongside C.L.R. James, W.E.B. Du Bois, Nehru, Ho Chi Minh, and Nasser and was the mentor to activists from the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. Furthermore, with Kwame Nkrumah, he achieved the independence of Ghana and promoted the freedom and unity of Africa, earning him the recognition as “The Father of African Emancipation.” With his pen as a weapon, he wrote valuable works challenging the colonial, racist, and enslaving pillars of capitalism and advocating for the liberation of colonized peoples.

In a world still marked by the specters of coloniality, his ideas remain highly relevant. Therefore, in this book, we aim to recover his legacy to critically rethink the world from the Global South.

Juan Francisco Martínez Peria is a lawyer (UBA), Master in Political Science and Sociology (FLACSO), Master in History (Pompeu Fabra University), and Doctor in History (Pompeu Fabra University). He teaches Argentine and Latin American history at undergraduate and postgraduate levels at UBA, UNSAM, UNVM, UNR, and UNMA. He is the coordinator of the History Department at the Centro Cultural de la Cooperación. In addition to this book, he is the author of ¡Libertad o Muerte! Historia de la Revolución Haitiana (Ediciones del CCC, 2012), editor of El Sistema Colonial Develado by Jean Louis Vastey (Ediciones del CCC, 2018), and translator and editor of Vida y Lucha de los Trabajadores Negros, an anthology of texts by George Padmore (Prometeo, 2022).