The Conference I Almost Didn’t Go To

Three months ago, I was staring at three conference programmes on my laptop, trying to decide which one I could afford with limited funding. The answer, realistically, was none of them. So, I self-funded the Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS 2026) conference.

Leeds was the closest option. It was also the one where I had no friends waiting, no emotional pull to the city, no guarantee of anything beyond a name tag and a two-day programme. What I was looking for was something less tangible. A community. Latin Americans and people working on Latin America across the UK. People whose concerns might overlap with mine. People I could build something with over time.

It felt like an act of faith. I am glad I chose this one.

The theme “Memory Studies and Social Justice” was expansive. Four keynotes, over thirty panels, roundtables, film screenings, a theatrical performance, and creative workshops. Too much to see. Every choice meant missing something else. I moved through the programme with a quiet sense of loss, aware of the panels I could not attend while trying to remain present in the ones I did.

The food, on the other hand, demanded full presence. The welcome buffet alone with coxinhas, empanadas, churros con dulce de leche would have justified the trip. Meanwhile, Pitanga, a Leeds-based trio, filled a Gothic nave with choro, samba, and forró. The conference shifted for a moment into something sensorial, affective, embodied.

Welcome Event at Left Bank, Leeds.

One session that stayed with me was Thinking Inside the Box, a workshop marking ten years of a decolonial pedagogical framework that treats archives as living sites of knowledge. We sat close, without formal presentations. At the centre were printed posters from the Organización Continental Latinoamericana y Caribeña de Estudiantes (OCLAE), visual artefacts of political struggle across Latin America. Cartoneras made with scarce resources.

Urgency pressed into paper and ink. Holding these materials made the past feel present. Each object carried a political moment within it. The workshop invited us to touch and engage. The archive became something alive. It made me think about my own work with Los Seres del Bosque, the animated documentary I am co-creating with communities in the Mixteca Alta in Mexico.

Both projects share a conviction I am only now beginning to articulate clearly. The formats we use to hold knowledge shape what can be expressed and what remains out of reach.

On Friday afternoon, I chaired Panel 20: Environmental Violence, Knowledge and Extractivism. Ecuador, Brazil, Mexico. Oil, rivers, forests, knowledge. The papers spoke to each other in ways none of us had planned. We heard about Chevron’s contamination in Lago Agrio and environmental reverberations. We heard about contested narratives around the Coca River. We heard about sociobioeconomy in Brazil, and a caution that stayed with me. Scaling traditional knowledge can turn communities into supply chains.

These discussions matter beyond the panel. They point to something structural. Dominant models of development continue to absorb and translate local knowledge systems into inputs for markets and policy while leaving underlying systems intact. There is an urgency to rethink what counts as a solution. Many alternatives already exist in the histories, practices and territorial struggles of the communities we work with. Taking them seriously means shifting power over knowledge decision-making and what is valued and measured.

Then I presented.

For the first time, I delivered the full version of my talk. I expected engagement with concepts I have been carefully building - arraigo, the decidimos/nos dicen distinction, scalar slippage, the mismatch between institutional metrics and community definitions of success. People engaged with these ideas, but what stayed with them was the animated documentary.

The forest spirits. The fox Kachi. The fading practice of asking the mountain’s permission before planting. Animation opened a space for forms of knowledge that interviews and surveys cannot easily reach.

After the panel people came to talk. One conversation opened a door I had not anticipated. A Chilean colleague working between documentary and research suggested looking beyond academia for funding. Film festivals, creative grants, and cinema networks take this kind of work seriously.

It is a completely new world for me. Her practical advice also pointed to something broader: Academic infrastructures struggle to support work that is collaborative, long-term, and not easily reduced to conventional outputs.

Among the keynotes, one stayed with me. A reflection on “Amefricaladina” drawing on Lélia Gonzalez. The speaker questioned the coherence of Latin America as an analytical category and the erasures it sustains. Amefricaladina names a territory that exceeds colonial cartographies where Black and Indigenous lives are central.

What do we erase when we name the region we study? It is a question I now carry into my own work, which moves between Venezuelan, Mexican, and European contexts, between Spanish and English, and between academic and community registers.

But if I’m honest, the richest parts of the conference happened in the margins. Coffee breaks. Conversations after panels. The moments when someone says, “we should talk more about this”, and means it. These spaces are held together by informal relationships of care. Small gestures that do not appear in programmes or reports. Someone saving you a seat. Introducing you to a colleague. Staying a few minutes longer to listen. Sharing a contact. Asking how your work is really going.

These gestures shape what becomes possible. They create the conditions where critique can move into collaboration and where ideas begin to take form through relationships.

When I look at my notebook, it holds more contact details than notes. That tells me something. I came looking for a community. What I found was the beginning of one. What is at stake in spaces like this goes beyond academic exchange. It is about building something that can last through relationships and shared commitments.

In times of polycrisis, it is tempting to look for solutions at scale. Shifts are already happening in quieter ways through how people relate collaborate and build together. Structural change does not happen at conferences, but it can start with the relationships and ideas formed there.

Mariana C. Hernandez-Montilla

Mariana Hernández-Montilla is a third-year PhD researcher at the University of Manchester, examining forest landscape restoration governance in Mexico's Mixteca Alta. Her thesis moves across three scales: national policy gaps, community-defined restoration success with Ñuu Savi communities in Oaxaca, and international governance actors including IUCN and the Bonn Challenge. She is co-producing the animated documentary Los Seres del Bosque with the communities where she works.