Beyond Pain and Torture: Towards a Reparative Education About the Lives of Enslaved People in Puerto Rico

Drawing on the research project Visualizando la Afrodignidad (Visualizing Afrodignity), this presentation analyzes how 4th-grade social studies textbooks in Puerto Rico systematically erase the dignity, agency, and resistance of enslaved people through both written narratives and visual imagery. Classroom exercises with fourth graders confirm that these editorial choices shape how students connect or disconnect with different ethnic heritages. The presentation proposes anti-racist speculation as an editorial practice and outlines five concrete “visual reparations” as a commitment to reparative justice in education.

Teams link: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/325174099240469?p=boTpTv8bPyqpUtxOIJ