This panel offers a transnational and interdisciplinary vision of how creativity resists debt. Capturing the social alienation of debt embodied in the lives of so many Latin Americans, and contrary to analyzing Latin American debt only as a sophisticated form of socioeconomic oppression— particularly of individuals and communities historically marginalized from politics and power—this panel aims to discuss the creative and resourceful ways indebted individuals are forced to navigate their precarity and reclaim a future for their families. These efforts—to build community, reimagine futurity, and resist through surplus —are often shaped by the reclamation of capitalism's leftovers (e.g., trash, debris, noise) and by improvised infrastructures of care and collaborative action. This panel focuses on the representation of debt in contemporary Latin American literature and the visual arts but, most importantly, on the creative ways to fight it as experienced by marginalized communities in the region (Women, Queer individuals, and Black and Indigenous populations).

NeMLA will take place in Boston, March 7-10, 2024.