Overview
Jazmine Janay Cuevas is a scholar of Afro- México who is deeply informed by her experience as an Afro-Chicana who was raised by the Frontera, or the transnational El Paso, Texas, United States/Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, México, borderland. At Cornell she centers the African continent in work by pursuing a PhD in Africana Studies with dual graduate minors in the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program and Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program. Throughout her studies, she regularly educates on México’s African roots through public humanities projects. She is Afro-Latinx Caucus Representative for Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Sociales, Research Associate for Diaspora Africa, and a contract curator.
Jazmine has adjuncted at the University of Texas at El Paso in the First Year Composition Program teaching classes on Hip-hop, Nation-Building, and Blackness’ contention with Latinidad. She has presented on Afrofuturism, Afro-Mexico, Afro-Chicanx Identity, African American Literature, Latinx Literature, Legal Studies, Shakespeare, and Pedagogy. She has been a fellow for the Borderlands Shakespeare Colectiva, RaceB4Race Social Media Fellowship, Alamo Colleges Annual Democratizing Racial Justice: Ethnic Studies Educators'
Academy, Penn States’ Cooper-DuBois Mentoring Program, and the Latino Museum Studies Program at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Research Focus
Her research epistemologically and historically answers how it is that that Ifá, the endogenous Yorùbá knowledge system, has expanded Curanderismo, or holistic Mexican healing. Since there are many geographies and moments to trace Yorùbá presence and African systems of knowledge in México, Jazmine anchors her study through the healing tradition of her own ancestors to uncover how components of Ifá integrated with Curanderismo in Northern México and the Southwest United States.
Jazmine’s investigation excavates the Yorùbá diaspora in México alongside the nation’s precarious history of making and unmaking race. These are evaluated simultaneously to explain how it is possible that African healing technology is so prominent in México while its contributions have overwhelmingly been ignored. She begins with the mid-century eighteenth in costal state of Veracruz, to the northern state of Nuevo Leon, and concludes with contemporary Afro-Indigenous healing in the El Paso/Ciudad Juárez Frontera.
Jazmine’s research would not be possible without the support of her communities. Cultural centers such as Àkòdì Òrìṣà, an all-women’s indigenous art sanctuary, Ile-Ifẹ̀, Nigeria (the source of the Yorùbá civilization) and Iinamiki Center for Indigenous Borderlands Learning have afforded her invaluable immersion in indigenous culture and systems of knowledge. The Smithsonian Latino Studies Program has provided her with professional experience at the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the National Gallery of Art, allowing her to better educate public audiences on the African Diaspora to the Americas. She has long been a member and received guidance from the San Antonio based Borderlands Shakespere Colectiva and the RaceB4Race scholarly community operating through Arizona State University’s Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Although, she is particularly to her former students at the University of Texas at El Paso whose feedback assisted in shaping this current study.
