Publication date: 1 December 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781806552252

Number of illustrations: 40

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Comics and Race in Latin America

James Scorer (Editor), María Elena Bedoya (Editor), Abeyamí Ortega Domínguez (Editor), Peter Wade (Editor)

Series: Modern Americas

Comics and Race in Latin America draws together artists and academics to create a dynamic and diverse study of the contested field created by the relationship between comics and racialised identities. Each chapter includes original artwork by artists from Argentina, Colombia and Peru, interviews and reflections written by them, alongside essays written by leading researchers in Latin American comics and Latin American race studies. Among the comics included here are several responses to images collated during a three-year AHRC-funded project that underpins the book.

Though the book recognises that comics have long had a troubled relationship with racialised identities, it also demonstrates that comics can also be a powerful tool for antiracist discourses and practices. It delves into the complex nature of racialised inequalities and comics production. It contributes to growing calls for multiracial perspectives, in this case featuring Black, Indigenous, mestizo and Asian-descent artists who use comics to express a shared opposition to racism. The book’s multidisciplinary approach creates a set of networked pathways that cut across disciplines, nations and lines of thought, and, in a gesture towards the hybrid nature of both comics and Latin American philosophies, across visual and written forms.

List of figures
List of contributors

Introduction – Racist and anti-racist lines in Latin American comics
James Scorer, María Elena Bedoya, Abeyamí Ortega Domínguez and Peter Wade

1 Afro-diasporic comics and anti-racism
Wilson Borja, with an academic intervention by Abeyamí Ortega Domínguez

2 Entangled racisms: comics lines and barbed wire
Lucía Brutta, with an academic intervention by Jasmin Wrobel

3 Braiding resistance: comics and protest
Jesús Cossio, with an academic intervention by Jorge Català

4 Race, history and the comics archive
Cristina Zavala Portugal, with an academic intervention by María Elena Bedoya

5 Racialised oppression and Indigenous resistance/resilience in comics
Michael Guetio Cobo, with an academic intervention by Peter Wade

6 Contesting Indigenous visual landscapes in comics
Grupo Kalay’i, with an academic intervention by James Scorer

Afterword – The unfinished reading
Carla Sagástegui Heredia

References
Index

DOI: 10.14324/111.9781806552252

Number of illustrations: 40

Publication date: 01 December 2026

PDF ISBN: 9781806552252

EPUB ISBN: 9781806552269

Hardback ISBN: 9781806552238

Paperback ISBN: 9781806552245

James Scorer (Editor)

James Scorer is Professor of Latin American Studies at the University of Manchester. He is the author of Latin American Comics in the Twenty-First Century: Transgressing the Frame (Texas, 2024), co-winner of the 2025 MLA’s Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize, and City in Common: Culture and Community in Buenos Aires (SUNY, 2016). He is also the editor of Comics Beyond the Page in Latin America (UCL Press, 2020), and the co-editor of Cultures of Anti-Racism in Latin America (University of London Press, 2019), and Comics and Memory in Latin America (Pittsburgh, 2017). Between 2021 and 2024 he was the Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded project, ‘Comics and Race in Latin America’.

María Elena Bedoya (Editor)

María Elena Bedoya is a public historian and independent curator. She was a postdoctoral research associate on the ‘Comics and Race in Latin America’ project at the University of Manchester between 2021 and 2024. She is the author of Antigüedades y nación (2021) and co-editor of Museos, historia pública y comunidades digitales en América Latina (2023). Her most recent book is Public History, Gender, and Power in Latin American Museums (Routledge, 2026). She currently teaches in museology and heritage programs. Her research interests include critical museology, public history, and visual and material culture in Latin America.

Abeyamí Ortega Domínguez (Editor)

Abeyamí Ortega Domínguez is Honorary Research Associate in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. At the same institution, she was a Research Associate in the project ‘Comics and Race in Latin America’ (2021-2024). She is co-editor of Creative Critical Interventions for Social Justice (UCL Press, 2026). Other publications include ‘Public Art and the Grammars of Antiracism’ (in Polgovsky, 2023), ‘The mestizo gaze: visualizing racism, citizenship, and rights in neoliberal Mexico’ (Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2002) and ‘Marrón/x envisionings: visualising queer beauty as feminist antiracist affective refusal and care in sequential art activism’ (Feminist Theory, 2025).

Peter Wade (Editor)

Peter Wade is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. His publications include Race and Ethnicity in Latin America (Pluto Press, 2nd ed. 2010), Degrees of Mixture, Degrees of Freedom: Genomics, Multiculturalism and Race in Latin America (Duke University Press, 2017), Against Racism: Organizing for Social Change in Latin America (edited with Mónica Moreno Figueroa, Pittsburgh University Press, 2022), and Art and Anti-Racism in Latin America (edited with Lúcia Sá and Ignacio Aguiló, Cambridge University Press 2026).

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×

Comics and Race in Latin America

Series: Modern Americas

Publication date: December 1, 2026

Open Access PDF ISBN: 9781806552252

Paperback ISBN: 9781806552245

Hardback ISBN: 9781806552238

Trim size (hardback): 23.4cm x 15.6cm

Trim size (paperback): 23.4cm x 15.6cm

Download free PDF online

https://uclpress.co.uk/book/comics-and-race-in-latin-america/

Comics and Race in Latin America draws together artists and academics to create a dynamic and diverse study of the contested field created by the relationship between comics and racialised identities. Each chapter includes original artwork by artists from Argentina, Colombia and Peru, interviews and reflections written by them, alongside essays written by leading researchers in Latin American comics and Latin American race studies. Among the comics included here are several responses to images collated during a three-year AHRC-funded project that underpins the book.

Though the book recognises that comics have long had a troubled relationship with racialised identities, it also demonstrates that comics can also be a powerful tool for antiracist discourses and practices. It delves into the complex nature of racialised inequalities and comics production. It contributes to growing calls for multiracial perspectives, in this case featuring Black, Indigenous, mestizo and Asian-descent artists who use comics to express a shared opposition to racism. The book’s multidisciplinary approach creates a set of networked pathways that cut across disciplines, nations and lines of thought, and, in a gesture towards the hybrid nature of both comics and Latin American philosophies, across visual and written forms.

James Scorer (Editor)

James Scorer is Professor of Latin American Studies at the University of Manchester. He is the author of Latin American Comics in the Twenty-First Century: Transgressing the Frame (Texas, 2024), co-winner of the 2025 MLA’s Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize, and City in Common: Culture and Community in Buenos Aires (SUNY, 2016). He is also the editor of Comics Beyond the Page in Latin America (UCL Press, 2020), and the co-editor of Cultures of Anti-Racism in Latin America (University of London Press, 2019), and Comics and Memory in Latin America (Pittsburgh, 2017). Between 2021 and 2024 he was the Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded project, ‘Comics and Race in Latin America’.

María Elena Bedoya (Editor)

María Elena Bedoya is a public historian and independent curator. She was a postdoctoral research associate on the ‘Comics and Race in Latin America’ project at the University of Manchester between 2021 and 2024. She is the author of Antigüedades y nación (2021) and co-editor of Museos, historia pública y comunidades digitales en América Latina (2023). Her most recent book is Public History, Gender, and Power in Latin American Museums (Routledge, 2026). She currently teaches in museology and heritage programs. Her research interests include critical museology, public history, and visual and material culture in Latin America.

Abeyamí Ortega Domínguez (Editor)

Abeyamí Ortega Domínguez is Honorary Research Associate in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. At the same institution, she was a Research Associate in the project ‘Comics and Race in Latin America’ (2021-2024). She is co-editor of Creative Critical Interventions for Social Justice (UCL Press, 2026). Other publications include ‘Public Art and the Grammars of Antiracism’ (in Polgovsky, 2023), ‘The mestizo gaze: visualizing racism, citizenship, and rights in neoliberal Mexico’ (Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2002) and ‘Marrón/x envisionings: visualising queer beauty as feminist antiracist affective refusal and care in sequential art activism’ (Feminist Theory, 2025).

Peter Wade (Editor)

Peter Wade is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. His publications include Race and Ethnicity in Latin America (Pluto Press, 2nd ed. 2010), Degrees of Mixture, Degrees of Freedom: Genomics, Multiculturalism and Race in Latin America (Duke University Press, 2017), Against Racism: Organizing for Social Change in Latin America (edited with Mónica Moreno Figueroa, Pittsburgh University Press, 2022), and Art and Anti-Racism in Latin America (edited with Lúcia Sá and Ignacio Aguiló, Cambridge University Press 2026).