Cultural WG webinar – Latin America In Outer Space

Agenda

1. Remo Rapetti: Introduction
2. Anne Warren Johnson: Latin American Engagements with Outer Space: Contradictions and Alternatives
3. Umbriel López Avalos: Connections to the Moon: Perspectives from Indigenous Communities in Mexico
4. Alejandro Viadas Loyo: Mexico and the Moon in the Future
5. Comments and questions: Lisa Pettibone, artist,& Cristina Luna, anthropologist

Registration

Speakers

Anne W. Johnson is a Professor in the Graduate Social Anthropology Program of the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, where she teaches classes on science and technology, the anthropology of futures, and material culture. She has a Ph.D. in social anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin. Her publications about outer space include articles in the Revista Colombiana de Antropología (2023) and Acta Astronautica (2021), as well as chapters in the edited works Exploring Ethnography of Outer Space (Routledge, 2025), Space Feminisms (Routledge, 2024), The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Social Studies of Outer Space (Routledge, 2023), and Southern Space Studies (Springer, 2002).  Her book From the Cosmic Race to the Space Race on Mexican engagements with outer space is forthcoming with the University of Arizona Press.

Umbriel López Avalos is the head of the Citizen Participation Department at the Instituto Electoral del Estado de Guanajuato. He holds a B.A. in social anthropology from the Universidad de Guanajuato and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in political analysis at the Division of Law, Politics, and Government at the same institution. Since 2019, he has worked at the Electoral Institute of the state of Guanajuato, where he currently serves as the head of the Citizen Participation Department, leading programs focused on addressing the needs of youth in the state of Guanajuato. He is a member of the National Electoral Professional Service, and his academic research topics focus on the impact of non-institutionalized youth participation in the state’s democratization process, youth in democracy, political engagement during adolescence, systems of political value transmission, and mechanisms for citizen participation.

Alejandro Viadas Loyo has a B.A. in International Relations with a focus on Political Analysis from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in political analysis at the Universidad de Guanajuato. He is the co-founder and coordinator of the Center for Global Order Studies (CESOG), where he conducts research on Mexico’s role in the aerospace value chain, the Mexican space program, and new trade routes within a multipolar globalization. He was also a jury member of the Mexican experimental rocketry contest (ENMICE) in 2024.