All of human-existory is desperate intonations
of disparate metaphors.
In the end, we experience merely our Selves.
This is me... metaphoring my me-tə-ˈmȯr-fə-ˌsēz.
Hi, I'm Julián
pronounced hoo-lyÁhn
Some people call me a “multipotentialite” or a “polymath,” while others regard me as a “Renaissance Man,” but my stride is too short and unsteady, unstable and unwilling, to carry those honorifics to full term.
What I can tell you is that I identify more as an obsessively (com)passionate and compulsively curious explorer of
• the arts, ethics, and cultures;
• totalities and infinities;
• limitations and liminalities;
• otherness and the margins;
• the physical and the metaphysical;
• histories and philosophies;
• atoms and astronomy;
and
• the entwined nature-nurture horizons of our potentialities and pluralistic existences.
I delve into the spectrums, tensions, and dissonances of our ontological, epistemological, psychological, sociological, linguistic, spiritual, historical, ancestral, institutional, and hermeneutical situations: how we engage with, make sense of, heal from, and revolutionize them.
As founder of The Nasiona, managing director of consulting and strategy at Conscious Thrive, and architect of numerous other initiatives, expeditions, and investigations, I’ve centered my work around subaltern, anti-essentialist, liberatory interpretations, translations, empowerments, and transformations:
• the examination of existential concerns via prisms of decoloniality and Indigeneity;
• the innovation of liberation-based relationships, cultures, policies, and practices;
and
• the reclamation of agency and authority over our imaginations and authenticities so we can better disclose, discover, and create… to overcome, exist, travel, and thrive safely unmasked beyond survival.
I'm a Turtle Island-conceived, Abya Yala-born,
multiply neurodivergent with multiple chronic conditions
and Afro-Euro-Indigenous roots.
The morning after my birth,
my parents were greeted
not by the front page of The New York Times
as they may have been if they had remained in Queens,
which showcased a photo of
the Pope kissing the foreheads of African children,
another photo of
Atlanta residents in mourning
over the killings of their own boys and girls,
and a lead article about how
the Soviet Defense Minister said
the West was trying to reopen the Cold War.
Instead,
my parents were greeted
by Colombian newspaper headlines
about hunger strikes
and photographs that would prove
how some now-forgotten dissident
was tortured.
If I was born literate
and read those front pages,
I would not have had high hopes
for my brown-skinned life.
I have difficulties describing who I am
because my existence is evanescent, ephemeral, and fleeting… A short-term transitory somnolence… A fugitive comet in continual metamorphosis… traveling between sfumato colors and tones… (re)naming, (re)claiming, and (re)inhabiting its broken shelves… Selves shifting and tearing ligaments and bones… (re)threading the lingering trails of its own renaissance.
If my voices were a painting
the paint brush would be dipped in Beethoven hues and shades of Sandro de América, a rainbow mixture of Django Reinhardt’s Romani jazz and Thelonious Monk improvisations, a bit of Blues, some blood red Flamenco, caramel coffee Cumbia, carnation pink Vallenato, African violet Mapalé, lilac panpipe flutes, the hypnotic rhythm of a copper penny pendulum, and the silences in between black holes. Those are the colors of the spectrums of my voices.
I’m also a Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best of the Net nominee; a Trilogy Award in Short Fiction finalist; a McNair fellow; a winner of the Rudy Dusek Essay Prize in Philosophy of Art; and author of two books (Marx’s Humanism and Its Limits; and Reporting on Colombia), as well as a poetry collection (Ninety-Two Surgically Enhanced Mannequins). My work appears in PANK Magazine, Into the Void Magazine, The Acentos Review, Novus Literary Arts Journal, Havik 2021: Inside Brilliance, Fahmidan Journal, Rigorous Magazine, among others.
I hold a bachelor’s in philosophy and in communication and a master’s in justice studies from University of New Hampshire and was an interdisciplinary PhD candidate at University of British Columbia Okanagan, where I focused on political science and Latin American studies.
I have been awarded fellowships and grants to conduct research in the humanities and social sciences, and have presented my findings at universities and conferences (such as the International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association) in the United States and Canada, as well as provided live analysis on international media (such as Al Jazeera). I have also worked as a researcher in the private sector and on a range of social-political projects, which have taken me to Canada, Ecuador, Colombia, and the United States. I was also a guest researcher at the Universidad de los Andes’s political science department in Bogotá, Colombia.
Throughout my career, I have engaged with audiences as an educator, storyteller, museum director, event host, topic expert, moderator, workshop leader, activist, journalist, and podcaster. I have also been invited to speak at war protests; public workshops on issues ranging from student activism to armed conflict resolution to how memoir can be a political act; university courses to discuss indigenous civilizations before European colonization of the Americas; festivals celebrating multiculturalism and renewable energy; Colombian magical realism; a lecture on diversity and poetry at the New Hampshire Seacoast African American Cultural Center; and as a keynote at events ranging from immigration and border crossing to the role of creative nonfiction in today’s divisive world. I have also moderated numerous public discussions and debates, such the Abortion Debate event at the University of New Hampshire. I have also taught university courses on comparative politics and political issues in Latin America at the University of British Columbia Okanagan.
Universities and the private sector have also recognized my diversity, equity, and inclusion work. The University of New Hampshire inducted me into the Diversity Hall of Fame; and I was a member of several University of British Columbia Okanagan DEI committees, such as the Deputy Vice Chancellor Human Rights & Equity committee, the Equity Enhancement Fund sub-committee, and the International Day for Elimination of Racial Discrimination committee.