“Te vas Alfonsina con tu soledad. Qué poemas nuevos fuiste a buscar,” Luis Othoniel Rosa sang to an overflowing classroom as students, faculty and onlookers alike gathered tight near the door to listen in. These lyrics translate to “You leave, Alfonsina, with your solitude. What new poems were you seeking?” The song Alfonsina y el mar (Alfonsina and the Sea), according to Rosa was written during a dictatorship and is about the suicide of an Argentinian poet.
On Thursday, a Latin American Studies classroom in Andrews Hall was dedicated to the Institute for Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. For Rosa, the associate director of the Institute for Ethnic Studies, the space ensures the safety of Latin American culture.
“Our idea singing that song is that art and study and books and what we do in this new room of Latinx studies means that you cannot erase culture, that empires never learn, that they cannot erase culture, because culture always finds a way, and we’re finding a way here,” Rosa said…