Colonial Blueprints: Crafting Loyalty in the Spanish Planet

Ninel Valderrama Negrón (Assistant Professor, Spanish & Portuguese)

MON MAY 4, 12:00 - 1:30 PM

Hall Center Conference Hall

This talk explores how nineteenth-century infrastructure in Spain’s last colonies—ephemeral

monuments, statues, promenades and urban plans—shaped political imagination as much as they organized daily life. Negrón focuses on projects in Cuba and the Philippines that she calls “infrastructures of the Spanish Planet,” designed to exalt King Fernando VII and symbolically reclaim an empire Spain had largely lost. By shifting attention from metropolitan centers to colonial borderlands, the talk shows how these ornamental infrastructures operated as political technologies: they sought to inspire loyalty yet often generated negotiation and alternative visions of modernity.

Drawing on tri-continental archives and interdisciplinary approaches, Negrón situates these materials within Global Hispanophone Studies and highlights connections between the Caribbean and the Philippines that move us beyond Atlantic-centered narratives. Ultimately, the talk invites us to reconsider what counts as “colonial” and “modern,” and to understand infrastructure not only as material design but as a critical site where imperial worlds were made and unmade.

A tailgate-inspired buffet will be available for the first 45 attendees.