Latinidad is Cancelled: The Bold Statement By Dr. Alan Pelaez Lopez Turning Heads Across Academia and Culture

In a single phrase—“Latinidad is Cancelled”—Dr. Alan Pelaez Lopez spun a mirror into the heart of Latinx identity, reflecting both its brilliance and its shadows. This provocative statement, first publicly engaged through their Harvard exhibition Negation, challenges the notion of a cohesive, universal Latinx identity by highlighting the ways in which whiteness, antiblackness, and colonial legacies have historically shaped and limited the category. Pelaez Lopez’s work pushes viewers to confront the exclusions embedded in the concept of “Latinidad,” forcing a reckoning with the reality that Latinidad has often been constructed through erasure: erasure of Afro-Latinx experiences, indigenous perspectives, and the vast diversity of cultural expressions across Latin America and the diaspora. By intentionally destabilizing what many might consider a shared identity, the artist provokes critical dialogue around race, class, and cultural representation, asking whose voices are amplified, whose histories are silenced, and how such exclusions perpetuate systemic inequalities within Latinx communities.

This critical lens becomes especially relevant when examining cultural expressions such as reggaeton, a genre celebrated globally as a cornerstone of Latinx musical influence. Despite its origins in Afro-Caribbean communities, reggaeton has often undergone processes of whitewashing in both commercial and media contexts. Artists, producers, and marketing campaigns have frequently minimized the genre’s Black roots, highlighting lighter-skinned performers while sidelining Afro-Latinx contributions. Pelaez Lopez’s assertion that “Latinidad is Cancelled” resonates here, revealing how dominant notions of Latinx identity continue to center whiteness, even within spaces ostensibly defined by Latin American culture. By challenging these sanitized narratives, the artist exposes the mechanisms by which cultural forms are extracted, commodified, and repackaged in ways that marginalize those whose labor and creativity originally shaped them.

Beyond the music industry, antiblackness permeates broader societal attitudes across Latin America, influencing who is included in national imaginaries of Latinidad. Black Latinos often face discrimination in education, employment, and media representation, and their histories are frequently omitted from mainstream narratives of national identity. In countries such as Brazil, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic, state and cultural institutions have historically elevated mestizo or European-descended identities while minimizing the presence of Afro-Latinx communities. Pelaez Lopez’s work interrogates this exclusionary practice, using art to question the myths of unity and homogenization that have long been associated with Latinidad. By framing Latinx identity as inherently fractured and racialized, they draw attention to the social and political mechanisms that uphold systemic inequality and the need for intentional inclusion of marginalized voices.

The phenomenon extends beyond historical and cultural erasure into contemporary debates surrounding representation and belonging. Latinx identity is often treated as a monolith in global discourses, a simplification that disregards the multiracial, multiethnic realities of the community. Pelaez Lopez’s work confronts this simplification, prompting audiences to examine the ways in which whiteness and antiblackness are coded into social institutions, cultural production, and even internal community dynamics. By suggesting that “Latinidad is Cancelled,” the artist does not reject Latinx culture outright; rather, they invite a critical reevaluation of the structures that define it, encouraging a reimagining that centers racial equity and historical accountability.

In this light, the Harvard exhibition Negation becomes a powerful intervention: it forces engagement with uncomfortable truths about identity formation and cultural memory. The exhibition situates Latinidad as a contested and evolving construct, one that cannot be understood without acknowledging the enduring influence of colonial hierarchies, racialized labor, and cultural commodification. Through provocative visual and conceptual strategies, Pelaez Lopez underscores how the categories by which society organizes race, ethnicity, and belonging are neither natural nor fixed—they are the product of historical choices, systemic power, and ongoing negotiation. By exposing these dynamics, their work contributes to broader conversations about inclusion, representation, and the urgent necessity of antiracist praxis within Latinx communities and institutions.

Ultimately, “Latinidad is Cancelled” functions not as a nihilistic dismissal, but as a clarion call to confront the ways in which racialized power shapes who is seen, celebrated, and remembered. Pelaez Lopez compels us to examine the intersections of whiteness, antiblackness, and cultural production in the formation of Latinx identity, from music and media to social norms and institutional policy. In doing so, they illuminate both the limitations of existing frameworks and the possibilities for a more inclusive, critically conscious vision of Latinidad—one in which the histories, contributions, and identities of Black, Indigenous, and other marginalized Latinx communities are fully recognized and celebrated.