Migrant children play after lunch in the main courtyard of Casa del Migrante. October 2024. Photo by Cinthya Briones Santos.
Remesas y Sobremesa: Tequio (Mutual Aid) in an Era of Deportation and Borders
When: Wednesday April 16, 2025 @ 6:00 PM- 8:30PM
Where: Performance Space New York, 150 1st Avenue, 4th Floor, NYC
Host: Cinthya Santos-Briones
Guests: Michelle Castañeda, Paola Ramos, and Natalia Mendez
RSVP HERE!
*Discussion will be held primarily in Spanish, with simultaneous interpretation
Presented as part of the Clemente’s Historias initiative, the Remesas y Sobremesa series invites you to gather around the table, where the warmth of food and shared meals meets thoughtful dialogue. This event will be the second iteration of Remesas y Sobremesa,focusing on Migration and Spiritual Belief, one of Historias core thematic tracks.
Presented in partnership with Performance Space New York, artist and anthropologist Cinthya Santos-Briones will host an intimate discussion over shared food and drink about mutual aid, her recent border trips to Mexico, and NYC’s migrant services.
She, along with academic Michelle Castañeda, journalist Paola Ramos, and chef Natalia Méndez, will discuss mutual aid as a vital response to anti-immigrant policies and how to provide immediate and long-term relief to fractured communities. The conversation will highlight the role of artists as cultural bridges—preserving and sharing knowledge through their work.
The dinner will entail a participatory preparation of regional dishes using locally sourced ingredients, led by Cinthya Santos-Briones and Natalia Méndez.
Participant Bios:
Cinthya Santos Briones is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist, educator, and cultural worker of Nahua heritage. With a background in Anthropology and Ethnohistory, she spent a decade at Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History researching Indigenous migration, textiles, and traditional medicine. Her practice blends photography, archives, writing, drawing, embroidery, and popular education to center collective storytelling and social justice. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Photography from Ithaca-Cornell University and a certificate from ICP. Cinthya teaches at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and is Associate Director of Outreach at the Mexican Institute. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Nation, and The New Yorker, and exhibited at ICP, El Museo del Barrio, and The Latinx Project at NYU. A community organizer, she advocates for migrant justice and is a guardian for unaccompanied children. She is a member of Colectiva Infancia and co-creator of The Huichapan Codex.
Michelle Castañeda holds a Ph.D. from Brown University’s Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, an M.A. in Dance Theatre from Trinity Laban, London, and a B.A. in Political Science from Yale University. Michelle’s research and teaching interests focus on migration, Latino/a and Latin American studies, dance, and critical legal studies.
Paola Ramos is an American journalist and author of Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means for America (2024). She is a contributor to Telemundo and MSNBC, and a former correspondent for Vice, where she hosted the docuseries Latin-X and earned a GLAAD Media Award nomination for her reporting on HIV activism at the border. Ramos focuses on issues impacting Latino communities in the U.S. and Latin America. Her work has been featured in outlets such as Latina, Popsugar, Bustle, HIV Plus Magazine, Vice, and KCRW. She previously served in the Obama administration and was Deputy Director of Hispanic Media for the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign. Ramos holds a BA in Political Science from Barnard College and a Master in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School. She is also a frequent speaker for organizations like Lesbians Who Tech + Allies and other advocacy groups.
Natalia Méndez is the co-owner and head chef of La Morada, a Michelin-listed, family-owned Oaxacan restaurant and community hub in the South Bronx. A proud curandera (healer), Méndez draws on her ancestral knowledge of the nutritional and medicinal properties of Indigenous ingredients to create food as both nourishment and healing. Guided by the saying “donde come uno comen dos,” La Morada is a sanctuary that welcomes all and is active in immigrant, Indigenous, and food justice movements. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Méndez transformed the restaurant into a mutual aid kitchen, serving up to 1,000 meals daily. Her family continues to reclaim land and use community gardens to increase food access while passing on traditional knowledge of Indigenous foodways. Méndez has been honored with the Three Kings Medal from El Museo del Barrio and a Doctor of Humane Letters from Lehman College. La Morada is a three-time James Beard finalist and widely celebrated.
Accessibility:
Performance Space New York is located at 150 First Avenue at the corner of 9th Street in Manhattan. The courtyard is step-free; the ground is a wheelchair accessible ecofloor system (grid of tightly packed gravel). ADA all-gender bathrooms are located inside Performance Space on the 4th and 5th floors. On the 1st floor are gender-segregated, ADA, multi-stall bathrooms.
If you’d like to come, but something makes that difficult for you, or if you have questions about the events, the venue, have particular seating needs, or would like to tell us about your access needs, please don’t hesitate to contact us at info@theclementecenter.org with the event title and ‘accessibility’ in the subject. Advance notice is appreciated and requests made 2 weeks prior to the event will have the best chance of being met.