‘One of the many benefits that we have in doing international exchanges is clearly the exchange part for me. It's the meeting and sharing of experiences with students,’ said prof. Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez, an American writer, artist and academic lecturer specialising in Latin American literature, cross-border culture and migration studies. He is the head of the Spanish and Portuguese Department at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque (UNM). His work and research focus on the experiences of the Latino community living on the Mexican-American border, as well as the role of literature and art in crossing borders, both geographical and symbolic. He has been cooperating with the University of Gdańsk for many years. In 2017, he was one of the founding members of the Border Studies Studio at the Faculty of Languages, and he is a member of the International Border Studies Center (IBSC). He regularly participates in conferences and symposia organised by the IBSC. Thanks to Erasmus grants, several teaching exchanges between the University of Gdańsk and the UNM have taken place. Prof. Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez was interviewed by dr Grzegorz Welizarowicz, head of the Border Studies Laboratory/Border Research Laboratory at the University of Gdańsk.

Grzegorz Welizarowicz: - Santiago Vaquera-Vasquez, welcome to the University of Gdańsk! What brings you here? What are you doing here at the University of Gdańsk?

Santiago Vaquera-Vasquez: - Thank you very much. I'm really happy to be here. I'm here because I have been asked to teach a short seminar on the US-Mexico border and questions of border crossing. I'm focusing my classes on the theme of spectrality, on the different layers of history that go through both sides of the borderline. I am also asking the students to think not just about the US-Mexico border but also about the borders in their own lives: to think about Gdańsk in particular and the many layerings of history and echoes and traces that we can find here. So thank you very much for the invitation. And I appreciate the Department of American Studies very much for bringing me as well as the support that I received from through the Erasmus Plus project.

- You are also a member of the International Border Studies Center at UG here. Can you tell us about the history of that collaboration?

- I arrived at UG in 2019 as a Fulbright specialist with the aim of lecturing on the Mexican American presence in the United States but also to help develop and envision a project that I found very fascinating and very dear to my heart which is the Border Studies Lab and, later, the International Border Studies Center which is a collaborative interdisciplinary unit made-up of scholars from various fields who are looking at borders around the world. What particularly interested me with the IBSC was its focus on cultural production as well as thinking through alternative methodologies or pedagogies for talking, instructing, and educating about borders and borderlands.

- How many times have you been here already?

- That's a great question. I've lost count. I think that this is probably about the fifth time. My first visit to the University of Gdańsk was in 2016 when I was on a Fulbright in Turkey. And I was invited to give a couple of lectures. And then I returned in 2019 a Fulbright specialist. Since then I have returned for events at the IBSC, which have included staged readings, and talks about my work.

- And you participated in a roundtable with world class scholars when we had the Border Seminar 2023. And last year we had you at the Globality Forum, a symposium organized by the IBSC. But you have also been giving creative writing workshops, and you have maintained contact with your students!

- One of the many benefits that we have in doing international exchanges is clearly the exchange part for me. It's the meeting and sharing of experiences with students. I often say in talks that part of my job, as a writer, is to tell stories. But I believe that my most important job is actually to listen to others’ stories. And when I travel, I take as many opportunities as I can to ask questions and to hear stories. In receiving of these, it's also a way of passing along knowledge and histories.

- This is perhaps one of your longest stays in Gdańsk and you have been able to explore some of the areas in the city or around the city. Can you tell us what you have found interesting? What spikes your interest in Gdańsk as a border region? Are there any stories that you learned, or you want to share with us about this region?

- For me the most interesting aspect is all the layerings of history and the contested histories about Gdańsk. And for me I found the histories around the period of World War Two and the transition from the German city of Danzig to the Polish city of Gdańsk very interesting: in particular, the ways that the Germans in the run-up to the war treated the local Polish community as a community that does not belong, as strangers. This treatment of the Poles as “strangers” in their own land, is akin to how the United States has treated us -Mexican Americans, Chicanos and Chicanas- as “strangers in our own land.” On a visit to the site of the Stutthof concentration camp I was struck by a sign that said “No hounds or Poles allowed” which reminded me of signs that were common throughout the Southwest up until the 1960s that said things like ‘No dogs or Mexicans allowed.’ These echoes of history I find very telling and are some of the stories that have intrigued and captured me on this visit. They make me think about how as nations we have our different histories but also similar experiences of migration, of oppression, of being made to feel other. It is important to learn these stories, to know this history.

- Any plans for future collaboration with the IBSC?

- I would like to continue working with the IBSC as I as I feel that the work that we do as a collaboration is very important especially in a time when borders are becoming strengthened and fortified. It's very important to look at how artists and writers and scholars resist the further impositions of borders through the creation of art, through the telling and teaching of stories in ways to push back on this idea that somehow borders are natural when they are not. And it is very important to remember that we as communities have shared lives and experiences that should always be remembered and recognized. One of the posters at Stutthof that caught my attention was for an exhibit about the history of the site. It consisted of a skull  carved out of the attire that the prisoners wore, and then just below that it said “Remember.” This is very important: our task is to remember. I would like to see increased collaboration with the IBSC but also to think about other ways that we can start having not just faculty exchanges but also student exchanges. So maybe at some point sending graduate students or even undergrads to New Mexico to learn about the experience of the Mexican American communities in the Southwest as well as students from the Southwest coming to Poland to learn and discover things that may resonate with their own histories that can be related to the histories here. And, of course, in the most immediate future I will be one of the contributing writers to the Migration and Refuge Reader that the IBSC is preparing for publication sometime early next year.

- Thank you very much for the interview!

- Thank you!