Volume 2, Issue 2 ix A Journal of Social, Cultural, and Literary History Periphe – rica Foreword Pedro García-Caro University of Oregon pgcaro@uoregon.edu T his new issue of Periphērica brings together a multitude of critical and creative approaches to the cultures of various spaces that share Iberian colonial histories and legacies: Cuba and the Philippines, Brazil and California, among others. To give a graphic idea of the breadth of our editorial project, let’s think about the distances from which the four poets who participate in the creative writing section work: María Tabares (Bogotá), Zingonia Zingone (Rome), Alberto Moreno (Santiago de Chile and Isla Negra), and Denisse Vega Farfán (Lima). If we add to this poetic map the points from which the other authors and collaborators of this issue are located, the geographical arc expands even further and ranges from Australia to Paris, passing through Bellingham, New York, Havana, and many other places across a trans-Pacifc and trans- Atlantic geography. Our editorial project proposes from its beginnings a vast geography of critical thinking that questions and goes beyond the academic and epistemic frameworks of the nation-state. Two independent articles open the issue by ofering a critical look at the contemporary legacy of slave colonialism in Brazil (Tocco) and the late Spanish colonial period in Cuba (Camacho). Through the very productive concept of • https://doi.org/10.7264/peripherica.2.2.6038