Pedro Morán Bonilla
Raised by their maternal great-grandmother, María Luisa Villacorta, Pedro Morán Bonilla is a first-generation Salvadoran refugee raised on the unceded lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, Katzie, Semiahmoo, Kwikwetlem, Kwatlen, Qayqayt, Tsawwassen and Stó:lō peoples. In collaboration with members of the vancouver-based first-generation Salvadoran refugee and diasporic communities, as a PhD candidate at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), they co-theorize and explore how first-generation Salvadorans in diaspora cultivated land and place-based relationships on vancouver; and how said land and place-based relationships influenced home (un)making for first-generation Salvadorans arriving on vancouver during the 1979–1992 period. To assist in this project, Pedro spread the word within their Salvadoran communities and co-interviewed vancouver-based first-generation Salvadoran refugees and diaspora. Their research interests also include exploring how Refugee, Exile and Forced Migrants’ (from the Global South) land and place relationships on Turtle Island intersect with Canadian Settler-Colonialism.