Marcos Colón

Marcos Colón, PhD, is the Southwest Borderlands Initiative Professor of Media and Indigenous Communities at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of Amazônia Latitude, a pioneering digital magazine that amplifies environmental, cultural, and Indigenous perspectives from the Amazon to global audiences. Through both scholarly and journalistic approaches, his research explores how mediated storytelling, particularly through Indigenous and community media, can challenge dominant narratives, foster environmental consciousness, and support decolonial knowledge production. His work investigates the role of journalism and documentary as tools for visibility, resistance, and intercultural dialogue in the context of Amazonian and Latin American realities.

Colón’s interdisciplinary research and creative work bridge Brazilian literary and cultural studies, environmental humanities, and documentary film, with a sustained focus on Amazonian ontologies, biocultural diversity, and resistance to extractivism paradigms. His work engages with urgent ecological and epistemological questions, foregrounding Indigenous knowledge systems and the representation of natureculture as frameworks for reimagining the region beyond colonial and capitalist logics.

He is the author of The Amazon in Times of War (2024) and editor of Utopias Amazônicas (2025). In addition to his academic role, he is a journalist whose articles, essays and commentary have been featured in the Jornal Público, Folha de São Paulo, Revista Piauí, Le Club de Mediapart, Havard Review of Latin America, Latin America Bureau, El País, among others.

Colón’s documentary work has garnered significant recognition in international film circuits for its contribution to environmental and cultural discourse. Stepping Softly on the Earth (2022) received the Best Feature Documentary award at ECOADOR International Environmental Film Festival (Ecuador, 2024) and Periferias International Film Festival (Portugal/Spain, 2023), in addition to Best Cinematography at Filmambiente (Brazil, 2022). His earlier film, Beyond Fordlândia (2018), received more the 15 awards including the Best Feature Documentary award at the Grand Rapids and Cabo Verde International Film Festivals, and received distinctions such as the Green Image Award (Tokyo, 2018), the Golden Sun Award from WWF Spain, and emerging filmmaker awards from the Princeton and Geneva Film Festivals. The film was also recognized by the World Wildlife Fund and received an Award of Excellence from Impact DOCS.

Colón’s films have been screened at over 60 universities and festivals across the Americas and Europe, including Oxford, Cambridge, King’s College London, St Andrews, UCLA, the University of Chicago, and the University of California system. Stepping Softly on the Earth (2022) and Beyond Fordlândia (2018) have been featured in academic events hosted by institutions such as Harvard, Princeton, Sorbonne Université, and the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Organized by departments and centers in Latin American studies, environmental humanities, and Indigenous studies, these screenings often include lectures and Q&As, underscoring the films’ interdisciplinary relevance and contribution to critical debates on extractivism, environmental justice, and Indigenous sovereignty.

He lives in Phoenix, Arizona, and divides his time between the U.S. and the Amazonia and Pan-Amazonia region.