In Memory of Sebastian Mejia

About Our Fundraiser

The Mejia Martinez family has reflected on how to best honor Sebastian's life. We feel that Sebastian would love to see his community come together and take collective action to amplify his legacy.

The funds collected will be used to cover any costs incurred by his family from his loss, as Sebastian’s number one priority was making sure his parents could rest and not worry financially. Additionally, money will be evenly donated in honor of Sebastian to organizations he supported.

Sebastian cared deeply about community. He was connected to struggles and social movements for the self-determination and liberation of all oppressed peoples, especially those in the Global South. He understood the need for solidarity with all colonized and racialized people and took very seriously the communal and collective nature of revolution: revolution within our minds with deep collective study, revolution in our hearts with true collective care, and, most importantly, revolution that brought about real material changes for all resistant communities. He dedicated his work, both inside and outside of the academy, to doing all he could to bring about transformative changes to the world, but especially to his own world of family and friends who he always brought in to teach, listen, and organize for a brighter tomorrow. Everyone who had the privilege of meeting Sebas knows he was about it all and would want us to be about it for now until forever, porque ¡La gente unida jamás será vencida!

May we never stop learning from and continuing the struggle for nuestro hijo, hermano, nieto, sobrino, y amigo precioso: Sebastian Mejía Martínez

About Sebastian Mejia ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ノ

Sebastian Mejía, 24, of Miami, Florida, passed away unexpectedly on October 6th, 2022, while completing his Fulbright Research Program in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Sebastian was born on May 9th, 1998, in Miami, Florida, to Colombian immigrants Rosa Elena Martínez Bethés and Jaime Mejía Londoño. He grew up in Miramar, Florida, and attended Pembroke Pines Charter Elementary School. He enjoyed playing video games like Pokémon and Super Smash Bros., and he was a soccer goalie as a kid. In 2008, His family moved to Naples, Florida, where he lived in the Golden Gate Estates and attended Corkscrew Elementary School and Corkscrew Middle School. In 2016 he graduated Summa Cum Laude from Palmetto Ridge High School, where he worked as a cafeteria worker and participated in the swim, band, and childcare programs.

Out of his own volition, Sebastian conducted genealogical research to learn more about the Muisca and Panche people, from whom he is a descendant. Interested in reconnecting with his ancestors' community, language, and culture, he began to research the Muisca’s history and their struggle for recognition as an Indigenous community in Colombia. While doing this personal research, he came across similar movements in Brazil and immediately developed an interest in the plurality of the movements and the similarities between the two countries. Alongside his friends, he organized a grassroots and community-based organization, 718 Coalition, committed to community empowerment, education, abolition, and liberation from all forms of violence for marginalized people.

He received Florida’s Academic Scholars Award to attend Florida State University, graduating Summa Cum Laude in May 2020 with a dual bachelor’s degree in Latin American and Caribbean Studies and International Affairs with a minor in Portuguese. During his undergraduate studies, he worked as an English instructor and childcare provider in Managua, Nicaragua, as a teacher and tutor in Tallahassee and Naples, volunteered with the Tallahassee Bail Fund and the Frenchtown Urban Farm, served as the public relations chair for the Hispanic/Latinx Student Union, was the membership chair and secretary for Leaders Empowering Others in Needs of Education and Service, and was the co-founder, Director, and Event Coordinator for the Coalition for Latinx Studies at FSU.

For his strong academic track record, he was awarded a myriad of grants and fellowships, including the Foreign Language & Area Studies Fellowship and Service Scholars Award, and participated in nationally competitive academic programs such as the Moore Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program, the University of Florida’s Language and Culture Program in Rio, and Middlebury’s Portuguese Language Program. Sebastian collaborated with communities as he undertook archival and ethnographic fieldwork in Brazil and in his Abuelita’s hometown of Albán, Cundinamarca, Colombia. He completed his undergraduate senior thesis entitled “Decolonizing Land & Re-indigenizing Body: The Recuperation of Indigenous Identity in Brazil,” which analyzes how communities who have been socially and politically “whitened” affirm their Indigenous identities and rights to ancestral lands while redefining the parameters of indigeneity in conflict with the Brazilian state. He situated this conflict within neoliberal multiculturalism and historicized the tensions between the Brazilian state and resistant communities.

In the spring of 2021, Sebastian was awarded a Departmental Fellowship at New York University and began his graduate studies at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at NYU that fall. Throughout his graduate studies, he was interested in and engaged in work related to indigeneity, ethnic and land recognition, social movements, multiculturalism, and the ways that processes of capitalism impact Indigenous communities in Brazil and Colombia. In 2022, Sebastian was in the process of finishing up his master’s degree in Latin American and Caribbean Studies while also completing his Fulbright Research Program under the mentorship of faculty from the Institute of History at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He began taking orfebrería classes and enjoyed creating jewelry. He was awarded a Tinker Foundation Field Research Grant to further his interdisciplinary research, traveling to archival sites in São Paulo and Brasília, and was accepted to PhD preview programs at Brown, Princeton, and Yale. Through a social history lens, he tackled questions that grounded his analysis in the narratives of those affected. Sebastian was in the process of completing his master's thesis, “Indigeneity, Land, & Concessions: A Transnational Comparative History of Indigenous Identity, (De)colonization, and Neoliberal Multiculturalism in Brazil and Colombia,” and his research project for his Fulbright program tentatively titled, “Land & Indigeneity: The Dissolution of Indigenous Lands and the Struggle for Ethnic Recognition and Territorial Demarcation.”

Before his untimely passing, Sebastian was in the process of applying to PhD programs where he would obtain his doctorate in History, preferably at the University of Texas at Austin. Through his work, he hoped to continue to push fields that engaged with Indigenous communities to be connected to the critical struggle of decolonization. He wanted to become a professor to carry on the kind of transformative teaching he had already engendered with his loved ones.

Sebastian is deeply loved by many. He cherished his family and friends like no one else and expressed his love in his own unique way. His humor and wit were and still are unmatched, and he would constantly make his friends and family, and himself, laugh without trying. He was always looking for solutions to unnecessary problems; from teaching himself a programming language so that he could remove copyright text on eBooks that got in the way of accessibility features, to dedicating himself to socialist practice in order to help build a better and more just world. From a young age, Sebastian was always making friends; so much so that there were friends of his who never met and, in the same vein, friends of his who only met because of him. He valued community tremendously and was constantly cultivating it wherever he was. He generously shared everything he learned with his family and friends; he taught his little sister how to swim, he taught his brothers about teamwork, and he taught his parents that they are deserving of peace. He wanted nothing more than to make sure his family and friends were okay. He wanted them to succeed and find purpose. He offered guidance wherever he could and asked for help in areas he struggled. He cared for everyone and did everything he could to make sure his parents, especially, would be taken care of. Sebastian really just wanted to be happy and make sure his loved ones were happy. No amount of words will ever encompass how layered and interesting and worthy of a person Sebastian was.

Sebastian’s spirit will forever live on through his parents Rosa and Jaime, his older brother Camilo, his younger brothers Alejandro and Daniel, and his younger sister Catalina. They love him so much.