We say goodbye to Rossana Reguillo

From the CLACSO Working Group on Childhood and Youth, we would like to share some heartfelt words to remember the great Rossana Reguillo. 

Professor, researcher, academic, and brilliant intellectual, who sadly passed away today, April 25, 2026, should also be remembered as the fierce activist who dedicated herself wholeheartedly to the struggle for the rights and well-being of Latin American youth, and who refused to be intimidated or back down in the face of the countless threats she received throughout her life. She refused to be recognized as a scholar “of” youth; rather, she championed the role of a researcher who produced knowledge “with” and not “about” youth, an epistemic and political marker of her writing and her committed research.

Author of seminal works on youth studies, their identities, and their emotional expressions, and founder of important working groups at conferences and scientific societies, Rossana was always attentive to the historical, social, cultural, territorial, and communicational conditions that shape the condition and practices of youth in their many manifestations. This intellectual, deeply Mexican and at the same time a citizen of the world, produced profound and original reflections on youth as privileged observers of the spirit of the times.

Thus, her contributions, which extended to the fields of communication and culture, urban anthropology, and identity, did not shy away from confronting the tentacular structure of necropolitics, focusing precisely on what she called the calligraphies and grammars of horror. For those who were able to attend one of her lectures, always well-attended, it was possible to witness a moving process: her slender body, when seized by her unique gift of oratory, seemed to grow larger, and from her mouth the words leaped like sparks of fire and light.

To mourn Rossana is, therefore, to be in struggle. May her words and her brilliant writings continue to be a beacon for all those who research “with” Latin American youth.

April 27th 2026
CLACSO Working Group on Childhood and Youth

This text expresses the position of the aforementioned Working Groups and not necessarily that of the centers and institutions that make up the CLACSO international network, its Steering Committee or its Executive Secretariat.