Andrés Thomas Conteris

Andrés Thomas Conteris is a storyteller, activist, and cultural weaver whose life has been shaped by both the trauma of empire and the sacred wisdom of ancestral lineages. Born in the U.S. and taught to walk by his grandparents in Montevideo, Uruguay, Andrés carries a lifelong connection to land, cosmos, and justice. His name, bestowed in a Oneida naming ceremony as “Shooting Star,” reflects the path he walks—one of luminous insight, radical presence, and expansive imagination.

With a background in journalism, filmmaking, and international advocacy, Andrés has dedicated his life to exposing injustice and uplifting the voices of the marginalized. He is the founder of Democracy Now! en Español, co-producer of the documentary Hidden in Plain Sight, and has worked closely with figures like Alice Walker and Báyò Akómoláfé. His activism has taken him to embassies under siege, to human rights commissions in Honduras, and to the frontlines of post-humanist imagination—most recently co-conjuring global carnivals as acts of collective resistance and celebration.

Now rooted near Lake Atitlán in Guatemala, Andrés is working on a novel that explores lunar wisdom, indigenous cosmology, and the necessary collapse of supremacist structures. In the Fellowship, he hopes to explore how storytelling and ritual can seed new worlds—and how community can hold the paradoxes of grief, joy, and transformation. With each step, Andrés offers the Fellowship a reminder that healing and justice are not separate paths, but one sacred journey.