Rosa Colón Guerra

Mikael Jakobsson, Research Coordinator in the MIT Game Lab and Lecturer in Comparative Media Studies, collaborated with artist Rosa Colón Guerra to challenge colonialist ideologies through the development of counter-colonial board games. Building on work with Mary Flanagan, the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor in Digital Humanities at Dartmouth College; Aziria Rodríguez Arce (SM CMS/W ’18); and members of the MIT Game Lab and MIT CoLab, Jakobsson and Colón Guerra created Promesa, a counter-colonialist board game centered on Puerto Rico.

With support from a CAST Fay Chandler Faculty Creativity Grant in 2018, Jakobsson and his team led a class in Bogotá at the University of the Andes and workshops at Universidad del Sagrado Corazón, San Juan and at MIT in which professional game designers, students, and others from Colombia and Puerto Rico shared their ideas and experiences and created game concepts.

Jakobsson and Colón Guerra led an MIT Independent Activities Period (IAP) course in January 2020 and a series of collaborative workshops with the goal of developing and producing a small print run of a new board game that challenges narratives of colonialism and foregrounds Puerto Rican voices and lived experiences. In spring 2022, Jakobsson, Colón Guerra, and the MIT Game Lab launched Promesa with a presentation of their collaboration and an opportunity for the MIT community to play the board game.

This artist residency is supported by the Ida Ely Rubin Artists in Residence Fund. 

Past Events

Promesa Board Game: Presentation and Play
April 27, 2022 / 5:00-7:00pm

IAP: Playing Counter-Colonialism in the Americas
January 21-22, 2020 / 2:00-6:00pm

Campus Visits
January 21-24, 2020

Mikael Jakobsson, Research Coordinator in the MIT Game Lab and Lecturer in Comparative Media Studies

Rosa Colón Guerra is passionate about storytelling through comics and illustration. She has been drawing and self-publishing her comics (along with writer Carla Rodríguez) as Soda Pop Comics for 10 years. Colón Guerra earned a BA in humanities–fine arts from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras and an MA in sequential art and design from the University of Brighton, England.

Soda Pop Comics has participated in numerous indie comic cons in the United States, including MoCCA Fest (Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art Fest), CAKE (Chicago Alternative Comics Expo), MICE (Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo), and TCAF (Toronto Comic Arts Festival) in Canada.

Recently, Colón Guerra (as Soda Pop Comics) has collaborated with other artists in the indie art community in Puerto Rico as a curator and participant in art shows and an editor of a comics anthology.

Traveling to indie cons inspired Colón Guerra (with Carla Rodríguez) to create Tintero: Festival de Cómics y Arte Independiente, an indie art festival focusing exclusively on local illustrators and artists. They have produced four successful iterations of the festival, as well as conferences, pop-up stores, and art workshops.

Colón Guerra writes and illustrates comics focusing on Puerto Rico’s financial crisis and life during Hurricane María and its aftermath. She has been published in Lion Forge’s Puerto Rico Strong Anthology, the 2019 Will Eisner Comic Book Award’s Best Anthology, as well as The Nib and Splinter News.

More at the artist’s website: Rosa Colón Guerra

Hollywood Reporter: Puerto Rico Strong wins Best Anthology, 2019 Eisner Award Winners

Amazon Book Review: 31st annual Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards