Abstract
AFRO-COLOMBIANS, ONE OF THE MOST RESOURCEFUL AND RESILIENT COMMUNITIES in the Americas, are under siege. They have struggled largely outside of the gaze of most of the world despite suffering massive social upheavals. According to some sources, Afro-Colombians constitute up to 25 percent of the country’s total population of about forty million and as a group have a population in excess of ten million. These figures may vary according to the criteria used.1 Despite such a large population size, Afro-Colombians face constant threats of displacement from both the Colombian state and transnational corporations. In the wake of such attacks, Afro-Colombians have adopted new strategies of resistance to combat repression from the state and its multinational allies. By looking inward or engaging in self-valorization as an initial strategy, Afro-Colombians have determined the character of the struggle. However, self-valorization, a form of identity politics, is not sufficient as a basis for struggle. When connected to a larger movement for political institution-building, self-valorization has the potential to bring Afro-Colombian communities together with other groups of African-descent in Latin America that are currently engaged in mass movements for social change. At this present moment, Latin America is in transition, and popular movements are challenging regional hegemonies.
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NOTES
Arturo Escobar, “Displacement, Development and Modernity in the Colombian Pacific,” International Social Science Journal 175 (March 2003): 157–67.
W. F. Santiago-Valles, “The Caribbean Intellectual Tradition that Produced James and Rodney,” Race and Class 42, no. 2 (October–December 2000): 61–79.
For Jaime Arocha, see “Inclusion of Afro-Colombians: Unreachable National Goal?” Latin American Perspectives 25, no. 3 (May 1998): 70–90; “Los Negros y la Nueva Constitucion Colombiana de 1991,” America Negra 3 (1992): 39–54; and “Afrogenesis, Eurogenesis y Convivencia Interetnica,” Pacifico: Desarrollo o Biodiversidad? Estado, Capital y Movimientos Sociales en el Pacifico Colombiano, ed. Arturo Escobar and Alvaro Pedrosa (Bogota: CEREC: 1996). For Arturo Escobar, see “Displacement, Development and Modernity in the Colombian Pacific,” Moving Targets: International Social Science Journal 175 (March 2003): 157–67; and “Culture, Economics, and Politics in Latin American Social Movements Theory and Research,” in The Making of Social Movements in Latin America: Identity, Strategy, and Democracy, ed. Arturo Escobar and Sonia Alvarez, (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1992), 62–85. For Peter Wade, see Blackness and Race Mixture: The Dynamics of Racial Identity in Colombia (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993); “The Cultural Politics of Blackness in Colombia,” American Ethnologist 22, no. 3 (1995): 341–58; “Blackness, Music, and National Identity: Three Moments in
Colombian History,” Popular Music 17, no. 1 (1998): 1–19; “Representations of Blackness in Colombian Popular Music,” Representations of Blackness and the Performance of Identities, ed. Jean M. Rahier (Westport: Bergin and Garvey, 1999); “Current Anthropology, Making Cultural Identities in Cali, Colombia,” August 40, no. 4 (October 1999): 449–68; and “Racial Identity and Nationalism: A Theoretical View from Latin America,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 24, no. 5 (September 2001): 845–67. For Kiran Asher, see Constructing Afro-Colombia: Ethnicity and Territory in the Pacific Lowlands, PhD dissertation (University of Florida: 1998).
See, for example, Eduardo Restrepo, “Afrocolombianos, antropologia y proyecto de modernidad en Colombia,” in Antropologia en la Modernidad: Identidades, Etnicidades y Movimientos Sociales en Colombia, ed. Maria Victoria Uriba and Eduardo Restrepo (Instituto Colombiano de Antropologia, Bogota: 1997).
Wade, “The Cultural Politics of Blackness in Colombia,” 341–58.
Francis Njubi, “New Media, Old Struggles: Pan Africanism, Anti-Racism and Information Technology,” Critical Arts (January 2001): 117–35.
Richard J. Powell, Black Art: A Cultural History (London: Thames and Hudson, 2003), 13–15.
Ibid.
Adam Halpern and France Winddance Twine, “Antiracist Activism in Ecuador: Black-Indian Community Alliances,” Race and Class 42, no. 2 (October–December 2000): 19–32.
Frantz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove, 1963), 233.
Hilbourne Watson, “Theorizing the Racialization of Global Politics and the Caribbean,” Experience Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 26, no. 4 (October–December 2001): 449–84.
Luis Gilberto Murillo, El Choco: The African Heart of Colombia, speech given at The American Museum of Natural History, Sponsored by The Colombia Media Project and The Caribbean Cultural Center, New York, February 23, 2001.
Arocha, “Inclusion of Afro-Colombians: Unreachable National Goal?,” 72.
Ibid, 82
See Karen Juanita Carillo, Afro-Latinos Prepare for Third AFROAMERICA XXI Conference, Mundo Afro Latino, February 25, 2004, http://www.mundoafrolatino.com/english/020504.htm (accessed June 2004). See also Chile Declaration of African Descendents, Preparatory Conference of the Americas Against Racism Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, December 5–7, 2000, Santiago, Chile.
Murillo, El Choco; emphasis added.
Chile Declaration of African Descendents, Preparatory Conference of the Americas Against Racism Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, December 5–7, 2000, Santiago, Chile, http://academic.udayton.edu/race/06hrights/VictimGroups/AfricanDescendants/AfricanDescendants.htm.
Ibid.
Ibid.
S. Allen Counter and David L. Evans, I Sought My Brother: An Afro-American Reunion (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981).
Antonio Benitez-Rojo, The Island Is Repeated: The Caribbean and the Post-Modern Perspective (Hanover, NH: Ediciones del Norte, 1989), quoted in W. E Santiago-Valles, “The Caribbean Intellectual Tradition,” 47.
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© 2008 Manning Marable and Vanessa Agard-Jones
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Jordan, J. (2008). Afro-Colombia. In: Marable, M., Agard-Jones, V. (eds) Transnational Blackness. The Critical Black Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230615397_8
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