Blackness and its Re-emergence in
Colombia and Ecuador: Contemporary
Afro-descendent Social Movements and
Knowledge Production
LYNN STEPHEN
DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY
CENTER FOR LATINO/A AND LATIN
AMERICAN STUDIES
Blackness in Latin America

“The Black and White Dialogue on race and culture in the United States has consistently ignored the existence of more
than 150 million people of African ancestry in the other Americas. The total absence of Afro-Latinas/os from the
Caribbean Mexico, Central America and South America in the consciousness of the national discourse in the United
States, including in institutions that educate and inform the civil society of the nation, contributes to the absolute
disregard of the presence and realities of African Diasporic communities within the U.S. national territory and aboard.
This lack of recognition and omission of the history, contributions and lives of more than 150 million people of African
ancestry, many of whom reside here in the United States renders their contributions and lives irrelevant.”

–Dr. Marta Moreno Vega, Women Warriors of the Afro-Latina Diaspora, “Afro-Boricua: Nuyorican de Pura Cepa,”

“Of the estimated 11 million enslaved Africans brought to the New World from the late 1400s to the 1860s, most were
taken to Latin America and the Caribbean, with only some 645,000 landing in the United States. “So when you’re
talking about blackness, you’re really talking about Latin America.”

–Miriam Jimenez Roma

Source: Racialicious http://www.racialicious.com/2013/02/12/call-for-submissions-y-tu-abuela-donde-esta-multidimensional-afro-latinao-identities-in-the-21st-century/
The Forced Diaspora of African Peoples in Latin America
Afrodescendiente Origins
 Many from West Africa mostly
arrived in Latin America as part of
the Atlantic slave trade, as
agricultural, domestic, and menial
laborers and as mineworkers. They
were also employed in mapping
and exploration and were even
involved in conquest They were
mostly brought from West Africa
and Central Africa in what are now
the nations of Nigeria, Ghana,
Benin, Angola, and Congo.
 There are six major groups: the
Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Ewe, Akan,
and the Bantu (mostly Zulu). Most
of the slaves were sent to Brazil,
and the Caribbean, but lesser
numbers went to Colombia and
Venezuela. C
 Adrián Sánchez Galque, Mulatos
de Esmeraldas, 1599
Anti-black racism is linked to significantly
higher levels of poverty among
contemporary Afro-descendent populations
in Latin American than in other
racial/ethnic groups. The World Bank
estimates that there are between 85 to 150
million afrodescendents in Latin America.
They make up about 25 percent of the total
population, but 50 percent of the poor.
Historically, blackness has been masked as
being a part of “mestizaje” which is often
about blanqueamiento or whitening.
Mestizaje is seen as leading to the eventual
disappearance of black and indigenous
peoples while immigration policies often
encouraged light-skinned European
immigrants. This was a way to “Whiten”
nations. Even national census’ from the late
19th century until not very long ago dropped
out categories which could be identified as
Afro-descendent. In Argentina, for example,
in 1810, Blacks made up 30 percent of the
population. By 1887 that had plummeted to
2 percent. Until 1994, the Argentine
constitution restricted immigration of
people of African or Asian descent, favoring
European immigrants. Argentina's 2010
Census included a question on Afro-heritage
for the first time since 1887. It revealed that
0.4 percent of the population is black
The emergence of black and indigenous
social movements and multicultural
constitutional and legal reforms in some
countries during the past 20-25 years which
celebrate ethnic and racial diversity, rights,
and rights to territory are parts of the
context for understanding contemporary
political and cultural manifestations of
different forms of Afro-descendent identities
and cultures in Latin America.
’Palenqueras’ sell fruit and candy to cruise ship
passengers who disembark in Cartagena, Colombia.
Joaquin Sarmiento/Reuters
Afro-Ecuadorians: Origins and Reistance






Ecuador was known at the Real audience of
Quito, belonging to the viceroy of Peru.
Since 1535, the presence of slaves was noted.
Slaves were taken to Quito, Guayaquil or
Cuencas. They came from Guinea, San Tome,
the Bantu zone, and Northern Africa.
Slaves worked in gold and silver mines as well as
on sugar, cotton, and tobacco plantations.
Most important slave-owning regions were in
Guayaquil, Quito, Esmeraldas, the Chota Valley
and Loja.
Slaves engaged in distinct forms of resistance,
including hidden refuges, engaging in uprising,
burned plantations. They also filed many
complaints in the legal system.
Abolition of Slavery began in 1821 when
legislators of Great Colombia ordained partial
freedom. Ecuador declared independence in
1930.Although the first constitution of Guayaquil
terminated slavery in Ecuador in 1852, slaves
still being granted freedom in 1870
Afro-Ecuadorian Social Movements and Communities Today





Current movement has roots in
movements from 1960s on as well as
being influenced by civil rights struggles
in U.S. and Afro-descendent organizations
in Colombia and Brazil.
In 1998, a constitutional reform declared
Ecuador to be a multi-ethnic and
pluricultural nation. Afro-descendent are
now recognized as “people” subject to
collective rights.
There are about 350 social and cultural
organizations that are identified as Afrodescendent.
In the Ecuadorian Constitution approved
in 2008, Afro-Ecuadorians received
constitutional rights to fight
discrimination, reparation and affirmative
action for victims of racism, and
constitutional and territorial rights.
The new constitution recognizes the
descendents of Africans explicitly as AfroEcuadorians, not as blacks, signally a
rupture with colonialism. (Source John
Anton Sanchez 2009).
Mujeres de la Tercera Edad Manos Unidos en el Valle de Chota,
las comunidades de Comuna Río Santiago Cayapas en
Esmeraldas y el Fondo Documental Afro-Andino de la
Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar (Women Elders with United
Hands of the Valley of Chota, the communities of Comuna Río
Santiago Cayapas in Esmeraldas and the Afro-Andino
Documentary Fund of the Andean University Simón Bolívar)
Birthing Knowledge




First, using birth as an entryway into understanding
life, the research team focused part of their effort on
documenting the art of midwifery. This form of
knowledge is learned with practice from being a
mother, an aunt, a grandmother, or a midwife and
involves multiple techniques including massages,
baths, prayers, and symbolic systems.
The midwives locate the mother, the child, and the
particular circumstances of each birth into a
symbolic system where they construct a diagnostic
analysis. The midwife and others accompanying the
birth also work to ensure that the proper conditions
accompany the birth. For example, there cannot be a
drinking glass turned upside down or a bucket face
down, a door or a window closed as all must be open
at the time of the birth.
A particularly important part of midwifery is the art
of cutting and curing the umbilical chord. The
umbilical chord can be cured with a variety of
elements that are related to the kind of person that
the baby will become. There is transference of the
traits of a particular plant to the child, with
particular plants instilling vigor, force, and
reinforcing personality traits such as courage or
timidity.
Most of these practices are deeply gendered. There
are particular plants used for curing baby girls’
umbilical cords and others for boys. The substance
used for girls will promote knowledge of plants and
of curing, for example.
 Midwife from La Chota
teaching others how to read
an unborn child’s health and
position
Mapping Medicinal Knowledge
Using the concept of social mapping, the
research team first worked with
participants to draw their territories and
within them to outline the different kinds
of knowledge that exist, the spaces for
their production, the specific material and
relational elements they contain, and the
persons who reproduce them.
 Elders, adults, and children shared
experiences and from that discussion
maps were drawn. For example, maps
were drawn of different kinds of medicinal
plants, where they grow, their
characteristics as hot and cold, and how
they can be used. Medicinal recipes were
also shared and remembered.
 After the maps were drawn, people talked
about them, and then walked together to
the points on the map. In situ, in
particular locations of rivers, gardens,
houses, cemeteries, the maps were
remembered, discussed and shared.

Community mapping of medicinal plant
and ritual routes in Ecuador.
Afro-descendents in Colombia: Origins, history, movements.

By the 1520s, Africans were being imported into
Colombia steadily to replace the rapidly declining
native American population. Africans were forced to
work in gold mines, on sugar cane plantations, cattle
ranches, and large haciendas. African labor was
essential in all the regions of Colombia, even until
modern times. African workers pioneered the
extracting of alluvial gold deposits and the growing
of sugar cane in the areas that correspond to the
modern day departments of Chocó, Antioquia,
Cauca, Valle del Cauca, and Nariño in western
Colombia.

In eastern Colombia, near the cities of Vélez, Cúcuta,
Socorro, and Tunja, Africans manufactured textiles
in commercial mills. Emerald mines, outside Bogotá,
were wholly dependent upon African laborers. Also,
other sectors of the Colombian economy like tobacco,
cotton, artisanry, and domestic work would have
been impossible without African labor.
Free Black African towns called palenques were
found where Africans could live as cimarrones, that
is, they who escaped from their oppressors
Slavery was not abolished until 1851,


El Choco
In 1945 the department of El Chocó was
created; it was the first predominantly
African political-administrative division.
El Chocó gave African people the
possibility of building an African
territorial identity and some autonomous
decision-making power.
 In the 1970s, there was a major influx of
Afro Colombians into the urban areas in
search of greater economic and social
opportunities for their children.
 Nearly 30% of the Afro-Colombian
population is based in the Chocó region,
an area characterized by its megabiodiversity, the wealth of its natural
resources (lumber, gold, natural
resources) and by its strategic situation
(possibility of an inter-oceanic channel) in
contrast to the socioeconomic and cultural
conditions of its settlers and their land
tenancy patterns.

The Proceso de Comunidades Negras (The
Black Communities Process (PCN) of Colombia
Expanding AfroColombian
Territory
The PCN is a national AfroColombian political
organization that includes 120
cultural groups, community
councils, and urban and rural
collectives who together seek to
gain rights for Black
communities . When their
struggle began in the mid1990s, the PCN focused much of
their effort on demarcating and
titling ancestral Afro-Colombian
lands. This priority was in
response to a change in the
Colombian Constitution and the
Ley 70 which granted
indigenous peoples and Afrodescendant peoples the right to
establish collective ownership of
traditional Pacific coastal
territories. As a result of intense
organizing efforts, the PCN and
their allies were able to title five
million hectares of land as the
collective territories of Black
communities.
 LAND GIVEN WITH LEGAL
TITTLE
 TO BLACK COMMUNITIES
Land with legal
title in Afrodescendent
communities.
The PCN made a strategic
decision to push the
National Department of
Statistics (DANE) in
Colombia to greatly improve
their system for categorizing
and counting AfroColombians in the 2005
census.
The PCN research team
found that past Colombian
censuses both during the
colonial and republic
periods lay the foundation
for the invisibility of
Colombia’s Afro-descendent
population. The first census
of 1758 in Colombia was
created to diminish ethnic
specificity and to begin to
promote the idea of
universal subjects who later
became citizens. By the time
that Colombia became an
independent nation in 1819,
Blackness had been almost
completely erased from
official records.
Erasing Blackness in Colombia
through the Census.
Making Afro-Colombians Visible through Expanding Census
Categories.

From 1905 to 1995, there were ten
censuses conducted and only two used
terms related to Blacks. This had a
significant effect on how people
responded to the census categories of
Negro and Afrodescendiente in the
20th century and beyond.

PCN found that a wide range of selfidentification terms were used by AfroColombians including Triune, Moreno,
Malate, Zamboni, Afrocolombiano,
Afrodescendiente, Raizal, Palenquero,
Negro, Indígena, Gitano (Rom o Li),
and Blanco. Originally the DANE
excluded the category of Triune on the
census form, but ultimately yielded to
pressure from the PCN and others and
included it in the 2005 census along
with other categories.
After the 2005 census was carried
out, the results revealed that 10.5
percent of Colombians identified as
Negro (or a related term) as
opposed to the 1.5 percent count
generated by the 1993 census. While
the figure of 10.5 percent was
higher, PCN activists felt that it still
represented a very significant
undercount in comparison with
other statistics such as the figure of
26 percent cited in the 1998
National Plan for the Development
of the Afro-Colombian Population.
The PCN team then carried out their
own research on who had actually
been asked the ethnic selfidentification question on the 2005
Census where they could selfidentity as Black.
Overall they found that 42 percent
of the people surveyed in these cities
were not asked the ethnic-selfidentification question by census
takers. l. After analyzing the results
of their survey of the undercount,
PCN researchers estimated that
about 18 to 20 percent of the
national population is AfroColombian. This would rank
Colombia as number two after
Brazil as the country with the largest
Afro-descendent population in Latin
America.
From 1.5 % to 18 – 20 % Negro
The Afro-Colombian population has
become increasingly urbanized. This
process has been greatly accelerated by
the war in Colombia which has as its
epicenters the Pacific Coast of
Colombia and Buenaventura, two of the
principal locations of Afro-Colombians.
 Driven out by the combined pressure of
paramilitaries, FARC guerillas, drug
traffickers, and the Colombian army,
many formerly rural Afro-Colombian
communities have become urbanized,
leaving behind their territories for
others who arrive to stake claims.
 It is crucial for the PCN to document
the increasing urban Afro-Colombian
population as they fight for the rights of
Afro-Colombians outside of their rural
locations and raise national awareness
of the poverty, hunger, and lack of
social services available to Black people
in Colombia’s cities.

PCN Encuentro, Colombia
Comparative Findings
 Visibility

Establishing presence and visibility are
basic to staking any type of claim or
demanding specific rights related to
land and territory occupation, legal
demarcation, recognition and
legitimating of language, culture,
ethnicity, and other “ethnic” rights.
“Being seen” or becoming “visible” was
at least one of the impetuses for a
majority of these projects.
Larger
Questions

How do we move the specifics of a wider notion of
health and curing into the educational curriculum for
a wide range of children?

How do we establish an integrated model of territory
which includes human, plant, natural, and spiritual
relations in development policy at regional, national,
and international levels?

How do we take what some have called the relational
ontologies of Afro-descendent and indigenous peoples
such as those illustrated here which avoid the
dualisms of nature/culture, individual/community,
material/spiritual and have them taken seriously as
part of state and transnational discussions on
sustainability?

How do we broaden our cultural and political
definitions of “expertise” to include knowledge
producers who are credentialed by their communities
and organizations and not only by universities?
Children in the Miskitu
community of Tuara
