By Martina Blandón,
When someone hears my thick accent, they immediately ask, “Where are you from?” I reply “Colombia,” which they follow with “I did not know there were Black people there.” I am a Black woman born and raised in Chocó (located in western Colombia) who lives in Washington, DC.
I was not very surprised by the prevailing lack of awareness of Blackness in Colombia. Even though we have more than 100 languages spoken in the country, which include indigenous and creole languages, Colombia has never presented itself to the rest of the world as a diverse country. What surprised me was how many collective spaces in the U.S., intended to represent the shared Black struggle, contained a very small representation of the Black experience in Latin America.
Some libraries, academic curricula, and even museums rarely feature Black authors from Latin America. Even the Smithsonian of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, displayed a small feature. The majority of enslaved Africans were taken to Latin American countries.
On the heels of Hispanic Heritage Month, Diaspora Voices presents a prime opportunity to reflect on the experiences of Black people in Latin American countries.
Similar to other African descendant groups across the Americas, I grew up in a country that hides its Black history as if it were ashamed to recognize our innovations and contributions.
In official textbooks, you will not see that Colombia once had a Black president, that Black people fought in the wars of independence, or that fugitive Black people created sovereign towns in pursuit of freedom. The systematic erasure of Black presence, from the nation’s inception through events that followed, prominently uplifts a white-mestizo narrative to the top of Colombia’s carefully crafted image.
Invisibility from our country’s historic narratives leads many of us to base our identities on rejecting our own Blackness. Like other generations, I grew up unaware of my heritage and our freedom struggle, which also contributed to an illogical shame of my own appearance.
Identity challenges were exacerbated as I pursued undergraduate studies far from home in the city of Medellín, Colombia. In Medellín, I began to discover other narratives, authors, and discourses that saved me from a systematic ignorance promoted mainly by the national education system. Thanks to the efforts of various Black organizations in the city, we created the Wiwas Women’s Collective, an anti-racist organization with a special emphasis on discussions around gender construction. Wiwa was initially concerned with reclaiming the Black history that had been denied to us. Then, we shared the resurrected history with young Black women through Medellín’s political schools in marginalized neighborhoods. Wiwas helped me to understand the world as I never had before. Now, who I am and what I do connects with constant reflections on how I can continue to support the Black liberation struggle.
The name of our collective, Wiwa, refers to a female warrior from Guinea-Bissau. With her husband Benkos Biohó, Wiwa founded several Palenques (or free towns) around Los Montes de María, south of the city of Cartagena de Indias.
The imprint of Wiwa and Benkos Biohó’s work remains after 400 years. While, Benkos Biohó has little recognition in Colombian history, Wiwa remains largely unrecognized revealing how gendered and anti-Black oppression erases Black women leadership. Los Palenques were a mechanism of resistance where fugitive Black communities used their knowledge, strategy, and revolutionary strength to establish agricultural settlements in remote areas that still exist today.
In many cases, these Palenques evolved into permanent free communities, spaces of autonomy in the face of the colonial slave order. This is the case of San Basilio de Palenque, a free town with more than 600 people, organized into kuagros (or groups) under a model of civil participation, where each person fulfilled a specific social, political, economic, or military function. The imminent threat of San Basilio forced Spain’s monarchs to sign a peace agreement to prevent further escapes in the region. Because of this, San Basilio de Palenque is now recognized as the first free Black town in all of the Americas.
Despite the historical richness of Blackness in Latin America, Black communities have little access to it; a layered problem that demands ongoing reflection. Institutions have long neglected to preserve, investigate and teach Black history. Black communities have limited access to quality education and inclusion programs are still very recent.
My experience in the U.S. higher education system taught me how history, knowledge, and experiences are prioritized based on the power of the nation where it emerged. Therefore, I learned much more about Black history from the U.S. than Colombia. In Wiwas Collective, for example, we learned about the civil rights movement of the 1960s. We read academics and activists such as Angela Davis, Toni Morrison, and Bell Hooks. In fact, our group slogan is Angela Davis’ famous phrase: “You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.”
U.S. Black history accounts become the dominant template for understanding racism or discrimination particularly across the Americas. While there are similarities, the narratives neglect the myriad of complex Black experiences that exist outside of the U.S. To strengthen our transnational movements, we must encourage more inclusion and less hierarchy in our collective Black histories. As Afro Colombians, we are still in the early stages of preserving and teaching our histories. Stronger global solidarity across the African diaspora will allow us to strengthen our framework.
To encourage learning more about Africans in Latin America, I recommend several Black Latin American authors. In Colombia, various scholars have used their careers to understanding Black history. Manuel Zapata Olivella’s Changó, el gran putas (Changó, the Biggest Badass) is the result of more than twenty years of research and offers a deeply felt perspective on the African diaspora in the Americas. Similarly, Sergio Antonio Mosquera, a historian and professor, has written books that trace the history of slavery and racism in Colombia. Arnoldo Palacios, in Las estrellas son negras (The stars are black), re-creates the starkness of daily life in Quibdó, Chocó, my birthplace. From other countries, it is important to read Ochy Curiel, a decolonial feminist and scholar-activist from the Dominican Republic, whose research centers on decolonial feminism, political identities, and the intersections of race, sex, and sexuality. From Puerto Rico, the renowned Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro and Mayra Santos-Febres both write about the complexities of racial identity in Latin America and issues of gender and sexuality. And from Brazil, Sueli Carneiro, one of the principal figures of Black feminism in Brazil and Latin America, is widely known for her pioneering activism and for her seminal essay “Enegrecer o feminismo” (Blackening Feminism).
You may also consider the Schomburg Research Center in Harlem, N.Y. The more we learn, the more we can support each other.
