Afro-Social Movements and the Struggle for Racial Equality in Latin America

Abstract

Abstract This chapter examines the struggle for racial justice and human rights by Afro-descendants in Latin America. It analyzes the rise of Afro-Latin social movements, Black consciousness, and Afro-civil society during the twentieth century, and how this led to important multicultural and constitutional reforms in Latin America. While Afro-descendants constitute a sizable portion of the populations of many Latin American countries and have made substantial contributions to the region’s development, they have often been invisible and erased in national histories and nationalist discourses. Afro-Latin American women’s activism and their gender advocacy is also central to the analysis in this chapter. In countries such as Brazil and Colombia, Afro-Latin women have been at the forefront of struggles for both gender and racial justice, as well as being central actors in struggles for full citizenship and democracy and against state violence. The concept of Afro-civil society is used to place Afro-Latin social movements within a theoretical and historical time frame. While Black resistance in Latin America has been ongoing for five centuries, this chapter mainly focuses on the last third of the twentieth century and the start of the twenty-first century.