Beyond Race and Gender: Recent Works on Afro-Latin America

A powerful black cultural renaissance is flowering in the Americas—Afro-Latin America is on the map. The black presence in Latin America—which until recently was socially invisible as blacks were cleansed from the sociological landscape—is more visible than ever. The cultural, historical, and sociological relevance of Afro-Latin America is now the subject of vigorous examination. Across Afro-Latin America—from Cuba to Colombia to Brazil—strong, positive, black-based social movements are creating new democratic space in their respective struggles for human rights protection, social equality, and democratic reform. After centuries of being relegated to the margins of Latin American societies, black communities throughout the region are challenging social hierarchies that produce structural inequalities. In the academy, the Afro-Latin contribution to art, literature, race and gender models, social movements, the environment, and history, as debated within an Afro-Latin context, is changing Latin American and Africana studies.

While accurate census data are hard to come by, it is estimated that there are about 150 million people of African descent in Latin America, thus representing about one-third of the total population. ¹ At present strong black movements exist in Latin American countries with varying degrees of organization. Many of these movements are fighting against police brutality, disappearances, extermination, coerced sterilization, poverty, and other systematic abuses. Positively, they are fighting for legal recognition and basic socio-political rights. In general these movements are striving for social and economic development, equality before the law, democratic reforms, human rights, and citizenship. The history of these communities, their levels of empowerment, and their social standing vis-à-vis the overall population vary from country to country; it is true, however, that these communities share many similar problems. This essay is focused on cutting edge scholarship that examines the Afro-Latin problematic from various disciplinary perspectives such as history, cultural studies, sociology, and anthropology.

George Reid Andrews's Afro-Latin America is a compelling historical narrative focused on the struggles of Afro-Latin Americans (1800–2000) for democratic participation, social equality, human rights, and citizenship. Such a work is long overdue. Perhaps not since Leslie B. Rout's African Experience in Spanish America, Franklin Knight's African Presence in Latin America, and Minority Rights Group's Afro-Latin America: No Longer Invisible has anyone focused on the collective struggles and problems of Afro-Latin communities in the Americas from a comparative perspective.

While there are no new or novel questions posed, the ones raised are relevant, important, and are dealt with superbly. The author provides a tight analysis and synthesis of some of the key political issues facing Afro-Latin Americans. Andrews moves from country to country with ease as he situates the various struggles of Afro-Latin communities within the fluid parameters of Latin American history. By doing so, he demonstrates his fluency in the sociological language of plantation slavery, slave resistance, caste laws, racial and gender discrimination, miscegenation or mestizaje, and Afro-Latin social movements. He mainly focuses on Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Costa Rica, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. There are also important discussions on Mexico and Uruguay. [End Page...