Black Masculinity after “el Negro Gaitán”: The Racial and Gender Politics of Arnoldo Palacios’s Las estrellas son negras

Las estrellas son negras (1949), a novel by Arnoldo Palacios, studies black poverty in Chocó, a region on the Pacific coast of Colombia. For most of the text, the protagonist critiques poverty, but in the final pages he begins to idealize it. Some critics have understood Las estrellas son negras as a protest against state racism in Chocó and ignore or dismiss the novel’s ending. Another critic celebrates the ending, arguing that the protagonist proudly recognizes himself as a member of the African diaspora. While I agree that the protagonist takes on a new racial identity, I contend that the identity is gendered—a black masculinity—and that it has a resigned affect. I will argue that the novel allegorizes the defeat of leftist Afro-Colombian movements after the assassination of the populist leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán—a dark-skinned mestizo popularly known as “el negro Gaitán”—in 1948.