Can Ethnicity Replace Race? Afro‐Colombians, Indigeneity and the Colombian Multicultural State

Abstract

Diferentes países latinoaméricanos, Colombia incluida, han declarado ser naciones multiculturales. En el proceso, estos han reestructurado los derechos legales de acuerdo con líneas de distinción cultural, y han proveído a los grupos étnicos con derechos especiales bajo nuevas constituciones políticas. Una dimensión crucial de este cambio legal ha sido la consagración de una cierta conceptualización de etnicidad. En este artículo me concentro en los procesos que permiten y que también limitan la pertenencia étnica en Colombia, para comprender el concepto de indigeneidad sobre el cual dichos nuevos ideas de etnicidad están basados. Examino el uso de ideas específicas de indigeneidad en un conflicto territorial entre comunidades indígenas y negras en los Andes, y también el fallo de la Corte Constitucional de la Tutela 422 de 1996, caso en el que se trata de los derechos de los afro‐colombianos. Estos ejemplos muestran cómo en Colombia ciertas ideas locales y globales de indigeneidad establecen quién pertenece a un grupo étnico y quién está incluido en un grupo racial. Además, estos dos casos demuestran el papel trascendental que tiene el territorio en la construcción de los conceptos de indigeneidad y de grupo étnico. palabras claves: indigeneidad, Colombia, territorio, raza, etnia.

The Mascogo/Black Seminole Diaspora: The Intertwining Borders of Citizenship, Race, and Ethnicity

“…11 Later, in the period of indigenismo, the struggles for indigenous rights were centered on fighting against racism and, until today, much of the Anthropological literature about indigenous peoples takes these groups as racial, rather than ethnic. What these elements show is that the concept of race in Mexico is understood differently than in the United States, and that there is really not such a clear distinction between race and ethnicity, although, as exposed by Ng'weno (2007), the distinction is used for legal purposes.…”

“…Part of the discussion is that Afro-descendants have had to mobilize ethnic categories in order to access land and other resources (Safa 2005;Ng'weno 2007;Vacanti Brondo 2007;Hooker 2009;Sánchez 2009;Mobwa Mobwa N'Djoli 2009;Hale 2011). These debates generally focus on the ways Afro-descendants relate to the specific nation-states where they have settled; thus, the analytical scope is that of one single nation-state.…”

The Representation of Blackness in Murals and Statues in an Afro-Ecuadorian Region

“…However, in Ecuador the meaning of race is changing. Through both scholarly and activist work (Anton 2005(Anton , 2007 and the globalization of multiculturalism (Hooker 2008;Green 2007;Ng'weno 2007), it has become much more difficult for elites in Ecuador to sustain the dominant discourse of national identity, mestizaje=blanqueamiento, that attempts to erase and ignore the fact of racism and ethnic=racial diversity characterizing the people and groups that comprise their nations. Green writes, ''Earlier eras characterized by the racist ideologies of blanqueamiento, mestizaje, and mulataje have given way to the globalizing ideologies of inter-ethnic tolerance, identity politics, cultural citizenship, and contemporary reparations for the past wrongs associated with slavery and colonial domination' ' (2007: 330).…”

Soccer and the (Tri‐) Color of the Ecuadorian Nation: Visual and Ideological (Dis‐) Continuities of Black Otherness from MonoculturalMestizajeto Multiculturalism

“…These are seen as more indigenous‐like than black communities in other regions of the country (Restrepo 2002; Wade 1995). Building on Wade's and Restrepo's work, Bettina Ng'weno shows how global discourses of indigeneity relate to Afro‐Colombian claims to land (Ng'weno 2007a, 2007b). A “traditional relationship” to the land, she writes, characterizes definitions of “indigenous communities” in Colombia and elsewhere in Latin America.…”