Contesting Politics as Usual

Abstract

Latin America has long been exalted as a racial paradise, a region free of ethnic and racial conflict. Still, in the past decade, ethnic and racial issues have gone from invisibility to full exposure as black and indigenous social movements have become central to mainstream politics in the region. In the case of Latin America’s black population, scholarship must now shift from trying to find “invisible” blacks to understanding contemporary social issues affecting these populations and the social movements that have begun to address them. 1 With the increasing visibility of racial inequalities and with the emergence of policies such as affirmative action in Brazil, we can now begin to discuss “black politics” in Latin America as being linked to social movements and black nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Although there are many historical examples of black resistance and organization in this region, such initiatives have multiplied in recent years as black organizations have emerged and challenged the state in new ways. These shifts in Latin American politics are taking place within the context of increased globalization, making transnational networks and advocacy key components in their articulation. We examine the complex ways that movement leaders oscillate between organizing at the national and international levels. We find that Afro-Latin American leaders are involved in many transnational networks of Afro-descendants, which they see as stemming from similar histories of slavery in the Americas as well as similar conditions of marginalization, discrimination, and inequality today. This new configuration of domestic and transnational social movements should be considered under the rubric of “black politics” and as an emergent field of study in itself. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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