Afro-Latino-América: Black and Afro-descendant Rights and Struggles

This chapter provides an overview of Afro-descendant activism in Latin America with specific attention to the situation in Colombia, Costa Rica, Honduras, and Nicaragua. It outlines the forms of structural racism and invisibilization to which Afro-Latin Americans are subjected, and the ways in which activists are attempting to dismantle the forms of disadvantage and discrimination, with a particular focus on media activism. While policies of whitening have been thoroughly discredited and long abandoned, the attitudes associated with them persist, generating a process of internal colonialism and endoracism that exists to this day. The legacy of such prejudices can be seen in ongoing forms of Afro-descendant exclusion and marginalization throughout the continent and the greater social mobility enjoyed by people who are lighter-skinned. Some Afro-Latin Americans, particularly those who are urban-based, do, however, consciously adopt a diasporic identity.