The article presents an examination into the history and influence of the Black community of Montevideo, Uruguay during the 19th and 20th centuries. Details are given noting how the African community of Montevideo became a powerful cultural and advocacy hub for the African diaspora in Latin America. Description is provided regarding the various racial identity issues which manifested themselves in the Uruguayan community during the period along with analysis of the means by which they were addressed such as African journalism, social institutionalism and other forms of cultural production.
Examines Colombia's adoption of policies for black Colombians in 1993. Argues that Afro-Colombian activists were able to seize upon changes in global policy norms around multiculturalism and state disequilibrium both by deploying traditional social movement strategies and by framing their demands in terms of ethnic difference. This case extends our understanding of how social movements make strategic use of political openings and also illustrates the circumstances under which an ethnic difference framing can be a more effective political strategy for achieving rights for black populations than a racial equality framing.
This essay focuses on James Weldon Johnson's overlapping literary and diplomatic careers. Johnson's novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, written while he worked as a US consul in Latin America, draws upon tropes of international representation to weigh in upon questions of aesthetic and racial representation. Tracing Johnson's transition from a US representative abroad to a race representative within the US, the essay argues that Johnson's case illustrates the importance of permitting the significant tradition of black work in the US's diplomatic program to inform the ways we approach African America's expressive and geopolitical engagements with the international world.
The book "Imaginarios ambiguos, realidades contradictorias. Conductas y representaciones de los negros y mulatos novohispanos, siglos XVI y XVII" by Úrsula Camba Ludlow is reviewed.
The current political and economic situation in Latin America is characterized by a marked difference between South American countries, on one side, and Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, on the other. In South America, capital still accumulates through the appropriation/recovery of a portion of its abundant ground rent. In Mexico and most of the Caribbean Basin, capital accumulates through the production, exploiting a relatively cheap and disciplined labor force, of industrial goods for the world market.
