quote:

Originally posted by ZAKAR:
Great Articles, Im currently reading a book on the history of Africans in Spanish America. Its very insightful. I was particularly impressed with the so called Cimarróns. These were the freedom fighters of early Spanish America, who were the forfathers who created alot of the African populated Enclaves in central and South America. I think if would be wise for us as African people in North America, to seriousl study our histories in developing the so called New World. With a global perspective we will be able to create solutions to our local problems.

Just now reading this, but, Good Info! It is an eye opener, definitely

Racism in Colombia: From Chocó to Chicó

16 Apr 2007
by César Rodríguez

How unexpected: Colombia’s northwest department (province) of Chocó is suddenly en vogue. After the scandalous death of 49 children from hunger in the last three months—adding to countless others we’ve never heard about—everyone seems to have an opinion about Chocó. Some say the department is simply unviable and that it should be absorbed and divided up between neighboring departments. Others say the problem is not a lack of funds, but rather that politicians steal all the money. While still others say the issue is about management, and that the government is just too distracted with things elsewhere.

Incredibly, what no one talks about and what all the pictures accompanying news reports about Chocó scream out, is that the skin color of those victims of hunger is Black. Black are the malnourished children who pose with their bloated soccer-ball like bellies. Black are the parents that cry before the cameras. Dark, too, is the copper-tone skin of the indigenous shown recently in videos, stranded in the middle of nowhere and drinking from the sewers of the Atrato River.

That nobody is willing to talk about such a sizable, not white, but black elephant says much more than all the ink spilled about the problem. Indeed, a collective silence is the clearest symptom of most deep social ills, those that are so firmly entrenched that we simply deny and ignore them.

And that ill, in this case, is none other than the racism that permeates all of Colombian society, from the poverty stricken Chocó to the ritzy Bogotá neighborhood of Chicó. These two places typify the two distinct kinds of racism that have emerged. The Chocó’s is the racism of geographical apartheid: the subtle and not so subtle forms of spacial segregation that keeps Afro-Colombians in marginal areas of the country and of cities. It’s the racism of Cali, with its very Black barrio of Aguablanca, as segregated as the South African townships, where that country’s Black population was confined by the state during apartheid. It’s the same racism of the barrio of Nelson Mandela in Colombia’s touristy city of Cartagena. And that of Chocó itself with an 85% Black population and a human development index that competes with the even Blacker Haiti.

This is why Afro-Colombian movements and academics talk about “structural racism.” As Carlos Rosero, leader of the Process of Black Communities movement, commented about the Chocó scandal: “The poorest and most left behind municipalities of the country have Black and indigenous faces, and we have lived an historic inequality that is not resolved with band-aid solutions.”

“Structural racism” is no smoke screen, one need only see a recent report on the subject by the UN, using the Colombian government’s own statistics. Illiteracy and infant mortality rates are three times higher among Afro-Colombians than among the rest of the population. Seventy-six percent of Afro-Colombians live in extreme poverty and 42% are jobless. Moreover, the educational system effectively reproduces these huge inequalities: only two of every 100 young Afro-Colombians reach university.

If we go from Chocó to Bogotá’s upscale Chicó neighborhood, the racism changes form, but it runs as deep as the geographic apartheid of the Chocó. It is the racism of the owners of the “good” music clubs who order their bouncers to “not let in Blacks,” as still happens in Cartagena despite successful lawsuits against the practice. The racism is evident in the whiteness of almost every sphere of the state and the private sector, where the country’s important decisions get made. It comes out in the comments left on the Web pages of the largest Colombian news magazine: “Hungry Blacks won’t work, and one with a full belly even less,” is how one reader responded to a blog posting I wrote on the subject. A similar case were the comments made by radio listeners over a speech made by Afro-Colombian Senator Piedad Cordoba on a recent trip to Mexico that caused a minor diplomatic spat. “A Black that doesn’t screw you on the way in, will do it on his way out,” was the comment about her actions that about sums up the opinions expressed by several listeners.

What both these racisms (Chocó and Chicó) have in common is that they lay to rest the egregious myth of Colombia as some racial paradise. It is one of the foundational myths of Colombian identity, as described by historian Alfonso Múnera in his book Fronteras imaginadas (Imgained Borders): “…the old and successful myth of a mestizo nation, in which Colombia has since the end of the 18th Century supposedly always been a country of mestizos, is actually a history marked by racial conflict and tension.”

If the Chocó scandal can bring us down from that cloud, then it will have served at least some purpose. If not, the tragedy of poverty and hunger will remain tied to the racisms reproduced with identical force in the Chocó and in Chicó.


César Rodríguez is a professor at the Universidad de Los Andes and a founding member of DeJusticia. He coordinates DeJusticia’s Racial Discrimination Observatory. This article was originally published by Semana.com, Colombia’s largest news magazine, and translated from the Spanish by NACLA.

http://news.nacla.org/2007/04/16/racism-in-colombia-from-choco-to-chico/

RACISM = OPPRESSION = DEATH

I dont think people of the WORLD UNDERSTAND this especially those benefiting directly or indirectly from the STRUCTURE.

That is why RACISM seemingly is SEPARATED from OPPRESSION and that seemingly SEPARATED from DEATH.

As long as they REMAIN separate, our HUMANITY which includes SPIRITUAL THINGS are SEPARATE and again UNEQUAL.

We are INCOMPLETE.

I am of the SCHOOL that RACISM = OPPRESSION = DEATH. There is no mark for SEPARATION. They are EQUAL.

In reverse I have yet seen RACISM give LIFE?

If anybody has LET ME KNOW.

Oh well.

Video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=JgzOlTAze3Q

BTW, they don't call this a rush transcript for nothing. It's spelled "Palenque", not "Palenke". And it's "Colombia", not "Columbia".

quote:

NAIDOO: We go next to Colombia. During the days of slavery, the city of Cartagena had one of the colonial Spain's biggest slave ports, and hundreds of thousand of Africans were traded there. Today, in one community set up by escaped slaves, the sounds and memories of Africa live on.

CNN's Karl Penhaul paid a visit.

(BEGIN VIEOTAPE)

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They're singing a song about their lost home in Africa, and about escape from slavery. No matter that they're poor to afford real instruments, they're playing their village anthem from the heart.

This is Pelenke (ph). (rush transcipt is right!--it's spelled "Palenque" --ricardomath) Villagers call it their corner of Africa in America.

"This anthem shows the whole country that what we have here is black power, and that we're descendants of Africa," she says.

PENHAUL: The village anthem honors their hero, Benkos Bioho. He led the Colombian slave revolt and escaped from the colonial port of Cartagena 400 years ago. Millions of Africans, especially from what is now Congo, Liberia and Senegal, were transported to Cartagena, but like the statue shows, Benkos snapped his chains and led dozens into the jungle of hinterland, to freedom.

At 81, Basilio Perez says his mind gets cloudy when he tries to remember how many children and grandchildren he has, but he remembers the stories passed down through generations like it was yesterday.

"It was as difficult to tell slaves to get here as it is to get from the Earth to the Moon. There were tigers, lions and snakes, it was terrifying to be in these jungles," he says.

Slavery was abolished in Columbia 150 years ago, but nowadays, blacks and Indians rank among the poorest and most discriminated sectors of society, according to government and independent reports.

"The black race is not free, still oppressed, especially in terms of jobs and education. We have minimal rights," he says.

Local legend tells how slave masses split up slaves from the same tribe to stop them from communicating. The ploy failed, and today, Palenke's (ph) inhabitants still speak a language experts say is a fusion of Bantu languages and Spanish.

Teacher Sebastian Salgado said his parents were to ashamed to teach him the language at home, fearing he would be mocked by white Colombians. Instead, he learned in the village's dusty alleys.

"When Palenke (ph) loses its language, then Palenke (ph) looses its identity. If there is no language, we stop being the people of Palenke (ph), the descendants of Africa," he says.

Spanish masters also tried to ban the slaves' talking drums. But the drums have not fallen silent altogether. At 5 years old, Louis Alejandro (ph) has already learned to tap out a tune. His grand dad, Jose Valdez, is the local drum maker, a skill he says was handed down.

"I often used to watch my uncle making drums, and it was etched in my mind," he says.

As the afternoon heat subsides after a heavy tropical thunderstorm, youngsters get together for a jam session. These days, the drums are not for talking, but dancing. Village elders say some of the dancers' movements are a secret code from slave times to symbolize resistance against their masters.

The rhythm may have mingled with more modern sounds of South America, but they can still hear the beat of an African home they've never known.

Karl Penhaul, CNN, Palenke (ph), Columbia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NAIDOO: Thanks to Karl Penhaul there in Palenke (ph), Colombia.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0511/19/i_if.01.html

October 18, 2007

San Basilio de Palenque Journal

A Language, Not Quite Spanish, With African Echoes

By SIMON ROMERO



A dance troupe performed at an annual drum festival in San Basilio de Palenque, Colombia. The villagers speak what is thought to be the only Spanish-based Creole language in Latin America.

SAN BASILIO DE PALENQUE, Colombia — The residents of this village, founded centuries ago by runaway slaves in the jungle of northern Colombia, eke out their survival from plots of manioc. Pigs wander through dirt roads. The occasional soldier on patrol peeks into houses made of straw, mud and cow dung.

On the surface it resembles any other impoverished Colombian village. But when adults here speak with one another, their language draws inspiration from as far away as the Congo River Basin in Africa. This peculiar speech has astonished linguists since they began studying it several decades ago.



San Basilio de Palenque was founded by runaway slaves.

The language is known up and down Colombia’s Caribbean coast as Palenquero and here simply as “lengua” — tongue. Theories about its origins vary, but one thing is certain: it survived for centuries in this small community, which is now struggling to keep it from perishing.

Today, fewer than half of the community’s 3,000 residents actively speak Palenquero, though many children and young adults can understand it and pronounce some phrases.

“Palenge a senda tielan ngombe ri nduse i betuaya,” Sebastián Salgado, 37, a teacher at the public school here, said before a classroom of teenage students on a recent Tuesday morning. (The sentence roughly translates as, “Palenque is the land of cattle, sweets and basic staples.”)



A student wrote an assignment on the board during a language class. The classes are part of an effort to preserve the unique local language, called Palenquero.

Palenquero is thought to be the only Spanish-based Creole language in Latin America. But its grammar is so different that Spanish speakers can understand almost nothing of it. Its closest relative may be Papiamento, spoken on the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao, which draws largely from Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch, linguists say. It is spoken only in this village and a handful of neighborhoods in cities where workers have migrated.

The survival of Palenquero points to the extraordinary resilience of San Basilio de Palenque, part of whose very name — Palenque — is the Spanish word for a fortified village of runaway slaves. Different from dozens of other palenques that were vanquished, this community has successfully fended off threats to its existence to this day.

Colonial references to its origins are scarce, but historians say that San Basilio de Palenque was probably settled sometime after revolts led by Benkos Biohó, a 17th-century African resistance leader who organized guerrilla attacks on the nearby port of Cartagena with fighters armed with stolen blunderbusses.

And while English-, French- and Dutch-based Creole languages are found in the Caribbean, the survival of one in the interior of Colombia has led some scholars to theorize that Palenquero may be the last remnant of a Spanish-based lingua franca once used widely by slaves throughout Latin America.

Palenquero was strongly influenced by the Kikongo language of Congo and Angola, and by Portuguese, the language of traders who brought African slaves to Cartagena in the 17th century. Kikongo-derived words like ngombe (cattle) and ngubá (peanut) remain in use here today.

Advocates for keeping Palenquero alive face an uphill struggle. The isolation that once shielded the language from the outside world has come to an end. Once three days by mule to the coast, the journey to Cartagena now takes two hours by bus on a bumpy dirt road.

Electricity arrived in the 1970s as a government gift in recognition of Antonio Cervantes, better known as Kid Pambelé, a Colombian world boxing titleholder who was born here. With electricity came radio and television. The schoolhouse, named in honor of Biohó, has an Internet connection now.

But Palenqueros, as the community’s residents call themselves, say the biggest threat to their language’s survival comes from direct contact with outsiders. Many here have had to venture to nearby banana plantations or cities for work, and then found themselves ostracized because of the way they spoke.

“We were subject to scorn because of our tongue,” said Concepción Hernández Navarro, 72, who survives by farming yams, peanuts and corn.

Only two of Ms. Hernández’s eight children live here; five are in Cartagena and one moved as far away as Caracas, drawn by Venezuela’s oil boom. “We have always been poor here,” she said in an interview in front of her modest house, “but our poverty has grown worse.”

If there is one blessing to this impoverishment, it may be that Colombia’s long internal war has largely been fought over spoils in other places, allowing teachers here to toil uninterrupted at reviving Palenquero since classes were introduced in the late 1980s.

Undaunted by the prospect of Palenquero’s disappearing after centuries of use, Rutsely Simarra Obeso, a linguist who was born here and lives in Cartagena, is compiling a lexicon. Others are assembling a dictionary of Palenquero to be used in the school.

The defenders of Palenquero view their struggle as a continuation of other battles. “Our ancestors survived capture in Africa, the passage by ship to Cartagena and were strong enough to escape and live on their own for centuries,” said Mr. Salgado, the schoolteacher.

“We are the strongest of the strongest,” he continued. “No matter what happens, our language will live on within us.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/world/americas/18colombia.html

Residents of San Basilio de Palenque, a village in the jungle of northern Colombia that was founded centuries ago by runaway slaves, speak a language that has astonished linguists for decades.


The language, known as Palenquero, is thought to be the only Spanish-based Creole language in Latin America. But its grammar is so different that Spanish speakers can understand almost nothing of it. Sebastián Salgado, 37, a teacher at the public school, leads students in a Palenquero lesson.


The language is spoken only in this village and a handful of neighborhoods in cities where workers have migrated. Today, fewer than half of the community's 3,000 residents actively speak Palenquero, though many children and young adults can understand it and pronounce some phrases.


A student walks past a wall that reads "Study today for tomorrow." Historians say that San Basilio de Palenque was probably settled sometime after revolts led by Benkos Biohó, a 17th-century African resistance leader who organized guerrilla attacks on the nearby port of Cartagena with fighters armed with stolen muskets.


The survival of Palenquero points to the extraordinary resilience of San Basilio de Palenque, part of whose very name 'Palenque' is the Spanish word for a fortified village of runaway slaves. Different from dozens of other palenques that were vanquished, this community has successfully fended off threats to its existence to this day.


Advocates for keeping Palenquero alive face an uphill struggle. The isolation that once shielded the language from the outside world has come to an end. Once three days by mule to the coast, the journey to Cartagena now takes two hours by bus on a bumpy dirt road.

Electricity arrived in the 1970s as a government gift in recognition of Antonio Cervantes, better known as Kid Pambelé, a Colombian world boxing titleholder who was born here. With electricity came radio and television. The schoolhouse, named in honor of Biohó, has an Internet connection now.


But Palenqueros, as the community's residents call themselves, say the biggest threat to their language's survival comes from direct contact with outsiders. Many here have had to venture to nearby banana plantations or cities for work, and then found themselves ostracized because of the way they spoke.


A dance troupe performed at an annual drum festival in San Basilio de Palenque. Palenquero was strongly influenced by the Kikongo language of Congo and Angola, and by Portuguese, the language of traders who brought African slaves to Cartagena in the 17th century. Kikongo-derived words like ngombe (cattle) and ngubá (peanut) remain in use here today.


Undaunted by the prospect of Palenquero's disappearing after centuries of use, a linguist is compiling a lexicon and others are assembling a dictionary of Palenquero to be used in the school.


"Our ancestors survived capture in Africa, the passage by ship to Cartagena and were strong enough to escape and live on their own for centuries," said Mr. Salgado, the schoolteacher. "We are the strongest of the strongest," he continued. "No matter what happens, our language will live on within us."

The Saturday Profile

A Lawmaker Whose Nation Dislikes Her Friends

By SIMON ROMERO
Published: March 1, 2008
The New York Times


“I suppose I’m somewhat unique. But Colombia will just have to get used to me because I’m not going away.” Piedad Córdoba

Caracas, Venezuela

THOSE in search of a glimpse of the Casablancaesque feel of this city might go to the lobby of the Hotel Meliá these days. Jet-lagged Iranians arrive on the flight from Tehran. Commandos in red berets from the elite presidential guard stand by the piano. Businessmen from Belarus discuss deals over glasses of whiskey.

And of course, Piedad Córdoba, the Colombian senator at the center of negotiations here with Colombia’s largest rebel group, livens up this scene when she is in town. In neighboring Colombia, and now here in Venezuela, few politicians generate as much emotion or controversy.

Ms. Córdoba dines with guerrillas and dons their berets for photos. Shuttling between Bogotá and Caracas, she dances at salsa spots here like El Maní es Así. She wears turbans evoking her African roots, a rare distinction in a country like Colombia where politicians are often expected to be light-skinned men from the moneyed classes.

And, eliciting accusations of treason in Colombia, she has vociferously declared herself a supporter of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela at a time when Mr. Chávez and President Álvaro Uribe, a close Bush administration ally, are rhetorically at each other’s throats.

“I suppose I’m somewhat unique,” Ms. Córdoba, 53, said in an interview on the Meliá’s terrace. “But Colombia will just have to get used to me because I’m not going away.”

IT is taking many people in Colombia time to get used to that idea. Flying in and out, for instance, has become troublesome for her. Fellow passengers showered Ms. Córdoba with insults and threats before she boarded a flight from Bogotá to Caracas in January. Airline personnel and customs police officers intervened to shield her from more aggression.

“It is evident that when a person expresses herself against her country, as Senator Piedad Córdoba has done, well, naturally someone will react,” Carlos Holguín, Colombia’s justice minister, said after the episode.

Semana, the respected Colombian news magazine, called Ms. Córdoba “the most controversial woman in Colombia,” comparing her guerrilla diplomacy to Jane Fonda’s overtures to North Vietnam in the early 1970s. Ms. Córdoba’s disapproval rating surged in January to 63 percent, the highest such rating in the country. Two months earlier it had been only 32 percent.

Much of the ire directed at Ms. Córdoba is related to her efforts to arrive at a negotiated solution to Colombia’s long internal war. She is working alongside Mr. Chávez to secure the release of dozens of captives, including three American military contractors, held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

They have had some success. The FARC, which is seeking the release of hundreds of its own jailed rebels, delivered two high-profile hostages in January to Ms. Córdoba in the Colombian jungle. They freed four other lawmakers, held for more than six years, to her and other emissaries of Mr. Chávez this week.

But Ms. Córdoba’s support for a proposal by Mr. Chávez to remove the FARC from terrorism lists has proved to be too much for many Colombians, who are weary of the group’s tactics. In four decades of war, it has financed itself largely through abductions and cocaine trafficking.

Still, Ms. Córdoba knows there are no innocents in this long war. In 1999, she was kidnapped by members of a right-wing paramilitary death squad in the heart of Medellín, her home. After her release she went into exile with her four children in Montreal, a period she defines as one of the most painful in her life.

Navigating the bureaucracy of Canada’s system for political refugees was daunting, she said, as was starting anew in such a different society. “There was no house with a pool and a car in the garage waiting for us,” she said. After about two years in Montreal, she returned to politics in Colombia.

As a senator, Ms. Córdoba seems to revel in saying things in public that many other Colombians can only whisper in private. “Every Colombian has a little paramilitary soldier in their heart,” she said with brio at the Hotel Meliá as guests and passers-by sipped their espressos and stared.

The statement was a jab at her society’s tolerance for the same kinds of private armies that kidnapped her. In a slow-burning scandal, these militias have drawn support from backers of President Uribe in Colombia’s Congress and within his main intelligence agency.

Like Mr. Uribe, Ms. Córdoba is a lawyer; both are from Antioquia, the economically vibrant province that has Medellín as its capital. But the similarities end there, with Ms. Córdoba emerging as one of the most outspoken critics of Mr. Uribe, the scion of a powerful landholding family.

Ms. Córdoba said her propensity to speak out originated during her childhood in Medellín as the daughter of a black man and a white woman, both teachers.

“My family and I were considered extraterrestrials,” she said. “I understand what it’s like to be different, which is why I defend homosexuals, women, blacks, anyone I can.”

While at college in Medellín, Ms. Córdoba said she was attracted to the theater and revolutionary ideas, but she avoided the guerrilla groups gaining momentum at the time, defining herself as a pacifist. Later, she got her start in politics as the private secretary of a former mayor of Medellín, William Jaramillo Gómez, emerging as his protégée.

YET while Ms. Córdoba has won recognition for supporting Colombia’s minorities, her warm ties with the country’s leftist guerrillas go too far for many Colombians, even if they privately acknowledge she may be one of the only people who can win the release of the FARC’s captives.

Ernesto Samper, the former Colombian president, said he got a sense of the emotions Ms. Córdoba elicits when he recently entered a barber shop in Bogotá where two women were arguing about politics. One of the women hated Ms. Córdoba, Mr. Samper said, while the other one loved her.

“It’s a mistake to think her political career is over,” Mr. Samper said in a telephone interview.

And so Ms. Córdoba presses ahead with this new phase, which has her spending about as much time in Caracas, in the corridors of Mr. Chávez’s palace and the Meliá, as she does in Bogotá. Asked about comments in Colombia that she should simply stay in Venezuela, Ms. Córdoba flashed a smile and said she had no plan to do so.

“It’s not surprising,” she said, laughing. “In Colombia, with my face, my turban, my words, I’m Public Enemy No. 1.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/01/world/americas/01cord...c9398bec8&ei=5087%0A

quote:

Originally posted by ricardomath:

Racism in Colombia: From Chocó to Chicó

16 Apr 2007
by César Rodríguez

How unexpected: Colombia’s northwest department (province) of Chocó is suddenly en vogue. After the scandalous death of 49 children from hunger in the last three months—adding to countless others we’ve never heard about—everyone seems to have an opinion about Chocó. Some say the department is simply unviable and that it should be absorbed and divided up between neighboring departments. Others say the problem is not a lack of funds, but rather that politicians steal all the money. While still others say the issue is about management, and that the government is just too distracted with things elsewhere.

Incredibly, what no one talks about and what all the pictures accompanying news reports about Chocó scream out, is that the skin color of those victims of hunger is Black. Black are the malnourished children who pose with their bloated soccer-ball like bellies. Black are the parents that cry before the cameras. Dark, too, is the copper-tone skin of the indigenous shown recently in videos, stranded in the middle of nowhere and drinking from the sewers of the Atrato River.

That nobody is willing to talk about such a sizable, not white, but black elephant says much more than all the ink spilled about the problem. Indeed, a collective silence is the clearest symptom of most deep social ills, those that are so firmly entrenched that we simply deny and ignore them.

And that ill, in this case, is none other than the racism that permeates all of Colombian society, from the poverty stricken Chocó to the ritzy Bogotá neighborhood of Chicó. These two places typify the two distinct kinds of racism that have emerged. The Chocó’s is the racism of geographical apartheid: the subtle and not so subtle forms of spacial segregation that keeps Afro-Colombians in marginal areas of the country and of cities. It’s the racism of Cali, with its very Black barrio of Aguablanca, as segregated as the South African townships, where that country’s Black population was confined by the state during apartheid. It’s the same racism of the barrio of Nelson Mandela in Colombia’s touristy city of Cartagena. And that of Chocó itself with an 85% Black population and a human development index that competes with the even Blacker Haiti.

This is why Afro-Colombian movements and academics talk about “structural racism.” As Carlos Rosero, leader of the Process of Black Communities movement, commented about the Chocó scandal: “The poorest and most left behind municipalities of the country have Black and indigenous faces, and we have lived an historic inequality that is not resolved with band-aid solutions.”

“Structural racism” is no smoke screen, one need only see a recent report on the subject by the UN, using the Colombian government’s own statistics. Illiteracy and infant mortality rates are three times higher among Afro-Colombians than among the rest of the population. Seventy-six percent of Afro-Colombians live in extreme poverty and 42% are jobless. Moreover, the educational system effectively reproduces these huge inequalities: only two of every 100 young Afro-Colombians reach university.

If we go from Chocó to Bogotá’s upscale Chicó neighborhood, the racism changes form, but it runs as deep as the geographic apartheid of the Chocó. It is the racism of the owners of the “good” music clubs who order their bouncers to “not let in Blacks,” as still happens in Cartagena despite successful lawsuits against the practice. The racism is evident in the whiteness of almost every sphere of the state and the private sector, where the country’s important decisions get made. It comes out in the comments left on the Web pages of the largest Colombian news magazine: “Hungry Blacks won’t work, and one with a full belly even less,” is how one reader responded to a blog posting I wrote on the subject. A similar case were the comments made by radio listeners over a speech made by Afro-Colombian Senator Piedad Cordoba on a recent trip to Mexico that caused a minor diplomatic spat. “A Black that doesn’t screw you on the way in, will do it on his way out,” was the comment about her actions that about sums up the opinions expressed by several listeners.

What both these racisms (Chocó and Chicó) have in common is that they lay to rest the egregious myth of Colombia as some racial paradise. It is one of the foundational myths of Colombian identity, as described by historian Alfonso Múnera in his book Fronteras imaginadas (Imgained Borders): “…the old and successful myth of a mestizo nation, in which Colombia has since the end of the 18th Century supposedly always been a country of mestizos, is actually a history marked by racial conflict and tension.”

If the Chocó scandal can bring us down from that cloud, then it will have served at least some purpose. If not, the tragedy of poverty and hunger will remain tied to the racisms reproduced with identical force in the Chocó and in Chicó.


César Rodríguez is a professor at the Universidad de Los Andes and a founding member of DeJusticia. He coordinates DeJusticia’s Racial Discrimination Observatory. This article was originally published by Semana.com, Colombia’s largest news magazine, and translated from the Spanish by NACLA.

http://news.nacla.org/2007/04/16/racism-in-colombia-from-choco-to-chico/

Racism in Columbia...I mean...urum...Colombia? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Can't be!!!! I thought South America was supposed to be making leaps and strides in race relations!! The destination for poor white retiree math instructors around the world!?!?!

I just ran across an old New York Times article from 1994.

March 29, 1994

Long Neglected, Colombia's Blacks Win Changes

By JAMES BROOKE

In this slow-moving river port, signs of abandonment are everywhere. Unemployed men while away hours on front stoops, taxis jolt gingerly down pitted and muddy streets, and broken windows scar Government buildings that are dilapidated mementos of token national interest in a state where 95 percent of the population is black.

"The Government doesn't even send schoolbooks here," said Maria Luisa Restrepo Perea, a high-school teacher. "Sometimes we have to help the children get pens, uniforms, notebooks."

But in recent months Colombia's black population, the largest in the Spanish-speaking world but long politically dormant, has started to organize, and there are some signs of change.

In November, for example, high schools received a new kind of visitor: military academy recruiters armed with scholarships. Responding to political pressure, Colombia's President, Cesar Gaviria Trujillo, had abolished an informal color bar at the nation's air, army, naval and police officer training schools the month before. Black Rights Law Approved

Starting with a handful of sit-ins at Government offices here in 1991, political consciousness has grown gradually among Colombian blacks, who make up about 15 percent of the nation's 35 million people.

Perhaps the most important change came last year when pressure by blacks in the form of street protests and even guerrilla actions helped win passage of a black rights law that is considered the most far-reaching in Latin America.

"For the first time this law recognizes that there are blacks in Colombia," said Gustavo Makanaky Cordoba, a doctor here in Choco, a Pacific Coast state that has become Colombia's reservoir of black consciousness.

Signed by President Gaviria on a visit here, the "Negritudes Law" allows for extending land titles to traditional black communities, promoting black education, "punishing" racial discrimination and setting up a presidential advisory board for black affairs.

In a first concrete step, two recently elected deputies are entering Congress, representing seats reserved for the black population, the only such seats in Latin America.

Recognizing a growth in black consciousness, the nation's largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, announced the formation of its first all-black unit in November. Operating in Choco, the unit carries the name of Benkos Bioho, a colonial-era leader of black resistance. Two Handicaps Noted

"We aren't children any more, we are organized," said the leader of one Quibdo slum-dwellers association. "If the Government does not have the political will to invest in our people, we will have to follow the lead of all the other groups in this country -- turn to arms."

While the prospect of racial violence seems remote, black activists complain that their struggle for greater political power suffers from two handicaps. They are obstacles common to all of Latin America: racism by the nation's European elite and a low level of racial identification among Colombia's five million blacks.

Colombia has Latin America's second largest black population, after Brazil. But President Gaviria presides over an all-white Cabinet, black faces rarely appear in national news magazines and television networks rarely employ black actors or reporters. Schools and universities largely ignore black history and the country has no museum of black culture.

"We are invisible," Alba Otilia Duenas de Perez, a black activist, said in Bogota, the capital.

Most of Colombia's black population live on the tropical nation's Pacific and Caribbean coasts. From Barranquilla and Cartagena, Colombia's two largest seaports, the nation's black population extends to coastal villages, interior sugar cane plantations, and the shantytowns of big Andean cities. To protect historically black villages, land titling has already begun for what the new law officially calls "black communities." Decades of Neglect

"The black groups are on the coasts and the whites are in the Andes," Dr. Makanaky said. "The whites channel all the state resources to favor their zone."

A visit to Choco, whose population is 95 percent black, is to encounter a legacy of decades of neglect by Colombia's European elite.

"There is not one kilometer of paved road in Choco," Eustorgio Perez Rosero, the state civil defense director. Travel from here to the Pacific coast, 60 miles by plane, takes two days by riverboat, the only means of surface transport.

Arriving at Quibdo airport, visitors jolt down a potholed road, passing open sewer ditches, unpainted shanties on stilts and wooden town houses on the verge of collapse. In a tropical region with one of the world's highest rainfalls, this city of 300,000 is routinely racked by floods.

Largely populated by descendants of blacks freed after Colombia abolished slavery in 1851, Choco today is a forgotten region. The only road out of Quibdo, a spine-wrenching 150-mile dirt track to Medellin, takes 15 hours on a good day. The Government recently sent bulldozers to smooth the road, but only after guerrillas shut it in January for a week.

"That's why Colombia has no black cyclists -- the roads are bad in black regions," Dr. Makanaky said, referring to the national passion for bicycle racing. In contrast, black athletes dominate Colombian boxing and soccer, sports that require little equipment. Statistics' Sad Story

In Bogota, officials announced recently that Colombiano longer needs low-interest development loans from the World Bank. But just as Mexico has Chiapas, Colombia has Choco.

As easy to see as the distended bellies of barefoot children here, Choco's infant mortality rate is 155 per 1,000 live births -- five times Colombia's national rate. Life expectancy is 52 years, 25 percent below the national level. Illiteracy is twice the national rate.

"It's what I call a pigmentocracy -- white people have more access to schools and hospitals, blacks and Indians have less access," said Dr. Makanaky, who treats a daily stream of people with preventable diseases at his storefront clinic here. "The Government has reduced antimalaria spending. Coincidentally, malaria is concentrated in black areas."

Slowing political identification has been a low level of racial identification, a phenomenon common among the mixed-race populations of Latin America.

"Some Colombian blacks don't identify themselves as blacks, and some mixed-race people don't identify themselves with blacks," Peter Wade, a British anthropologist, wrote last year in an essay, "The Black Movement in Colombia."

Dr. Makanaky said more bluntly: "We are like the black movement in the U.S. in 1945. Blacks are avoiding being black. They are are trying to be as white as possible."

Hampering racial and cultural identification, Colombia's anthropological establishment argues that the Spanish Inquisition wiped out African customs and religious practices among the 200,000 captives imported from Africa during Spanish colonial rule. In Colombia, the Inquisition court was based in Cartagena, the only legal port of entry for slaves. Cultural Research Ordered

Contradicting these arguments, linguists say that only 20 miles inland from Cartagena, at San Basilio de Palenque, descendants of a community of escaped slaves still speak a dialect based in part on languages spoken in contemporary Angola and Congo.

"The stamp of Africa is on the Afro-Colombian family structure, the centrality of women in the family," said Nina S. de Friedemann, an anthropologist and author of a new book, "The Black Saga: African Presence in Colombia." "The worship of saints is often a cultural mask for the worship of African deities."

Over protests from the Colombian Institute of Anthropology, a Government agency dominated by Indian specialists, the "Negritudes Law" specifically orders the institute to start researching "Afro-Colombian culture."

Remembering the fiasco of the 1991 constitutional convention, black activists here assert that Colombia's Indians won political power only after they won national respect for their history and culture.

Billed as "a constitutional convention of all Colombians," this gathering reserved two seats for Colombia's 500,000 Indians. Blacks, with a population 10 times larger, had no seats.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9505E2D8...on=&pagewanted=print

I found an english translation to Colombia's LAW 70, which is referred to in several articles in this thread. This will take a few posts, but here it is:

Law 70 of Colombia (1993): In Recognition of the Right of Black Colombians to Collectively Own and Occupy their Ancestral Lands.

English Translation
April 2007

Translated by:

Dr. Norma Lozano Jackson
Benedict College
Columbia, SC 29204
jacksonn@benedict.edu

Dr. Peter Jackson
Benedict College
Columbia, SC 29204
jacksonp@benedict.edu

You may copy and distribute this Translation in any medium provided that you include the following: This translation is the work of Norma and Peter Jackson of Benedict College, Columbia, South Carolina 29204
www.benedict.edu/exec_admin/intnl_programs/other_files/...colombia-english.pdf

LAW 70 OF 1993
For Which Transitory Article 55 of the Political Constitution of Colombia was Developed Decrees

Chapter I
Objective and Definitions

Article 1. The object of the present Law is to recognize the right of the Black Communities that have been living on barren lands in rural areas along the rivers of the Pacific Basin, in accordance with their traditional production practices, to their collective property as specified and instructed in the articles that follow. Similarly, the purpose of the Law is to establish mechanisms for protecting the cultural identity and rights of the Black Communities of Colombia as an ethnic group and to foster their economic and social development, in order to guarantee that these communities have real equal opportunities before the rest of the Colombian society.

In Accordance with what has been stipulated in paragraph 1 Article 55 of the Political Constitution, this Law will also apply in the barren, rural, and riparian zones that have been occupied by Black Communities that have traditional practices of production in other areas of the country and abide by the requirements established in this Law. Article 2.

For the purposes of the present Law, it is understood that:

1. PACIFIC BASIN. Is the region defined by the following geographic limits: From the summit of the Chiles Volcano bordering the Republic of Ecuador, continuing along the division of the Western Mountain Range waters, and the Cumbal and Azufral Volcanoes, until the Hoz of Minamá; crossing it, just below the mouth of the Guáitara River continuing through the division of the waters of the Western Mountain Range, along the Munchique Mountain, the Farallones de Cali, the Tatamá, Caramanta and Concordia Mountains; from these mountains, continuing along the branching of the waters to the Nudo de Paramillo; continuing to the Northeast up to the high point of Carrizal, along the branching of the waters to Río Sucio and Caño Tumarandó, into Río León to a point of Bahía Colombia along the left margin of the mouth of the Surinque River in the Gulf. Continuing along the line that defines the Gulf Coast of Urabá to the international landmark in Cabo Tiburón, from this point continuing through the line of the international limit between the Republic of Panamá and Colombia, to the midpoint between Punta Ardita (Colombia), and Cocalito (Panamá), over the coast of the Pacific Ocean, continuing along the coast to the mouth of the Mataje River, continuing along the international limits with the Republic of Ecuador, to the top of the Chiles Volcano, point of departure.

2. RIVERS OF THE PACIFIC BASIN. Are the rivers of the Pacific region, which comprise:
a) the Pacific flow made up of superficial waters of rivers and brooks that drain directly into the Pacific Ocean and its subsidiaries, the basins of the rivers Mira, Rosario, Chajul, Patía, Curay, Sanquianga, Tola, Tapaje, Iscuandé, Guapi, Timbiquí, Buey, Saija, Micay, Naya, Yurumanguí, Tumba Grande, Tumbita, Cajambre, Mallorquín, Raposo, Anchicayá, Dagua, Bongo, San Juan, Ijua, Docampadó, Capiro, Ordó, Sivirú, Dotendó, Usaraga, Baudó, Piliza, Catripre, Virudo, Coquí, Nuquí, Tribugá, Chori, El Valle, Huaca, Abega, Cupica, Changuera, Borojó, Curiche, Putumia, Juradó, and other smaller tributaries which drain directly into the Pacific Ocean;
b) the basins of the Atrato, Acandí, and Toló Rivers, that flow into Caribbean.

3. RURAL RIPARIAN LANDS. Are the lands bordering the banks of the rivers mentioned in the preceding paragraph that are outside urban perimeters as defined by the Municipal Councils of the area municipalities in question in accordance with the provisions of Municipal Regulation Code (Decree 1333 of 1986), and any subsequent added laws that develop or amend it and in which the respective community is settled.

4. BARREN LANDS. Are the lands situated within the borders of the national territory belonging to the State and no other owner, and that, having been categorized as such, shall return to the domain of the State in accordance with article 56 of Law 110 of 1913, and any other regulations that augment, develop, or reform it.

5. BLACK COMMUNITY. It is the group of families of Afro-Colombian descent who possesses its own culture, shares a common history and has its own traditions and customs within a rural-urban setting and which reveals and preserves a consciousness of identity that distinguishes it from other ethnic groups.

6. COLLECTIVE SETTLEMENT. It is the historic and ancestral settling of Black Communities in lands for their collective use, lands that constitute their habitat, and where they currently develop their traditional practices of production.

7. TRADITIONAL PRACTICES OF PRODUCTION. Are the technical, agricultural, mining, forestal extractions, grazing, hunting, fishing, and general harvesting activities of natural resources, customarily used by the Black Communities to guarantee the conservation of their lives and their self–sustaining development.

Chapter II
Principles

Article 3. The present Law is based on the following principles:

• Recognition and protection of ethnic and cultural diversity, and equal rights for all
cultures that compose the Colombian nationality.
• Respect for the integrity and dignity of the Black Communities’ cultural life.
• Participation of the Black Communities and their organizations, without detriment
to their autonomy, in decisions that affect them and in those that affect the entire
nation in confo