Afro-Chilean Women Asserting Black Pasts, Presents, and Futures in Chile

• Project in Chile
• Videos
• Photos

• Project Proposal:

  My research asks how Afro-Chilean women activists’ articulations of belonging to the African diaspora and the Chilean nation make salient both the country’s unacknowledged racial formations and its formidable patriarchal powers. How are these articulations motivated and structured by inequalities of race, class, and gender? What can be made of the profound role of women in activist efforts for recognition? I suggest that current Afro-Chilean activist struggles to demand state and popular recognition serve to reproduce the nation’s black pasts, presents, and futures. This project will contribute to a better understanding of the development and divergences of Afro-Chilean activists’ claims to the African diaspora and Chilean nation, and places women at the forefront of theorizing Afro-Latin America.

  While the African diaspora is a burgeoning topic in Latin American studies, Chile largely remains outside its scope, due to the comparatively small population in the hemisphere of just over 8,400 Afro-Chileans and hegemonic discourses of the homogenous ‘Chilean race.’ Current racial hierarchies are evident in the rising social panic and violence towards working class black migrants coming to Chile seeking employment from Haiti, Colombia and elsewhere, and ongoing state violence towards indigenous peoples. Further, Afro-Chileans’ articulations exemplify the complexities of theorizing race as not just a quality of the foreign or indigenous ‘Other.’ Women-led activism also attests to how many Afro-diasporic communities operate.

  The methodology for this project will highlight the perspectives and experiences of women Afro-Chilean activists through the use of ethnographic, archival and participatory research. I propose to carry out this research in Chile in three phases from March-November 2019, utilizing networks of contacts I established during visits to the region in 2016 and 2017.

• Proposal:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTZqLoRBBCQ/youtube]

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