Ayanna Legros
DRECCA (Fundacíon para el Desarrollo y Reivindicacíon Etno-cultural de las Comunidades Afrodescendientes)
Cali, Colombia
Greetings! I am a master’s candidate in Africana Studies, and this summer I will intern at DRECCA, an organization in Colombia that works to promote the vindication and development of the human rights of Afro-Colombians. I will work in their education department, promoting public policy initiatives against racial discrimination.
My desire to understand black history in the Atlantic World came to fruition during a freshman-year course entitled “Black Politics in Latin America,” but my love for Latin America and the Caribbean started in Harlem, New York. Rarely did a day go by in my home without my Haitian parents giving me a brief history lesson on Haiti.
The “Black Politics in Latin America” course awakened to me the significance of Haiti’s independence in 1804. This event not only caused Haiti to be the birthplace of black citizenship and autonomy, but also represented the struggle to define one’s human right to be free from enslavement, rape, torture, and a plethora of other abuses. It made me yearn to understand the historical significance of independence movements in the Americas at large, and the ways in which Africans and Afro-descended people came to define their space, rights, and citizenship in the New World.
Many Latin American countries attempted to “whiten” their populations by encouraging European migration during the post-independence period. Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia—to name a few—attempted to use “whitening” as a solution to the “problem” of blackness. For example, João Batista de Lacerda, director of Brazil’s National Museum, endorsed “constructive miscegenation” and was one of the first members of the scientific community to do so. In 1912, he calculated that Brazil’s black population would be reduced to zero by 2012 and that mulattoes would make up merely three percent of the total population.[1]
Luckily, Afro-Colombians have been able to survive and prosper despite such efforts, and today they have a strong presence in the Colombian cities of Medellín, Cali, Bogotá, Cartagena, and Barranquilla. However, they have suffered innumerable human rights abuses, starting from their departure from the slave docks in the African continent. Activist groups such as DRECCA are lobbying to demand the recognition of Afro-descended people in Colombia and in the Americas at large on political, social, and economic levels.
As Afro-descended Latin Americans continue to struggle for recognition within their homelands and throughout the diaspora, they need to be recognized during black history month as well. During black history month this year in New York City, I was elated to see a surge in programming surrounding Afro-Latino history. I was also pleasantly surprised to see on Facebook that DRECCA staff members were involved in black history month programs in Colombia.
I look forward to working with DRECCA this summer, as I am confident that it will be a fruitful experience for me personally and professionally.
[1]For more information regarding miscegenation and “whitening” movements in Brazil, refer to Kim D. Butler’s Freedoms Given, Freedoms Won (see in particular Chapter 1: “Order and Progress”).