Beyond Negritude: Negrismo and Negredumbre as Recognition Categories During the First Half of the Latin American 20th Century

Abstract

This article analyzes how Black/Afro-descendant intellectuals have used negrismo and negredumbre as self-classifying categories of identity during the first half of the 20th century in the Spanish-speaking areas of Latin America. The study allows us to draw a comparison with negritude, one of the most popular categories in current scholarly work, but which, as a concept and movement of cultural affirmation, only entered Black/Afro-descendant intellectual discussions in Latin America in the 1970s. Reviewing these discourses helps comprehend that negritude was considered a foreign concept, with different socio-historical tensions, and that within Latin America, Black/Afro-descendants had already adopted other concepts to classify their own identity.