The Afro-Latin American Negritud

Abstract

ABSTRACT By focusing on the case of Colombia, this article explains how influential the Négritude movements was on the Afro-Latin American politics during the 1970s. Scholars tend to highlight its cultural contributions often disregarding its influence on the emergence of Black social and political organizations. Thus, the article focuses on three aspects: First, it connects the Négritude movement to the emergence of a Negritud movement in Latin America. Second, it maps forms of Black politics, collective actions, and public spheres that explicitly framed their mobilizations under the Négritude framework in Colombia, and third, the article describes the transnational spaces of articulations built around Négritude in Latin America. The article concludes with some reflections on the legacies of the Afro-Colombian Negritud movement, considering that people of African descent could develop forms of Black politics to affirm their visions of Blackness and to contest racial oppression in Latin America.