From ethnicization to ethnicism: Transformations of the legal and political subject of blackness in Colombia

Introduction

Colombia ¹ stands out as one of the countries with Afro-descendant presence in the Americas, ranking first with the largest black population in Hispanic America. According to official figures, Afro-Colombians make up about ten percent of the country’s total population; although some organizations and activists believe the percentage is much higher. ² There are many places in Colombia where the presence of the Afro-descendant populations is particularly significant. In the Pacific region of Colombia, for example, black people make up an overwhelming majority of the population. The Caribbean, both on the islands and on the mainland, also reveals a noteworthy presence of Afro-descendant individuals, as do many of the inter-Andean valleys.

Contrary to prevalent social perceptions among Colombians that the black population resides mainly in rural areas, official statistics reveal that the majority of Afro-Colombians live in urban settings, particularly in cities such as Cali, Cartagena, Bogotá, and Medellín (DANE, 2019). Cali, home to more than a million Afro-Colombians, is ranked as the second city with the largest black population in Latin America, surpassed only by Salvador de Bahía in Brazil. More black people live in Cali than in the entire Colombian Pacific region. Even in this region, the bulk of its population is settled in medium-sized cities, among which Buenaventura, Quibdó, and Tumaco stand out.

Unlike many other countries in the Americas, Colombia classifies some Afro-descendant populations as an ethnic group, similar to the categorization of indigenous communities. More recently, within the context of the Comisión de la Verdad report, the State's legal and political vocabulary has turned to the concept of ethnic people, which is more in line with the transformations and positions of certain organized sectors, both indigenous and Afro-descendant. This state perception of the black population as an ethnic group or people is widely shared among activists, scholars, and professionals in non-governmental organizations. It constitutes a kind of common sense in the expert discourse and political narratives, which often goes unquestioned.

Ethnicization is the process by which populations become an “ethnic group,” which in the Colombian context, with the shift towards multiculturalism, has involved constituting marked others who are traditionalized, communalized, and ancestralized within the nation. From this conceptual perspective, “ethnic group” is not understood as a euphemism for race, nor are ethnicity and race considered synonyms. As will be explained in this article, they refer to distinguishable processes of managing-disputing difference-inequality, even when they appear to be operating with respect to the “same” people. Although they overlap in multiple ways and are often confused, this does not mean it is not theoretically and politically relevant to understand their differences.

As Claudia Briones (2002) argues, theoretical work is crucial to highlight the diverse registers and operations that race (racial discrimination and racism) and ethnicity (ethnicization and ethnicism) entail to understand different forms of social othering. These historical and political processes of othering are not uniform; they involve entanglements, sometimes incommensurable, and continue to have distinguishable effects on political imaginaries and the world in general.

The much more recent notion of “pueblos étnicos negro, afrocolombiano, raizal y palenquero” expresses a shift from traditionalist culturalism (in which ethnicization operated) to racialized ethnicism (which combines racial markers from an Afro-diasporic closure with ancestral cultural differences that have been articulated by a particular regime of victimhood). These transformations should not be understood as simple successions in which the newer clearly and smoothly replace the former. On the contrary, they overlap, juxtapose, and create tensions in multiple ways. This does not mean, either, that I consider that there are only two articulations of the legal and political subject of blackness, one being ethnicization and the other racialized ethnicism. Articulations such as those of the Afrodiasporic subject or those enabled by the regime of victimhood have also emerged in recent decades.

As I hope to elaborate in the article, in the last three decades, a series of displacements have occurred (which, as noted earlier, should not be understood as simple substitutions or successions) in the legal and political subject of blackness that have converged in a racialized ethnicism expressed in the concept of pueblos étnicos. Specifically, my argument is that ethnicism appeals to a racial marker (blackness, with its various inflections), equating it with the culturalist othering that territorialized, traditionalized, and communalized “black communities” (which, in turn, have been inscribed in a particular regime of victimhood).

This article analyzes some of the most visible conceptions and transformation of the legal and political concept of blackness over the last three decades, as influenced by specific imaginaries and policies set forth by the Colombian State. There are many aspects that escape me, as it has been more than thirty years during which extensive legislation has been produced, during which the Constitutional Court has issued numerous rulings, and during which state programs or projects involving Blackness as a legal and political subject have been designed and implemented in various ways. Some articulations of this subject are presented more clearly than others, undoubtedly; this does not mean that the argument of the text, which invites us to think that rather than a stable subject, it is one that transforms—not in the sense of a linear succession—and that we are at a moment where a novel articulation is being enabled, which I have called racialized ethnicism, is not relevant.

In methodological terms, this article is the result of multiple research projects that involve ethnography, historical archive work, and discourse analysis, which have been expressed in my publications over nearly thirty years. It also stems from an uninterrupted dialogue with many colleagues, through which I have been able to closely follow their research.

Becoming an ethnic group

Considering the black communities from Pacific region as an ethnic group is widely accepted among activists, scholars, government officials, and NGO professionals in Colombia, without much debate. Few of them question this idea, and even fewer are interested in understanding how we have come to think this way. This naturalization contrasts with the challenge that even some anthropologist colleagues from European countries, the United States, Brazil or Chile face in understanding that in Colombia the black population is legally and politically considered an ethnic group, just like the indigenous population. A similar situation exists only in Ecuador, largely due to shared political histories that have articulated blackness (Antón Sánchez 2023).

However, the history of conceiving “black communities” as an ethnic group with traditional production practices, a collective territory, ancestral forms of authority, and a distinct cultural identity is relatively recent. It was through the 1991 Political Constitution, particularly with its Temporary Article 55, which endorsed Law 70 of 1993, that the idea of “black communities” as an ethnic group was institutionalized in state terminology. ³ Until about three decades ago, these same populations –now recognized as an ethnic group– were considered peasants if they lived in rural areas; fishermen if they settled along coasts, marshes, or rivers to engage in fishing; or miners if they worked with artisanal techniques in dikes and alluvial beds. Their blackness was not always highlighted; being categorized as peasants, fishermen, or miners was enough.

In the early 1980s, it was hard to conceive that, for example, the black population living in the middle course of the Atrato River in the Pacific region of Colombia could be imagined as an ethnic group with traditional production practices, a territory with collective property rights, an ancestral culture, and a cultural identity. At that time, this population residing in the middle Atrato region was commonly referred to as either peasants or black peasants. They were peasants, and as such they were assumed to be needy, backward, and in need of being “redeemed” from their precarious and impoverished situation through “development.” They had to be integrated into the nation through the market, and various development projects were designed for this purpose (Gutiérrez and Restrepo, 2017).

On the other hand, some scholars, intellectuals, or political figures used the terms “ethnic group” or “etnia” to refer to the black population in Colombia, but the meaning of these terms did not correspond to that developed in the turn to multiculturalism in the nineties. Those scholars, intellectuals, or political figures who adopted the term “ethnic group” or “etnia” did so as the equivalent to a racial group or race. ⁴ They did not take into account the existence of collective territorialities, traditionalities, and ruralized communalities that established a cultural difference and a distinct cultural identity, which is the sense that has been consolidated since the multiculturalism approach in the nineties.

Before the 1990s, a significant part of social mobilizations in the political sphere involved the assertion of citizens’ rights against the State. The civic strikes of the seventies and the civic movements of the eighties involved black populations in this context of political mobilization (Agudelo, 2005). However, none of these strikes or mobilizations was articulated in the name of a traditionalized and communalized cultural difference of those populations, as it came to crystallize in the 1990s (Domínguez, 2017). As we will see later, another part also articulated demands for inclusion, and some of them even gave rise to struggles against racial discrimination and racism (Wade, 2004).

For black communities to gain legal and political recognition as an ethnic group with traditional nature-based production practices, collective land ownership, and economic rationality adapted to their environment, key processes occurred in the middle Atrato river region, with significant involvement of missionaries and experts including lawyers and anthropologists (Villa, 1998). By the mid-1980s, a group of missionaries initiated a series of organizational processes that by 1988 coalesced around the novel idea that the peasants in that area were an ethnic group. As those familiar with this history may have deduced, I am referring to the creation of the Integral Peasant Association of Atrato (ACIA), fueled by disputes over timber exploitation permits in the middle Atrato (Pardo, 1998).

This situation for “black communities” was also true for the indigenous peoples, albeit a decade earlier, in the Andean context of Cauca (Gros, 2000; Rojas, 2011). If one examines the demands of indigenous populations in Colombia before the 1960s, their perceptions of themselves and others did not revolve around the concept of traditional cultural difference, nor were they articulated in terms of “territory” or their “harmonious relationship with nature.” Their demands reflected land disputes, which differ significantly from struggles for territorial control (Offen 2009). Their struggles were linked to discrimination and marginalization rather than to the recognition of their cultural difference.

Some authors (Cárdenas, 2023; Pardo, 2016; Romero, 2012; Urrea et al., 2014; Wade, 2004) have suggested that a certain model of indigeneity, one that is culturalized and traditionalized, has dominated the ethnization of black identity. It reflects certain images of indigeneity, where the distinction, tradition, communal ownership of territory, ancestral authorities, and cultural identity have served as criteria for conceiving themselves as an ethnic group, with legal and political implications stemming from the Colombian state’s ratification of ILO Convention 169 on indigenous and tribal peoples.

This indigenous model inspired the ethnization of “black communities” during the latter half of the 1980s to address specific struggles that were initially framed in terms of black peasants in the Middle Atrato River region. This transformation resulted from a series of mediations involving sectors of the Church inspired by the liberation theology and the Second Vatican Council, alongside a group of experts linked to a Dutch international cooperation development project known as DIAR (Integral Agricultural Rural Development) (Villa 1998).

During the 1990s, the relationship between the state and black populations was shaped by this process of ethnicization, which found its paradigmatic expression in the Pacific region. Within this framework, two significant and interrelated dynamics unfolded. On one side, an “ethnic-territorial” organizing strategy developed, which enabled the black movement to gain traction among black populations, notably in the Colombian Pacific region (Domínguez, 2017; Martínez, 2013; Pardo, 2016).

On the other side, despite some delays and setbacks, the 1990s witnessed a dynamic characterized by state institutionalization that materialized representation scenarios and initiatives that realized some of the rights of “black communities” as an ethnic group. The process of collective land titling, as a result of Decree 1745 of 1995 and driven by joint bodies composed of state entities and representatives of “ethnic-territorial” organizations, is perhaps the most noteworthy reference. This process, which has included the titling of more than five million hectares of collective land to “black communities” in the Colombian Pacific, can be seen as one of the most eloquent results of the shift to multiculturalism in the relationship between the state and black populations.

For the Colombian state, parallel to the shift toward multiculturalism, the 1990s were also a period of the emergence and positioning of the biodiversity discourse, which permeated the creation of the Ministry of the Environment and the environmental institutional framework. Biodiversity refers to a dense network of knowledge, narratives, techniques, agents, and institutions that value biological diversity as an indicator and source of wealth in natural places and environments. Biodiversity gained prominence as a global social phenomenon in the early 1990s. The positioning of biodiversity involves shifting from nature to environment, from conventional biology to ecology, as an anchor for the production of expert knowledge and government policies (Escobar, 2008).

Since the Colombian Pacific region quickly became associated with the idea of its providential biodiversity, several environmental initiatives for the region were promoted by the Colombian state in the 1990s. The discourse on biodiversity and its embodiment in the Colombian Pacific allows us to understand the significance in the 1990s of the marking of certain environmental concerns in the relations between the state and Afro-descendant populations, in this initial phase of the shift towards multiculturalism, constituting what Roosbelinda Cárdenas (2012) has characterized as “green multiculturalism.” For both the state and ethnic-territorial organizations, one of the key features that characterized the black communities in the Colombian Pacific was their traditional production practices. These practices, through their collective ownership of territory and an economic rationality that did not prioritize capital accumulation, expressed an ecological harmony that has been a guarantor for the conservation of Pacific biodiversity (Agudelo, 2005).

This context outlined the notion that in the relations between the state and black populations, especially those in the Colombian Pacific, the concept of “black communities” as “guardians of nature” (Wade 2004) took precedence. From the enactment of Law 70 in 1993 to the collective land titling process and the role given to emerging environmental institutions, there was a clear alignment of black communities as a political subject and their rights with the characteristics of the “ecological native.” ⁵

Marking of victimhood

Although Law 70 of 1993 opened up a tentative possibility of articulating a political and rights-based subject for “black communities” as an ethnic group beyond the Colombian Pacific, the practical application by the state and the prominence of “ethno-territorial” organizations in this region, other experiences and aspirations of black populations in the country were not really addressed during the 1900s. Only the iconic figure of Palenque de San Basilio, a settlement of Maroon descendants declared Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO in 2005, had gained some visibility on the national stage, while capturing the political and legal subjectivity of black communities in Cartagena and the Colombian Caribbean (Cunin 2003).

In the late 1990s, substantial political and economic conditions that had shaped the shift to multiculturalism in the relationship between the state and black populations underwent a significant transformation. The escalation of the armed conflict and its association with legal and illegal business interests, both in the Pacific region and other areas inhabited by these populations, were the catalyst for displacement and armed violence. This escalation, which is attributed to the perverse convergence of the warlike intentions of certain sectors of the political class, on one hand, and the economic interests of various armed actors in the illegal sphere, on the other, has had a significant impact on rural populations throughout the country, with Afro-descendant peoples, especially those of the Colombian Pacific, being the most affected (Comisión De la Verdad, 2022).

Unlike almost the entire Colombian territory, until the mid-nineties the Pacific region had remained largely untouched by military escalation, the economy of terror, and violence as a preferred means of conflict resolution. Consequently, it was viewed as a “sanctuary of peace” (Arocha, 1993; Losonczy, 1993). However, in the latter half of the decade, the Colombian Pacific region from the Atrato River in the far north to Tumaco on the border with Ecuador became a boiling war zone.

As noted in several studies (Escobar, 2008; Pardo, 2016), this war escalation and the resulting placement of illicit economies, including narcotics and mechanized mining, have been major factors in explaining why land titling processes in the Pacific region did not guarantee the continued existence or effective territorial control by the “black communities,” just as the existence of community organizations and councils did not necessarily imply the defense of the interests for which they were established. The dynamics of the military conflict over the control of the region intensified, significantly affecting the living conditions of the local populations from which the organized movement for the assertion of cultural and territorial difference had emerged.

Paramilitary groups began to extend their influence in the region around 1996, starting in the far north at the Atrato River. Ten years later, in the first decade of the new century, the paramilitaries had a presence in most urban centers in the Pacific region. By the early 2000s, the FARC and ELN guerrillas, which had a marginal presence or no presence at all in the region, tended to establish themselves in rural areas along the river basins. This reality in the Colombian Pacific region (with the presence of armed actors, criminality, and the exploitation of people and resources) far exceeded the political imagination of community councils as effective local authorities that embodied traditional forms of authority and harmonious collective resource ownership. However, it also highlighted the significant limitations of a state that could not control or have an effective presence in much of the region (Domínguez, 2017; Martínez, 2013; Pardo and Alvarez, 2001).

What is particularly dramatic for the Colombian Pacific region is not unique to other areas of the country with significant black populations. Northern Cauca, for example, has been marked by historical presence of armed actors and more recent dynamics of mining and coca crop cultivation, which have been the subject of disputes by organized sectors of the black movement (Rojas y Vanegas 2012). Likewise, the Caribbean region of Colombia has become a scenario of population displacement since the 1990s due to the actions of paramilitaries and guerrillas (Centro De Memoria Histórica, 2015).

Displacement, selective assassinations and massacres, intimidation and control of territories and populations, and the transformation of local economies, among other factors, have significantly altered the terms and scope of the struggles and demands of organized sectors of the “black communities” (Comisión De la Verdad, 2022). By the end of the 1990s, some organizations, such as AFRODES (Association of Displaced Afro-Colombians), had emerged, and many existing organizations emphasized the issues of displaced persons, the right to life, and reparations for the victims (Almario, 2004; Rosero, 2002).

These experiences of violence, dispossession, and death caused by the armed conflict in black populations have had a dual impact on the political and rights-based subject that frames the relationship between the state and black populations. On one hand, mass displacement of hundreds of members of these populations in the Pacific, including some of their representatives, exposed them to different experiences and needs in the major urban centers outside of what had been constituted as their “ancestral territories.” Consequently, a growing number of members from the renowned “black communities” of the Pacific arrived in cities such as Bogotá, Medellín, Cartagena or Cali as internally displaced persons This not only involved a relocalization, but also a redefinition of “black communities” as an ethnic group.

On the other hand, many of the tragedies of displacement and the effects of the conflict have also been experienced by black populations in other regions of the country. For example, individuals escaping heartbreaking situations of violence in rural areas of the Colombian Caribbean or the major Cauca valley often converged in urban centers with those who had arrived from the Pacific. Of course, black populations were not the only ones displaced, but they were significantly overrepresented in relative terms to their share of the Colombian population (Comisión De la Verdad, 2022). This communal experience of Afro-descendant populations forged in the crucible of the wars waged in the country, and their connections with merchants of death, enabled an articulation within the emerging state framework of the regime of victimhood (Cárdenas 2023), which took shape around the figures of the displaced and victims in the last fifteen years.

As argued by Juan Ricardo Aparicio (2005), the legal and political emergence of the figure of the Displaced Person in the Colombian state took shape in the second half of the 1990s. Within a framework of laws, ⁶ representations, data, expert knowledge, and bureaucratic registrations that the displaced person emerges as an “[…] object of knowledge and intervention in the public space of Colombia” (Aparicio, 2005: 136). Thus, the displaced person became the subject of a form of state intervention framed within the discourse of providing humanitarian assistance to victims of violence, which, however, overlooked the state’s role as the perpetrator of this violence and allowed for the deployment of numerous foreign and domestic organizations to address the humanitarian crisis. The figure of the Displaced Person has engendered a series of legal and expert discourses, as well as a set of practices and subjectivities that establish certain ways of state operation and enable the presence of foreign and domestic entities around “humanitarian aid” (Aparicio, 2005: 136).

In the last two decades, along with a series of Constitutional Court rulings (T-025 of 2004 and Auto 005 of 2009), the Victims and Land Restitution Law (Law 1448 of 2011), the creation of the National Center for Historical Memory, and, more recently, the complex set of provisions related to the signing of the Peace Agreements with the FARC, the state’s discourses and practices regarding black populations as victims of the conflict in need of humanitarian attention have become more intricate within the institutional framework of the state. ⁷

The legal and political subject of blackness associated with ethnicization is deeply impacted by the experiences and effects of war, forced displacement, and armed violence that kills and intimidates. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the figures of the displaced and the victim emerged in legal terms. These categories not only enabled a series of humanitarian interventions from international technical cooperation and the realm of non-governmental organizations, but also led to a series of rulings and laws that allowed the State to establish a regime of victimhood. This regime makes the displaced and victims of the armed conflict understandable and a focus of attention, providing a specific legal and political framework.

Since then, the process of ethnicization has increasingly been articulated and configured in relation to this regime of victimhood. Within the state apparatus, black communities as an ethnic group are recognized as victims of the armed conflict. Not just any victims, but those with ancestries, traditions, communal ties, and territorialities that have constituted them as an ethnic group. The process of ethnicization becomes marked by the regime of victimhood.

Therefore, the state has unfolded what Cárdenas (2023) has described as the confluence of the ethnic rights subject with a regime of victimhood, in which Afro-Colombians (no longer simply “black communities”) appear not only as an ethnic group, but also as vulnerable populations and victims of the armed conflict. These are the circumstances that will shape a recent deepening of this political and rights-based subject embodied in the concept of the ethnic people within the framework of the Comisión de la Verdad. However, before delving into this matter, it is relevant to examine how, in the first two decades of the 21st century, the Afro-diasporic subject emerges in the state relations.

Diaspora, racial markings, and racism

The Third World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Forms of Intolerance was held by the United Nations in Durban, South Africa, from August 31 to September 8, 2001. In anticipation of this conference, a series of regional preparatory meetings took place, which not only promoted the consolidation of transnational networks among activists from different Latin American countries, but also fostered the knowledge and dissemination of the Afrodescendant category (Romero, 2012).

It was not until the late 1990s and the early 2000s that the term “Afrodescendant” began to circulate beyond the context of its origin. Coined within the context of some Brazilian black movement activists in the 1980s, ⁸ it had limited use in Brazil and was virtually unknown in other countries in the region until the round of preparatory meetings for the World Conference against Racism. One activist, Jorge Romero Rodríguez, described one of these preparatory meetings held in Santiago, Chile, in 2000, stating, “We entered as blacks and came out as Afrodescendants.” ⁹ Since then, the term has rapidly gained acceptance among not only activists but also among state officials, non-governmental organizations, international cooperation entities, and numerous academics.

The Afrodescendant category prioritizes the concept of a commonality within the diaspora. A diaspora in which the historical experience of African enslavement and its descendants has been a constitutive element of a present marked by inequality and racism. It is a diaspora expressed through distinct physical traits and cultural imprints that trace back to Africa. These imprints are viewed as connections, continuities, and memories rather than the conventional concept of culture with collective territoriality and traditional practices in harmony with nature, which facilitated the emergence of “black communities” as an ethnic group in the mid-1980s and 1990s.

This Afro-diasporic subject speaks of the hairstyles of women who used their braids to map routes to escape from slavery to maroon communities. The hair of both men and women is also seen as a hiding place for plant seeds that they would cultivate in freedom, or to conceal gold nuggets that enslaved groups mined, later used to buy their own freedom or that of their children or partners. African influences are evident in the turbans, the brightly colored clothing that women wear with pride, as well as certain shirts or designs for men. The maroon struggles and resistance in communities, associated with figures such as Benkos Bioho and the iconic Palenque de San Basilio, feed the narratives that shape black people as a diasporic subject that often engages a wide urban audience.

On December 27, 2001, Congress passed Law 725, which officially established Afro-Colombian Identity Day to be celebrated annually on May 21st This date marks the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the law that abolished slavery in Colombia, enacted on May 21, 1851. The commemoration was created: “[…] in recognition of the plurinationality of the Colombian Nation and the need for the Afro-Colombian population to recover its historical memory […].” It is worth noting that the subject of this law is the “Afro-Colombian population,” and not the “Black communities.” It “[…] will develop a commemoration campaign that includes organizations and institutions working for the benefit of the groups involved in this historical event.”

The Afro-diasporic subject is not limited to rural and riverside “black communities” in the Colombian Pacific region or to those who have been victims of armed violence and requiring humanitarian assistance. It encompasses a novel subject of rights and politics that is broadly referred to as Black, Afro-Colombian, Palenquero, or Raizal. This diasporic subject also includes urban trajectories and presences, experiences of racial discrimination and racism, demands for statistical visibility, and the dignification of their contributions to nation-building.

Of course, this political subject of African descent should not be viewed as a mere replacement of the ethnicity-based subject, of the “black communities” as an ethnic group, as both coexist, although sometimes in tension. It is not entirely new either, since some of the premises on which it is based were previously proposed by black organizations such as Cimarrón, the Centro de Estudios Afrocolombianos, and the newspaper Presencia Negra. These organizations were established, in part, with a political agenda aimed at combating racial discrimination and racism (Pisano, 2012; Valderrama, 2018).

Since the 2005 Census, efforts have been made to increase the statistical visibility of the Afro-diasporic subject, particularly through the introduction of a self-identification question. The question asked people to identify with an ethnic group based on their culture, people, or physical characteristics. The options included: (1) Raizal from the San Andrés and Providencia Archipelago; (2) Palenquero from San Basilio; and (3) Black, Mulatto, Afro-Colombian, or Afrodescendant. ¹⁰ The results were generally read statistically and politically as simply the Afro-Colombian or Afro-descendant population, or more specifically as Afro-Colombians, Blacks, Palenqueros, and Raizals. ¹¹

Before the census, the Constitutional Court’s rulings and documents from the Consejo Nacional de Política Económica y Social (CONPES) showed the expansion of the ethnic subject to include Afro-Colombian populations residing in urban areas or locations beyond the Pacific region. In the CONPES document titled “Support Program for the Development and Ethnic Recognition of Black Communities” (2909 of 1997), the Afro-Colombian population is not only defined as “black communities” from the Pacific but also includes the “Colombian black population” in urban contexts and the “Afro-Colombian population” in other areas outside the Pacific:

“The Afro-Colombian population is located throughout the national geography, mainly in the inter-Andean valleys of Patía, Magdalena, and Cauca, in the lowlands of the Pacific Andean foothills, in the Urabá region, on the Atlantic coast, in the archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia, and Santa Catalina, and in various gold-bearing areas of the country. There are also significant population centers in the country’s major urban centers, especially in Cali, Barranquilla, Cartagena, Medellín, and Bogotá. The majority of the Colombian black population resides in urban areas. In almost all major urban concentrations in the country, Afro-Colombians constitute a significant group that contributes to the strengthening of Colombia's ethnic and cultural diversity through heterogeneous urban expressions.” (CONPES, 1997: 2).

These notions of the Afro-Colombian population or the black population have taken hold since the late 1990s, leading to the emergence of the Afro-diasporic subject. They also include “heterogeneous urban expressions” that contribute to the “strengthening of Colombia’s ethnic and cultural diversity.”

This population is also described in terms of its marginalization and discrimination, in the most precarious conditions, which often translates into the presentation of a series of statistical data showing that they have the lowest poverty rates (based on criteria such as health, education, displacement, and employment). This emphasis on the marginalization and discrimination of the black or Afro-Colombian population is embedded in the discourse of the State.

Rather than the traditionalized concept of difference in the 1990s, what prevails as intelligibility and as the object of state intervention in relation to this Afro-diasporic political and legal subject are the conditions of economic marginalization and their limited access to health, education, employment, and infrastructure services. According to various activists and organizations, this marginalization, reflected in economic and social indicators, is not a random inequality but is linked to the history of enslavement and is evidence of structural racism. Therefore, the relationship between the state and the Afro-Colombian population has resulted in the positioning of an Afro-diasporic commonality, united by the history of enslavement and associated with its effects of invisibility and inequality, as well as by experiences of racism.

This emphasis on racialization and the discourse on racial discrimination and racism sharply contrasts with what was articulated in the 1990s with the turn to multiculturalism. In fact, when it crystallized in Law 70 of 1993, the notion of “black communities” as an ethnic group was not established as a racialized legal and political subject; it was not merely a synonym or euphemism for black individuals or the black population. Instead, it represented a subject position based on cultural differences, traditional production practices, collective territory, and self-governance. Consequently, the Pacific region of Colombia, specifically the rural areas along the middle and upper reaches of the rivers, became the paradigm that constituted this new legal and political subject of black communities as an ethnic group.

However, in recent years, as I will argue below, the notion of an ethnic people that predominates in the Comision de la Verdad’s report has led the State to merge the ethnicization embodied in “black communities” with the racialization articulated in the term “Afro-descendant.” There has been a transition from ethnicization as a cultural concept rooted in rural riverine communities of the Colombian Pacific, which served as the paradigm for the ethnic group, towards a view of an ethnic people that overlaps with individuals who are racially identified as black. However, this overlap envisions them in accordance with a traditional culture that contrasts with that of other Colombians. This can be interpreted as a shift from ethnicization to ethnicism as the legal and political subject of blackness transits from a differential culturalism to a racial closure.

Ethnic peoples

As one of the results of the Peace Agreement signed between the Colombian state and FARC-EP in 2016, the Comisión para el Esclarecimiento de la Verdad de Colombia (CEV) emerged. This Commission was created with the aim of investigating and clarifying the events that occurred during the conflict, acknowledging the truth of what happened, and providing recognition to the victims. In addition to the Comisión de la Verdad, the Peace Agreement also established other transitional justice mechanisms, including the Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz (JEP) and the Unidad de Búsqueda de Personas Dadas por Desaparecidas (UBPD), which also seek to address the crimes committed during the conflict and ensure reparations for the victims.

The CEV’s final report, published in June 2022, comprises a series of books totaling more than 8000 pages and a variety of transmedia materials that contain its findings on the causes, characteristics, and effects of the armed conflict in Colombia. ¹² One of the most groundbreaking findings in its report, as stated by the CEV, is that racism is a structural issue in Colombia and has significantly contributed to the armed conflict. This finding is significant because there is a widespread denial of the existence of racism in Colombia, and even when it is recognized, it is often reduced to marginal expressions of racial discrimination by uninformed individuals.

Also, there is an evident transformation in language in the CEV’s final report. It no longer refers to “ethnic groups” but to “ethnic peoples”. This is not a minor transformation, nor does it happen by chance. The ethnic focus was one of the pillars on which the Commission was established. In the Commission’s own words: “[...] it enabled us to become the world's first Truth Commission that effectively and anticipatively integrated an ethnic perspective with an anti-racist approach from the outset” (https://comisiondelaverdad.co). This involved appointing several commissioners to represent ethnic communities, conducting investigations, and providing community-specific findings: “Efforts were made to ensure compliance with the framework of rights recognized for ethnic communities and the acknowledgement of the cultural diversity of the Colombian nation. This was reflected in their actions, institutional structure, regulations, team, as well as procedures, protocols, and all their activities, including their final report” (https://comisiondelaverdad.co). ¹³

As a result of this approach and the participation of representatives of Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities, the CEV, not without internal debate, embraced the concept of “ethnic peoples,” (“pueblos étnicos”) setting aside the term “ethnic groups” sanctioned by the 1991 Constitution. This is not the place to delve into the genealogy of the concept of ‘peoples’ that has been championed by organized indigenous sectors, not only in Colombia but also in the Americas and elsewhere in the world. Certain organizations in Colombia had also advocated for the term “black people” (“pueblo negro”). The use of “pueblo negro” (or other terms used as synonyms such as “pueblo afro” or “pueblo afrocolombiano”) can also be traced in academia. ¹⁴ However, the concept of “pueblos étnicos” with its particular content and scope within the state framework, at least concerning the Black or Afro-Colombian population, emerges in the CEV.

In the volume of the report dedicated to ethnic communities, titled “Resisting Is Not Enduring: Violence and harm against ethnic communities in Colombia,” a characterization of ethnic communities in Colombia is provided. The following ethnic communities are identified: 1) Indigenous or native peoples, 2) Black, Afro-Colombian, Raizal, and Palenquero peoples, and 3) the Romani people. In a strict sense, in this context, the Commission does not refer to a single ethnic people but to several ethnic peoples: Black, Afro-Colombian, Raizal, and Palenquero communities. Although in some passages, even within the same report, it appears as ethnic people in singular or as “an ethnicity”: “In 99.64% of the municipalities in the country, there is an Afro-Colombian population, but 90.4% is concentrated in 171 municipalities, making it an ethnicity with a significant presence in Colombian territory” (Tobón Yagarí et al. 2022a: 22; emphasis added).

While the 1991 Constitution is mentioned, which, as we have seen, articulated the legal and political subject of “black communities” as an ethnic group, it also introduced the dimension of the diasporic subject referred to as the descendants of Africans brought as enslaved people:

“These ethnic people are recognized by the 1991 Constitution and have significant cultural, territorial, and historical diversity that has contributed to the construction of the nation. They are descendants of Africans who were abducted, enslaved, and brought through the transatlantic trade, primarily from West Africa.” (Tobón Yagarí et al. 2022a: 22).

The construction of this notion of Ethnic Peoples (pueblos étnicos) involves not only cultural differences but also racialized markings. It includes not just the rural but also the urban subject. It encompasses both present cultural diversity and imprints of shared African ancestry.

In this report, a definition of “black communities” is provided, which differs with what was presented in Transitional Article 55 and Law 70 of 1993. ¹⁵ According to the Commission, black communities:

“They are the descendants of enslaved people who came to the continent through the African slave trade and settled in different territories of the country, where they developed cultural characteristics based on their African heritage. They have their own culture, share a history, and their traditions and customs are within the rural-urban relationship. Therefore, black communities are deeply different from each other: those that are, for example, connected to the sea have developed cultural characteristics different from those that are closer to the rivers or other types of territories.” (Tobón Yagarí et al. 2022a: 24; emphasis added).

As previously argued, the legal and political subject of “black communities” as an ethnic group did not place emphasis on African heritage or the descent of enslaved people. These emphases, as we have seen, were introduced later in the discourse of the Colombian state, particularly with what we have called the Afro-diasporic subject.

In addition to black communities, the report defines the “Afro-Colombian population” in the following terms: “They are human groups present throughout the national territory (urban and rural), born in Colombia but with historical, ethnic, and cultural African roots and ancestry, with racial, linguistic, and folkloric diversity.” (Tobón Yagarí, Palacios and Salazar, coords., 2022a: 24).

In Annex 1 of this report, titled “Who Are the Ethnic Peoples (pueblos étnicos) in Colombia?” the Commission expands on its understanding of each of the ethnic groups. There, it is stated that:

“The black, Afro-Colombian, Raizal, and Palenquero people (pueblo) are ethnic populations recognized by the Colombian Constitution since 1991, characterized by historical resistance built in the pursuit of freedom, citizenship, the right to being, territory, and a life free of racism and discrimination.” (Tobón Yagarí et al., 2022b: 29).

It is a vocabulary with significant differences from the early 1990s. Presently, racism and African legacies are explicitly mentioned, while the paradigm of the rural Pacific has been decentered:

“The social and political existence of the Afro-Colombian population represents a great identity, territorial, and regional diversity, integrated from the legacy, diverse socio-cultural African origins, and the political-organizational trajectories acquired through the settlement, migration, and socialization of African people in the region” (Tobón Yagarí et al., 2022b: 29).

Hence, “Afro-Colombians” are referred to as “[...] the social group of African descent that inhabits the entire rural and urban extent of the country, and shares the identity thread or representative legacy of the Africans who arrived in America during the transatlantic slave trade” (p. 34).

With the notion of ethnic peoples (pueblos étnicos) —Black, Afro-Colombian, Raizal, and Palenquero—the CEV introduces a new political and legal articulation of the subject of blackness in Colombia. This approach reclaims and transforms the legal and political subject of black communities as an ethnic group from the 1990s, connecting it to the subject crystallized by the victimhood regime and the Afro-diasporic subject of the first two decades of the 21st century. Ethnic peoples racialize what was previously conceived in terms of traditionalist and differentialist culturalism while also culturalizing what had operated simply as racialized markings of blackness. It equates cultural difference with racial markings, introduces a horizon of traditionality and communal identity in the imprints of the African diaspora, and consolidates the experience of racial discrimination and racism in shared violences and precarizations. It forges a collective identity recognizing a certain heterogeneity of trajectories and anchors but with profound essentialities that define their character as ethnic peoples.

With the passing of Law 2281 of January 4, 2023, the Colombian Congress created the Ministry of Equality and Equity, with the current Vice President Francia Márquez appointed as the Minister. With this Ministry, the Colombian state continues to use the term “ethnic peoples” to refer to Afro-Colombian populations. Article 5, which defines the scope of the Ministry’s responsibilities, establishes a list of subjects with special constitutional protection, including “Afro-descendant, Black, Raizal, Palenquero, Indigenous, and Romani peoples.” It is noteworthy that these groups are presented in a specific order, and that they are not referred to as ethnic in this list, as it is already assumed. However, one of the five deputy ministries explicitly includes the term “ethnic peoples,” as it is named “Ethnic Peoples and Peasants.”

The Ministry of Equality and Equity is not an exception but rather an expression of a trend. In various government entities, academic establishments, and the NGO sector, it is increasingly common to encounter the term “ethnic peoples” (pueblos étnicos) to refer to black population. We are thus facing a new legal and political articulation of the subject of blackness with the potential to become dominant by establishing itself as a “common sense” that is widely accepted as undeniable evidence.

Conclusions

Until the second half of the 1980s, no one in Colombia thought of black populations in the terms of an ethnic group, as defined in the 1991 Political Constitution and in Law 70 of 1993, let alone as an ethnic people as described in the 2022 report of the Truth Commission or in the recently created Ministry of Equality and Equity.

In the slightly more than three decades since the emergence of black communities as an ethnic group, there have been several transformations in the legal and political subject of blackness in Colombia. Thus, the rulings of the Colombian Constitutional Court, the Victims’ Law, the peace agreements, the Truth Commission, and the Special Jurisdiction for Peace have had concrete effects in articulating the process of ethnicization with the regime of victimhood. Within this regime, specific notions of victims and their unique expressions concerning ethnic groups first, and later ethnic peoples, are produced. But also, has emerged other articulations as the Afro-diasporic subject in the same decades, where the imprints of a historical communality dating back to Africa, racialized diacritics of blackness, and experiences of racial discrimination and racism.

Therefore, from the legal and political perspective of the subject of blackness, one can trace some shifts that extends beyond certain experiences and anchors of black populations based on communalized, ruralized, and traditionalized differences to include other articulations as the Afro-diasporic subject or the more recent notion of “ethnic peoples” by using a new articulation of racialized ethnicism.