Afro-Latin (in)visibility and the UN Decade: Cultural politics in motion in Nicaragua, Colombia and the UK

在拉丁美洲各地的非洲裔学者、活动家和艺术家之间建立跨国对话的努力往往因长期缺乏资金、国家对其福祉的紧迫挑战以及这些社会行为者使用的各种不同语言（包括克里奥尔英语、加里富纳语、西班牙语、葡萄牙语、帕伦克罗语和米斯基图等土著语言）而受阻。然而，虽然非洲-拉丁研究领域在历史上一直集中在巴西，哥伦比亚和古巴的离散国家背景下的非洲人后裔的经验，但越来越多地参与跨越国界的动员和歧视的相关叙述。联合国非洲人后裔国际十年（2015- 2024年）提供了一个密切相关且明确的跨国平台，通过这个平台，基层组织、活动家、艺术家和学者可以根据种族、阶级和性别的相关概念，提出他们的要求，并对比他们的方法。拟议的网络旨在利用联合国十年的国际影响力，以促进中美洲、哥伦比亚、古巴和英国同行之间的讨论，并开辟新的合作途径。该网络的核心是关注单语奖学金“地方化”团结战略的局限性，并致力于探索非洲人后裔文化生产的肥沃土壤，以此作为超越国家和语言边界的手段，在拉丁美洲，哥伦比亚和古巴（沿着巴西）的非洲人后裔在其国家政治中占据着相当独特的象征和文化空间。然而，非裔中美洲人的经历和存在在该区域往往黯然失色，使这些社区产生一种特别的紧迫感，他们感到他们作为一个民族的集体生存受到威胁。尽管自殖民时代以来，他们对中美洲国家的文化和经济贡献具有重要意义，但他们陷入了殖民国家和国际政治，不断使他们的存在变得无形和边缘化。此外，中非裔美国人必须面对持续存在的歧视和种族主义。他们争取尊严、人权、文化公民权和福祉的斗争受到中美洲非裔人被迫谈判的两个现实的损害，这两个现实在拉丁美洲以不同的方式和不同的程度运作。第一个是特别恶毒的帝国主义话语的影响，强调欧洲和土著对遗产的贡献，同时消除黑人的贡献。第二个是重新崛起的土著人，他们成功地获得了全球和国家形式的政治补救，例如集体土地所有权和国家对土著语言的支持，就中美洲而言，这些补救措施并不适用于非洲裔人口，我们与尼加拉瓜加勒比海岸自治区大学的伙伴密切合作，我们的网络力求组织一系列活动，直接解决这一问题。特别是，我们寻求让非洲裔中美洲人与非洲裔古巴人和非洲裔美国人以及在英国生活和工作的加勒比黑人侨民的成员和学者进行对话，解决这些不同的选区如何在各自的社会中谈判独特的象征和文化空间。我们提议的讲习班和相关文化活动旨在为非裔学者、艺术家、广播员和民间社会活动家之间创造富有成效的互动知识交流形式，其方式将直接提高文化和政治能见度，并增进对拉丁美洲非裔文化和政治要求的了解，并交流对所有参与者都有利的行动和干预战略。

Efforts to build transnational dialogues among Afro-descendant scholars, activists and artists across Latin America are often thwarted by a chronic lack of funding, pressing national challenges to their well-being, and the range of different languages practised by these social actors (including Creole English, Garifuna, Spanish, Portuguese, Palenquero, and indigenous languages such as Miskitu). Yet, while the field of Afro-Latin Studies has historically concentrated on experiences of Afro-descendants in the discrete national contexts of Brazil, Colombia and Cuba, there is a growing engagement with connected narratives of mobilisation and discrimination across national borders. The UN International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-24) presents a germane and explicitly transnational platform through which grassroots organisations, activists, artists and scholars can visibilise their demands and contrast their approaches, contingent as they are on relational concepts of race, class and gender. The proposed Network aims to harness the international reach of the UN Decade in order to facilitate discussions among Central American, Colombian, Cuban and British peers, and open up new avenues of collaboration. At the core of the Network is a concern for the limiting ways in which monolingual scholarship 'provincialises' solidarity strategies and a commitment to interrogating the fertile terrain of Afro-descendant cultural production as a means to transcend national and linguistic borders.Within Latin America, Afro-descendants in Colombia and Cuba (along with Brazil) occupy quite distinct symbolic and cultural spaces within their national polities. The experience and presence of Central Americans of African descent is often eclipsed in the region, however, generating a particular sense of urgency among these communities, who feel that their collective survival as a people is under threat. Despite the significance of their cultural and economic contributions to the nations of Central America since the colonial era, they are enmeshed in colonial state and international politics which continually invisibilise and marginalise their presence. Furthermore, Afro-Central Americans must confront persistent discrimination and racism. Their struggles for dignity, human rights, cultural citizenship and well-being are compromised by two realities that Afro-descendant Central Americans are forced to negotiate, which operate in different ways and to varied degrees across Latin America. The first is the effect of particularly virulent imperializing discourses of mestizaje that emphasise European and Indigenous contributions to heritage while erasing Black ones. The second is a resurgent indigeneity that has succeeded in gaining global and national forms of political redress, such as collective land titles and state support for Indigenous languages, which, in the case of Central America, are not extended to Afro-descendant populations.Working closely with our partners at the University of the Autonomous Regions of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua (URACCAN), our Network seeks to organize a series of events in which this state of affairs can be directly tackled. In particular, we seek to put Afro-Central Americans into dialogue with Afro-Cubans and Afro-Colombians as well as with members and scholars of the Black Caribbean diaspora living and working in the UK, addressing how these different constituencies negotiate distinct symbolic and cultural spaces within their respective societies. Our proposed workshops and associated cultural activities aim to create productive and interactive forms of knowledge exchange between Afro-descendant scholars, artists, broadcasters and civil society activists in ways that will directly enhance the cultural and political visibility and understanding of Afro-descendant culture and political demands in Latin America and exchange strategies for action and intervention of mutual benefit to all participants.