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

在拉丁美洲的非洲裔学者、活动家和艺术家之间建立跨国对话的努力经常受到长期缺乏资金的阻碍，他们的福祉面临紧迫的国家挑战，以及这些社会行动者使用不同的语言（包括克里奥尔英语、加里富纳语、西班牙语、葡萄牙语、帕伦克罗语和土著语言，如米斯基图语）。然而，尽管非裔拉丁研究领域在历史上一直专注于巴西、哥伦比亚和古巴等离散国家背景下非洲裔后裔的经历，但越来越多的人参与到跨国界动员和歧视的相关叙述中。联合国非洲人后裔国际十年（2015-24）提供了一个密切的、明确的跨国平台，通过这个平台，基层组织、活动家、艺术家和学者可以看到他们的要求，并对比他们的方法，因为他们取决于种族、阶级和性别的相关概念。拟议的网络旨在利用联合国十年的国际影响力，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。网络的核心是关注单语学术将团结战略“省区化”的局限性，以及致力于探究非洲后裔文化生产的肥沃土壤，将其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（以及巴西）的非洲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，中美洲非洲人后裔的经历和存在在该地区往往被忽视，这在这些社区中产生了一种特别的紧迫感，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，他们对中美洲各国作出了重要的文化和经济贡献，但他们仍然卷入殖民国家和国际政治，这些政治不断忽视和排斥他们的存在。此外，非裔中美洲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非裔中美洲人被迫谈判的两种现实的损害，这两种现实在整个拉丁美洲以不同的方式和不同程度发挥作用。首先是梅斯蒂扎伊人特别恶毒的帝国主义话语的影响，这些话语强调欧洲和土著对遗产的贡献，同时抹去黑人的贡献。第二种是重新兴起的土著，它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，而在中美洲，这种支持并没有扩大到非洲人后裔。我们的网络同我们在尼加拉瓜加勒比海岸自治区大学的伙伴密切合作，力求组织一系列活动，在这些活动中直接处理这一事态。特别地，我们寻求让中非裔美国人与古巴裔、哥伦比亚裔以及在英国生活和工作的加勒比黑人移民成员和学者展开对话，探讨这些不同群体如何在各自社会中协商独特的象征和文化空间。我们所提议的工作坊及相关文化活动，旨在为非裔学者、艺术家、广播业者及民间社会活动者创造富有成效及互动的知识交流形式，直接提升拉丁美洲对非裔文化及政治诉求的文化与政治可见度及了解，并就所有参与者互惠互利的行动与干预交流策略。

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.