The coup d’état that ousted Chilean President Salvador Allende is painfully remembered worldwide. Led by the military dictator Augusto Pinochet, the coup established a ferocious dictatorship that lasted from September 11, 1973, until 1990. The pain caused by that dictatorship is palpable and remains, but today we want to highlight the role of Afro Chileans and their struggles for recognition.
The African diaspora can be found in all corners of the American continent as a result of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Chile, though not widely recognized as a country that received enslaved Africans, was the site of the forced arrival of Africans kidnapped from the Congo-Angola-Guinea region during the period between 1580 and the country’s abolition of slavery, which took place on June 23, 1823.
Documents in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, Spain show that the Chilean territory was part to the Viceroyalty of Peru. Santiago, the current capital of Chile, was a transit point for this shameful trade to Peru, and becam a link to Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia.
The Afro Chilean epicenter is in the port city of Arica, on the border with Peru. One of the chief promoters Afro Chilean culture, the engineer Marta Salgado Henríquez , in one of her statements says that “many times I have passed for a foreigner in my country, just because of my color and my curly hair, and I have to say with pride that I am Chilean.” She goes on to say that “Chilean Afrodescendant culture is composed of a network of shared symbols. In Arica there is a very popular neighborhood called Lumbanga where people enjoy the Moreno Carnival and where they dance the Saya, which is a signal of our solidarity with Afro Bolivian communities.”
From Santiago de Chile to Durban
In the late 1990s, the United Nations prepared for its Third World Conference Against Racism by holding a series of regional assemblies so that governments and social movements could put together a programmatic line for inclusion in the plan of action against racism. In December 2000, at the beginning of the 21st century, more than one hundred Afrodescendant organizations from all over the continent met in Santiago, Chile, for a meeting in which we defined ourselves as Afrodescendants.
Following the Santiago de Chile meeting, organizations from all over the American continent went to the city of Durban, South Africa and outlined the Afrodescendant plan of action against racism for the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance on Sept. 6, 7, 8 and 9. It was there that we proposed, among other things, restorative justice and declared the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and African slavery as a crime against humanity.
Santiago de Chile, the city with the smallest Afrodescendant population on the continent, became an essential point of reference for the redefining of Africans and their descendants. From that moment on, Afro Chileans took up their own advocacy agenda and fought for inclusion in Chile 2017 census, where the Afro Chilean population reached 11,000 inhabitants, mostly located in Arica and Santiago de Chile. Following that, the Afro Chilean community started organizing to seek constitutional recognition for the reform of the Chilean constitution—they wanted to be included in the new constitution––but with that goal they were not successful.
The Oro Negro de Chile organization
Marta Salgado, leader of the now 23-year-old organization, Oro Negro, says that their work has allowed Afro Chileans to be present in the struggles for recognition as a people, as set forth in Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization.
“Our struggles have not been easy,” she said. “It was wonderful to have our Afrodescendant gathering in Santiago on December 4 and 5, 2000. Then we met again in the city of Durban, South Africa, in September 2001 with Professor Sheila Walker and Jesus Chucho Garcia and we began to categorize our experiences in the book “Conocimiento desde adentro: Los afrosudamericanos hablan de sus pueblos y sus historias (Knowledge from the Inside: Afro-South Americans Speak of their People and their Stories).”
“There in that book I pointed out the history and culture of Afro Chileans: it looks at our African linguistic remnants such as Mandinga, Sandunga, Chimba, and Chimbango among others. There are also our dances for mother earth, like the Cachimbo, that point to our heritage.”