IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 2 ENGLISH | Page 60

[Women’s Path Towards Peace] and others are
organizations that strengthen the architecture and
configuration of the Afro-Colombian political
camp.
For those of us in Cuba who are committed to cimarronaje (the struggle for independence), this is
a lesson on how to build self-esteem, recover historical memory and root our identities by using
knowledge as a tool.

San Basilio de Palenque
Narrating memory in order to live is one of the
aspects of cimarronaje’s culture of resistance. As
Juan de Dios Mosquera defines it, cimarronaje is
an original, Afro-Latin American, alternative ideology for reaffirming our roots and historical origins, and expressing, critiquing and creating a
new vision for our political reality.
By exercising our right to communicate, the Colombian Caribbean’s Afro political and social
platforms permit our empowerment through selfrecognition and acknowledgement via campaigns
like “Tenía que ser negro” [He Had to Black]. We
learned first hand about favorable and unfavorable scenarios by hearing testimony from members
of the Asociación de Afrodescendientes
Desplazados [Association of Displaced Afro-Descendants] (AFRODES).

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The sad situation of millions of Afro-Colombians
displaced by Colombia’s armed conflict is lamentable. Studies show that they suffer the greatest
degree of social and economic inequality on the
American continent.
The work of the Colombian Ministry of Culture
is also decisive in the search for broader and more
rooted visibility, inclusion, acknowledgment and
representation for ethnic and other population
groups. The Afro-Colombian, Raizal and Palenque populations are essential.
Our visit to Palenque de San Basilio, considered
Africa’s principal corner in the Caribbean, allowed us to connect to the Slave Route, get to
know the community and see how they have been
able to defend themselves and preserve its culture—everything from language to dances.
The work we’ve done with the CCA has been key
to our civic formation. As Afro-descendants, we
never thought we’d be going beyond our agenda
to consider the black transgender or LGBTI population. I must confess that it is a category that we
had unconsciously left out, perhaps on account of
our own poor emotional education, which was
both patriarchal and machista.
Colombia is not a model country, but constitutionally it has political liberties for civil societies
to create institutions. Their platforms taught us
how the community can learn to organize into organizations and construct modes of thinking, categories and forms of resistance through which
Afro-Colombians insert themselves, participate
in the political process and formulate our own
thoughts and be able to interpret our own narrative and personal life stories.
Mexico is another important place in Latin America that is undergoing a process of opening windows onto Cuban civil society. Initiatives such as
the Salinas’s Caminos de Libertad and the Peru-