IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 7 ENGLISH | Page 60

Multiculturalism debuted and was
adopted by a number of the region’s
countries via multi-ethnic constitutions.
The most important and pioneering case
was that of Colombia (1991), which also
reviewed its land policies via the Law
for Black Communities (1993), through
constitutional law, in 1991. Then came
Mexico (1992) and Argentina (1994),
later Ecuador and Venezuela, until the
last few finally came: Bolivia (2009) and
Costa Rica (2014). Brazil and Argentina,
with their anti-discrimination laws, were
pioneers, in 1998, even though Nicaragua had already included Afrodescendants in the collective rights
granted to Atlantic Coast indigenous
communities by its constitution, in 1987.
The important rewriting of the “Discovery of America,” on the occasion of its
Quincentennial (1992) re-posited the
place of Europeans in the construction of
the Americas, and encouraged the search
for the rightful place of ethnic minorities
in history. All these factors provoked a
re-thinking of Latin America and the
Caribbean’s so-called “third root.” They
worked well to stimulate thought and
work about this; its directional force
continues into the twenty-first century.
The celebration of the United Nation’s
Third World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia,
and Related Forms of Intolerance, in
Durban, South Africa, in 2001, was a
decisive moment. A number of Latin
American, Afro-descendant leaders participated in it, which helped with the
coining a term that still them was relatively unknown: Afro-descendant. As

one, well known, Afro-Uruguayan activist put it: “We went from being black
and then became Afro-descendants.”
The Action Plan produced at the conference acknowledged Afro-descendants as
a specific group and victim of the system; it suffered discrimination today
after having been enslaved in the past.
The final declaration categorized the
slave trade and slavery as crimes against
humanity. The group appropriated the
term Afro-descendant as a useful tool for
their struggle and demands; it left behind
the category “black” as a colonial-era,
pejorative label scarred by slavery and
understood today as an insult most contexts. In great measure, the impact and
profoundest success of the Durban agenda were seen in Latin America and the
Caribbean before they were felt in other
areas of the globe. One could see this in
the adoption of affirmative action
measures for Afro communities in various countries. Affirmative action is
complex and diverse, and provides differing degrees of progress. Racism and
the reversion of the conditions of poverty in which a large part of this group
lives is a common challenge for national
authorities and Afro-descendant ac tivists
face. Some countries, like Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Costa Rica, have
carried out progressive agendas and
achieved notable improvement for legal
situation of their Afro-descendant populations. In others, like Venezuela, Peru,
Uruguay, and Argentina, progress for
and in Afro populations is not so clearcut. In yet a third set of nations are the
ones that have made the least progress:

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