IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 7 ENGLISH | Page 63

After the United States and Brazil, Colombia has the third largest Afrodescendant population in the hemisphere: 4.3 million of the total population, or 10.61%, are Afro-Colombian, according to the 2005 census. Other estimates state they are 10.5 million strong. Seventy-six percent of this Afro population is concentrated on the Pacific and Caribbean. This demographic justifies the significant progress that this population has received since 1991. What garnered the most media attention this year took place in mid October. Micolta, the emblematic soldier, was taken off the air. It main actor would put on blackface for Sábados Felices, a popular TV program on Caracol TV. The Afro-Colombian community and some NGOs had denounced the character as racist, given he was playing a traditional, black, ‘minstrel-style’ character. After much intense debate, it was agreed that the show would continue, but the actor would paint himself in the colors of the Colombian flag, and not as a black man. After October 12th, Afro-Colombian communities (established since 1993) will be consulted regarding legal and administrative initiatives involving the longest, internal conflict in Colombian history, which between 1958-2012 has taken more than 200,000 lives, and displaced another 300,000 per year since 2000. President Juan Manuel Santos announced a system of prior consultation via his Twitter account. In November, 15,000 Afro-Colombians were given title to 188,000 hectares of land in the southwest, the result of a legal case that goes back to 1999. National justice has apologized for the slowness of its work regarding denunciations of discrimination: of 188 presented by AfroColombians since 2013, only one case has ended in a sentence. In September, progress was made towards a bill for a census to gather detailed information on the Afro population in Colombia. In Costa Rica, the Afro movement has made important progress in recent years; in 2014, the country declared itself a multi-ethnic State with about 350,000 Afros (8% of the total population). By 2015, two new affirmative actions measures went into effect. In January, Afro-Costa Rican activist Quince Duncan was appointed Commission of AfroDescendant Affairs for the President of the Republic. As a representative of the group, Duncan carries out prolific and intense work in the State’s dynamics. By the end of October, he presented the National Plan for Acknowledgment, Justice and Development for Afro-Descendant Men and Women (2015-2018). It primary objective is to ameliorate the group’s economic problems, and prevent or intervene in racial discrimination cases. The Nicaraguan State had to censor the classic children’s book Cocorí due to its racist content. It reproduced stereotypes and caused great consternation in its comparison of an Afro child with a monkey. A request was made to stop the book’s production and sales, and musical representations of the work. This initiative, by two Afro-Costa Rican congressional delegates, brought about racist threats. Yet, at the very least it served to 63