New Reading: Identidad y Territorio Afrodescendiente en Chile. ["Afrodescendant Identity & Territory in Chile"] 2018
We had the honor of hosting Cristian Baez Lazcano @afrochileno last month for our panel on the AfroChilean response to the ongoing political crisis in Chile🇨🇱 . He left us with his latest book which documents the Black experience in Chile. The book discusses African epistemology and its importance in revalorizing African identity. It also delves into the traditional African derived cultural heritage and diaspora foodways of Chile. The book ends with an important legal and political analysis of territorial claims made under the ILO-Convention 169 (1989 International Labor Organization Convention on the Rights of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples. International Convention).
The Convention, one of the first international human rights documents recognizes: the right of indigenous and Tribal groups to self identify, the concept of collective rights, territorial autonomy and the idea of "territory" as a distinct but complementary concept to "land" and the special relationship of said communities to the environment as a source of material and spiritual sustenance.
The recent civil society protests have forced the government of President Sebastian Pineda to consider reforms to the Chilean Constitution. The AfroChilean community is pushing to be recognized under this new Constitution as an indigenous or tribal community because Chile is a signatory to the ILO- Convention 169.
The Convention establishes the international framework for rights and protections of ancestral lands traditionally occupied by those recognized as "tribal" or "indigenous communities". These implicate how resources are allocated by the state and international funding organizations. As a result, many indigenous communities reject the idea that Afrodescendants should be considered indigenous or tribal communities, arguing that although brought to the Western Hemisphere forcefully 500 years ago, descendants of enslaved Africans do not have the same connection to the land. Afrodescendant civil society counters that they have been on the land for 500 years, before independence and before the existence of any of the actual countries within whose borders they live.
The reality is that these political tensions between Black and indigenous communities in Chile exist throughout the Americas from the U.S. South, to Mexico, Central and South America. They are seldom discussed, but (US context aside), most recently have arisen in the context of the 20th century framework for human rights claims made by these international conventions. In the transition from enslaved indigenous to African labor from the 1500's such tensions existed as they were often pitted against each other. Following that however, Black and indigenous communities had long periods of social, cultural, economic and political solidarity against mestizo hegemony.
The example of the Samarka demonstrates the importance of these designations. In the 1990s Suriname allowed lands occupied by the Samarka, one of 6 Afrodescendant maroon communities in its borders, to be decimated by speculators and deforestation. After making a claim to their territorial rights under the ILO Convention 169, in 2007, the OAS Inter-American Commission on Human Rights ruled that the Samarka were to be recognized and their land rights protected as a "tribal community". The decision relied on several criteria but in particular Samarka's self governance and traditional reliance on their spiritual, social, cultural and economic relationship to the land. "The land signifies more than merely a source of subsistence for them; it is also a source necessary for the continuity of life and cultural identity... It forms part of their social ancestral and spiritual essence." (Baez Lazcano, 104).
The constitutional reforms of the 1990s in Colombia, and several other South American countries have sought to address some of these issues, recognizing the rights to territorial autonomy and cultural heritage preservation and promotion. Many of these rights have been codified on paper but poorly implemented, guaranteeing little if any protection to communities. In recent years, as Afrodescendants in Latin America increasingly use international bodies and courts to make human rights claims (against state violence or institutional racism), the 20th century international human rights framework has had the perhaps unintended consequence of pitting communities against each other for the right to make human rights claims to land and territorial autonomy. While there is precedent in the Samarka decision of how this framework can be used justly, it remains to be seen if the interpretation given in the Samarka case will prove effective for Afrodescendants in Chile and elsewhere in the region facing opposition to their ancestral land claims.