any more info on Dominica and this situation?
el salvador is one of the few places in the americas where there isn't a noticeable black population. in the past they used to have black people but they have long disappeared (mixed with others or left)
Essential Afro-Latino/ Caribbean Current Events
- Thread starter Poitier
- Start date
Boils down to the U.S. trying to halt Venezuelan influence in the Caribbean (and ultimately Chinese and Russian too cause apparently they're buying land in the island, doing military exercise, being given citizenship etc.)
OAS and Elections in Dominica and Bolivia – Part 10
Longest-serving CARICOM leader wants Almagro to go!
Chronicles Of A Chronic Caribbean Chronicler By Earl Bousquet
IT may be the start of a new beginning, but the short trek between elections in Bolivia and Dominica has ended with a call for a quick end to the first term of the reign of Luis Almagro as Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS).
The OAS and Almagro were both present and featured in both elections, despite their different outcomes. But in with both cases too, Almagro’s interventions went against the grain of many member-states, including CARICOM, which united as one to reject his stone-cold interventionist approach to the Dominica elections.
The call…
A recent statement by Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves that he will lead a call and drive for a new Secretary General for the Organization of American States (OAS) has received enthusiastic support online and in regional political circles.
In a call to a local radio station congratulating the Dominica Labour Party (DLP) on its victory, the Vincentian leader said he does not like how OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro has led the regional body and he’d written fellow CARICOM leaders on the issue.
Gonsalves, who is the longest-serving CARICOM Head of State, said he and Almagro have cordial ties, but he would lead the charge against his re-election after his three-year term expires and elections for the post are called in March 2020.
The Vincentian leader, whose administration, along with Dominica and Surinam, voted with other OAS member-states against the Almagro-led efforts to use the hemispheric body to pursue Washington’s political and diplomatic agenda against Venezuela, said he opposed the neoliberal agenda being pursued in the OAS under Almagro’s watch.
Mixed response
The response has been mixed.
Most who have reacted to PM Gonsalves’ disclosure within CARICOM have either welcomed it with enthusiasm or cautious optimism, but there have also been the usual cynical Caribbean responses not worth repeating.
Supporters of the view that Almagro should go point to the OAS role in annulment of the Bolivia elections in October that led to the forced removal and exile of elected President Evo Morales, as well as Almagro’s own role in whipping-up pre-election hysteria about possible fraudulent elections in Dominica from as far back as last February, two years before elections were due.
Unabashedly unapologetic
Almagro has throughout his first term as Secretary General made no bones about leading the neo-conservative and interventionist charge at the OAS against President Nicolas Maduro and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).
He is unabashedly unapologetic about advocating and actively participating in political pursuit of regime change against a founding OAS member-state, siding with the Canada-led Lima Group of nations opposed to Maduro and facilitating appointment of a delegate of self-proclaimed US-backed Juan Guaido to represent Venezuela.
Soon after Almagro became Secretary General and targeted Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia for special attention, it became clear he was singing from the same hymn sheet as the Trump Administration and doing everything to facilitate its onslaught against pro-socialist regimes in Latin America and the Caribbean.
He openly sided with the Venezuela opposition and the Lima Group in keeping the US military option on the table and publicly and repeatedly attacked the Maduro administration in ways inconsistent with the non-interference normally associated with his official position.
Supporting interventionism
Venezuela in 2017 gave the two years notice needed to signal its departure from the OAS, citing Almagro’s aggressive interventionist stances and his alignment of the OAS with Washington’s interfering anti-Venezuela agenda as the main reasons.
Then, less than a month before the Venezuela Ambassador’s formal departure, the Lima Group, with Almagro’s support, cynically voted to accept the unelected Guaido’s appointee as Venezuela’s ‘new’ OAS representative.
Under Almagro’s watch, the rules were skillfully navigated to revive the long-dormant Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR) that can be used to facilitate military intervention by member-states in member-countries.
Use of the OAS to facilitate and/or support military intervention against member-states at the behest of the USA dates all the way back to the early 1960s, when Cuba eventually pulled out for the same reasons, its then Foreign Affairs Minister Raul Roa describing the US-based OAS as Washington’s ‘Ministry of Colonies’ for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Almagro also led the charge to create what many member-states regard as an interventionist arm through its election observer teams that have under his watch, and with US backing, been used to strong-arm selected member-states to submit to demands for electoral reform and automatic selection for observing national elections in member-states.
Such interventions led to dubious results in Haiti in 2004 – the century of the 1804 Revolution that led to establishment of the world’s first Black republic – and the removal and exile of President Jean Bertrand Aristide.
Paying the Price
Nicaragua rejected Almagro’s demands for an OAS Observer Mission to participate in its last presidential elections, but Bolivia did – and to Morales’ peril, leading to a military coup and installation of a US-backed interim administration that has usurped all the powers of the ruling Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party that had the majority of seats in both the senate and the national assembly.
The OAS role in Bolivia is now more widely accepted as having been part of a plot against Morales and MAS, as it gave their political opponents and the military the fig leaf to force Morales out and start a national campaign of repression of the protests and resistance by the majority indigenous Bolivians.
The indigenous people indeed watched their votes stolen before their very eyes by the OAS annulment that Almagro and those promoting the OAS as the only enforcer of a ‘Gold Standard’ in elections have still not yet justifiably explained.
Wider scope
Use of the OAS to intervene on a wider scope to include in elections in Caribbean member-states, under Almagro’s watch, became clear in his early targeting of Dominica, but gained momentum when, just days before the Dominica poll, a military court in Surinam sentenced President Desi Bouterse, in absentia, to 20 years in prison for a case dating back 37 years.
As it would turn out, Surinam also voted, with Dominica and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, like Bolivia, Cuba and Nicaragua, against the US-backed interventionist anti-Venezuela resolutions at the OAS.
And as it would also turn out, after Dominica in December, general elections are also due in Surinam and St. Vincent and the Grenadines in 2020.
Bouterse, an ex-soldier who led an army coup in 1980 and who, as elected and re-elected President today is also commander in chief of the armed forces, remains in office, with the right and option of appeal.
But he says the move was part of a wider externally-backed plot aimed at facilitating calls made immediately thereafter by his political opponents for him to resign and not contest the next general elections.
Targeting ‘Socialist regimes’
President Trump has more than once made it clear that his policy is to target the socialist regimes in Latin America and the Caribbean for special action and following their vote against the US on Venezuela at the OAS.
Now, the treatment of Dominica by Almagro and the curious developments in Surinam to date have left most keen regional political observers concluding that by that matrix, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Gonsalves are next in line for special attention.
Dominica resisted and refused to invite an OAS observer team until after it had already secured four other international teams and all Almagro’s earlier expressed concerns about possible electoral fraud proved baseless.
Gonsalves is not waiting for Almagro to fire the first salvo. Instead, he has fired the first shot in defense of the Caribbean nations, including CARICOM, which have been unfairly targeted for special treatment under Almagro’s rule.
Resistance
But this is not a war between Gonsalves and Almagro.
Instead, it’s another demonstration that the Caribbean member-states at the OAS have started to react to and stoutly resist Almagro’s interfering and interventionist thrust at the helm of the hemispheric body.
It’s a resistance which led to CARICOM collectively opposing any military intervention in Venezuela and the Caribbean group at the OAS recently unanimously coming to the defense of Dominica ahead of the December 6 elections, against Almagro’s disrespect for its independence and sovereignty.
Gonsalves’ call for the Caribbean to vote against Almagro at the next election for an OAS Secretary General is also well founded on possibilities as well, considering that the CARICOM group alone already has close to half the votes at the OAS General Assembly.
It’s a totally different question as to whether Gonsalves will have or be able to convince all CARICOM leaders that Almagro should go.
On the Agenda…
But his formal appeal to them, in writing, has placed on the agenda the matter of his departure, which will, in turn, lead to the natural question of a successor.
The CARICOM region has produced outstanding leaders for regional and international organizations, including Dominicans as Secretaries General of CARICOM and the Pan-American health organization (PAHO) and Saint Lucians and Secretaries General of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and the Association of Caribbean States (ACS).
So, since no Caribbean person has ever held that position and given that the number of Caribbean member-states is actually more than the CARICOM group, could it be that the time has come for a Caribbean candidate for the position of Secretary General of the OAS?
With Christmas rum, Black Cake and pork around the corner, this may or may not be the best time to start talking about who could be Caribbean candidates for ultimate selection for the March election.
But this will surely be a good way to close 2019, with the aim of making 2020 the year the Caribbean seeks and gets the backing of OAS member-states to assume the leadership — for the first time in its history — and to restore lost trust in its role as a hemispheric body committed to all of its members’ best common interests.
OAS and Elections in Dominica and Bolivia - Part 10 - St. Lucia News From The Voice St. Lucia
gonsalves is a character lol
the paragraph about Bouterse of Suriname ignores that he committed horrific crimes and was essentially a cartel boss.
US shouldn’t be interfering with the Caribbean but let’s not act like Bouterse was convicted for something out of the blue
the paragraph about Bouterse of Suriname ignores that he committed horrific crimes and was essentially a cartel boss.
US shouldn’t be interfering with the Caribbean but let’s not act like Bouterse was convicted for something out of the blue
Haiti: Opposition Meets with President, Demands His Resignation
Despite the popular pressure, Moise -who is backed by the United States- said he would carry on his term until its end. | Photo: Reuters
Published 17 December 2019
The whole spectrum of opposition forces agree that the president’s resignation is the first condition if a way out of the crisis is to be found.
Members from the Haitian opposition Passarelle platform, who have been meditating since November between radical opposition parties and the government, met Monday with President Jovenel Moise to hand him a copy of the so-called Marriott agreement, signed by several groups to demand the president’s immediate resignation and the establishment of a transitional government.
RELATED: Haiti Descends Into Worst Violence in Years as Gang Violence Increases
Despite the president’s calls for dialogue and union, his opponents backed by hundreds of thousands of protesters who have been taking to the streets for almost a year, have been refusing to negotiate, as the whole spectrum of opposition forces agree that the president’s resignation is the first condition if a way out of the crisis is to be found.
The Haitian opposition however is fragmented. On Monday, spokesman for the opposition Democratic and Popular Sector (DPS), Michel Andre, which is one of the president's strongest critics, rejected the meeting between the committee representing the platform and the president, saying that Moise should not have met with Passerelle, but with the DPS.
Nonetheless, Andre agreed that the first step towards an end to the political, economic and social crisis must be the resignation of the president, the establishment of an interim administration, and trials for those state officials involved in cases of corruption, especially the embezzlement of Petrocaribe funds, meant to finance infrastructure development along with health, education and social programs across the impoverished nation.
Haiti has been experiencing a situation of fragile calm since last month after consecutive months of mass anti-government protests that paralyzed the country.
On Dec. 2, some schools reopened, as services such as public transportation and public administration along with some businesses resumed their activities.
The mass demonstrations that mobilized almost all sectors of civil society, call for the deep transformation of a system that has been governing the Caribbean nation since the end of the dictatorship in 1986 and seen as profoundly unequal and corrupt.
Despite the popular pressure, Moise -who is backed by the United States- said he would carry on his term until its end, pointing out that his resignation would be “irresponsible” while using the Constitution as his legal argument to retain his position.
The unrest in Haiti started in February following major corruption allegations.
As the country was already dealing with a tense economic crisis and high inflation, a report was published accusing Moise and dozens of officials of having embezzled US$2 billion from Petrocaribe, the cut-price-oil aid program that Venezuela offered to several Caribbean countries, among them Haiti.
The Carribean island of 11 million people has been struggling for decades to overcome extreme poverty along with widespread corruption. These last ten years were particularly harsh for Haiti, which went through one of the world's deadliest earthquakes in 2010, an epidemic of cholera, brought in accidentally by United Nations peacekeepers, and Hurricane Matthew in October 2016.
Haiti: Opposition Meets with President, Demands His Resignation
Despite the popular pressure, Moise -who is backed by the United States- said he would carry on his term until its end. | Photo: Reuters
Published 17 December 2019
The whole spectrum of opposition forces agree that the president’s resignation is the first condition if a way out of the crisis is to be found.
Members from the Haitian opposition Passarelle platform, who have been meditating since November between radical opposition parties and the government, met Monday with President Jovenel Moise to hand him a copy of the so-called Marriott agreement, signed by several groups to demand the president’s immediate resignation and the establishment of a transitional government.
RELATED: Haiti Descends Into Worst Violence in Years as Gang Violence Increases
Despite the president’s calls for dialogue and union, his opponents backed by hundreds of thousands of protesters who have been taking to the streets for almost a year, have been refusing to negotiate, as the whole spectrum of opposition forces agree that the president’s resignation is the first condition if a way out of the crisis is to be found.
The Haitian opposition however is fragmented. On Monday, spokesman for the opposition Democratic and Popular Sector (DPS), Michel Andre, which is one of the president's strongest critics, rejected the meeting between the committee representing the platform and the president, saying that Moise should not have met with Passerelle, but with the DPS.
Nonetheless, Andre agreed that the first step towards an end to the political, economic and social crisis must be the resignation of the president, the establishment of an interim administration, and trials for those state officials involved in cases of corruption, especially the embezzlement of Petrocaribe funds, meant to finance infrastructure development along with health, education and social programs across the impoverished nation.
Haiti has been experiencing a situation of fragile calm since last month after consecutive months of mass anti-government protests that paralyzed the country.
On Dec. 2, some schools reopened, as services such as public transportation and public administration along with some businesses resumed their activities.
The mass demonstrations that mobilized almost all sectors of civil society, call for the deep transformation of a system that has been governing the Caribbean nation since the end of the dictatorship in 1986 and seen as profoundly unequal and corrupt.
Despite the popular pressure, Moise -who is backed by the United States- said he would carry on his term until its end, pointing out that his resignation would be “irresponsible” while using the Constitution as his legal argument to retain his position.
The unrest in Haiti started in February following major corruption allegations.
As the country was already dealing with a tense economic crisis and high inflation, a report was published accusing Moise and dozens of officials of having embezzled US$2 billion from Petrocaribe, the cut-price-oil aid program that Venezuela offered to several Caribbean countries, among them Haiti.
The Carribean island of 11 million people has been struggling for decades to overcome extreme poverty along with widespread corruption. These last ten years were particularly harsh for Haiti, which went through one of the world's deadliest earthquakes in 2010, an epidemic of cholera, brought in accidentally by United Nations peacekeepers, and Hurricane Matthew in October 2016.
Haiti: Opposition Meets with President, Demands His Resignation
Seminar on reparations for slavery and colonization designs a programmatic agenda for the year 2020
Written by Leonardo Ojeda on 12/12/2019. Posted in Noticias
The collective design of a work schedule for next year is the focus of debate at the closing, this Thursday and Friday, of the theoretical-methodological seminar on Reparations for the damages caused by slavery and colonization, which takes place in the capital of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Caracas.
The day will establish the priorities and directionality of this issue, as well as ways to address the problems inherent to it, said Guillermo Barreto, president of the "Luis Antonio Bigott" International Center for Decolonization Studies.
“This is about us, with all the debate that we have carried out, establishing the action program for next year”, said the activist after making an assessment on the seminar that began in May 2018 as part of the International Decade for People of African Descent 2015–2024, proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations Organization (UN) in 2013.
The president of the Venezuelan International Center for Decolonization Studies recalled that since its inception, the seminar led to a series of activities and actions carried out both at the institutional level and the Afro-descendant social movements of the country, which actively work on the issue of reparations.
“In this process we had several seminars with international guests that gave us ideas and very interesting parameters on the subject of reparations from different points of view”, said the activist, who also pointed out that the international delegates came from Suriname, the United States, South Africa, Benin and France.
Similarly, he emphasized the fact that President Nicolás Maduro has been the first president in Latin America to take on reparations, slavery and colonization as a public policy issue.
The president of the International Center for Decolonization Studies also supported the validity of the issue of reparations by citing as reference the damages inflicted by the United States government to Venezuela with its illegal unilateral coercive measures.
Venezuela at the forefront
Norma Romero, president of the National Council for the Development of Afro-descendant Communities of Venezuela (Conadecafro), valued the fact that Venezuela has emerged as the first country to take on the issue of reparations.
“Venezuela is carrying the flag on this issue, the social movements and the Venezuelan institutions are being examples of struggle on this issue”, she said.
In this sense, the president of Conadecafro announced the establishment in the country — as well as internationally — of working groups of jurists to address the issue.
Commitment and conviction
Meanwhile, Casimira Monasterio, representative of the Afro-Venezuelan Movement, sealed the commitment of that organization to the cause of the reparations.
“We assume with responsibility, conviction and certainty this step that the Venezuelan government has taken. We continue moving forward, building that great homeland that our ancestors left us to build; a country where all human beings can live on equal terms and have a just society”, she said.
In 2018, President Nicolás Maduro Moros decreed the International Decade for Peoples of African Descendant (2015–2024), with the Minister of Foreign Affairs being the propeller and participant in the signing of the Decree.
Seminar on reparations for slavery and colonization designs a programmatic agenda for the year 2020
Written by Leonardo Ojeda on 12/12/2019. Posted in Noticias
The collective design of a work schedule for next year is the focus of debate at the closing, this Thursday and Friday, of the theoretical-methodological seminar on Reparations for the damages caused by slavery and colonization, which takes place in the capital of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Caracas.
The day will establish the priorities and directionality of this issue, as well as ways to address the problems inherent to it, said Guillermo Barreto, president of the "Luis Antonio Bigott" International Center for Decolonization Studies.
“This is about us, with all the debate that we have carried out, establishing the action program for next year”, said the activist after making an assessment on the seminar that began in May 2018 as part of the International Decade for People of African Descent 2015–2024, proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations Organization (UN) in 2013.
The president of the Venezuelan International Center for Decolonization Studies recalled that since its inception, the seminar led to a series of activities and actions carried out both at the institutional level and the Afro-descendant social movements of the country, which actively work on the issue of reparations.
“In this process we had several seminars with international guests that gave us ideas and very interesting parameters on the subject of reparations from different points of view”, said the activist, who also pointed out that the international delegates came from Suriname, the United States, South Africa, Benin and France.
Similarly, he emphasized the fact that President Nicolás Maduro has been the first president in Latin America to take on reparations, slavery and colonization as a public policy issue.
The president of the International Center for Decolonization Studies also supported the validity of the issue of reparations by citing as reference the damages inflicted by the United States government to Venezuela with its illegal unilateral coercive measures.
Venezuela at the forefront
Norma Romero, president of the National Council for the Development of Afro-descendant Communities of Venezuela (Conadecafro), valued the fact that Venezuela has emerged as the first country to take on the issue of reparations.
“Venezuela is carrying the flag on this issue, the social movements and the Venezuelan institutions are being examples of struggle on this issue”, she said.
In this sense, the president of Conadecafro announced the establishment in the country — as well as internationally — of working groups of jurists to address the issue.
Commitment and conviction
Meanwhile, Casimira Monasterio, representative of the Afro-Venezuelan Movement, sealed the commitment of that organization to the cause of the reparations.
“We assume with responsibility, conviction and certainty this step that the Venezuelan government has taken. We continue moving forward, building that great homeland that our ancestors left us to build; a country where all human beings can live on equal terms and have a just society”, she said.
In 2018, President Nicolás Maduro Moros decreed the International Decade for Peoples of African Descendant (2015–2024), with the Minister of Foreign Affairs being the propeller and participant in the signing of the Decree.
Seminar on reparations for slavery and colonization designs a programmatic agenda for the year 2020
Reintegrating Africa and its descendants in school curricula
The Spanish professors of the Gaston Berger University in Saint Louis are leading an international project to review the image that is transmitted from the continent to the new generations
A hallway of the Gaston Berger University of Saint Louis. LOLA HIERRO
S. LÉFÈVRE | A. RODRÍGUEZ-GARCÍA | C. COFFI HOUNNOUV
December 21, 2019 — 00:14 CET
This adventure began in Europe, in France, back in June 2015. At that time, a first research meeting on Africans in the diaspora took place, whose objective was to reflect on how Hispanic studies address and reflect on the African issue and that of its descendants. It was titled Afro-diaspora: reflections on the field of Hispanic studies and the Afro-descendant question: issues and perspectives, and was organized by the Ibero-American Research Center (CRIIA-GRELPP)
In this event the first steps were taken to rethink the teaching of Spanish in African countries, provide teachers with Afro-Hispanic materials, increase the study of writers, painters and other artists in whose works Afro-descendants are protagonists, overcome the invisibility suffered by the latter and analyze how the racial issue manifests itself in the Americas. That inaugural seminar concluded with a round table whose success and interest, both among researchers and the audience, made clear the need and urgency to repeat the event. The Afro-latino element finally aroused interest in academia.
Participants agreed to immediately address the most urgent issue: reflect on what would be the right materials for Spanish (and its cultures) students from Africa or the African diaspora. The nuclear and pressing question was the following: Could we continue to offer and use in the classroom materials of essentially Eurocentric content, ignoring in practice all of African and Afro-descendant history? Before responding, one must take into account the global demographic weight of this group and that its representation in the case of Latin America and the Caribbean today accounts for 30% of the population.
The only possible answer was a resounding no. Thus, the next obligatory step was to devise a new meeting to exhaustively analyze the expression and contents of the didactic and practical resources that we have today. It would be done from a new perspective, that is: conceiving and shaping new materials with Afro-decolonial content, with a fair representation of Africans and their descendants.
First stop: Senegal
In May 2017, the second meeting was organized within the Gaston Berger University of Saint Louis of Senegal; this time on the African continent and in the form of a colloquium: First International Colloquium on Representations of Africans and Afro-descendants in school manuals. Afro-decolonial perspectives. Practical and theoretical visions. 40 researchers participated, a dozen non-academic staff (writers, activists etc.), a large group of secondary school teachers and a good number of students.
All the interventions focused on how to elaborate the didactic materials, which reflected the philosophy of the colloquium, and epistemological reflections and concrete actions were presented for the decolonization of the mentioned content in the classrooms. The countries under consideration were Africa (Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon, Cameroon, Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau), Europe (France, Spain, Italy) and Latin America (Colombia, Mexico, Brazil).
The debate was articulated in the form of two interconnected reflexive movements; on the one hand, the plenary sessions, which dealt with the epistemological issues illustrated through specific cases; and, on the other hand, the workshops, in which the participants faced the problem of planning and elaboration of didactic resources. There were three workshops in this edition, and they focused specifically on how to represent Africa and its diaspora in Latin American school books and how to represent Afro-Latin America in African school books, Spanish and Portuguese books as a foreign language and Representation of Africans and people of descent from the continent, among other topics.
On this occasion, the workshops achieved the objective pursued to determine the state of the matter and propose new ways to deepen the reflection and elaboration of new resources. The conclusions of these works and their sharing were of great interest, as they allowed us to make decisive steps for the next meeting and bore fruit in the holding of a third meeting, which took place last October on the other side of the Atlantic, in Brazil: the jump to the American continent.
Crossing the Atlantic
After the stopover in Africa, the adventure was to continue in the diaspora. Brazil is the American country with the largest Afro-descendant population, and the third great reflexive activity was anchored there. The colloquium took place in two universities in Bahia. After the opening conference, which was given by Congolese-Brazilian professor Kabengele Munanga (University of São Paulo and Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia), workshops were opened in which 40 researchers from Africa, America and Europe shared their reflections on four fundamental axes: orality, cultural diversity, interculturality and learning. They talked about teaching experiences, school curricula, the role of institutions, translation, etc.
The practical objective was materialized in the creation of a digital platform to which educational resources can be uploaded whose purpose is to provide a common fund consisting of materials of various kinds (articles, texts, photos, videos, audios, paintings, etc.) of which researchers and professors can use from anywhere in the world. That is, make free access to primary sources possible.
The adventure continues its movement: currently, the members of the network are already working on the development of said digital platform and the publication of the minutes of the first two meetings. In this Afro-Atlantic back-and-forth, we are waiting for a new appointment in two years; probably, in the archipelago of Cabo Verde.
Reintegrating Africa and its descendants in school curricula
The Spanish professors of the Gaston Berger University in Saint Louis are leading an international project to review the image that is transmitted from the continent to the new generations
A hallway of the Gaston Berger University of Saint Louis. LOLA HIERRO
S. LÉFÈVRE | A. RODRÍGUEZ-GARCÍA | C. COFFI HOUNNOUV
December 21, 2019 — 00:14 CET
This adventure began in Europe, in France, back in June 2015. At that time, a first research meeting on Africans in the diaspora took place, whose objective was to reflect on how Hispanic studies address and reflect on the African issue and that of its descendants. It was titled Afro-diaspora: reflections on the field of Hispanic studies and the Afro-descendant question: issues and perspectives, and was organized by the Ibero-American Research Center (CRIIA-GRELPP)
In this event the first steps were taken to rethink the teaching of Spanish in African countries, provide teachers with Afro-Hispanic materials, increase the study of writers, painters and other artists in whose works Afro-descendants are protagonists, overcome the invisibility suffered by the latter and analyze how the racial issue manifests itself in the Americas. That inaugural seminar concluded with a round table whose success and interest, both among researchers and the audience, made clear the need and urgency to repeat the event. The Afro-latino element finally aroused interest in academia.
Participants agreed to immediately address the most urgent issue: reflect on what would be the right materials for Spanish (and its cultures) students from Africa or the African diaspora. The nuclear and pressing question was the following: Could we continue to offer and use in the classroom materials of essentially Eurocentric content, ignoring in practice all of African and Afro-descendant history? Before responding, one must take into account the global demographic weight of this group and that its representation in the case of Latin America and the Caribbean today accounts for 30% of the population.
The only possible answer was a resounding no. Thus, the next obligatory step was to devise a new meeting to exhaustively analyze the expression and contents of the didactic and practical resources that we have today. It would be done from a new perspective, that is: conceiving and shaping new materials with Afro-decolonial content, with a fair representation of Africans and their descendants.
First stop: Senegal
In May 2017, the second meeting was organized within the Gaston Berger University of Saint Louis of Senegal; this time on the African continent and in the form of a colloquium: First International Colloquium on Representations of Africans and Afro-descendants in school manuals. Afro-decolonial perspectives. Practical and theoretical visions. 40 researchers participated, a dozen non-academic staff (writers, activists etc.), a large group of secondary school teachers and a good number of students.
All the interventions focused on how to elaborate the didactic materials, which reflected the philosophy of the colloquium, and epistemological reflections and concrete actions were presented for the decolonization of the mentioned content in the classrooms. The countries under consideration were Africa (Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon, Cameroon, Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau), Europe (France, Spain, Italy) and Latin America (Colombia, Mexico, Brazil).
The debate was articulated in the form of two interconnected reflexive movements; on the one hand, the plenary sessions, which dealt with the epistemological issues illustrated through specific cases; and, on the other hand, the workshops, in which the participants faced the problem of planning and elaboration of didactic resources. There were three workshops in this edition, and they focused specifically on how to represent Africa and its diaspora in Latin American school books and how to represent Afro-Latin America in African school books, Spanish and Portuguese books as a foreign language and Representation of Africans and people of descent from the continent, among other topics.
On this occasion, the workshops achieved the objective pursued to determine the state of the matter and propose new ways to deepen the reflection and elaboration of new resources. The conclusions of these works and their sharing were of great interest, as they allowed us to make decisive steps for the next meeting and bore fruit in the holding of a third meeting, which took place last October on the other side of the Atlantic, in Brazil: the jump to the American continent.
Crossing the Atlantic
After the stopover in Africa, the adventure was to continue in the diaspora. Brazil is the American country with the largest Afro-descendant population, and the third great reflexive activity was anchored there. The colloquium took place in two universities in Bahia. After the opening conference, which was given by Congolese-Brazilian professor Kabengele Munanga (University of São Paulo and Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia), workshops were opened in which 40 researchers from Africa, America and Europe shared their reflections on four fundamental axes: orality, cultural diversity, interculturality and learning. They talked about teaching experiences, school curricula, the role of institutions, translation, etc.
The practical objective was materialized in the creation of a digital platform to which educational resources can be uploaded whose purpose is to provide a common fund consisting of materials of various kinds (articles, texts, photos, videos, audios, paintings, etc.) of which researchers and professors can use from anywhere in the world. That is, make free access to primary sources possible.
The adventure continues its movement: currently, the members of the network are already working on the development of said digital platform and the publication of the minutes of the first two meetings. In this Afro-Atlantic back-and-forth, we are waiting for a new appointment in two years; probably, in the archipelago of Cabo Verde.
Reintegrating Africa and its descendants in school curricula
Those Who Search for Dawn Don’t Fear the Night; Nor the Hand that Holds the Dagger: The Fifty-First Newsletter (2019).
https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/newsletter-51-2019-evangelism/
DECEMBER 19, 2019 |
Roberto Mamani Mamani, Papa Imillas.
Dear Friends,
Greetings from the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
Jeanine Áñez, the ‘president’ of Bolivia, walked into the Burned Palace (Palacio Quemado) with an enormous Bible in her hand. ‘The Bible has returned to the Palace’, she said as she seized power. Áñez’s Party – Movimiento Demócrata Social – won only 4% of the vote in the 2019 presidential election, and she is not in the direct line of succession. The Movement to Socialism (MAS) controlled the majority in parliament, and its speaker – first Adriana Salvatierra and then Mónica Eva Copa – stood ahead of her in the queue. Nonetheless, as MAS officials stayed home for fear of their lives, a parliamentary vote that excluded the majority party took place in which Áñez took power. The military backed her. Very soon thereafter, the United States and Brazil sanctified this Christian fundamentalist right-wing politician as the president.
The Generals stood beside Áñez as she took her oath. Hovering nearby was Luis Fernando Camacho, whose political party (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario) won only 0.69% of the vote in the presidential election. Nonetheless, Camacho is the kingmaker. He is the leader of the Civic Committee of Santa Cruz and the Santa Cruz Youth Union (Unión Juvenil Cruceñista) – both bodies tinged with pro-business fascism. Camacho followed Áñez into the palace. He was holding a crucifix. ‘Pachamama will never return to the palace’, he said. ‘Bolivia belongs to Christ’.
Áñez with her Evangelical Bible, 2019.
Beneath the volcanic eruption of Áñez and Camacho is the lava-like growth of the right-wing evangelical movement. In the 2019 presidential election, Áñez was not the standard-bearer for evangelism. Chi Hyun Chung (who won nearly 9% of the vote) and Victor Hugo Cárdenas (who won 0.41% of the vote) had the strongest evangelical credentials. During the lead-up to the vote, it was Chi who was called the ‘Bolivian Bolsonaro’. Bolivian sociologist Julio Córdova Villazón found that these men – Chi and Cárdenas – erased the separation between Church and State and relied upon the vast network of evangelical churches and television programmes to run their campaign. After the election, Julio Córdova said that it was Camacho, the man who installed Áñez to the presidency, who legitimised his authoritarianism through ‘Bolsonaro-style religious discourse’.
José Tola, El rapto de Europa, 2019.
Jair Bolsonaro, the president of Brazil, is – like Camacho and the others – rooted in these transnational evangelical neo-Pentecostal networks. But this is not an affliction of the fundamentalist versions of Christianity – such as neo-Pentecostalism – alone; there is evidence from around the world of these sorts of authoritarian religious movements that are pickled in hatred and rooted in praise of militaries and capitalism. It is no wonder that the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi – who emerges from his own authoritarian religio-political movement – invited Bolsonaro to be the Chief Guest at India’s Republic Day Parade on 26 January 2020. There is little that divides Modi’s fascistic Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and his Vishwa Hindu Parishad from the piety movements of Tablighi Jamaat (with its millions of Muslim followers) and these neo-Pentecostal formations. There is an enormous amount that they share in common.
Our researchers in Buenos Aires (Argentina) and in São Paulo (Brazil) have developed a preliminary theory of these neo-Pentecostal movements in South America. The team in Buenos Aires has published a report (in Spanish) on the Evangelical Question, while the team in São Paulo has produced an as yet unpublished document on the rise of neo-Pentecostalism in Brazil (André Cardoso and Fábio Miranda, ‘Contribuições para entender o crescimento pentecostal e os desafios para o campo popular’).
One of the common features of the findings in Argentina and in Brazil is that these movements are growing at an astronomical rate, doubling in twenty years. In both countries, these movements have jumped into the electoral sphere, where they have begun to define an ‘evangelical vote’. This consolidation of evangelism in politics polarises sections of the working class and peasantry. The analyses from our two offices are very close to each other, and they both point to at least five features of these movements:
TV Santhosh, Blood and Spit, 2009.
‘This is Not Your Dad’s India’. Protest in New Delhi, December 2019.
It is out of this deeply violent seam of authoritarian neo-Hinduism that the BJP government in India passed the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill that undermines the right of Muslims to be Indian citizens; and it is out of this seam that it has shut down Kashmir and now parts of the North-East and sent in the police forces to attack the students at Aligarh Muslim University (Uttar Pradesh) and Jamia Millia Islamia University (New Delhi).
Hassan Hallaj, Caravane, 2011.
These movements draw from older traditions, but they refashion themselves for neoliberal times. It is not as if they provide a necessary spiritual antidote for populations bereft of social life because of the neoliberal assault; other forms of ‘spiritual’ comfort are available, forms of social coexistence that are secular and progressive. But as the institutions of working-class culture are summarily destroyed in many countries; these forms – including neighbourhood and trade union gatherings – are overrun by the well-funded religion-oriented assemblies. A genuine sociology of these neo-religions should not avoid looking into the dark corners, where the ruling elites sit and write their support with cheques; in the bright lights, we see the working class stumble in and seek a soul in soulless conditions, but the lights are so bright that they often cannot see into the corners.
Aye subh ke ghamkharo, is raat se mat darna.
Jis haat me khanjar hai, us haat se mat darna.
You who search for the dawn, do not fear the night.
Do not be afraid of the hand that holds the dagger.
Fear is the ethos of this neoliberal religiosity. The Pakistani poet Ahmed Faraz saw this fear and shrugged. He counsels bravery.
Warmly, Vijay.
PS: please visit our website to find all our materials, as well as a place to donate to our Institute.
Those Who Search for Dawn Don’t Fear the Night; Nor the Hand that Holds the Dagger: The Fifty-First Newsletter (2019).
https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/newsletter-51-2019-evangelism/
DECEMBER 19, 2019 |
Roberto Mamani Mamani, Papa Imillas.
Dear Friends,
Greetings from the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
Jeanine Áñez, the ‘president’ of Bolivia, walked into the Burned Palace (Palacio Quemado) with an enormous Bible in her hand. ‘The Bible has returned to the Palace’, she said as she seized power. Áñez’s Party – Movimiento Demócrata Social – won only 4% of the vote in the 2019 presidential election, and she is not in the direct line of succession. The Movement to Socialism (MAS) controlled the majority in parliament, and its speaker – first Adriana Salvatierra and then Mónica Eva Copa – stood ahead of her in the queue. Nonetheless, as MAS officials stayed home for fear of their lives, a parliamentary vote that excluded the majority party took place in which Áñez took power. The military backed her. Very soon thereafter, the United States and Brazil sanctified this Christian fundamentalist right-wing politician as the president.
The Generals stood beside Áñez as she took her oath. Hovering nearby was Luis Fernando Camacho, whose political party (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario) won only 0.69% of the vote in the presidential election. Nonetheless, Camacho is the kingmaker. He is the leader of the Civic Committee of Santa Cruz and the Santa Cruz Youth Union (Unión Juvenil Cruceñista) – both bodies tinged with pro-business fascism. Camacho followed Áñez into the palace. He was holding a crucifix. ‘Pachamama will never return to the palace’, he said. ‘Bolivia belongs to Christ’.
Áñez with her Evangelical Bible, 2019.
Beneath the volcanic eruption of Áñez and Camacho is the lava-like growth of the right-wing evangelical movement. In the 2019 presidential election, Áñez was not the standard-bearer for evangelism. Chi Hyun Chung (who won nearly 9% of the vote) and Victor Hugo Cárdenas (who won 0.41% of the vote) had the strongest evangelical credentials. During the lead-up to the vote, it was Chi who was called the ‘Bolivian Bolsonaro’. Bolivian sociologist Julio Córdova Villazón found that these men – Chi and Cárdenas – erased the separation between Church and State and relied upon the vast network of evangelical churches and television programmes to run their campaign. After the election, Julio Córdova said that it was Camacho, the man who installed Áñez to the presidency, who legitimised his authoritarianism through ‘Bolsonaro-style religious discourse’.
José Tola, El rapto de Europa, 2019.
Jair Bolsonaro, the president of Brazil, is – like Camacho and the others – rooted in these transnational evangelical neo-Pentecostal networks. But this is not an affliction of the fundamentalist versions of Christianity – such as neo-Pentecostalism – alone; there is evidence from around the world of these sorts of authoritarian religious movements that are pickled in hatred and rooted in praise of militaries and capitalism. It is no wonder that the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi – who emerges from his own authoritarian religio-political movement – invited Bolsonaro to be the Chief Guest at India’s Republic Day Parade on 26 January 2020. There is little that divides Modi’s fascistic Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and his Vishwa Hindu Parishad from the piety movements of Tablighi Jamaat (with its millions of Muslim followers) and these neo-Pentecostal formations. There is an enormous amount that they share in common.
Our researchers in Buenos Aires (Argentina) and in São Paulo (Brazil) have developed a preliminary theory of these neo-Pentecostal movements in South America. The team in Buenos Aires has published a report (in Spanish) on the Evangelical Question, while the team in São Paulo has produced an as yet unpublished document on the rise of neo-Pentecostalism in Brazil (André Cardoso and Fábio Miranda, ‘Contribuições para entender o crescimento pentecostal e os desafios para o campo popular’).
One of the common features of the findings in Argentina and in Brazil is that these movements are growing at an astronomical rate, doubling in twenty years. In both countries, these movements have jumped into the electoral sphere, where they have begun to define an ‘evangelical vote’. This consolidation of evangelism in politics polarises sections of the working class and peasantry. The analyses from our two offices are very close to each other, and they both point to at least five features of these movements:
- Heart in a Heartless World. Over the course of the past few decades, as social inequality has increased, the purchasing power of the urban and rural poor has declined while the time and money for leisure activities has been reduced. With the cuts in social spending, State-funded community activities have also lessened. This has meant that in the neighbourhoods of the poor, commercial and State-funded avenues for social life have vanished. Near Brazil’s favelas, the storefronts are now occupied by a line of neo-Pentecostal churches, by liquor shops, and by a few restaurants. It is these neo-Pentecostal churches that operate as one of the key places for social life in these working-class communities and as an employment agency for its members. As the Church becomes a hub for social life – including music lessons – it attracts young people into its ranks. Few other outlets are available for the working class.
- ‘Gender Ideology’. In South America, the feminist movement, particularly the movement for abortion rights, has strengthened. In reaction, these religious currents have consolidated a patriarchal response. They make the argument that the elite is trying to colonise the families of the poor by eroding the authority of the father. These piety movements and their political allies routinely uphold patriarchal attitudes towards women, seeking to retroactively control all aspects of their lives and keep them subdued and submissive.
TV Santhosh, Blood and Spit, 2009.
- Racism. Camacho’s statement that Pachamama – an indigenous Andean spiritual concept – has no room in the presidential palace in Bolivia is just one of a million pieces of evidence that suggest the deep hatred that this seam of evangelism has for any form of life that does not follow its precepts. Both Áñez and Camacho have made racist statements about the indigenous communities of Bolivia, whose faith they consider ‘satanic’. The RSS view of Muslims and the adivasis (indigenous), and the Tabligh’s view of apostates (murtadds), mirror this attitude.
- Made in the USA. Our teams in Buenos Aires and São Paulo find that this form of evangelism was exported from the United States. Anthropologist Rita Segato suggests that there has been a concerted effort to export this form of religiosity into the Global South as a means to disorient and fragment the working class and peasantry and to undermine national liberation movements. Indeed, in the 1960s, the United States, Saudi Arabia, and others pushed a narrow and suffocating form of Islam through the World Muslim League to undermine the growth of socialist movements from Indonesia to North Africa. Just before he was executed, the Egyptian leader of the Muslim Brotherhood Sayyid Qutb described his organisation as part of a tendency that he called ‘American-made Islam’.
‘This is Not Your Dad’s India’. Protest in New Delhi, December 2019.
It is out of this deeply violent seam of authoritarian neo-Hinduism that the BJP government in India passed the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill that undermines the right of Muslims to be Indian citizens; and it is out of this seam that it has shut down Kashmir and now parts of the North-East and sent in the police forces to attack the students at Aligarh Muslim University (Uttar Pradesh) and Jamia Millia Islamia University (New Delhi).
- The Prosperity Gospel. Neo-Pentecostal churches and neo-Hindu gurus operate amongst people who are often the poorest of the poor, and yet it is amongst these social groups that they promote a ‘prosperity gospel’. It is not merely that these tendencies use the opportunities of the modern world – the media and the market – to push their aims; it is that they promote the values of neoliberalism amongst the working-class – be an entrepreneur, don’t become a trade unionist.
Hassan Hallaj, Caravane, 2011.
These movements draw from older traditions, but they refashion themselves for neoliberal times. It is not as if they provide a necessary spiritual antidote for populations bereft of social life because of the neoliberal assault; other forms of ‘spiritual’ comfort are available, forms of social coexistence that are secular and progressive. But as the institutions of working-class culture are summarily destroyed in many countries; these forms – including neighbourhood and trade union gatherings – are overrun by the well-funded religion-oriented assemblies. A genuine sociology of these neo-religions should not avoid looking into the dark corners, where the ruling elites sit and write their support with cheques; in the bright lights, we see the working class stumble in and seek a soul in soulless conditions, but the lights are so bright that they often cannot see into the corners.
Aye subh ke ghamkharo, is raat se mat darna.
Jis haat me khanjar hai, us haat se mat darna.
You who search for the dawn, do not fear the night.
Do not be afraid of the hand that holds the dagger.
Fear is the ethos of this neoliberal religiosity. The Pakistani poet Ahmed Faraz saw this fear and shrugged. He counsels bravery.
Warmly, Vijay.
PS: please visit our website to find all our materials, as well as a place to donate to our Institute.
Those Who Search for Dawn Don’t Fear the Night; Nor the Hand that Holds the Dagger: The Fifty-First Newsletter (2019).
Afro-descendants dennounce exclusion in the constitutional process
By Paula Huenchumil & Daniel Domingo
24/12/2019 - 04:45
Protest at La Moneda. Photo: Daniel Domingo
Although the Chilean Afro-descendant tribal people was given legal recognition in April 2019, several organizations are now pointing out that they are not being considered at this constituent moment. “The political scenario continues to perpetuate the colonial history of Chile, restricting the effective participation of Afro-descendants”, said part of the letter delivered on Monday, December 23 in La Moneda.
Around 11 am on December 23 in Morandé Street, a delegation composed of representatives of various organizations of the Chilean Afro-descendant people arrived with a letter outside La Moneda. The statement was read by Azeneth Báez Ríos, president of the Mujeres Hijas de Azapa organization. The slogan was unanimous: “Afro-Chileans want a new Constitution now”.
According to the 2017 census, there are about 20,000 Afro-descendants in Chile, while the Survey on Characteristics of the Afro-descendant Population in the region of Arica and Parinacota (INE), indicates that in this territory there are 10,000 people who self-recognize as part of this group.
The NGOs Oro Negro and Lumbanga, the Luanda Women's Collective, the Women's Association of Azapa, Tumba Carnaval and Arica Negro traveled on Sunday December 22 from Arica to Santiago to denounce the exclusion of the constitutional process that is being carried out due to the political and social crisis the country is going through. On that day they protested at Plaza Italia, today known as Plaza de la Dignidad.
Cristian Báez, president of the NGO Lumbanga, told INTERFERENCIA that “we came to carry out an advocacy action in the capital in response to the exclusion of the Afro-descendant tribal people in Thursday's vote in the Chamber of Deputies”.
Regarding the seats and the participation of gender parity, Báez explained that the deputies Luis Rocafull (Socialist Party) and Vlado Mirosevic (Liberal Party) presented an indication that the term tribal people would be counted as part of the indigenous peoples group.
“We were ten votes short of getting that approval. We ended up excluded, and now it is up to the Senate constitutional commission. What we say is that the same people who voted against it voted in favor of the Afro-descendant law. Therefore they are showing that they are being inconsistent in their speech. Why do they vote to include our recognition on one instance and not on the other?”, says leader and researcher Cristian Báez.
This call was also attended by participants from a Santiago troupe that practices the Carnival Tumbe, a cultural and identity practice originating in the Afro-descendant population of Arica and its valleys. The sound landscape was impregnated by the sound of drums, chimes, bells and shekeres, and this is how the leaders and congregates started a small parade until they were located next to La Moneda. At this point they extended a banner in favor of their inclusion in the constituent process.
Around noon, the historic Afro-descendant leader of Oro Negro, Marta Salgado, along with Camila Rivera, entered the presidential palace to deliver the letter, while on the outskirts the carnival continued to be played and danced.
Camila Rivera, Azeneth Báez and Marta Salgado. Photo: Daniel Domingo
Camila Rivera, a lawyer and leader of the Luanda Women's Collective, says that although the Afro-descendant organizations of Arica have organized themselves strongly in the region of Arica and Parinacota, the Afro-descendant population is spread throughout the country. Mario Villanueva, national leader of the No + AFP coordinator and part of the Social Unit and Verónica Ávila, of the Plurinational Feminist Assembly, were also present at the call.
The drums were heard again. After the delivery of the letter at the Moneda Palace, the organizations walked towards the Ministry of Social Development. Hours later, they met with the Citizen Observatory, to be advised on both political and legal actions that they intend to start shortly.
On April 19, 2019, law number 21,151 was enacted, granting recognition to the Chilean Afro-descendant tribal people. This is a historical fact that, as their representatives say, defines them as “subjects of law with the different specificities that make us part of said people on equal footing with the indigenous peoples”. Which is what article 5 of the law legally establishes as the “application of the right to consultation through Convention No. 169 of the ILO, whenever it is planned to enact legislative or administrative measures that might directly affect them”.
Eight months later, the Afro-Chilean people denounces in its political statement that they have been excluded from all negotiation and participation in the constitutional process, “the current political scenario continues to perpetuate the colonial history of Chile, which restricts the effective participation of Afro-descendants and violates our rights as subjects protected by law”.
Tumbe carnival outside La Moneda. Photo: Daniel Domingo
Afro-descendants dennounce exclusion in the constitutional process
By Paula Huenchumil & Daniel Domingo
24/12/2019 - 04:45
Protest at La Moneda. Photo: Daniel Domingo
Although the Chilean Afro-descendant tribal people was given legal recognition in April 2019, several organizations are now pointing out that they are not being considered at this constituent moment. “The political scenario continues to perpetuate the colonial history of Chile, restricting the effective participation of Afro-descendants”, said part of the letter delivered on Monday, December 23 in La Moneda.
Around 11 am on December 23 in Morandé Street, a delegation composed of representatives of various organizations of the Chilean Afro-descendant people arrived with a letter outside La Moneda. The statement was read by Azeneth Báez Ríos, president of the Mujeres Hijas de Azapa organization. The slogan was unanimous: “Afro-Chileans want a new Constitution now”.
According to the 2017 census, there are about 20,000 Afro-descendants in Chile, while the Survey on Characteristics of the Afro-descendant Population in the region of Arica and Parinacota (INE), indicates that in this territory there are 10,000 people who self-recognize as part of this group.
The NGOs Oro Negro and Lumbanga, the Luanda Women's Collective, the Women's Association of Azapa, Tumba Carnaval and Arica Negro traveled on Sunday December 22 from Arica to Santiago to denounce the exclusion of the constitutional process that is being carried out due to the political and social crisis the country is going through. On that day they protested at Plaza Italia, today known as Plaza de la Dignidad.
Cristian Báez, president of the NGO Lumbanga, told INTERFERENCIA that “we came to carry out an advocacy action in the capital in response to the exclusion of the Afro-descendant tribal people in Thursday's vote in the Chamber of Deputies”.
Regarding the seats and the participation of gender parity, Báez explained that the deputies Luis Rocafull (Socialist Party) and Vlado Mirosevic (Liberal Party) presented an indication that the term tribal people would be counted as part of the indigenous peoples group.
“We were ten votes short of getting that approval. We ended up excluded, and now it is up to the Senate constitutional commission. What we say is that the same people who voted against it voted in favor of the Afro-descendant law. Therefore they are showing that they are being inconsistent in their speech. Why do they vote to include our recognition on one instance and not on the other?”, says leader and researcher Cristian Báez.
This call was also attended by participants from a Santiago troupe that practices the Carnival Tumbe, a cultural and identity practice originating in the Afro-descendant population of Arica and its valleys. The sound landscape was impregnated by the sound of drums, chimes, bells and shekeres, and this is how the leaders and congregates started a small parade until they were located next to La Moneda. At this point they extended a banner in favor of their inclusion in the constituent process.
Around noon, the historic Afro-descendant leader of Oro Negro, Marta Salgado, along with Camila Rivera, entered the presidential palace to deliver the letter, while on the outskirts the carnival continued to be played and danced.
Camila Rivera, Azeneth Báez and Marta Salgado. Photo: Daniel Domingo
Camila Rivera, a lawyer and leader of the Luanda Women's Collective, says that although the Afro-descendant organizations of Arica have organized themselves strongly in the region of Arica and Parinacota, the Afro-descendant population is spread throughout the country. Mario Villanueva, national leader of the No + AFP coordinator and part of the Social Unit and Verónica Ávila, of the Plurinational Feminist Assembly, were also present at the call.
The drums were heard again. After the delivery of the letter at the Moneda Palace, the organizations walked towards the Ministry of Social Development. Hours later, they met with the Citizen Observatory, to be advised on both political and legal actions that they intend to start shortly.
On April 19, 2019, law number 21,151 was enacted, granting recognition to the Chilean Afro-descendant tribal people. This is a historical fact that, as their representatives say, defines them as “subjects of law with the different specificities that make us part of said people on equal footing with the indigenous peoples”. Which is what article 5 of the law legally establishes as the “application of the right to consultation through Convention No. 169 of the ILO, whenever it is planned to enact legislative or administrative measures that might directly affect them”.
Eight months later, the Afro-Chilean people denounces in its political statement that they have been excluded from all negotiation and participation in the constitutional process, “the current political scenario continues to perpetuate the colonial history of Chile, which restricts the effective participation of Afro-descendants and violates our rights as subjects protected by law”.
Tumbe carnival outside La Moneda. Photo: Daniel Domingo
Afro-descendants dennounce exclusion in the constitutional process
The black movement was Sergio Moro's public security package's main tormentor
Excerpts such as the plea bargain and the exclusionary rule were removed from the project after international denunciations from the black movement.
December 30, 2019
Text / Nataly Simões I Editing / Pedro Borges I Image / Lula Marques
One of the most important proposals for the first year of Jair Bolsonaro's government was the public safety package presented by Justice Minister Sergio Moro. During 2019, the project that proposes changes in Brazilian legislation was denounced by the black movement at international level.
On December 25, the bill was sanctioned by President Jair Bolsonaro with nearly 30% of the measures presented in the original text withdrawn because of the black movement's action with international human rights bodies and politicians opposed to the government.
Paragraphs taken down from the text
On August 6, the Chamber of Deputies working group responsible for analyzing Sergio Moro's public safety package took down important paragraphs from the text that had already been denounced by the black movement.
One of them was the plea bargain, which consists of the formulation of an agreement between the prosecutor, the accused and the jury, without the submission of criminal proceedings. This point has been criticized by the black movement for being a policy that can increase the incarceration of black youth in a judicial system described by researchers as racially selective.
Another point taken down concerned self-defense in cases of violence against women. The proposal was to reduce the penalty or not even apply it if the defendant claimed self-defense by a “overwhelming emotion”. The text was criticized by women's rights groups, as the argument could be used as a justification for femicide cases.
The black movement in particular celebrated the withdrawal of the measure by assessing that this type of crime falls even more strongly on black women. According to the Violence Map of 2019, 66% of the women murdered in the country in 2017 were black.
The following month, on September 25, the Chamber of Deputies working group overturned the entire part of the package that dealt with the exclusionary rule. The measure would reduce or even eliminate the punishment, in specific cases, for those who commit crimes such as homicide.
The amendments rejected by lawmakers broadened the self-defense of security agents who took someone's life out of “excusable fear, surprise or overwhelming emotion”. Minister Sergio Moro had proposed that the penalty for killing someone should be halved or even not applied.
For the black movement, the measure meant a license to kill black and poor people. The government's opposition in the Chamber of Deputies cited as an example the murder of eight-year-old Ágatha Felix, killed after being shot by a military policeman at Complexo do Alemão in Rio de Janeiro.
Another point taken from Sérgio Moro's original text by the Chamber's working group was the imprisonment after the first appeal. The package provided for a change in Brazilian law so that imprisonment after the first appeal could be legally recognized. The working group withdrew this passage as it understood that the Constitution would have to be changed.
In November, the Supreme Federal Court prohibited the commencement of the sentence before all appeals were exhausted. The Supreme Court relied on Article 283 of the Penal Code, which states that “no one shall be imprisoned before the end of the trial unless there is a in flagrante delicto or a request for a provisional arrest”.
International denunciations
On February 20, black movement organizations filed a complaint against the package at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), an autonomous organ of the Organization of American States (OAS). The document called for a position of the agency on the measures and the availability of an international observer to follow the case with the Brazilian Congress.
In its complaint, the anti-racist movement argued that the package could deepen the genocide of the black population, the one most affected by violence. One of the indicators used was the Violence Map published by the Brazilian Public Security Forum (FBSP), which points out that of the 62,517 people murdered in the country in 2017, 71.5% were black.
Three months later, in May, representatives of the black movement attended a hearing with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in Kingston, Jamaica. On the occasion, the representatives detailed the arguments against Jair Bolsonaro's government proposals, such as the public safety package.
On July 5, the black movement delivered a letter to Federal Senate President David Alcolumbre requesting support at public hearings on the public safety package. The letter was supported by entities from Argentina, Canada, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela and the United States, as well as intellectuals from the United States and Nigeria.
Juliana Góes, PhD student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a member of the Regional Articulation of Afro-descendants of Latin America and the Caribbean, said that the fact that foreign organizations questioned the project demonstrated the package's lack of legitimacy.
“This support shows how problematic is Moro's proposal. Violence in Brazil draws the international community's attention. The project completely ignores data and suggests measures that criminalize the black population even more and increase violence against this sector of society”, she said.
Already in September, members of the Black Coalition for Rights denounced the public security package to the United Nations (UN) during a meeting with members of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) in Geneva, Switzerland. The anti-racist organization of 60 civil society organizations also formalized allegations against other federal government policies, such as Jair Bolsonaro's arms decrees.
The black movement was Sergio Moro's public security package's main tormentor
Excerpts such as the plea bargain and the exclusionary rule were removed from the project after international denunciations from the black movement.
December 30, 2019
Text / Nataly Simões I Editing / Pedro Borges I Image / Lula Marques
One of the most important proposals for the first year of Jair Bolsonaro's government was the public safety package presented by Justice Minister Sergio Moro. During 2019, the project that proposes changes in Brazilian legislation was denounced by the black movement at international level.
On December 25, the bill was sanctioned by President Jair Bolsonaro with nearly 30% of the measures presented in the original text withdrawn because of the black movement's action with international human rights bodies and politicians opposed to the government.
Paragraphs taken down from the text
On August 6, the Chamber of Deputies working group responsible for analyzing Sergio Moro's public safety package took down important paragraphs from the text that had already been denounced by the black movement.
One of them was the plea bargain, which consists of the formulation of an agreement between the prosecutor, the accused and the jury, without the submission of criminal proceedings. This point has been criticized by the black movement for being a policy that can increase the incarceration of black youth in a judicial system described by researchers as racially selective.
Another point taken down concerned self-defense in cases of violence against women. The proposal was to reduce the penalty or not even apply it if the defendant claimed self-defense by a “overwhelming emotion”. The text was criticized by women's rights groups, as the argument could be used as a justification for femicide cases.
The black movement in particular celebrated the withdrawal of the measure by assessing that this type of crime falls even more strongly on black women. According to the Violence Map of 2019, 66% of the women murdered in the country in 2017 were black.
The following month, on September 25, the Chamber of Deputies working group overturned the entire part of the package that dealt with the exclusionary rule. The measure would reduce or even eliminate the punishment, in specific cases, for those who commit crimes such as homicide.
The amendments rejected by lawmakers broadened the self-defense of security agents who took someone's life out of “excusable fear, surprise or overwhelming emotion”. Minister Sergio Moro had proposed that the penalty for killing someone should be halved or even not applied.
For the black movement, the measure meant a license to kill black and poor people. The government's opposition in the Chamber of Deputies cited as an example the murder of eight-year-old Ágatha Felix, killed after being shot by a military policeman at Complexo do Alemão in Rio de Janeiro.
Another point taken from Sérgio Moro's original text by the Chamber's working group was the imprisonment after the first appeal. The package provided for a change in Brazilian law so that imprisonment after the first appeal could be legally recognized. The working group withdrew this passage as it understood that the Constitution would have to be changed.
In November, the Supreme Federal Court prohibited the commencement of the sentence before all appeals were exhausted. The Supreme Court relied on Article 283 of the Penal Code, which states that “no one shall be imprisoned before the end of the trial unless there is a in flagrante delicto or a request for a provisional arrest”.
International denunciations
On February 20, black movement organizations filed a complaint against the package at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), an autonomous organ of the Organization of American States (OAS). The document called for a position of the agency on the measures and the availability of an international observer to follow the case with the Brazilian Congress.
In its complaint, the anti-racist movement argued that the package could deepen the genocide of the black population, the one most affected by violence. One of the indicators used was the Violence Map published by the Brazilian Public Security Forum (FBSP), which points out that of the 62,517 people murdered in the country in 2017, 71.5% were black.
Three months later, in May, representatives of the black movement attended a hearing with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in Kingston, Jamaica. On the occasion, the representatives detailed the arguments against Jair Bolsonaro's government proposals, such as the public safety package.
On July 5, the black movement delivered a letter to Federal Senate President David Alcolumbre requesting support at public hearings on the public safety package. The letter was supported by entities from Argentina, Canada, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela and the United States, as well as intellectuals from the United States and Nigeria.
Juliana Góes, PhD student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a member of the Regional Articulation of Afro-descendants of Latin America and the Caribbean, said that the fact that foreign organizations questioned the project demonstrated the package's lack of legitimacy.
“This support shows how problematic is Moro's proposal. Violence in Brazil draws the international community's attention. The project completely ignores data and suggests measures that criminalize the black population even more and increase violence against this sector of society”, she said.
Already in September, members of the Black Coalition for Rights denounced the public security package to the United Nations (UN) during a meeting with members of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) in Geneva, Switzerland. The anti-racist organization of 60 civil society organizations also formalized allegations against other federal government policies, such as Jair Bolsonaro's arms decrees.
The black movement was Sergio Moro's public security package's main tormentor
Tato Quiñones in an unpublished interview about the Abakuá society in Cuba
By Jorge Luis Padrón
Tato Quiñones passed away January 12 2020. Photo taken from OnCuba News.
Yesterday, the death of the renowned Cuban researcher and writer Serafín “Tato” Quiñones dressed the national culture in mourning. A prolific scholar and diffuser of the legacy of African religions in Cuba, Quiñones died at the age of 77 in Havana.
When I learned about his death, I remembered that in October 2015, near the Ramón Pando Ferrer Institute of Ophthalmology, in Marianao, where I lived at that time, I interviewed him about different aspects of the Abakuá society, a topic he offered a large part of his intellectual work. I never published that interview and it rested on my computer desk since then.
Today, in honor of this great defender and diffuser of the values and history of the Abakuás in our country, I publish this interview after more than four years.
What are the requirements to be part of Abakuá?
“First of all you have to be a man, and respond to the ethical code of society: be a good son, a good father, a good brother, a good husband and a good friend. You have to be a hardworking person and have a deep sense of justice, truth and love for the country”.
Why is the Abakuá society mostly concentrated in Havana and the municipalities of Matanzas and Cárdenas?
“These three territories are port cities and it was where the bulk of sugar production from the west of the country was exported since the end of the 18th century. There was a lot of activity in those places and the Abakuás exercised a very notable presence in the port areas. Slaves and freemen, most of them black, worked in the activities of loading and unloading ships and the Abakuá was a possibility to organize in a kind of union, or brotherhood, for mutual defense. That's why the society is concentrated on these three cities: the ports determined that. Although there were ñáñigos in other sectors, such as in the tobacco companies, or among coachmen, builders, etc.”.
Is the Abakuá society considered a religion?
“This has been debated for a long time now. I think so. There is religiosity whenever there is a concept of a supreme being. In the Abakuá there is a religious ritual when the potencia (group) is in operation, whoever has been deeply involved with it will realize that this is a criterion of religiosity and, above all, with a possible link with the world of the afterlife, with a concept of nature and creation. It is also a society which initiatory ritual turns its members into brothers. They must assist each other under any circumstances, whether it's sickness, imprisonment, unemployment...”.
What is your opinion on men who tattoo an íreme without belonging to any Abakuá game?
“I think they are looking for a way to identify with something, a space to socialize, because reality often does not offer them that. It is the same thing with the word ekobio (brother), which has entered the popular language and has begun to be used as a vocative to qualify the closest friend. Is it a way to show deep affection, an intimate camaraderie relationship? It would be necessary to see in what context the word is said, who uses it and why. It is a word that is in the street, like many of the Abakuá ritual vocabulary. Asere is the most known word”.
What is the initiation process like?
“First of all, you have to decide which brotherhood or game you want to belong to and then try to have a member already started, who knows you very well and can answer for you, introduce you. After that, you must fill out a form with your general information and they will start a research process that can last at least one year”.
“Once the inquiry is made, if the game management considers that you have the conditions to start, you must be presented to the General Assembly Board, where those who participate know you and have the right to ask you any questions and even provoke you to see how you react. If you are approved by the Board, you can classify yourself as an endísime (applicant) and in one of the opportunities in which the potencia carries out an initiation activity, you can be among the selected”.
Why do you think some people associate the Abakuá society with crime and rowdiness?
“First of all, due to the bad press it has carried for many years. Since before the 19th Century there was a consistency in the diatribes against the brotherhood, among other things, by the anti-slavery and anti-colonialist actions that characterized it. Some official magazines after 1959 also contributed to the formation of a negative image”.
“Very little was said about the black Abakuás who were involved in the events of the medical students, or those who participated in the War of Independence, in the Spanish Civil War or participated in the fighting in Angola”.
“On the other hand, the attitude of our brothers throughout history, that with behavior aimed at violence have been stressing, in some way, that between this and the Abakuá there are communicating vessels. The first cultural product of poverty is violence, the filmmaker Glauber Rocha once said. Violence is closely associated with poverty, marginalization, unemployment, ills that were endemic in Cuban society until very recently. There are certain codes of values that are established in certain social environments, which govern the behavior of individuals; these values start in the street and, in a certain way, are enshrined in prisons, closely linked to violence”.
“The Abakuá man must be brave to die in defense of his: his family, his property, his country, his institution. The virtue shown is another guarantee. But that can be misrepresented, misinterpreted as it has been done, since one thing is courage and another is rowdiness and thuggery”.
Do you think the youth are responsible for the Abakuás being considered as quarrelsome and problematic?
“I disagree with this opinion, depending on where it comes from. I am convinced that in residential neighborhoods such as Miramar, Kohly or Nuevo Vedado that is the existing criterion. However, if you go to Cayo Hueso, Jesús María, Los Pocitos or Los Sitios, that is not the prevalent opinion, because there is a secular tradition about ñañiguismo that almost everyone knows. There is no denying that there is a sector of urban youth that, seeking a sense of belonging, of self-assertion as a person, has resorted to violence linked to ñañiguismo”.
“I think that you cannot evaluate, know and unravel any current Cuban sociocultural phenomenon that does not take into account the years that have passed since the Special Period. There is no area of Cuban reality that has not been affected by that period we have lived and the Abakuá is no exception. Therefore, to analyze with certainty the situation, you have to ask yourself how it was before and what has happened in recent times. How mentalities and values have been changing and men think how they live and, given certain social circumstances, negative values appear that are the ones that will govern the behavior at a given time”.
If one of the regulatory precepts is “do not commit crimes, or deeds that make you lose respect before society and the institution”, why have young people who have acted contrary to this been accepted?
“These are empty words for many institutions. What makes you lose respect before society? That would have to be specified. There is no Abakuá institution that is so strict in the assessment of its possible members and associates; you kind of have a hand depending on the circumstances. The forms ask if you have been arrested and what matters is the type of problem that took you to jail and your behavior in it. There are crimes such as rape and abuse of women that are intolerable”.
“I know more than one case of high school teenagers who have gathered in groups of around 15 and played a game, made secret oaths, cut their fingers and mixed the blood and are already ekobios. That is not an Abakúa game, that is a gang. But they claim to be Abakuá and tattoo the íreme without being a part of it”.
“I have seen young people at the carnivals wanting to dance like the diablito without knowing anything, wanting to demonstrate a human condition that frightens and inspires respect. Those are affective deficits, family, social, deficits of all kinds. It is necessary to have in these places the presence and influence of people linked to youth organizations of the State, not to repress or denigrate or criticize, but to understand or help. The few I have seen are sometimes perceived as unusual species by the institutional framework”.
How has Abakuá society been seen by the Cuban government?
“There was never any link other than repression. Although in some periods there was a certain level of tolerance. When the Cuban Revolution triumphed, there was a time of honeymoon, even between 1959 and 1960 there were some Abakuá organizations that requested recognition as legal associations and obtained it from the revolutionary government. Then there was a process in which the relationship grew sour. On the one hand, there was the establishment of scientific atheism as the official doctrine. The Final Declaration of the Education and Culture Congress of 1971 speaks of a part of juvenile delinquency and it is very clearly associated with Santería or Abakuá or Ñáñiga societies”.
“That shows the state in which the relationships were. There were years of prohibitions, only meetings and some types of ceremonies were authorized, but not initiations of new people. The policy was to wear us out until we disappeared”.
“In 1977, some time after the Constitution was promulgated, we decided to grow without asking anyone for permission, but without doing it in secret. Subsequently there were its ups and downs until the socialist camp collapsed and our state decriminalized religious conscience. Being that Abakuá is a Cuban religion there were two alternatives: either you liquidated it or you had to give it a position of legality, which was what they did”.
“Today the relations are cordial, clear and of good communication. It seems to me that in recent times violent actions in our activities have been significantly reduced”.
How much has Abakuá society influenced our culture and idiosyncrasy?
“There is no area of Cuban artistic-literary creation in which there is no secular influence of this subject. If you go to the plastic arts you find Víctor Patricio Landaluze in the 19th Century, passing through Víctor Manuel, René Portocarrero, Mariano Rodríguez, Wilfredo Lam to Belkis Ayón more recently. They all addressed in different ways the Abakuá theme”.
“It is the same way in literature, music, cinema and theater, where we find closely linked works. Authors such as Alejo Carpentier, Manuel Cofiño, Ignacio Piñeiro, Alejandro García Caturla and Sara Gómez have touched on the subject in their creations”.
Tato Quiñones in an unpublished interview about the Abakuá society in Cuba
By Jorge Luis Padrón
Tato Quiñones passed away January 12 2020. Photo taken from OnCuba News.
Yesterday, the death of the renowned Cuban researcher and writer Serafín “Tato” Quiñones dressed the national culture in mourning. A prolific scholar and diffuser of the legacy of African religions in Cuba, Quiñones died at the age of 77 in Havana.
When I learned about his death, I remembered that in October 2015, near the Ramón Pando Ferrer Institute of Ophthalmology, in Marianao, where I lived at that time, I interviewed him about different aspects of the Abakuá society, a topic he offered a large part of his intellectual work. I never published that interview and it rested on my computer desk since then.
Today, in honor of this great defender and diffuser of the values and history of the Abakuás in our country, I publish this interview after more than four years.
What are the requirements to be part of Abakuá?
“First of all you have to be a man, and respond to the ethical code of society: be a good son, a good father, a good brother, a good husband and a good friend. You have to be a hardworking person and have a deep sense of justice, truth and love for the country”.
Why is the Abakuá society mostly concentrated in Havana and the municipalities of Matanzas and Cárdenas?
“These three territories are port cities and it was where the bulk of sugar production from the west of the country was exported since the end of the 18th century. There was a lot of activity in those places and the Abakuás exercised a very notable presence in the port areas. Slaves and freemen, most of them black, worked in the activities of loading and unloading ships and the Abakuá was a possibility to organize in a kind of union, or brotherhood, for mutual defense. That's why the society is concentrated on these three cities: the ports determined that. Although there were ñáñigos in other sectors, such as in the tobacco companies, or among coachmen, builders, etc.”.
Is the Abakuá society considered a religion?
“This has been debated for a long time now. I think so. There is religiosity whenever there is a concept of a supreme being. In the Abakuá there is a religious ritual when the potencia (group) is in operation, whoever has been deeply involved with it will realize that this is a criterion of religiosity and, above all, with a possible link with the world of the afterlife, with a concept of nature and creation. It is also a society which initiatory ritual turns its members into brothers. They must assist each other under any circumstances, whether it's sickness, imprisonment, unemployment...”.
What is your opinion on men who tattoo an íreme without belonging to any Abakuá game?
“I think they are looking for a way to identify with something, a space to socialize, because reality often does not offer them that. It is the same thing with the word ekobio (brother), which has entered the popular language and has begun to be used as a vocative to qualify the closest friend. Is it a way to show deep affection, an intimate camaraderie relationship? It would be necessary to see in what context the word is said, who uses it and why. It is a word that is in the street, like many of the Abakuá ritual vocabulary. Asere is the most known word”.
What is the initiation process like?
“First of all, you have to decide which brotherhood or game you want to belong to and then try to have a member already started, who knows you very well and can answer for you, introduce you. After that, you must fill out a form with your general information and they will start a research process that can last at least one year”.
“Once the inquiry is made, if the game management considers that you have the conditions to start, you must be presented to the General Assembly Board, where those who participate know you and have the right to ask you any questions and even provoke you to see how you react. If you are approved by the Board, you can classify yourself as an endísime (applicant) and in one of the opportunities in which the potencia carries out an initiation activity, you can be among the selected”.
Why do you think some people associate the Abakuá society with crime and rowdiness?
“First of all, due to the bad press it has carried for many years. Since before the 19th Century there was a consistency in the diatribes against the brotherhood, among other things, by the anti-slavery and anti-colonialist actions that characterized it. Some official magazines after 1959 also contributed to the formation of a negative image”.
“Very little was said about the black Abakuás who were involved in the events of the medical students, or those who participated in the War of Independence, in the Spanish Civil War or participated in the fighting in Angola”.
“On the other hand, the attitude of our brothers throughout history, that with behavior aimed at violence have been stressing, in some way, that between this and the Abakuá there are communicating vessels. The first cultural product of poverty is violence, the filmmaker Glauber Rocha once said. Violence is closely associated with poverty, marginalization, unemployment, ills that were endemic in Cuban society until very recently. There are certain codes of values that are established in certain social environments, which govern the behavior of individuals; these values start in the street and, in a certain way, are enshrined in prisons, closely linked to violence”.
“The Abakuá man must be brave to die in defense of his: his family, his property, his country, his institution. The virtue shown is another guarantee. But that can be misrepresented, misinterpreted as it has been done, since one thing is courage and another is rowdiness and thuggery”.
Do you think the youth are responsible for the Abakuás being considered as quarrelsome and problematic?
“I disagree with this opinion, depending on where it comes from. I am convinced that in residential neighborhoods such as Miramar, Kohly or Nuevo Vedado that is the existing criterion. However, if you go to Cayo Hueso, Jesús María, Los Pocitos or Los Sitios, that is not the prevalent opinion, because there is a secular tradition about ñañiguismo that almost everyone knows. There is no denying that there is a sector of urban youth that, seeking a sense of belonging, of self-assertion as a person, has resorted to violence linked to ñañiguismo”.
“I think that you cannot evaluate, know and unravel any current Cuban sociocultural phenomenon that does not take into account the years that have passed since the Special Period. There is no area of Cuban reality that has not been affected by that period we have lived and the Abakuá is no exception. Therefore, to analyze with certainty the situation, you have to ask yourself how it was before and what has happened in recent times. How mentalities and values have been changing and men think how they live and, given certain social circumstances, negative values appear that are the ones that will govern the behavior at a given time”.
If one of the regulatory precepts is “do not commit crimes, or deeds that make you lose respect before society and the institution”, why have young people who have acted contrary to this been accepted?
“These are empty words for many institutions. What makes you lose respect before society? That would have to be specified. There is no Abakuá institution that is so strict in the assessment of its possible members and associates; you kind of have a hand depending on the circumstances. The forms ask if you have been arrested and what matters is the type of problem that took you to jail and your behavior in it. There are crimes such as rape and abuse of women that are intolerable”.
“I know more than one case of high school teenagers who have gathered in groups of around 15 and played a game, made secret oaths, cut their fingers and mixed the blood and are already ekobios. That is not an Abakúa game, that is a gang. But they claim to be Abakuá and tattoo the íreme without being a part of it”.
“I have seen young people at the carnivals wanting to dance like the diablito without knowing anything, wanting to demonstrate a human condition that frightens and inspires respect. Those are affective deficits, family, social, deficits of all kinds. It is necessary to have in these places the presence and influence of people linked to youth organizations of the State, not to repress or denigrate or criticize, but to understand or help. The few I have seen are sometimes perceived as unusual species by the institutional framework”.
How has Abakuá society been seen by the Cuban government?
“There was never any link other than repression. Although in some periods there was a certain level of tolerance. When the Cuban Revolution triumphed, there was a time of honeymoon, even between 1959 and 1960 there were some Abakuá organizations that requested recognition as legal associations and obtained it from the revolutionary government. Then there was a process in which the relationship grew sour. On the one hand, there was the establishment of scientific atheism as the official doctrine. The Final Declaration of the Education and Culture Congress of 1971 speaks of a part of juvenile delinquency and it is very clearly associated with Santería or Abakuá or Ñáñiga societies”.
“That shows the state in which the relationships were. There were years of prohibitions, only meetings and some types of ceremonies were authorized, but not initiations of new people. The policy was to wear us out until we disappeared”.
“In 1977, some time after the Constitution was promulgated, we decided to grow without asking anyone for permission, but without doing it in secret. Subsequently there were its ups and downs until the socialist camp collapsed and our state decriminalized religious conscience. Being that Abakuá is a Cuban religion there were two alternatives: either you liquidated it or you had to give it a position of legality, which was what they did”.
“Today the relations are cordial, clear and of good communication. It seems to me that in recent times violent actions in our activities have been significantly reduced”.
How much has Abakuá society influenced our culture and idiosyncrasy?
“There is no area of Cuban artistic-literary creation in which there is no secular influence of this subject. If you go to the plastic arts you find Víctor Patricio Landaluze in the 19th Century, passing through Víctor Manuel, René Portocarrero, Mariano Rodríguez, Wilfredo Lam to Belkis Ayón more recently. They all addressed in different ways the Abakuá theme”.
“It is the same way in literature, music, cinema and theater, where we find closely linked works. Authors such as Alejo Carpentier, Manuel Cofiño, Ignacio Piñeiro, Alejandro García Caturla and Sara Gómez have touched on the subject in their creations”.
Tato Quiñones in an unpublished interview about the Abakuá society in Cuba
Haitian woman wants to turn Salvador into a hub for "racial cinema" with the Black Film Festival
Fabienne Colas will bring the Black Film Festival to Salvador
Nathália Geraldo
January 13, 2020 — 04h00 | Updated January 15, 2020 — 15h43
This year, Black November in Salvador will feature two large cultural events: the Black Film Festival (BFF) and the AfroPunk Festival, which has become a reference on the black alternative scene.
Behind the festival is Fabienne Colas, a Haitian woman who started her career as an actress and, when she arrived in Canada in 2003, decided to build a cinema scene in which she could work and stimulate the production of local directors and filmmakers.
Taking charge of initiatives framed as "racial cinema", says Fabienne, reveals her battle as a black woman who's active in the artistic market. "I tell my story to understand that it was not easy for me. And when you are a woman, a black woman at that, no one will give you anything on a silver platter. You will have to fight and work hard", she said in an interview for Universa.
It will be the first time that the Black Film Festival — which will be held by Giros Filmes and Zaza Productions and which is affiliated with the Canadian black film festivals of the Fabienne Colas Foundation — will take place in Brazil and the choice of Salvador has a meaning behind it: it is the blackest city outside the African continent, according to 2015 data.
Queen of Festivals
Fabienne speaks during the launch of the Black Film Festival, in December 2019, in Salvador. Photo: Wendell Wagner
Fabienne Colas is a reference in the black and independent cinema scene around the world.
Recognized as one of Canada's 100 Most Powerful Women in 2019, she founded eight movie festivals in three countries, including the International Black Film Festival in Montreal, where she currently lives in, as well as festivals in Halifax, Toronto, New York and Port-au-Prince.
One of his first investments in promoting initiatives for cultural diversity and valuing black culture was the creation of the Fabienne Colas Foundation, alongside partners Réal Barnabé and Emile Castonguay. The non-profit institution's proposal is to "build bridges through the arts".
Check out the main excerpts from the conversation with Fabienne below.
How can one occupy a position of power and excellence in the international audiovisual market?
It was not easy for me. I came from Haiti to Montreal in 2003. In my country, I was a very popular actress, I had received many awards, and I came to start all over again here. Unfortunately, all doors were closed to people like me.
I didn't take roles as representative as I thought they could be offered. So, I quickly understood that I would not have the career I wanted on TV or in the movies. That's when I thought, 'You know what, I'm going to bring all the films from Haiti that I played in so that people can see what kind of actress I am, how I work and they will discover a 'racial cinema'. But not one festival selected the films.
That's when I realized that we needed to change how things were and how people thought. We decided to create the Fabienne Colas Foundation (which already existed in Haiti, but with a different mission) in Canada. To celebrate the art of people of color. Today, the foundation is promoting festivals, programs and initiatives to support more than 200 artists, for whom we offer workshops and grants.
Along the way, I still had the opportunity to direct my own film in 2008 and to act in a few films on TV and in cinema.
And what was it like to conquer this position being a black woman? Do you think your position is representative?
I tell my journey so that you can understand that it was not easy for me. And when you're a woman, a black woman at that, nobody is going to give you anything on a silver platter. You will need to fight and work hard. You will not have what you want in life. But you will have what you have the audacity to go after, to ask, to negotiate.
This is for all women and especially for black women. I learned it the hard way, that you need to use your voice for yourself and other people who have no voice. So, this is my mission, to amplify the voice of other people who don't know how to advocate for themselves, who didn't have the opportunity to show their work or sell their product. It is for this reason that we are working to put the festival on the world stage and that is why I am so happy to bring the festival to Salvador.
I hope black artists will be inspired by my journey and the festival. And let them know that they can go out and conquer the world because we have no lack of talent, we only have a lack of opportunities.
If we want to create collectively, we have to make sure that everyone will make it.
Salvador has the largest black population outside of Africa. How can art help mobilize black people in the diaspora?
Art is powerful and cinema is one of the strongest in the sense of bringing people together. When watching an hour and a half of a film, be it documentary, animation, the person is taken on a journey with the perspective of another person. And whoever is in the movie theater at that moment shares the same story. We laugh and cry together, we are transformed and educated together.
This will be the Black Film Festival's first time in Salvador. This is historic, it's no small thing. It is important for that beautiful city, which is already known for art, music, food, architecture, but not yet for cinema. And we want to position Salvador as a city of cinema, where black films are shot. And I still believe that art brings everyone together, and can attract tourism as well. So much so that we are working with the Salvador Department of Tourism.
Why bring the Festival to Brazil?
The event, to be held in November, awaits confirmation of dates; movie subscriptions have not yet opened. Photo: Wendell Wagner
First, it is necessary to do it in Salvador, which needs to be part of this movement in the film industry. And I think the global context makes it relevant. I mean, artists are always producing, in good times or bad times.
[Holding the festival is a way of saying that] We are with them, as one: 'Hey, are we here? And you know what? Come on, let's prove that these people are wrong, let's prove that we managed to produce something great, despite the current context'.
I think Brazil is in a good position in Latin America to lead the front and show that this can be a big black festival.
In November, the first edition of Afropunk will also take place in Brazil, in Salvador. Was this arranged?
The festival does not depend on Afropunk, but I think that Salvador hosting both events is great news. It will draw the world's attention there. So, let's use this to let the world know more and put the country in the mainstream artistic movement. That is fantastic, and we are going to work on it.
It seems that we live in a time when racism and other forms of prejudice are more open. What do you think about it?
I really believe that racism and prejudice are in places where there is fear — fear of the other. So the more we get to know each other, know each other's history, the less we are afraid of each other or we will hate each other. Because then we will understand the other's perspective and history. As I believe in the power of art, that is what cinema is: allowing us to get to know each other better, to understand each other, to love each other.
How can cinema contribute to this transformation?
Cinema does this: it encourages love in a community. In the movements we make in Canada, in the United States, we see transformations. People will see the film and talk to each other. It is great to see this collective understanding.
That is why the festival in Salvador is necessary, because we live in a time when we need to be together more than ever, we need to understand the other side. For me, it is the only way we can live in peace and together for the long term.
Brazil is going through a moment of clash in culture, with the government dismantling a lot of the investment. Is the festival an event of resistance in valuing Brazilian culture, especially black culture?
Now is the best time to do so. As I said, artists are always producing, in good and bad times. It is no exception now. And I am happy to see that we have great productions from various places in Brazil. So, I encourage people to produce, even though if it is difficult and they have less money. Looking for a way to continue telling stories, this is the best way to resist. To continue existing and producing.
What do you expect from both the mainstream and independent black film market in 2020?
What I hope is that filmmakers and producers are authentic and that they tell stories that matter to them, in universal films that reflect the reality of where they come from. We must not force ourselves to make films that fulfill a certain type of narrative. We must make stories that are close to our own reality, as we feel it. It is the only way we will transcend territories and touch people, the more the story is authentic.
Do you see a trend in more films debating racial issues?
Yes, in recent years, it is possible to see some filmmakers talking about things they go through on a daily basis, in Canada, Haiti, in some countries in Africa, in the United States, in Brazil. And it's not just about racial issues, but about religion, LGBTQ issues, women's conditions... I encourage everyone to feel the need to tell stories like this: do it. But I don't want people trying to tell stories that they don't believe in or that they don't relate to.
The idea is not to hop on the trend and say: 'Let's talk about it, because it is popular', but 'I want to make this film about what nobody knows or if they know, they can see it from another perspective'. That's what matters. See the trends, but be yourself.
You have been to Salvador. What do you find inspiring about Brazilian culture?
In Salvador, I saw exactly what I always read out. I went to the Carnival museum, I saw a parade with a Christmas celebration. I think this is a place everyone should go to at least once in their lives. Because it is rich. It is authentic. And by bringing the Festival, I feel honored to be the messenger behind this.
Besides that, one thing that I've always loved is Brazilian football. Pelé is my idol, Haiti loves him. And I say that my best memory is the 1994 World Cup, when Brazil beat Italy. I remember the names of all of the players. That's what I grew up with.
Additionally, I love samba, bossa nova and Brazilian food. We have some restaurants in Canada, but in Salvador the food is much better, of course. I also love caipirinha. Everyone should find out about this. So I am very happy to bring friends, journalists and filmmakers with us to the event. It will be a huge party.
Haitian woman wants to turn Salvador into a hub for "racial cinema" with the Black Film Festival
Fabienne Colas will bring the Black Film Festival to Salvador
Nathália Geraldo
January 13, 2020 — 04h00 | Updated January 15, 2020 — 15h43
This year, Black November in Salvador will feature two large cultural events: the Black Film Festival (BFF) and the AfroPunk Festival, which has become a reference on the black alternative scene.
Behind the festival is Fabienne Colas, a Haitian woman who started her career as an actress and, when she arrived in Canada in 2003, decided to build a cinema scene in which she could work and stimulate the production of local directors and filmmakers.
Taking charge of initiatives framed as "racial cinema", says Fabienne, reveals her battle as a black woman who's active in the artistic market. "I tell my story to understand that it was not easy for me. And when you are a woman, a black woman at that, no one will give you anything on a silver platter. You will have to fight and work hard", she said in an interview for Universa.
It will be the first time that the Black Film Festival — which will be held by Giros Filmes and Zaza Productions and which is affiliated with the Canadian black film festivals of the Fabienne Colas Foundation — will take place in Brazil and the choice of Salvador has a meaning behind it: it is the blackest city outside the African continent, according to 2015 data.
Queen of Festivals
Fabienne speaks during the launch of the Black Film Festival, in December 2019, in Salvador. Photo: Wendell Wagner
Fabienne Colas is a reference in the black and independent cinema scene around the world.
Recognized as one of Canada's 100 Most Powerful Women in 2019, she founded eight movie festivals in three countries, including the International Black Film Festival in Montreal, where she currently lives in, as well as festivals in Halifax, Toronto, New York and Port-au-Prince.
One of his first investments in promoting initiatives for cultural diversity and valuing black culture was the creation of the Fabienne Colas Foundation, alongside partners Réal Barnabé and Emile Castonguay. The non-profit institution's proposal is to "build bridges through the arts".
Check out the main excerpts from the conversation with Fabienne below.
How can one occupy a position of power and excellence in the international audiovisual market?
It was not easy for me. I came from Haiti to Montreal in 2003. In my country, I was a very popular actress, I had received many awards, and I came to start all over again here. Unfortunately, all doors were closed to people like me.
I didn't take roles as representative as I thought they could be offered. So, I quickly understood that I would not have the career I wanted on TV or in the movies. That's when I thought, 'You know what, I'm going to bring all the films from Haiti that I played in so that people can see what kind of actress I am, how I work and they will discover a 'racial cinema'. But not one festival selected the films.
That's when I realized that we needed to change how things were and how people thought. We decided to create the Fabienne Colas Foundation (which already existed in Haiti, but with a different mission) in Canada. To celebrate the art of people of color. Today, the foundation is promoting festivals, programs and initiatives to support more than 200 artists, for whom we offer workshops and grants.
Along the way, I still had the opportunity to direct my own film in 2008 and to act in a few films on TV and in cinema.
And what was it like to conquer this position being a black woman? Do you think your position is representative?
I tell my journey so that you can understand that it was not easy for me. And when you're a woman, a black woman at that, nobody is going to give you anything on a silver platter. You will need to fight and work hard. You will not have what you want in life. But you will have what you have the audacity to go after, to ask, to negotiate.
This is for all women and especially for black women. I learned it the hard way, that you need to use your voice for yourself and other people who have no voice. So, this is my mission, to amplify the voice of other people who don't know how to advocate for themselves, who didn't have the opportunity to show their work or sell their product. It is for this reason that we are working to put the festival on the world stage and that is why I am so happy to bring the festival to Salvador.
I hope black artists will be inspired by my journey and the festival. And let them know that they can go out and conquer the world because we have no lack of talent, we only have a lack of opportunities.
If we want to create collectively, we have to make sure that everyone will make it.
Salvador has the largest black population outside of Africa. How can art help mobilize black people in the diaspora?
Art is powerful and cinema is one of the strongest in the sense of bringing people together. When watching an hour and a half of a film, be it documentary, animation, the person is taken on a journey with the perspective of another person. And whoever is in the movie theater at that moment shares the same story. We laugh and cry together, we are transformed and educated together.
This will be the Black Film Festival's first time in Salvador. This is historic, it's no small thing. It is important for that beautiful city, which is already known for art, music, food, architecture, but not yet for cinema. And we want to position Salvador as a city of cinema, where black films are shot. And I still believe that art brings everyone together, and can attract tourism as well. So much so that we are working with the Salvador Department of Tourism.
Why bring the Festival to Brazil?
The event, to be held in November, awaits confirmation of dates; movie subscriptions have not yet opened. Photo: Wendell Wagner
First, it is necessary to do it in Salvador, which needs to be part of this movement in the film industry. And I think the global context makes it relevant. I mean, artists are always producing, in good times or bad times.
[Holding the festival is a way of saying that] We are with them, as one: 'Hey, are we here? And you know what? Come on, let's prove that these people are wrong, let's prove that we managed to produce something great, despite the current context'.
I think Brazil is in a good position in Latin America to lead the front and show that this can be a big black festival.
In November, the first edition of Afropunk will also take place in Brazil, in Salvador. Was this arranged?
The festival does not depend on Afropunk, but I think that Salvador hosting both events is great news. It will draw the world's attention there. So, let's use this to let the world know more and put the country in the mainstream artistic movement. That is fantastic, and we are going to work on it.
It seems that we live in a time when racism and other forms of prejudice are more open. What do you think about it?
I really believe that racism and prejudice are in places where there is fear — fear of the other. So the more we get to know each other, know each other's history, the less we are afraid of each other or we will hate each other. Because then we will understand the other's perspective and history. As I believe in the power of art, that is what cinema is: allowing us to get to know each other better, to understand each other, to love each other.
How can cinema contribute to this transformation?
Cinema does this: it encourages love in a community. In the movements we make in Canada, in the United States, we see transformations. People will see the film and talk to each other. It is great to see this collective understanding.
That is why the festival in Salvador is necessary, because we live in a time when we need to be together more than ever, we need to understand the other side. For me, it is the only way we can live in peace and together for the long term.
Brazil is going through a moment of clash in culture, with the government dismantling a lot of the investment. Is the festival an event of resistance in valuing Brazilian culture, especially black culture?
Now is the best time to do so. As I said, artists are always producing, in good and bad times. It is no exception now. And I am happy to see that we have great productions from various places in Brazil. So, I encourage people to produce, even though if it is difficult and they have less money. Looking for a way to continue telling stories, this is the best way to resist. To continue existing and producing.
What do you expect from both the mainstream and independent black film market in 2020?
What I hope is that filmmakers and producers are authentic and that they tell stories that matter to them, in universal films that reflect the reality of where they come from. We must not force ourselves to make films that fulfill a certain type of narrative. We must make stories that are close to our own reality, as we feel it. It is the only way we will transcend territories and touch people, the more the story is authentic.
Do you see a trend in more films debating racial issues?
Yes, in recent years, it is possible to see some filmmakers talking about things they go through on a daily basis, in Canada, Haiti, in some countries in Africa, in the United States, in Brazil. And it's not just about racial issues, but about religion, LGBTQ issues, women's conditions... I encourage everyone to feel the need to tell stories like this: do it. But I don't want people trying to tell stories that they don't believe in or that they don't relate to.
The idea is not to hop on the trend and say: 'Let's talk about it, because it is popular', but 'I want to make this film about what nobody knows or if they know, they can see it from another perspective'. That's what matters. See the trends, but be yourself.
You have been to Salvador. What do you find inspiring about Brazilian culture?
In Salvador, I saw exactly what I always read out. I went to the Carnival museum, I saw a parade with a Christmas celebration. I think this is a place everyone should go to at least once in their lives. Because it is rich. It is authentic. And by bringing the Festival, I feel honored to be the messenger behind this.
Besides that, one thing that I've always loved is Brazilian football. Pelé is my idol, Haiti loves him. And I say that my best memory is the 1994 World Cup, when Brazil beat Italy. I remember the names of all of the players. That's what I grew up with.
Additionally, I love samba, bossa nova and Brazilian food. We have some restaurants in Canada, but in Salvador the food is much better, of course. I also love caipirinha. Everyone should find out about this. So I am very happy to bring friends, journalists and filmmakers with us to the event. It will be a huge party.
Haitian woman wants to turn Salvador into a hub for "racial cinema" with the Black Film Festival
Vilma Reis: we decided to stop white hegemony in politics
The sociologist will be try to be the first black woman elected mayor of Salvador and warns that “there will be nothing about us, without us”
Igor Carvalho and José Eduardo Bernardes
Brasil de Fato | São Paulo (SP), December 14, 2019 09:36
Vilma Reis is one of the Workers' Party's mayoral candidates: “We cannot accept the hegemony of 15% of the population in our city” / Photo: José Eduardo Bernardes/Brasil de Fato
During the international meeting of the Black Coalition for Rights, in November, in São Paulo, the black movement defined the conquest of spaces for political representation as a priority.
The focus on the search for representation takes place in one of the most active moments in the recent history of the black movement. In recent months, militants have been in Brasília (Federal District), where they fought against the anti-crime package of Minister Sergio Moro and fought against the agreement that could result in the delivery of the Alcântara Base to the United States and the expulsion of quilombolas from their territories.
Abroad, the movement denounced the genocide against the black Brazilian population in places hitherto occupied only by Brazilian whiteness, even if on the left. The United Nations (UN), the Organization of American States (OAS), the European Parliament and even the United States Congress were attended by the militants.
At the forefront of this articulation is sociologist Vilma Reis, who demands changes in the political class of Salvador, the country's blackest capital.
A pre-candidate, she intends to become the first black woman mayor in the history of Bahia's capital, currently governed by Antônio Carlos Magalhães Neto (Democrats), heir to the white political elite that has ruled the state for decades.
Vilma Reis explains that this is not a personal ambition, but a demand of the movement.
“We cannot accept the hegemony of 15% of the population in the city of Salvador, and white men, who are a minority within the white population, have hegemony in representing our city. We, from the black women's movement, in an act of colonial and patriarchal disobedience, decided to interrupt this absolute hegemony”, she says.
One of the first obstacles, says Reis, is facing white hegemony, even in left-wing parties. “All the careers of progressive whites in this country were built by us, all of them. Our understanding now is that it is no longer possible to ask us to wait, all the construction of movements that come from the street into the parties is that there will be nothing about us, without us”, Reis explains.
The sociologist intends to be a candidate for the Workers' Party, to which she has been affiliated since 2007. However, the party has not yet decided who will lead the ticket for the 2020 elections. Juca Ferreira, who was recently fired by Alexandre Kalil (Social Democratic Party), mayor of Belo Horizonte, from the city's Secretariat of Culture, is considered a strong name within the party in the dispute for Bahia's capital.
Check out the full interview:
Brasil de Fato: you announced that you are a mayoral candidate for Salvador. How did this decision take place?
Vilma Reis: For us, of Mahin [Collective Luiza Mahin], in Salvador and the state of Bahia, it's important to say that in 470 years of colonial occupation in our city — because there was no discovery of Brazil let alone founding of the city of Salvador — the heirs of colonization have absolutely remained in power.
The 2015 pre-Census gave us fantastic data from Salvador, which shows 85% black men and women population. It is an embarrassment, a shame, it is absurd for the world and for us, in fact, for us, the Brazilian left, we must yearn for more.
We cannot accept the hegemony of 15% of the population in the city of Salvador, and white men, who are a minority within the white population, have hegemony in representing our city. We, from the black women's movement, in an act of colonial and patriarchal disobedience, decided to interrupt this absolute hegemony.
It is important to say that our dispute is not with any other black person, it is to stop this white hegemony in the city.
The black movement, for years, has been complaining about the low representation in spaces of power. Do you agree?
Lélia Gonzales, in 1982, by running for deputy after a political decision of the black movement, in the Workers' Party, fulfilled a historical task determined by our movements.
In 1986, Luiza Bairros and Luiz Alberto in Bahia, by the Workers' Party, Edson Cardoso in Brasília, also by the Workers' Party, and Lélia herself in Rio de Janeiro, via the Democratic Labour Party, nominated themselves. The Unified Black Movement (Movimento Negro Unificado, MNU) also had candidates in both the Workers' Party and the Democratic Labour Party.
Not to mention that all the careers of progressive whites in this country were built by us, all of them. Our understanding now is that it is no longer possible to ask us to wait, all the construction of movements that come from the street into the parties is that there will be nothing about us, without us. This is the challenge that we are building on a very consolidated basis.
We will not withdraw our pre-candidacies and we will not negotiate our pre-candidacies, not even for a game of political pragmatism. For decades we have been building the left parties, both the old and the new left. There is not one left-wing party that has risen in this country without our mass membership and it is not acceptable for our parties to have a white hegemony in charge.
What we are doing is a school of political science, open and democratic, with popular participation, to pass this debate on to the whole country: we can no longer accept that. A good revolution starts at home and if we but on a turnaround in Brazil, it must happen in our parties.
So, it is good to say that our presence in the spaces of power and in decision-making processes is important for society as a whole. Remembering Lélia Gonzales, I say that we do not fight for a society for us, we fight for a society for everyone.
To quote Angela Davis, when black women move, the whole society moves. We see this photograph in the Public Defender's Offices, with a generation of black women. The black presence in universities, universities that will never be the same.
So, this last bastion needs to be changed, the power in the parties, almost all of them controlled by whites, whites on the right and whites on the left. We do not accept that, because we built these careers.
You study mass incarceration in the country. The numbers point to a vertiginous growth and tragedies are taking over the prisons. What is your reflection on the topic?
We founded a field of thought in Brazil on incarceration policies. We introduced the racial debate on mass incarceration and on the war on drugs issue. It seemed, a decade ago, that it was possible to debate the war on drugs without mentioning race relations; it is not possible.
So, for us, talking about criminal abolitionism, new policies and drug decriminalization is not a revolutionary agenda, it is in the mouth of reformists worldwide. We think that taking the power of death from the police and agglomerations that truly command drug trafficking is fundamental.
We understand that it is not possible to debate a nation project, knowing that more than 800 thousand people are incarcerated and of this group, 42% did not even have access to a trial. At most, they had a custody hearing in that first 24-hour period and those who did not have parole there are in prison.
The abuse of preventive detention has to do with racial choices within the justice system, which appeals to criminal populism and criminalizes black bodies. It is important to say that when a black man is incarcerated, his family is incarcerated. We serve time by extension.
There are 2.1 million people directly involved in the prison system. The electronic ankle tag is the new chain on the feet of the black man. It has a different meaning for a middle class white man, he can move around, but he doesn't need to take a bus, he doesn't need to leave his house to have the world at his feet.
Now, that same electronic ankle tag on a black man or woman is the end of our lives, you left one prison and entered another. We need to fight for penal abolitionism and that has to do with the fight against racism. All white people who have an anti-racist stance need to confront Brazil's penal system.
It is important to have this empathy, but in addition to empathy, you have to position yourself and confront the white world that does not feel bothered, for example, by a custody suite. When the defender is in a custody suite, you cannot behave like someone in a club with your friends. The world is round, but the Public Defender's Office has a side.
“A good revolution starts at home and if we but on a turnaround in Brazil, it must happen in our parties.”
The black movement has denounced the genocide of black youth in the country. What explains this extermination project denounced by you?
They have no other way of holding back our people's revolt. I live in a city like Salvador where a black woman is fighting for a spot in a daycare center, which started in October, with more than 150 women. How can this be acceptable in 2019?
We have situations in this entire country, like all the horror of mining, that our people cannot accept. We are the ones who know what Mariana was like that November 5, 2015, the horror that our people went through. So, their response is to further enrich the rich and put our people in poverty.
Then, in the face of our reaction to poverty, with the minimum wage policy, the practices of [Minister of Economy] Paulo Guedes, of PEC 95 [Proposed Constitutional Amendment of the Government Expenditure Ceiling], you freeze investments in Education and Health for 20 years, there's no way to endure this.
So, in the face of our indignation, their answer is the police armed to the teeth and the police killing recklessly.
In the country that plots our cultural, physical and political elimination 24 hours a day, coming into 2019, a hundred years after Monteiro Lobato said that Brazil would need to become white to be viable as a nation, as the majority of said nation is a victory. This is our first victory.
They kill us and our blood running becomes a seed. They failed to make us a minority. This is the only country in the world outside the African continent in which they have failed to exterminate us. Imagine the massacre in Argentina, Uruguay and even in the US, which has a black population that is no more than 14%, we are 54% and the next Census will give us another victory and show that we are 56%.
There is a war against us and the centuries have shown that we have few allies. We always ask ourselves: “how did we get here in the face of this massacre?”
We left Durban [Third World Conference Against Racism], in 2001, determined to make a change in the country and we did. We went from 0.4% at the University of Brasília, for example, to blackening the classrooms of all universities in this country.
Often alone, because all the parties and intellectuals on the left were against quotas; we convinced them. In the 1988 Constituent, we approved the regulation of quilombola lands and territories. Today, we have almost 7 thousand communities identified with the Palmares Foundation certificate. We have victories.
How did you receive the news that Sérgio Camargo would be appointed president of the Palmares Foundation?
The denial of racism, in a brutally racist country like Brazil, is the very affirmation of the existence of racism.
They are weak, because they are using a black man to fulfill the role that they do not have the courage to fulfill, because they would all go to trial. We will be on the street to prevent the possession of Sérgio Camargo [he eventually was suspended on December 12].
He does not represent our accumulation of struggle, he does not represent what we are in Brazil and if the colonial landlords who occupy the Planalto Palace and those who occupy the ministries had the baseness to use a politically unpositioned black man to put this thesis on, they are losing the narrative.
They had to use Sérgio Camargo to say these things because they are cowards. We are part of a generation that gave birth to our freedom, that's why Princess Isabel is a joke.
You cannot deny racism in this country, even the most liberal and cynical people in this country admit the existence of racism, like Fernando Henrique Cardoso. We are here to say that we are going to beat all scoundrels, all lackeys, who today inappropriately occupy spaces of power. We defend a leftist culture and it is with this dignity that we say that we will survive all of you, colonial landlords and your narratives, which are supported by centuries-old lies.
Edition: Rodrigo Chagas
Vilma Reis: we decided to stop white hegemony in politics
The sociologist will be try to be the first black woman elected mayor of Salvador and warns that “there will be nothing about us, without us”
Igor Carvalho and José Eduardo Bernardes
Brasil de Fato | São Paulo (SP), December 14, 2019 09:36
Vilma Reis is one of the Workers' Party's mayoral candidates: “We cannot accept the hegemony of 15% of the population in our city” / Photo: José Eduardo Bernardes/Brasil de Fato
During the international meeting of the Black Coalition for Rights, in November, in São Paulo, the black movement defined the conquest of spaces for political representation as a priority.
The focus on the search for representation takes place in one of the most active moments in the recent history of the black movement. In recent months, militants have been in Brasília (Federal District), where they fought against the anti-crime package of Minister Sergio Moro and fought against the agreement that could result in the delivery of the Alcântara Base to the United States and the expulsion of quilombolas from their territories.
Abroad, the movement denounced the genocide against the black Brazilian population in places hitherto occupied only by Brazilian whiteness, even if on the left. The United Nations (UN), the Organization of American States (OAS), the European Parliament and even the United States Congress were attended by the militants.
At the forefront of this articulation is sociologist Vilma Reis, who demands changes in the political class of Salvador, the country's blackest capital.
A pre-candidate, she intends to become the first black woman mayor in the history of Bahia's capital, currently governed by Antônio Carlos Magalhães Neto (Democrats), heir to the white political elite that has ruled the state for decades.
Vilma Reis explains that this is not a personal ambition, but a demand of the movement.
“We cannot accept the hegemony of 15% of the population in the city of Salvador, and white men, who are a minority within the white population, have hegemony in representing our city. We, from the black women's movement, in an act of colonial and patriarchal disobedience, decided to interrupt this absolute hegemony”, she says.
One of the first obstacles, says Reis, is facing white hegemony, even in left-wing parties. “All the careers of progressive whites in this country were built by us, all of them. Our understanding now is that it is no longer possible to ask us to wait, all the construction of movements that come from the street into the parties is that there will be nothing about us, without us”, Reis explains.
The sociologist intends to be a candidate for the Workers' Party, to which she has been affiliated since 2007. However, the party has not yet decided who will lead the ticket for the 2020 elections. Juca Ferreira, who was recently fired by Alexandre Kalil (Social Democratic Party), mayor of Belo Horizonte, from the city's Secretariat of Culture, is considered a strong name within the party in the dispute for Bahia's capital.
Check out the full interview:
Brasil de Fato: you announced that you are a mayoral candidate for Salvador. How did this decision take place?
Vilma Reis: For us, of Mahin [Collective Luiza Mahin], in Salvador and the state of Bahia, it's important to say that in 470 years of colonial occupation in our city — because there was no discovery of Brazil let alone founding of the city of Salvador — the heirs of colonization have absolutely remained in power.
The 2015 pre-Census gave us fantastic data from Salvador, which shows 85% black men and women population. It is an embarrassment, a shame, it is absurd for the world and for us, in fact, for us, the Brazilian left, we must yearn for more.
We cannot accept the hegemony of 15% of the population in the city of Salvador, and white men, who are a minority within the white population, have hegemony in representing our city. We, from the black women's movement, in an act of colonial and patriarchal disobedience, decided to interrupt this absolute hegemony.
It is important to say that our dispute is not with any other black person, it is to stop this white hegemony in the city.
The black movement, for years, has been complaining about the low representation in spaces of power. Do you agree?
Lélia Gonzales, in 1982, by running for deputy after a political decision of the black movement, in the Workers' Party, fulfilled a historical task determined by our movements.
In 1986, Luiza Bairros and Luiz Alberto in Bahia, by the Workers' Party, Edson Cardoso in Brasília, also by the Workers' Party, and Lélia herself in Rio de Janeiro, via the Democratic Labour Party, nominated themselves. The Unified Black Movement (Movimento Negro Unificado, MNU) also had candidates in both the Workers' Party and the Democratic Labour Party.
Not to mention that all the careers of progressive whites in this country were built by us, all of them. Our understanding now is that it is no longer possible to ask us to wait, all the construction of movements that come from the street into the parties is that there will be nothing about us, without us. This is the challenge that we are building on a very consolidated basis.
We will not withdraw our pre-candidacies and we will not negotiate our pre-candidacies, not even for a game of political pragmatism. For decades we have been building the left parties, both the old and the new left. There is not one left-wing party that has risen in this country without our mass membership and it is not acceptable for our parties to have a white hegemony in charge.
What we are doing is a school of political science, open and democratic, with popular participation, to pass this debate on to the whole country: we can no longer accept that. A good revolution starts at home and if we but on a turnaround in Brazil, it must happen in our parties.
So, it is good to say that our presence in the spaces of power and in decision-making processes is important for society as a whole. Remembering Lélia Gonzales, I say that we do not fight for a society for us, we fight for a society for everyone.
To quote Angela Davis, when black women move, the whole society moves. We see this photograph in the Public Defender's Offices, with a generation of black women. The black presence in universities, universities that will never be the same.
So, this last bastion needs to be changed, the power in the parties, almost all of them controlled by whites, whites on the right and whites on the left. We do not accept that, because we built these careers.
You study mass incarceration in the country. The numbers point to a vertiginous growth and tragedies are taking over the prisons. What is your reflection on the topic?
We founded a field of thought in Brazil on incarceration policies. We introduced the racial debate on mass incarceration and on the war on drugs issue. It seemed, a decade ago, that it was possible to debate the war on drugs without mentioning race relations; it is not possible.
So, for us, talking about criminal abolitionism, new policies and drug decriminalization is not a revolutionary agenda, it is in the mouth of reformists worldwide. We think that taking the power of death from the police and agglomerations that truly command drug trafficking is fundamental.
We understand that it is not possible to debate a nation project, knowing that more than 800 thousand people are incarcerated and of this group, 42% did not even have access to a trial. At most, they had a custody hearing in that first 24-hour period and those who did not have parole there are in prison.
The abuse of preventive detention has to do with racial choices within the justice system, which appeals to criminal populism and criminalizes black bodies. It is important to say that when a black man is incarcerated, his family is incarcerated. We serve time by extension.
There are 2.1 million people directly involved in the prison system. The electronic ankle tag is the new chain on the feet of the black man. It has a different meaning for a middle class white man, he can move around, but he doesn't need to take a bus, he doesn't need to leave his house to have the world at his feet.
Now, that same electronic ankle tag on a black man or woman is the end of our lives, you left one prison and entered another. We need to fight for penal abolitionism and that has to do with the fight against racism. All white people who have an anti-racist stance need to confront Brazil's penal system.
It is important to have this empathy, but in addition to empathy, you have to position yourself and confront the white world that does not feel bothered, for example, by a custody suite. When the defender is in a custody suite, you cannot behave like someone in a club with your friends. The world is round, but the Public Defender's Office has a side.
“A good revolution starts at home and if we but on a turnaround in Brazil, it must happen in our parties.”
The black movement has denounced the genocide of black youth in the country. What explains this extermination project denounced by you?
They have no other way of holding back our people's revolt. I live in a city like Salvador where a black woman is fighting for a spot in a daycare center, which started in October, with more than 150 women. How can this be acceptable in 2019?
We have situations in this entire country, like all the horror of mining, that our people cannot accept. We are the ones who know what Mariana was like that November 5, 2015, the horror that our people went through. So, their response is to further enrich the rich and put our people in poverty.
Then, in the face of our reaction to poverty, with the minimum wage policy, the practices of [Minister of Economy] Paulo Guedes, of PEC 95 [Proposed Constitutional Amendment of the Government Expenditure Ceiling], you freeze investments in Education and Health for 20 years, there's no way to endure this.
So, in the face of our indignation, their answer is the police armed to the teeth and the police killing recklessly.
In the country that plots our cultural, physical and political elimination 24 hours a day, coming into 2019, a hundred years after Monteiro Lobato said that Brazil would need to become white to be viable as a nation, as the majority of said nation is a victory. This is our first victory.
They kill us and our blood running becomes a seed. They failed to make us a minority. This is the only country in the world outside the African continent in which they have failed to exterminate us. Imagine the massacre in Argentina, Uruguay and even in the US, which has a black population that is no more than 14%, we are 54% and the next Census will give us another victory and show that we are 56%.
There is a war against us and the centuries have shown that we have few allies. We always ask ourselves: “how did we get here in the face of this massacre?”
We left Durban [Third World Conference Against Racism], in 2001, determined to make a change in the country and we did. We went from 0.4% at the University of Brasília, for example, to blackening the classrooms of all universities in this country.
Often alone, because all the parties and intellectuals on the left were against quotas; we convinced them. In the 1988 Constituent, we approved the regulation of quilombola lands and territories. Today, we have almost 7 thousand communities identified with the Palmares Foundation certificate. We have victories.
How did you receive the news that Sérgio Camargo would be appointed president of the Palmares Foundation?
The denial of racism, in a brutally racist country like Brazil, is the very affirmation of the existence of racism.
They are weak, because they are using a black man to fulfill the role that they do not have the courage to fulfill, because they would all go to trial. We will be on the street to prevent the possession of Sérgio Camargo [he eventually was suspended on December 12].
He does not represent our accumulation of struggle, he does not represent what we are in Brazil and if the colonial landlords who occupy the Planalto Palace and those who occupy the ministries had the baseness to use a politically unpositioned black man to put this thesis on, they are losing the narrative.
They had to use Sérgio Camargo to say these things because they are cowards. We are part of a generation that gave birth to our freedom, that's why Princess Isabel is a joke.
You cannot deny racism in this country, even the most liberal and cynical people in this country admit the existence of racism, like Fernando Henrique Cardoso. We are here to say that we are going to beat all scoundrels, all lackeys, who today inappropriately occupy spaces of power. We defend a leftist culture and it is with this dignity that we say that we will survive all of you, colonial landlords and your narratives, which are supported by centuries-old lies.
Edition: Rodrigo Chagas
Vilma Reis: we decided to stop white hegemony in politics
Kribi: a Palenquero web dictionary
Cristian Agámez Pájaro | @ElUniversalCtg | December 29, 2019 12:00 AM |
Cristina Isabel De la Hoz Márquez is the creator of a Palenquero virtual dictionary. // Photos: Courtesy.
Having the ability to reinvent ourselves and reinvent the world can make us somewhat different. It can make you stand out. The struggles that we carry internally or externally for ourselves and those around us too. Cristina De la Hoz Márquez, 27, has a bit of both: a formula has been reinvented so that she can fight for her and for those around her, for Palenque, so that the world knows her language and her ethnic language remains alive.
Cristina is an entrepreneur who invented a virtual dictionary of her ancestral language. She was born in one of the urban palenques of Barranquilla, with her roots being in San Basilio de Palenque (Bolívar). She is a relative of Evaristo Márquez, the legendary actor of the movie Quemada, and her mother is Edith Márquez Reyes, an outstanding educator, founder of the first Ethno-educational School of the Barranquilla District Benkos Biohó, now known as Paulino Salgado ‘Batata’. “My whole life has been a leadership academy that has allowed me to grow as a woman, as a human being and work to highlight and safeguard the best of my ethnicity, my Palenquera community and the African history that belongs to me”, says the young woman, who has two younger brothers. Much of her childhood was spent in that same school and, at every opportunity, she visited and still visits San Basilio de Palenque.
Trip to Europe
Due to her her work, Cristina was recently invited by the Presidential Ministry for Youth and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Colombia to participate with a group of six young Colombians in the Più Libri Più Liberi (More free books) fair, in Rome, Italy. She tells us that “it took me by surprise. They were following the work I do and they invited me. They called me, I said yes and like a week later I was already in Rome”. There she exchanged knowledge with participants. “Cristina spoke about the importance of recovering and promoting Palenquera culture in the country and bringing young people closer to their roots, as well as the importance of exalting Afro-Colombian culture and heritage”, says the Ministry for Youth through the press release.
According to the Ministry of Culture: “In Colombia there are approximately 68 native languages spoken by about 850,000 people. Among them are 65 indigenous or Amerindian languages, two Creole languages spoken by Afro-descendants: the English-lexicon based Creole spoken in San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina and the Spanish-lexicon based Ri Palenge creole, spoken in San Basilio de Palenque, Cartagena and Barranquilla, where the Palenqueros reside”. Cristina has devoted at least the last five years of her life to promoting, researching and collecting data from the Ri Palenge.
“Why is the Palenquero language mostly studied by foreigners and we do not research it so much ourselves?” is the question and reason that perhaps motivated her to do so at that time. “In 2014 I started working on Palenquero language with the creation of a database that later served to make the first Spanish–Palenquero electronic dictionary, on PDF, A ten mbila”, she says. In order to do this, she relied on members of the community and other researchers.
Makeda Kahina
Her research was strengthened while studying Public Accounting at Universidad del Norte at Barranquilla, a profession she chose with the goal of starting her own company, “in order to handle my own bills”, she says. She works as an administrator in a residential complex in Barranquilla and alternates this with her work as a cultural manager. She has been part of organizations such as Aiesec, Eneua, Wiwa Collective and Fumcat. In 2016, “when I felt a little empowered from my story and wanted to share it with others, I created an Afro-descendant student group at Universidad del Norte; at that time there were groups of Arabic dance, music, drawing, LGBTI community, but not an Afro-descendant group. With the help of Student Welfare we opened the invitation for other students, in the first semester more than 100 students enrolled, but at this time 30 students enrolled”, she says. The Afro-descendant student group is called Makeda Kahina. She states that “these same young people believed in the value of studying who we are starting from our roots, handling different points of view and working together in didactic classes, the result of a collaborative work with leaders of the Afro-descendant community in Barranquilla, including Dolcey Romero Jaramillo and Francisco Adelmo Asprilla”. This research also led her to work at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, teaching Spanish and supporting research on the Palenquero language. Additionally, she created the short film Icha, with which she participated in Evaristo Márquez International Film Festival in 2018, named after her uncle, in San Basilio de Palenque.
Kribi–escribir
All of this happened before Kribi was born in 2019, a pedagogical tool that helps to learn and practice the Palenquero lexicon. The Palenquero word kribi means to write, and the dictionary can be found at www.kribi.com.co. Having a lexical basis in Spanish, many words are similar to this language and more than 1,500 are collected in the digital tool. “A lot of the words we use on the Coast have a Palenquero origin, I don't know if you know in Barranquilla there is a place called La Troja; troja in Palenquero means table. It is a place for sharing”, says Cristina. “All those young people who make and have been part of Afro Makeda Kahina, the Afro-descendant and Palenquero leaders who have extended their arms to embrace this idea and make it a reality, without them this would not be possible today, they have been a motivating fuel for this project”, she says. “My dream is that this pedagogical tool becomes the basis for future research in relation to the language and the first tool to learn and practice the Palenquero lexicon, thus becoming a powerful point of reference of Afro-descendant culture”, she says, while adding that they are planning to add games and interactive tools to the page next year. “Next year I start a master's degree in Education and this is how I see myself: teaching my community, creating and sustaining tools, creating new curricula, new proposals; I see Kribi as a diffuser of Afro-descendant culture. The Palenquero language is considered by UNESCO an intangible cultural heritage, it reminds us of part of our history, we must take it as something that belongs to all of us and that must be valued and maintained over time. It has an incredible history that must be safeguarded for centuries to come”.
Some words that can be found on the Kribi dictionary:
Anchobéro: opportunist.
Basayá: to mistreat.
Barentiérra: bed.
Debaneo: deffect.
Delario: pain.
Furatéro: foreigner.
Gobbé: to return, to become.
Gongoroko: baby food.
Konsirerasió: consideration.
Krito: Christ.
Kattajena: Cartagena.
Matabalá: bocachico fish.
Selelé: fight, fuss.
Teto: embarrassment, shame.
Tolondrón: rude.
Usukulu: night.
Un Diota: back in the day, in the past.
U: expresses admiration.
Behind Kribi:
Kribi's staff is made up of: Angie Zuñiga, CIO; Nino Mercado, CTO; Aldair Soto, CDO; Esteban Torregroza, ACM; and Cristina De la Hoz, CEO.
Kribi: a Palenquero web dictionary
Cristian Agámez Pájaro | @ElUniversalCtg | December 29, 2019 12:00 AM |
Cristina Isabel De la Hoz Márquez is the creator of a Palenquero virtual dictionary. // Photos: Courtesy.
Having the ability to reinvent ourselves and reinvent the world can make us somewhat different. It can make you stand out. The struggles that we carry internally or externally for ourselves and those around us too. Cristina De la Hoz Márquez, 27, has a bit of both: a formula has been reinvented so that she can fight for her and for those around her, for Palenque, so that the world knows her language and her ethnic language remains alive.
Cristina is an entrepreneur who invented a virtual dictionary of her ancestral language. She was born in one of the urban palenques of Barranquilla, with her roots being in San Basilio de Palenque (Bolívar). She is a relative of Evaristo Márquez, the legendary actor of the movie Quemada, and her mother is Edith Márquez Reyes, an outstanding educator, founder of the first Ethno-educational School of the Barranquilla District Benkos Biohó, now known as Paulino Salgado ‘Batata’. “My whole life has been a leadership academy that has allowed me to grow as a woman, as a human being and work to highlight and safeguard the best of my ethnicity, my Palenquera community and the African history that belongs to me”, says the young woman, who has two younger brothers. Much of her childhood was spent in that same school and, at every opportunity, she visited and still visits San Basilio de Palenque.
Trip to Europe
Due to her her work, Cristina was recently invited by the Presidential Ministry for Youth and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Colombia to participate with a group of six young Colombians in the Più Libri Più Liberi (More free books) fair, in Rome, Italy. She tells us that “it took me by surprise. They were following the work I do and they invited me. They called me, I said yes and like a week later I was already in Rome”. There she exchanged knowledge with participants. “Cristina spoke about the importance of recovering and promoting Palenquera culture in the country and bringing young people closer to their roots, as well as the importance of exalting Afro-Colombian culture and heritage”, says the Ministry for Youth through the press release.
According to the Ministry of Culture: “In Colombia there are approximately 68 native languages spoken by about 850,000 people. Among them are 65 indigenous or Amerindian languages, two Creole languages spoken by Afro-descendants: the English-lexicon based Creole spoken in San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina and the Spanish-lexicon based Ri Palenge creole, spoken in San Basilio de Palenque, Cartagena and Barranquilla, where the Palenqueros reside”. Cristina has devoted at least the last five years of her life to promoting, researching and collecting data from the Ri Palenge.
“Why is the Palenquero language mostly studied by foreigners and we do not research it so much ourselves?” is the question and reason that perhaps motivated her to do so at that time. “In 2014 I started working on Palenquero language with the creation of a database that later served to make the first Spanish–Palenquero electronic dictionary, on PDF, A ten mbila”, she says. In order to do this, she relied on members of the community and other researchers.
Makeda Kahina
Her research was strengthened while studying Public Accounting at Universidad del Norte at Barranquilla, a profession she chose with the goal of starting her own company, “in order to handle my own bills”, she says. She works as an administrator in a residential complex in Barranquilla and alternates this with her work as a cultural manager. She has been part of organizations such as Aiesec, Eneua, Wiwa Collective and Fumcat. In 2016, “when I felt a little empowered from my story and wanted to share it with others, I created an Afro-descendant student group at Universidad del Norte; at that time there were groups of Arabic dance, music, drawing, LGBTI community, but not an Afro-descendant group. With the help of Student Welfare we opened the invitation for other students, in the first semester more than 100 students enrolled, but at this time 30 students enrolled”, she says. The Afro-descendant student group is called Makeda Kahina. She states that “these same young people believed in the value of studying who we are starting from our roots, handling different points of view and working together in didactic classes, the result of a collaborative work with leaders of the Afro-descendant community in Barranquilla, including Dolcey Romero Jaramillo and Francisco Adelmo Asprilla”. This research also led her to work at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, teaching Spanish and supporting research on the Palenquero language. Additionally, she created the short film Icha, with which she participated in Evaristo Márquez International Film Festival in 2018, named after her uncle, in San Basilio de Palenque.
Kribi–escribir
All of this happened before Kribi was born in 2019, a pedagogical tool that helps to learn and practice the Palenquero lexicon. The Palenquero word kribi means to write, and the dictionary can be found at www.kribi.com.co. Having a lexical basis in Spanish, many words are similar to this language and more than 1,500 are collected in the digital tool. “A lot of the words we use on the Coast have a Palenquero origin, I don't know if you know in Barranquilla there is a place called La Troja; troja in Palenquero means table. It is a place for sharing”, says Cristina. “All those young people who make and have been part of Afro Makeda Kahina, the Afro-descendant and Palenquero leaders who have extended their arms to embrace this idea and make it a reality, without them this would not be possible today, they have been a motivating fuel for this project”, she says. “My dream is that this pedagogical tool becomes the basis for future research in relation to the language and the first tool to learn and practice the Palenquero lexicon, thus becoming a powerful point of reference of Afro-descendant culture”, she says, while adding that they are planning to add games and interactive tools to the page next year. “Next year I start a master's degree in Education and this is how I see myself: teaching my community, creating and sustaining tools, creating new curricula, new proposals; I see Kribi as a diffuser of Afro-descendant culture. The Palenquero language is considered by UNESCO an intangible cultural heritage, it reminds us of part of our history, we must take it as something that belongs to all of us and that must be valued and maintained over time. It has an incredible history that must be safeguarded for centuries to come”.
Some words that can be found on the Kribi dictionary:
Anchobéro: opportunist.
Basayá: to mistreat.
Barentiérra: bed.
Debaneo: deffect.
Delario: pain.
Furatéro: foreigner.
Gobbé: to return, to become.
Gongoroko: baby food.
Konsirerasió: consideration.
Krito: Christ.
Kattajena: Cartagena.
Matabalá: bocachico fish.
Selelé: fight, fuss.
Teto: embarrassment, shame.
Tolondrón: rude.
Usukulu: night.
Un Diota: back in the day, in the past.
U: expresses admiration.
Behind Kribi:
Kribi's staff is made up of: Angie Zuñiga, CIO; Nino Mercado, CTO; Aldair Soto, CDO; Esteban Torregroza, ACM; and Cristina De la Hoz, CEO.
Kribi: a Palenquero web dictionary
Beware of Pompeo
Christophe Simpson | 21 January 2020
The US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, is arriving in Jamaica today. His predecessor, Rex Tillerson, also visited Jamaica briefly in 2018. Just as we denounced Tillerson’s visit in 2018, we are denouncing Pompeo’s visit now, and for the same reason; the US is trying to divide the region and pit our leaders against each other.
Rex Tillerson had an obsession with Venezuela because of his career history in ExxonMobil, a company which felt entitled to take oil from Venezuela to make huge profits while paying little to nothing to benefit the country. Multiple oil companies had been operating in Venezuela, and ExxonMobil was the only company which refused to pay increased taxes on the oil they extracted in Venezuela; the government reacted by nationalising ExxonMobil’s assets, while other oil companies continued to operate and comply with the increased taxes. Rex Tillerson was the CEO of ExxonMobil, and later became the Secretary of State, which is the equivalent of a Foreign Affairs Minister. He relentlessly pursued a hostile foreign policy towards Venezuela.
Mike Pompeo is the former director of the CIA; he admitted that he and his colleagues lied, stole, and cheated as a part of their work. The CIA is a wicked organisation which has intentionally destabilised other countries’ governments, and has done other things which have resulted in violence against civilians in many forms. Now, being the Secretary of State, he seems to have an obsession with both Cuba and Venezuela. They brag about being able to punish entire countries, including causing over 50% inflation in Iran due to sanctions similar to the ones imposed on Venezuela. He also brags about sanctions against Cuba, and fully enforcing the blockade against Cuba which previous administrations enforced only partially, a move which even Canada and the European Union are not happy with..
Right now, the US is spreading the absurd myth that the government of Venezuela is a puppet regime of Cuba which is stealing Venezuela’s resources to benefit Cuba. With this myth, it is justifying sanctions against Cuba to add to the effects of the infamous blockade that we have called “the embargo” for decades. Just a few days ago, Pompeo was praising Luis Almagro, the head of the OAS, for promoting intervention in Latin American countries that don’t bow down to the US.
Almagro was the Foreign Minister of Uruguay under the presidency of Jose Mujica, who was called the “poorest president in the world”. After initially endorsing him to become the head of the OAS, Mujica condemned Almagro when he saw his true colours. Since becoming leader of the OAS, Almagro has been at odds with CARICOM and multiple governments in the region for his promotion of intervention in Venezuela and Bolivia, while defending the emerging dictatorships in Ecuador and Chile. Almagro also promoted intervention in Dominica’s recent elections. Cuba is no longer a member of the OAS, and considers it to be the “US’ Ministry of Colonies” - mocking it and Almagro for promoting the interests of the US in the region.
The current government of Jamaica claims to be in solidarity with Cuba against the blockade and sanctions, so we find it contradictory that they are uncritically welcoming someone like Pompeo while his hostile and divisive agenda is obvious. In an interview at the Texas A&M University, he identified “the Cubans” as one of the US’ “adversaries” alongside al-Qaida and ISIS. His measures against Venezuela have hurt Cuba, causing severe fuel shortages by interrupting legitimate trade deals.
This meeting in Jamaica will be a follow-up of the meeting that Trump invited Andrew Holness to, last year. Trump met with only a handful of leaders of the Caribbean at his private resort in Florida, but Holness called it the “Caribbean Leaders Summit” which attracted major criticism from the governments of multiple CARICOM countries. Likewise, this visit by Pompeo will include meetings with only a select subset of Caribbean leaders; the government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines was not invited to participate. Keith Rowley denounced the meeting last year as an event to support regime change, and Mia Mottley is denouncing this event now, distancing herself from Andrew Holness and rebuking Donald Trump, and also saying that it is dividing CARICOM. Both Mottley and Rowley are boycotting the meeting with Pompeo.
In the past, Jamaica was known for its principled foreign policy. Now, we have a government that seems to do anything for handshakes and smiles with questionable characters who will turn their backs on us at any moment, having no loyalty to our nation’s true friends who have continued to seek good relations with us despite the Jamaican government’s betrayal of them.
Beware of Pompeo
Christophe Simpson | 21 January 2020
The US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, is arriving in Jamaica today. His predecessor, Rex Tillerson, also visited Jamaica briefly in 2018. Just as we denounced Tillerson’s visit in 2018, we are denouncing Pompeo’s visit now, and for the same reason; the US is trying to divide the region and pit our leaders against each other.
Rex Tillerson had an obsession with Venezuela because of his career history in ExxonMobil, a company which felt entitled to take oil from Venezuela to make huge profits while paying little to nothing to benefit the country. Multiple oil companies had been operating in Venezuela, and ExxonMobil was the only company which refused to pay increased taxes on the oil they extracted in Venezuela; the government reacted by nationalising ExxonMobil’s assets, while other oil companies continued to operate and comply with the increased taxes. Rex Tillerson was the CEO of ExxonMobil, and later became the Secretary of State, which is the equivalent of a Foreign Affairs Minister. He relentlessly pursued a hostile foreign policy towards Venezuela.
Mike Pompeo is the former director of the CIA; he admitted that he and his colleagues lied, stole, and cheated as a part of their work. The CIA is a wicked organisation which has intentionally destabilised other countries’ governments, and has done other things which have resulted in violence against civilians in many forms. Now, being the Secretary of State, he seems to have an obsession with both Cuba and Venezuela. They brag about being able to punish entire countries, including causing over 50% inflation in Iran due to sanctions similar to the ones imposed on Venezuela. He also brags about sanctions against Cuba, and fully enforcing the blockade against Cuba which previous administrations enforced only partially, a move which even Canada and the European Union are not happy with..
Right now, the US is spreading the absurd myth that the government of Venezuela is a puppet regime of Cuba which is stealing Venezuela’s resources to benefit Cuba. With this myth, it is justifying sanctions against Cuba to add to the effects of the infamous blockade that we have called “the embargo” for decades. Just a few days ago, Pompeo was praising Luis Almagro, the head of the OAS, for promoting intervention in Latin American countries that don’t bow down to the US.
Almagro was the Foreign Minister of Uruguay under the presidency of Jose Mujica, who was called the “poorest president in the world”. After initially endorsing him to become the head of the OAS, Mujica condemned Almagro when he saw his true colours. Since becoming leader of the OAS, Almagro has been at odds with CARICOM and multiple governments in the region for his promotion of intervention in Venezuela and Bolivia, while defending the emerging dictatorships in Ecuador and Chile. Almagro also promoted intervention in Dominica’s recent elections. Cuba is no longer a member of the OAS, and considers it to be the “US’ Ministry of Colonies” - mocking it and Almagro for promoting the interests of the US in the region.
The current government of Jamaica claims to be in solidarity with Cuba against the blockade and sanctions, so we find it contradictory that they are uncritically welcoming someone like Pompeo while his hostile and divisive agenda is obvious. In an interview at the Texas A&M University, he identified “the Cubans” as one of the US’ “adversaries” alongside al-Qaida and ISIS. His measures against Venezuela have hurt Cuba, causing severe fuel shortages by interrupting legitimate trade deals.
This meeting in Jamaica will be a follow-up of the meeting that Trump invited Andrew Holness to, last year. Trump met with only a handful of leaders of the Caribbean at his private resort in Florida, but Holness called it the “Caribbean Leaders Summit” which attracted major criticism from the governments of multiple CARICOM countries. Likewise, this visit by Pompeo will include meetings with only a select subset of Caribbean leaders; the government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines was not invited to participate. Keith Rowley denounced the meeting last year as an event to support regime change, and Mia Mottley is denouncing this event now, distancing herself from Andrew Holness and rebuking Donald Trump, and also saying that it is dividing CARICOM. Both Mottley and Rowley are boycotting the meeting with Pompeo.
In the past, Jamaica was known for its principled foreign policy. Now, we have a government that seems to do anything for handshakes and smiles with questionable characters who will turn their backs on us at any moment, having no loyalty to our nation’s true friends who have continued to seek good relations with us despite the Jamaican government’s betrayal of them.
Beware of Pompeo