The crisis in the modern/colonial capitalist world-system that began to mature in the mid-1970s culminated in the launch of the neoliberal project in the 1980s as a true counterrevolution in response to the wave of anti-systemic movements of the 1960s and 1970s. The so-called lost decade of the 1980s marked a new moment in the organization of Afro-descendants in the Americas south of the Rio Grande. First Congress of Black Cultures in the Americas Held in Cali, Colombia in August 1977, it revealed a long history of Afro-descendant association throughout the region, while also marking an emerging process of transnational network formation, the fruits of which were seen in the leading role of Afro-Latin American leadership in the Third World Conference Against Racism and Related Forms of Discrimination held in Durban, South Africa in 2001.

The strengthening of organizations at local and national levels that enabled the weaving of transnational networks in the 1990s must be historically situated within the struggles for territory, citizenship, ecology, substantive democracy, redistribution of wealth and power, representation, and recognition of diversities (ethnic-racial, gender, sexuality, and generational) that emerged forcefully in the heat of what was known as Washington ConsensusThree main milestones in collective action were the Continental Campaign of 500 Years of Indigenous, Black, and Popular Resistance In 1992, the struggles against Free Trade Agreements and the processes of organizing and defining a political agenda led to the Santiago, Chile Conference in 2000, in preparation for the Durban meeting in 2001. Partly as a result of these struggles, a series of constitutional changes occurred—beginning with Nicaragua in 1987, Brazil in 1988, and Colombia in 1991—that broke with the monolithic view of the relationship between ethnicity, race, and nation in the region, by declaring the states multi-ethnic, intercultural, and later, in the cases of Ecuador and Bolivia, plurinational. In this context, a networked movement of Afro-descendants emerged throughout the region, where two social movement organizations stand out: the Network of Afro-Latin American, Caribbean and Diaspora Women, founded in the Dominican Republic in 1992, and the Strategic Alliance of Afro-descendants in Latin America, conceived in Ecuador in 1998 and consolidated in Santiago de Chile in 2000.  

The emergence of Afro-descendants as political actors throughout the region had a series of positive outcomes that transformed racial politics and political culture. The fact that all Latin American countries signed the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, recognizing slavery as a crime against humanity and structural racism as an endemic problem, remains a significant symbolic achievement in the realm of governmental discourse. The ongoing activism of Afro-descendant civil society at the national and regional levels resulted in a series of public policies against racism, in favor of racial equity, and for the political representation of Black citizens.

A prime example is the creation, during Lula's first presidency, of the Secretariat for Racial Equity in Brazil (SEPPIR), a unique government body in the world. The establishment of various initiatives explicitly against racism, for racial equity, and for Afro-descendant representation in state structures was implemented in a differentiated manner and with varying levels of commitment and practical effectiveness across the region. The emergence of what has been termed the Afro-descendant political field in Latin America and the Caribbean also influenced the policies of transnational institutions such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Inter-American Foundation; branches of the U.S. imperialist state such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID); and NGOs such as Global Rights. These institutions conducted studies, formulated policies, allocated funds, and designed programs for Afro-descendants in Latin America and the Caribbean. One of the collective research tasks is to map public policies, both from states and transnational institutions, to analyze their theoretical and epistemic guidelines (explicit or implicit), as well as their political vocation and character, and to evaluate their effects.         

The first two decades of the 21st century have been a historical stage for what the African philosopher Achille Mbembe has categorized as a the world's dark turn This implies, on the one hand, the generalization of the web of violence—economic, ecological, imperial, geopolitical, territorial, sexual, and racial—that has given substance to anti-Black racism; and on the other hand, the prominence of the centrality of African subjects in the struggles for decoloniality, democracy, justice, equality, and ecological harmony—in short, for liberation and well-being on the planet. Given a particularly perverse set of profound problems that combines chronic increases in unemployment, marginalization, famine, mass migrations, imperial interventions, accumulation by dispossession, the erosion of liberal democracies accompanied by the rise of despotic and bourgeois power, the intensification of ecological disasters, and a lack of future prospects in the common sense of millions, the current global condition is characterized as one of civilizational crisis.

One of the main symptoms of the civilizational crisis is what we have termed the reconfiguration of racism, a category used to account for and analyze the forms, practices, and dynamics of racialization and racial domination in the era of neoliberal globalization. One of the research areas of this Working Group must be precisely to identify and analyze racial formations, racist regimes, and ethnic-racial policies in the era of neoliberal globalization and its crises.

The leading role of Afro-Latin American social movements tends to go unnoticed or be relegated to the background in most analyses of collective struggles and actions in the region. Moreover, considering the argument presented by Aníbal Quijano and elaborated upon by many others, that ethnic-racial classification and racism as a regime of domination are key components of the modern/colonial power matrix that has shaped capitalist modernity since the emergence of its globalization process in the long 16th century to the present day, it is imperative to establish a working group of this kind to analyze the civilizational crisis we are experiencing, its symptoms, and the alternatives formulated from above and below, through the lens of Afro-descendant historical agency.   

In this GT we will investigate the relationship between Civilizational Crisis, Reconfigurations of Racism, and Afro-Latin American Social MovementsThis study will be conducted in three phases (each spanning approximately a decade) and will be structured around four thematic axes: 1) Afroepistemology, 2) Afro-Latin American Social Movements, 3) Black Feminisms and Intersectionality, and 4) Racial States and Ethnic-Racial Policies. We will maintain a long-term historical perspective that allows us to understand the phenomena and processes we will study within a broader temporal framework, enabling us to identify continuities and ruptures, general patterns and particularities in time and space.

The first period to be investigated will begin in the early 1990s, when Afro-Latin American social movement networks began to consolidate, and consequently, the ethnic-racial question and the political relevance of Black citizenships captured the attention of both states and transnational institutions. This was a time of effervescence in protests and collective actions, giving rise to new arenas of struggle and social movement formations, notably Indigenous, environmental, feminist, student, peasant, and urban movements. The Black movements that emerged in this context are part of this political constellation, but they have not received the recognition they deserve, and this in itself constitutes a research question. Research on this topic has been conducted in Latin America, Europe, and the United States, so part of the task is to conduct a state-of-the-art review of the literature (in academic communities, governmental spaces, transnational institutions, and knowledge produced within social movement settings) on Black movements and ethnic-racial policies in relation to Afro-descendant citizenships during this period in the region. One of the results of this era of struggles was the election of a series of progressive and new left governments, which have been called by different names, including the Red-Pink Wave and 21st Century Socialism, which constitutes the distinctive element of the beginning of the new millennium.

The second phase is the first decade of the 21st century. In this context, one of the Working Group's objectives will be to map the forms of Afro-descendant organization, the ethnic and racial policies of states, and their impacts on the living conditions and political cultures of Black communities and citizens. One project would be to create this map under progressive governments, alongside a related research initiative that would compare them with right-wing administrations, such as that of Uribe in Colombia, which also developed its own repertoire of ethnic and racial policies related to the Afro-Colombian population. Colombia is one of the countries that requires the most attention, not only because it is the Spanish-speaking territory with the largest Afro-descendant population, but also because it has a long history of Afro-descendant intellectual and political production, a unique history of legislation for Black rights (the much-studied Law 70 of 1993), and one of the most vibrant Black public spheres. The first part of the 21st century also marks the peak of the Durban Agenda against racism, which is important to analyze in terms of its impact on the organization and political cultures of Black communities in the region, as well as on the discourses and practices of states, NGOs, and transnational institutions. This period also encompasses the 2008 financial crisis, which marked a turning point in the global crisis. For the purposes of this Working Group, this implies investigating the relationships between this economic and political malaise, the reconfigurations of racism, and the emergence of collective action.

The third historical juncture we will study will be from 2010 to 2022—the end date of this proposal. 2011, as the International Year for People of African Descent, brought to a head a significant set of differences and debates within Afro-Latin American political arenas, which were expressed with particular clarity in the political and ideological struggle between the World Summit of Afro-descendants carried out in Honduras and the Fourth Meeting of Afro-descendants for Revolutionary Transformations in Latin America which took place in Venezuela. One of our objectives will be to map the Afro-descendant political field in the region, which involves identifying, characterizing, and differentiating actors, spaces, discourses, practices, policies, and projects. In theoretical and methodological terms, one of the distinctive features of this Working Group is to promote a transdisciplinary analysis where the political, the cultural, and the epistemic are fluidly intertwined. For this reason, the Working Group brings together intellectuals from diverse backgrounds, ranging from social scientists to critics and cultural creators, academics, and activists. The four thematic axes will allow us to analyze the civilizational crisis, the reconfigurations of racism, and the alternatives that emerge both from state policies and from communities and movements, from different perspectives.  

2011 is also known as a year of resistance and insurgencies, such as the Arab Spring (which was also an African Spring), the Occupy movement in the United States, the civil uprising in Greece, and the Indignados in Spain. A key question in our research is how to situate Afro-Latin American social movements within this context. It has been observed that studies and writings on the 2011 rebellions tend not to situate them in relation to Latin America. Moreover, we argue here that Black social movements in Latin America tend to be invisible in both academic and leftist literature regarding analyses of the Red-Pink Wave and so-called 21st-Century Socialism. In this sense, the case of Cuba, where an anti-racist movement with notable Afro-Cuban leadership has emerged, is key both for analyzing the strengths and limitations of universal social justice policies and understanding the racial contradictions of post-capitalist societies, and for exploring the meanings of 21st-Century Socialism.

The relative shift in the current climate of progressivism, marked by the emergence of authoritarian administrations with openly neo-conservative ideologies in Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia, demands a thorough investigation of both the support of Afro-descendant sectors for these political forms and the effects their governance practices will have on the reconfiguration of racism, modes of association, community structures, and political subjectivities. In the case of Brazil, the virtual elimination of the Secretariat of Racial Equity, attacks on the territorial integrity of Quilombola communities, Christian fundamentalist violence against Candomblé Terreiros, and the assassinations of Black leaders like Marielle Franco paint a picture of necropolitics that is catalyzing strong resistance among Afro-Brazilian activists. In contrast to necropolitics, in Afro-Brazilian communities, in Candomblé terreiros, in social movement spaces, and in critical places in the academic world, proposals of Afroepistemology are cultivated as a principle of liberation, where the category of Ubuntu is elaborated as a political and epistemic signifier of decoloniality and liberation in the key of Africanness.

The work we will carry out in this Working Group has theoretical, methodological, and political relevance in relation to several fields of research and analysis. The main areas to which our work will contribute are: Latin American and Caribbean Critical Theory, Decolonial Critique, Feminist Critique, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Political Theory, Social Movements, State and Public Policy, and Cultural Studies. We will do this through the following four thematic axes. 

Afroepistemology: Black Thought, African-Based Religious Traditions as Philosophies of Liberation, Afro-American Literatures as Decolonial Discourses, Black Cultural Expressions (Art-Literature, Music, Dance) as Practices of Resistance.

Afro-Latin American Social MovementsCollective Actions, Repertoires of Action, Political Cultures, Forms of Organization, Movement Networks, Relations with States and Transnational Institutions. Resistance and Resilience. Political Subjectivities.

Black Feminisms and IntersectionalityCartographies of Black Feminisms, Gender Struggles and Sexuality within the Afro-descendant Political Field. Intersectionality, Methodology and Politics. Intertwined Inequalities.

Racial States and Ethnic-Racial PoliciesGlobal Crisis, Ethnic-Racial Division of Labor and Reconfigurations of Racism; New Right and Neo-Racisms; Policies of Racial Equity and their political and societal impacts; Afro-reparations, Historical Projects and Horizons of the Future.