Inclusion of Afro-Colombians

Since July 4, 1991, a new constitution has allowed Colombians to exercise their citizenship by displaying cultural diversity rather than by concealing it as required by the previous political charter. Paradoxically, invisibility continues not only to impede full ethnic inclusion of Afro-Colombians but to aggravate ethnic asymmetries that, in turn, erode nonviolent coexistence among the black and Indian people who have shared portions of the Baud6 River valley (Department of Choco) for at least 150 years. Until the late 1980s, integration was the main strategy for achieving national unity in Latin America. It was argued that, by comparison with models based on state-enforced racial segregation such as the one applied earlier in the U.S. South, it resulted in more interethnic tolerance (De Carvalho, Doria, and Oliveira, 1995; de la Fuente, 1996; Harris et al., 1993). Nonetheless, after the 1960s, Indian and Afro-American political movements began to point out that amalgamation had resulted in the cultural annihilation of ethnic minorities and significant losses of ancestral territories. In response, countries such as Brazil and Nicaragua approved constitutions that legitimated ethnic diversity and its consequent territorial and political rights (Arocha, 1989). In Colombia, Indians and Afro-Colombians took part directly or indirectly in a National Constitutional Assembly that, in 1991, eliminated assimilationism.