When Rights Ring Hollow: Racism and Anti-Racist Horizons in the Americas I

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

The Red de Investigacion Accion Anti-Racista en las Americas (RAIAR) has been carrying out an ambitious research project spanning 7 countries (Bolivia, Brazil, Guatemala, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and the U.S.) to analyze the retrenchment in Latin America (and with a different temporal frame, in the United States as well), of a two-decade expansion of Afro-descendant and indigenous collective rights. In some cases the end of the "multicultural turn" has been abrupt, evidenced in a dramatic reversal in the record of respect for, and implementation of, Afro-descendant and indigenous rights; in others, it has been more subtle, or there was no expansion at all. The research carried out in the seven case studies sought to map this historical trajectory of racial formation and anti-racist mobilization in each country, and focused ethnographically on a specific example of anti-racist organizing. The project as a whole sought to answer the following questions: 1. How can we explain transformations, constrictions or closure in the advance of rights and, in some cases, increasing economic disparities with respect to racialized populations? 2. What are the strategic implications of this transformation with respect to anti-racist mobilization? 3. How is structural racism produced and reproduced at the present moment, as in the paradox of “racism without race”? 4. What local, national and international strategies are currently being pursued in the Americas to address racism and racial disparities? The purpose of this double panel is to disseminate the research results from each country within a comparative framework that will provide an analysis allowing for a broader understanding of the historical, current and future dimensions of racism in the hemisphere and the potential for change at the local, national and international level.

Sub Track

• Afro-Latin/Indigenous Peoples

Session Organizer

• Juliet A Hooker, University of Texas/Austin

Chair

• Pamela R Calla Ortega, New York University

Individual Presentations

• Anti-Racismo y mujeres indigenas en Bolivia - Cecilia Salazar de la Torre, UMSA; Martin Torrico

• La lucha contra el extractivismo como una lucha anti-racista en Guatemala - Rigoberto Ajcalon Choy

• Luchas Mapuches, Racismo y contra-Insurgencia contra la Movilizacion Mapuche en Chile - Héctor Javier Nahuelpán Moreno, Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS)

• Racismo y Criminalización de la Pobreza y Protesta Social en Guerrero, Mexico - Jaime Garcia, Universidad Autónoma de Guerrero

Discussant

• Charles R Hale, University of Texas/Austin