RIGHTS-LATAM: Descendants of Africans Make Appeal to UN

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, May 29 2002 (IPS) - Representatives of African descendants in the Americas are seeking United Nations action to encourage recognition of the multi-ethnic reality of the Western Hemisphere and the inclusion of the population’s ethnic and racial origins in national censuses in order to give their communities greater visibility.

The first demand, aimed at all governments of the Americas, but particularly those of Latin America, calls for constitutional guarantees for the rights of their populations of African origins.

The conclusions of a regional seminar of African descendants that took place in March in Honduras were presented this week to the UN Working Group on Minorities.

The representatives of these communities in Latin America are calling on governments to study the ethnic and racial origins of their populations through national censuses and other research mechanisms.

These studies must include the social indicators for each group, including education, health, housing, income and employment, according to the statement issued by the regional meeting in March.

The idea is that the data would serve as the basis for drafting social policies that reduce the inequalities existing between the African descendants and the general population.

In the case of the Dominican Republic, for example, the national census should provide data on the number of Haitian immigrants – who are mostly of African descent – arriving and the length of their residence in Dominican territory, said Solange Pierre, director of the Dominican-Haitian Women’s Movement, Tuesday in Geneva.

Censuses would grant greater visibility to the black communities, but before they are conducted an educational campaign should be carried out to prevent prejudices from skewing the conclusions, said Lucía Dominga Molina, director of the Indo-African American Cultural Centre in Santa Fe, Argentina.

In Argentina, where approximately six percent of the population is of African ancestry, it is essential to change the way blacks are portrayed in school textbooks, she said.

Currently, the school curriculum presents the African American community in a denigrating way, one that belongs to the slave era, and hurts the self-esteem of its members, stated Molina.

The UN Working Group on Minorities is to discuss the demands of the African Americans during its sessions this week. The conclusions will be presented to the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, slated to meet in Geneva in July.

The Sub-Commission is expected, in turn, to urge member states to comply with the demands of the Working Group through a recommendation to the Commission on Human Rights, the maximum authority on the matter at the UN, scheduled to meet in March 2003.

One of the experts of the Working Group on Minorities, José Bengoa, a Chilean national, stressed the importance of the meeting held earlier this year in Honduras, saying it had constructively dealt with a thorny matter for Latin America, “the black issue, which has long been invisible.”

In many countries the presence of blacks is not acknowledged in national statistics, or has been “a non-issue.” Latin Americans have commonly stated that the region does not suffer the racial problems of South Africa, the United States or other countries, Bengoa said.

The Chilean expert, who is also an independent member of the Sub-Commission, commented that the Latin American race question “has been very peculiar” because it has always been played down with the argument that the population is racially mixed, or “mestizo”, in Spanish.

He cited sociologist Gilberto Freire, who years ago stated, “in Brazil, we are all mestizos.”

However, Brazil awakened from that delusion some five years ago when, in a census, it asked its residents about their racial origins, said Bengoa. The survey found that poverty and lack of housing and of education were problems suffered disproportionately by those who identified themselves as being of African descent.

In recent years, a civil rights movement has emerged in Latin America among the black communities. And in this context the first UN regional meeting on the issue was convened.

The site of the meeting – La Ceiba, Honduras – was symbolically important because it is home to an absolute majority of residents from the “Garifuna” communities, who are of African origins.

These peoples, who from St. Vincent and the Grenadines settled along the entire Atlantic coast of Central America, share a common language that is a unique mix of African and indigenous Carib languages.

The delegates to the La Ceiba meeting began an important human rights process for all Latin America, establishing a connection among millions of people of African descent.

The document presented to the Working Group states that African Americans have been “invisible” in Latin American society in spite of the fact that they number more than 140 million.

Bengoa cited examples of rural communities with problems similar to those faced by indigenous peoples and other minorities.

In Colombia, the black population lives primarily along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts. They do not maintain their original languages but do conserve certain aspects of African customs and cultures. Like many indigenous communities, they are demanding land rights.

The same occurs in northern Brazil, in the area of what are known as “quilombos”, which gave refuge to the African slaves and descendants who fled slavery. The Garifunas of Central America also confront problems related to land rights.

The prime example of the combination of indigenous and African origins is found on Nicaragua’s Atlantic coast. There, it is nearly futile to try to distinguish the Misquito Indians from African descendants. And that area has achieved a situation of territorial autonomy, said Bengoa.

The circumstances of blacks living in urban areas, where they tend to be condemned to poverty, is related more to the demands for civil rights, he said, commenting that the upper classes often try to limit the social ascent of blacks.

But the movement of African descendants in Latin America achieved an important victory at the World Conference against Racism, sponsored by the UN last year in the South African city of Durban.

In the final declaration of the conference, they won recognition of the problem, and, as a result, the Latin American governments today must face a concrete reality, commented Dominican activist Pierre.