AFRO-COLOMBIAN
AFRO-COLOMBIAN
AFROAMERICA XXI
Rosalba Castillo
Afrocolombia@yahoo.es
Rosacv2003@yahoo.com
(57-2) 8854676
(57-2) 441-8898 Fax
Federación Nacional de Organizaciones No Gubernamentales para el Desarrollo de las Comunidades Afrocolombianas - AFROAMERICA XXI
AFROAMERICA XXI, Coordinadora Nacional
Cali, Colombia
The following information used was taken from the Poverty Alleviation Program for Minority Communities in Latin America: Communities of African Ancestry in Latin America-History, Population, Contributions, & Social Attitudes, Social and Economic Conditions. This was realized by members of and organizations of AFROAMERICA XXI.
GENERAL INFORMATION
AFROAMERICA XXI
Rosalba Castillo
Afrocolombia@yahoo.es
Rosacv2003@yahoo.com
(57-2) 8854676
(57-2) 441-8898 Fax
Federación Nacional de Organizaciones No Gubernamentales para el Desarrollo de las Comunidades Afrocolombianas - AFROAMERICA XXI
AFROAMERICA XXI, Coordinadora Nacional
Cali, Colombia
The following information used was taken from the Poverty Alleviation Program for Minority Communities in Latin America: Communities of African Ancestry in Latin America-History, Population, Contributions, & Social Attitudes, Social and Economic Conditions. This was realized by members of and organizations of AFROAMERICA XXI.
Approximate Total Population 40,262,000
Total Ethnic Groups 4
Approximate Afro-Colombian Population 10,468,120
Location -Departments of the atlantic coast: Córdoba, Bolívar, Cesar, Atlántico y Sucre
-Other locations: Cartagena, San Basilio, San Onofre, Puerto Caballos
-Ciertos barrios de Barranquilla y Santa Marta
-departments of the pacific coast: Choco Valle, Nariño, Cauca.
-Three cities: Cali, Tumaco, Quibdo y Buenaventura.
Languages Spanish
SOCIECONOMIC PROFILE
Population and its Distribution
The Pacific coast is predominantly Black, most of its residents living in thirty-three municipalities in the departments of Chocó Valle, Nariño and Cauca on the littoral. Seventythree (73 percent) percent live in three cities of Tumaco, Quibdó and Buenaventura.
Cali also has a large proportion of Blacks and the surrounding towns are typically Black, Afro-Europeans and zambos.
Economic Profile: Rural Activities
In rural areas, Afro-Colombians are small peasant producers of plantain, cotton, rice and food crops. In plantation areas, they load bananas to/from boats and are the fruit cutters in farms. In Cali, they are responsible for the sugarcane harvesting to this day. The Pacific considered only in the context of being a producer of primary raw materials for export to Colombian and foreign markets. The local population on the Pacific, mostly Black, has not benefitted from the economic program led by the government. There is little investment in infrastructure to benefit an economy that could be generated and managed by locals.
Mining of various minerals has always generated an important source of income for many residents of the Pacific Coast. Mining concessions enjoy uninterrupted rights to exploit thousands of acres and a cheap labour market. The dredging of the river beds by foreign companies to extract gold sediments have created irreversible harm to the edges of some rivers, polluted the waters with mercury, and destroying subsistence agriculture and a food source for many Pacific coast people.
However, one benefit of the presence of gold is that the population is relatively
expert at jewellery making and creating pieces of great beauty. However, these manufacturers presently rely on an unstable local market and have little access to training or marketing assistance.
Timber mining and other forestry concessions have been granted to national and
international firms. The product of these concessions are taken out of the region. Blacks
have limited employment in the industry and are poorly paid. The work is backbreaking and results in incapacitation of many men by the time they are in their late thirties and early forties. Over one million hectares of land have been devastated, including almost all mangroves and caoba.
Economic Profile: Urban Activities
Prestige Occupations
Discrimination against Blacks in white collar jobs is frequently reported. Prestige
occupations in the Black community tend to be limited to Afro-Colombians of mixed racial,
particularly white, ancestry. Typically, Blacks have difficulty obtaining jobs in which they
are visible to the public, jobs such as clerks and sales persons. Neither stores nor the ecotourism industry will hire them. In the case of Cali and Cartagena, one observes many
light-skinned mulattoes working as secretaries, clerks, bank tellers and bank managers --
occupations which do not include Blacks of dark skin. This also appears to be the case in
Bogota and Medellin. The lighter the skin colour the better the position. For example, in the
Port of Buenaventura, candidates for higher management positions are still recruited outside
the city.
There is a noticeable lack of participation of light-skinned Blacks as well as of their
darker relatives in positions of prominence within Colombian society. There are no Black
few have held positions in the diplomatic corps. Blacks are under-represented in the supreme court, high offices of government, ministries and the like. Their successful participation in electoral politics has occurred only in areas where they constitute the local majority of the population: Chocó, Buenventura, and the cities in the Pacific coastal region.
The Afro-Colombian professional class is quite small, if one were to exclude the
light-skinned class of Cali, Cartagena and Medellin and of the other important cities such as
Quibdó, Baranquilla and Santa Marta. Darker-skinned Blacks enter the fields of teaching, law, dentistry, police force, and medicine in comparatively small numbers. They are limited
by economics from entering higher education, particularly the country's best educational institutions.
Street Vendors
A large number of Blacks of both sexes are involved in the informal sector, particularly in as ambulantes (itinerant vendors) and are to be found in the markets, business districts and working class neighbourhoods of the cities. A number of young men in Cali and Bogota who sell fruit have complained of harassment by business people who say that the police and itinerant vendors are blocking their businesses and taking businesses away. Blacks tend to concentrate in this activity because:
• they have experience in food preparation and a reputation for being good cooks;
• the activity requires little capital investment;
• Blacks have access to the "raw materials" such as fruit, fish, plantains;
• it is the only option left when all formal sector opportunities are closed.
Education
For the Pacific coast, PLAIDECOP indicates that illiteracy at the urban and rural levels is twice the national average. (43 percent of the rural population and 20 percent of the urban population is illiterate compared to the national average of 23 percent, 4 percent and 7.3 percent respectively.) Less than half of the region's children attend primary school, and the majority of these children do not complete their primary education.
Informants reported that Black school children had high drop-out rates at all levels and had difficulties in attending school because of various factors, including cost and transportation. In Turbo, for example, for every 100 students in primary school, 20 enter secondary school and only one graduates.
Conclusions
Black populations in Colombia are abandoned by society and their government despite their major demographic, economic, and cultural importance to the country. Colombia, like others in Latin America, is embarrassed about the degree to which it is Black, and it penalizes those who would interrupt an unconscious modern ideal of whitening. This has resulted in a lack of infrastructural investment in Black communities to directly benefit Black populations. Thus, Afro-Colombians are limited in the roles they play in the economy and society by their poverty and the prevailing social attitudes.
Because Law #70 was promulgated, Colombia has embarked upon a series of programs to change the inferior status of Blacks. The country's Minister of the Interior has stated that "Colombia owes its Black citizens a debt" and notes that the Black population is perhaps nearly 40 percent. The country has advanced much further than other Latin American countries in admitting the problems of the Black population.
Programs such as the development plan for the Black communities, however, have failed to accomplish a broad vision of the potential political and economic power of the Black population. The planning limits its projections to the Pacific coast which has a, where a small fraction of Afro-descendants live, in spite of their strategic importance.
On the Pacific coast, there is an immediate need for more systematic land titling
efforts to protect the few remaining areas and to develop adequate programmatic remedies to
alleviate poverty.
Overall, immediate assistance requires (a) credit for agricultural activities; (b) microenterprise training and credit, especially in urban areas; (c) government action to reduce
invisibility and discrimination; (d) reduced harassment for those whose only source of income is the informal sector; (e) a concerted effort to eradicate the violence which plagues
Black communities, and, (f) appropriate training for all sectors of the society.
Total Ethnic Groups 4
Approximate Afro-Colombian Population 10,468,120
Location -Departments of the atlantic coast: Córdoba, Bolívar, Cesar, Atlántico y Sucre
-Other locations: Cartagena, San Basilio, San Onofre, Puerto Caballos
-Ciertos barrios de Barranquilla y Santa Marta
-departments of the pacific coast: Choco Valle, Nariño, Cauca.
-Three cities: Cali, Tumaco, Quibdo y Buenaventura.
Languages Spanish
SOCIECONOMIC PROFILE
Population and its Distribution
The Pacific coast is predominantly Black, most of its residents living in thirty-three municipalities in the departments of Chocó Valle, Nariño and Cauca on the littoral. Seventythree (73 percent) percent live in three cities of Tumaco, Quibdó and Buenaventura.
Cali also has a large proportion of Blacks and the surrounding towns are typically Black, Afro-Europeans and zambos.
Economic Profile: Rural Activities
In rural areas, Afro-Colombians are small peasant producers of plantain, cotton, rice and food crops. In plantation areas, they load bananas to/from boats and are the fruit cutters in farms. In Cali, they are responsible for the sugarcane harvesting to this day. The Pacific considered only in the context of being a producer of primary raw materials for export to Colombian and foreign markets. The local population on the Pacific, mostly Black, has not benefitted from the economic program led by the government. There is little investment in infrastructure to benefit an economy that could be generated and managed by locals.
Mining of various minerals has always generated an important source of income for many residents of the Pacific Coast. Mining concessions enjoy uninterrupted rights to exploit thousands of acres and a cheap labour market. The dredging of the river beds by foreign companies to extract gold sediments have created irreversible harm to the edges of some rivers, polluted the waters with mercury, and destroying subsistence agriculture and a food source for many Pacific coast people.
However, one benefit of the presence of gold is that the population is relatively
expert at jewellery making and creating pieces of great beauty. However, these manufacturers presently rely on an unstable local market and have little access to training or marketing assistance.
Timber mining and other forestry concessions have been granted to national and
international firms. The product of these concessions are taken out of the region. Blacks
have limited employment in the industry and are poorly paid. The work is backbreaking and results in incapacitation of many men by the time they are in their late thirties and early forties. Over one million hectares of land have been devastated, including almost all mangroves and caoba.
Economic Profile: Urban Activities
Prestige Occupations
Discrimination against Blacks in white collar jobs is frequently reported. Prestige
occupations in the Black community tend to be limited to Afro-Colombians of mixed racial,
particularly white, ancestry. Typically, Blacks have difficulty obtaining jobs in which they
are visible to the public, jobs such as clerks and sales persons. Neither stores nor the ecotourism industry will hire them. In the case of Cali and Cartagena, one observes many
light-skinned mulattoes working as secretaries, clerks, bank tellers and bank managers --
occupations which do not include Blacks of dark skin. This also appears to be the case in
Bogota and Medellin. The lighter the skin colour the better the position. For example, in the
Port of Buenaventura, candidates for higher management positions are still recruited outside
the city.
There is a noticeable lack of participation of light-skinned Blacks as well as of their
darker relatives in positions of prominence within Colombian society. There are no Black
few have held positions in the diplomatic corps. Blacks are under-represented in the supreme court, high offices of government, ministries and the like. Their successful participation in electoral politics has occurred only in areas where they constitute the local majority of the population: Chocó, Buenventura, and the cities in the Pacific coastal region.
The Afro-Colombian professional class is quite small, if one were to exclude the
light-skinned class of Cali, Cartagena and Medellin and of the other important cities such as
Quibdó, Baranquilla and Santa Marta. Darker-skinned Blacks enter the fields of teaching, law, dentistry, police force, and medicine in comparatively small numbers. They are limited
by economics from entering higher education, particularly the country's best educational institutions.
Street Vendors
A large number of Blacks of both sexes are involved in the informal sector, particularly in as ambulantes (itinerant vendors) and are to be found in the markets, business districts and working class neighbourhoods of the cities. A number of young men in Cali and Bogota who sell fruit have complained of harassment by business people who say that the police and itinerant vendors are blocking their businesses and taking businesses away. Blacks tend to concentrate in this activity because:
• they have experience in food preparation and a reputation for being good cooks;
• the activity requires little capital investment;
• Blacks have access to the "raw materials" such as fruit, fish, plantains;
• it is the only option left when all formal sector opportunities are closed.
Education
For the Pacific coast, PLAIDECOP indicates that illiteracy at the urban and rural levels is twice the national average. (43 percent of the rural population and 20 percent of the urban population is illiterate compared to the national average of 23 percent, 4 percent and 7.3 percent respectively.) Less than half of the region's children attend primary school, and the majority of these children do not complete their primary education.
Informants reported that Black school children had high drop-out rates at all levels and had difficulties in attending school because of various factors, including cost and transportation. In Turbo, for example, for every 100 students in primary school, 20 enter secondary school and only one graduates.
Conclusions
Black populations in Colombia are abandoned by society and their government despite their major demographic, economic, and cultural importance to the country. Colombia, like others in Latin America, is embarrassed about the degree to which it is Black, and it penalizes those who would interrupt an unconscious modern ideal of whitening. This has resulted in a lack of infrastructural investment in Black communities to directly benefit Black populations. Thus, Afro-Colombians are limited in the roles they play in the economy and society by their poverty and the prevailing social attitudes.
Because Law #70 was promulgated, Colombia has embarked upon a series of programs to change the inferior status of Blacks. The country's Minister of the Interior has stated that "Colombia owes its Black citizens a debt" and notes that the Black population is perhaps nearly 40 percent. The country has advanced much further than other Latin American countries in admitting the problems of the Black population.
Programs such as the development plan for the Black communities, however, have failed to accomplish a broad vision of the potential political and economic power of the Black population. The planning limits its projections to the Pacific coast which has a, where a small fraction of Afro-descendants live, in spite of their strategic importance.
On the Pacific coast, there is an immediate need for more systematic land titling
efforts to protect the few remaining areas and to develop adequate programmatic remedies to
alleviate poverty.
Overall, immediate assistance requires (a) credit for agricultural activities; (b) microenterprise training and credit, especially in urban areas; (c) government action to reduce
invisibility and discrimination; (d) reduced harassment for those whose only source of income is the informal sector; (e) a concerted effort to eradicate the violence which plagues
Black communities, and, (f) appropriate training for all sectors of the society.
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