Afro feminisms in Latin America and the Caribbean, dissenting traditions: from anticolonial thinking to the defense of the earth

Abstract

In this paper we will explore the ways in which Afro-Latin American and Caribbean feminist thoughts have shifted from anticolonial to decolonial thinking, where the defense of land has a primordial role as a factor in which concepts such as their own territory, as opposed to the diaspora and return of the black feminisms of the early twentieth century that developed from Pan-Africanism. Likewise, from anticolonial thinking with a strong anti-imperialist component, on the one hand, and the development of an idea of the African Nation from the slave diaspora, on the other, this thought has moved to the idea of autonomy and defense of land because of the conflicts that have displaced Afro communities in the region. This involves a couple of important changes: The first is that it has assumed the Latin American and Caribbean territory as its own, without the need to long for a large African matrix to which it must return; the second is that the political narrative of history did not point to the diaspora as an element of political articulation to think the history of other subalternized populations such as indigenous peoples in the Latin American and Caribbean territory. In the same way, we can point out that it has moved from the idea of nation to that of the people, implying a regional struggle that nevertheless continues to appeal to a political articulation based on the idea of race and gender as decolonial elements.