Inclusion of Afro-Colombians - Unreachable national goal?

It was expected that by legitimating Afro-Colombian ancestral territories, the new constitution would help to clarify ambiguities about land domains, thus easing tensions between black and Indian peoples and even allowing for the emergence of biethnic entities such as those of the San Juan River valley (Choco)(Sanchez, Roldan, and Sanchez, 1993: 183). It was hoped that such possible territorial consolidation might evolve to counterbalance increasing usurpations by private enterprises and colonists from the Andes and the Caribbean lowlands. However, recent data point to the development of what may be the precursors of new forms of interethnic friction among Afro-Colombians, indigenous people, and colonists. To explain this unexpected turn of events, several aspects must be considered: (1) the pressures created by modernization, (2) the asymmetries of the constitutional reform process, and (3) the failure of some state officials and advisers of grassroots organisations to perceive and acknowledge Afro-Colombian ethnicity and ancestral territorial rithrts. Before dealing with these matters, however, it is pertinent to review the origins and economical fate of the enslaved Africans and their strategies for regaining freedom and the failure of the integration model to produce ethnic inclusion. This approach is necessary because Colombia is not generally peceived as having a population that is 21% Afro-American or as displaying important African cultural contintuities (Friedemann and Arocha, 1995).