For Black History Month, Catherine Walsh, professor of Afro-Andean Studies at the University Simon Bolivar in Quito, Ecuador, shares with teleSUR her views about the achievements and challenges for the construction of an Afro-descendent consciousness in Latin America.
It's important to recognize the ways that Black history continues to be constructed, the ways that in Latin America official history has always negated in every single country Blackness and the ways Black intellectuals and communities have begun to re-write the official history, rethink memory on their own terms: that's part of a Black consciousness in the continent that continues to grow — in countries where the Black population is small like Argentina, Paraguay and Chile, but also in Brazil where its major or Colombia, continues to grow strong. The remembering —i.e. bringing together this history that has been dismembered— is extremely important today in maintaining and reconstructing identities and thinking about the ways education, a more inclusive idea of a nation.
