Organisers:

Jeremias Brasileiro (PhD in Social History. Researcher at GTEP/MG/UFJF and the Federal University of Uberlândia); Christine Douxami (PhD in anthropology from the EHESS, lecturer in performing arts at the Université de Franche-Comté. Researcher at IMAF (Institut des Mondes Africains) working at IRD-Brésil, linked to UFF and UFBA)

Deadline for submitting articles: September 20, 2024.

Our starting point comes from an assertion: structural racism in Latin American presupposes that there is no place for the history of Afro-Indigenous socio-cultural interactions in the region. If the myth of the "three races" has constructed a "Mestizo" identity in many Latin American countries, even as a census category, the continuous social and cultural interactions between populations of Indigenous and Afro-descendant origin were invisible in it. The supposed racial democracies that would have appeared after independence in the 19th century did not necessarily have the abolition of African and Indigenous slavery as an immediate task, much less the possibility of recognising and valuing the cultures of these populations as builders of the national present, which should incorporate their "contributions" only as part of the past. This picture began to change at the end of the 20th century in several countries in the region. After years of struggle, several countries have been recognizing the cultural rights of Indigenous peoples and Afro-descendants, often linked to the recognition of territorial rights. In general, however, a certain silence prevails about the place of Afro-indigenous interactions as a historical and cultural experience in the constitution of these groups, both by the states and their public policies, as well as by intellectuals and the populations in question, who are often faced with the difficult situation of having to choose between one cultural marker or another to assert territorial rights. This dossier aims, from the broad study of Afro-indigenous intangible heritage in the various Latin American countries, to think about the diversity of cultural, political, racial, identity and epistemological issues linked to this theme, with an emphasis on the following topics.

a) Pasts/Presents relations on the dynamics of struggles in territories with Afro-indigenous cultural manifestations and their relationship with the memory and narratives of the African and indigenous past, as well as with the public heritage policies developed in several Latin-American countries.

b) Ritual performances that dialogue with Afro-Indigenous cultural traditions in Latin America, showing their plurality and power.

c) Afro-Indigenous representations, aesthetic, religious and cultural diversities.

d) Cultural and religious coexistences and their interfaces with Afro-Indigenous cultural manifestations and their regional specificities.

e) Thinking about the Afro-Indigenous category beyond the reductionist views that separate the Afro from the Indigenous or reduce it to yet another identity marker, advancing new theoretical possibilities for analyzing cultural plurality.

f) Confluences and legal tensions for the recognition and titling of territories made up of Afro-Indigenous cultural memories and manifestations.

g) Narratives of the past, narratives of the present: dialogues with the holders of Afro-indigenous histories, memories and traditions in Latin America.

h) Afro-indigenous epistemologies and the construction of knowledge from new perspectives in Latin America.

i) Afro-indigenous ancestry and the democratisation of knowledge in Latin America as an agenda for history and the human sciences.

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« caboclinho do Boi Brilho de Lucas, Parada de lucas, Rio de Janeiro, 22 de junho de 2024, @christine Douxami”