In much of Latin America, dominant understandings of racial mixing (mestizaje) are inadequate and exclusionary, only partially recognizing the complexity of the colonial encounter between native peoples and Europeans, while often completely erasing the presence of Africans and their descendants. This disavowal of Blackness stems in part from enduring discourses of knowledge such as social Darwinism, mestizo supremacism, and indigenismo, which persist in generalized and institutionalized forms of racism and discrimination directed against Afrodescendants.

The UN International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-24) is an important platform for many Afrodescendants to secure the kinds of achievements and visibility gained by Indigenous groups consequent to the first (1995-2004) and second UN Decades of Indigenous Peoples (2005-2015), the creation of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and other global initiatives.

Meetings between the varied social actors involved in such questions are urgently needed but occur infrequently because of financial, linguistic and political barriers. This is why our AHRC-funded Network ‘Afro-Latin (in)visibility and the UN Decade: Cultural politics in motion in Nicaragua, Colombia and the UK’ sought to foster spaces whereby new, interdisciplinary and cross-sector engagements can influence our understanding of Afrodescendant cultural production and the mechanisms by which visibility and political voice might be achieved.