| This dissertation examines the struggle for black ethnic and territorial rights in the Pacific Lowlands of Colombia. In 1993, a new law, Ley 70, recognized Afro-Colombians as a separate ethnic minority with rights to own land collectively to be used in traditional ways. Since the majority of Afro-Colombians live in the Pacific region, the issue of black rights is closely linked to the future of the region. While on the one hand, the state proposes to give legal land rights to ethnic groups, on the other, it targets the Pacific region for a number of macrodevelopment projects to extract natural resources and modernize the region. Furthermore, the Pacific region is at the center of several biodiversity conservation programs because it supports a high degree of biological diversity. Thus, terms such "ethnic group," "collective land," "biodiversity," "traditional practices," and "ethic territory" which appear in Ley 70, are interpreted differently by the state and by black groups.In this study I take an interdisciplinary approach to comparative political analysis to show how ethnic identity is socially constructed within a particular historical, socio-political and economic context. I explore how socio-political institutions such as the state and the constitution, as well as structural factors such as the strategic demand for control over land and other resources, are shaping the construction of Afro-Colombian as an ethnic and political identity. I also examine the linkages between black ethnic identity and other categorical identities, focusing especially on the connection between ethnicity and gender. Finally, I argue that negotiations over definitions of ethnicity and land rights are part of the struggle of blacks as a heretofore oppressed and concealed group to contest the negative or derogatory racial identity imposed upon them by dominant society, and to construct a positive black subjectivity. |
