Abstract

VILLEGAS VELEZ, ÁLVARO. NATION AND ALTERITY IN COLOMBIA: BLACK PEOPLE, AND THE COLONIALITY OF POWER. Rev. colomb. antropol. [online]. 2008, vol.44, n.1, pp.71-94. ISSN 0486-6525.

This article shows how national homogenization in Colombia was indefinitely delayed, given the tension between a pedagogical dimension that emphasizes the republic's territorial and demographic integration, and a performative dimension that postpones it indefinitely by multiplying ethnic and territorial differences. This has been particularly visible in the way in which elites have represented the Afrocolombian population in two particular periods: 1853-1869 and 1920-1935. Despite their continuities, in each period ethnic/racial alterity (Blacks) and territorial alterity (the lowlands) are articulated in diverse ways around debates on miscegenation, the liberalization of nature, eugenics and the problem of national sovereignty.

Keywords : Colombia; alterity; black people; nation; state; pedagogical dimension; performative dimension.

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