Visibilizing Afro cultural connections and geopolitical dynamics in Nicaragua, Colombia, San Andrés and Providencia

This project is based on the main themes that emerged from three workshops in Nicaragua, Colombia and the UK as part of an AHRC research networking project on the opportunities and challenges associated with the UN Decade for People of African Descent (AH/P006884/1 Afro-Latin (in)visibility and the UN Decade:Cultural politics in motion in Nicaragua, Colombia and the UK).These events, held in collaboration with URACCAN in Nicaragua and Carabantú in Colombia, were designed to examine the role of media and film in brokering transnational Afrodescendant connections in the Central America-Caribbean region. We have observed how film and media often mobilise tactics which disrupt territorial borders, and how audiovisual geographies offer crucial intercultural spaces where Afrodescendants can articulate their demands to diverse constituencies and confront entrenched colonial constructions.

The case of the Colombian islands of San Andrés and Providencia is exemplary due to their complex geopolitical status, as a disputed territory between Colombia and Nicaragua; their cultural, historical and linguistic connections to the Nicaraguan Caribbean coast, and their Raizal Afro people who have been systematically sidelined by the Colombian state's investments in the archipelago, through mass tourism and displacement of population, putting extra pressure on resources and the sustainability of the environment. This follow-on project, 'Visibilizing Afro Cultural Connections and Geopolitical Dynamics in Nicaragua, Colombia, San Andrés and Providencia', brings the archipelago of San Andrés into our existing network and research programme, capitalizing different audiovisual strategies aiming to de-centre the Hispanophone and Anglophone Caribbean, complicating narratives of linguistic, territorial and cultural belonging, and bringing to the fore individual and collective Afrodescendant histories in order to build transnational Afro/Creole communities through radio, film and online media.

Our main aim is to document and disseminate through a participatory community media approach the cultural, historical and familial connections between Nicaragua, Colombia and the islands, making visible Afrodescendant historical connections that have been disrupted by geopolitics.Media and film can often visibilize strategies of re-identification, abetting the fragmentation of cultural ties and overcoming perceived linguistic, geopolitical and national barriers.

The project involves working closely with our Afrodescendant partners and their communities on the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua (Bilwi and Bluefields), the archipelago of San Andrés and Providencia, and mainland Colombia (Bogotá and Medellin, which have relevant migrant population from the islands). Mobilizing the substantial experience of the Network in order to cascade our research findings horizontally to local Afrodescendant populations, in each of the places, we will develop a set of innovative textual and audiovisual resources via film, radio and internet that Afrodescendants can make use of in their pursuit of equality and development. As such, the funding would enable us and our partners in Nicaragua and Colombia to expand the benefits of the network to larger numbers of users and provide a set of tools that could help shape the development of public policy and political advocacy initiatives in the region. These outputs will connect explicitly to struggles for development and well-being, including those pertaining to the UN Decade for People of African Descent and the SDGs, helping Afrodescendant populations to overcome their cultural and political invisibility in their respective nation-states. This project will also enable us to develop a set of written and audiovisual texts which will, in the near future, allow us to produce a television series, co-funded by the Colombian television industry, about black historical connections between Nicaragua, Colombia and the archipelago of San Andrés.

Through collaborative working with non-academic organizations who aim to promote Afrodescendant rights, this project will produce a set of audiovisual texts and public engagement activities designed explicitly to support the international development aspirations of the Afrodescendant populations on the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua, in mainland Colombia and in the archipelago of San Andrés. The pathways to impact outlined in the Case for Support demonstrate how the audiovisual and PE activities seek to provide Afrodescendant communities and cultural workers with skills and tools to participate more fully in the development process. By connecting with international development instruments such as the UN Decade for People of African Descent and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the activities and media texts will also speak to people in power (governments, employers, educators and NGOs) so that Afro-descendants are given access to spaces of political decision-making, are represented in public policy, are given equal consideration in employment and educational opportunities, and are treated with dignity and respect in the public sphere. With a view to ending the social, economic, political and cultural marginalization of Afrodescendants, our previous workshops have emphasised the following:

- the value of sharing experiences and strategies from across the Afro-Latin American diaspora
- the importance of resources to arrest cultural and linguistic loss and prevent Afrodescendant cultures being eroded by dominant homogeneous mestizo Spanish-speaking and Catholic culture
- the need for awareness of black history among Afrodescendants as without a sense of one's history it is impossible to make claims for land and other rights
- the importance of greater dialogue across generations, so that young Afro people feel connected to their own cultures and older Afro people understand the alternative cultural practices of the youth
- the need to properly recognize and remunerate cultural work so it is financially sustainable and disrupts the problematic idea that cultural performance should be provided for free

We believe that film and media are crucial to achieving these objectives. Existing research confirms that media texts that centre Afrodescendant cultural practices, celebrate Afrodescendant success and entrepreneurship, and explore historical and contemporary forms of structural racism often have a positive impact on black audiences and work to disrupt dominant understandings of Afrodescendant failure, put alternative perspectives onto the political agenda, provide a more diverse and accurate set of representations and identifications. Structural racism and persistent forms of discrimination are obstacles to Afrodescendant participation in the development process and that Afrodescendants are systematically invisibilized in, excluded from and stigmatized by public policy deliberations and mainstream media and political discourse. It is clear that film and media produced by Afrodescendants and inflected with Afro ways of knowing are key tools to changing the state of affairs.

We seek therefore to have a direct impact on the Afro-Colombian populations, black Creole Nicaraguans and the Raizal population of San Andrés, some of whom migrated to mainland Colombia in search of decent work. The latter group has been caught in a long-term geopolitical dispute over sovereignty between Colombia and Nicaragua that has not served their development needs. This project seeks to move beyond the wranglings between governments and put the cultural and historical connections between the three sites at the centre of our work, to create a geopolitics from below. By working in partnership, our project will directly feed into the aspirations of the UN Decade for People of African Descent and respond directly to SDG goals 1, 3, 4, 8, 10, 11,16 and 17.