Maintaining and Cultivating African Culture in Chile
By: Talyah White
Photos: Amy Sullivan
Video: Elayne Smith
Begonia Vega is a woman of African descent who, as a child, changed schools twicebecause of racism. She said she was discriminated against by classmates and teachers alike. She was even told she could be a stripper because she had braids and a “good body” in high school.
“Most of my classmates were indigenous. In Arica, it is really hard to find pure white though. In my youth, I experienced the same at university by some classmates who thought they could invalidate you just because you look different from the rest,” Vega says.
Vega is a wife, mother, and teacher who resides in her hometown of Arica, Chile, one of the only areas in the country with a visible black population. Arica is about 1,200 miles north of Chile’s capital of Santiago. She is an Afro-Chilean woman, but the Chilean government does not recognize people of African descent as an ethnic group.
While there are many African influences in Chile, it is still one of the only Latin American countries to exclude its black population from its constitution. As a result, there is an invisibility of black people in Chile.
This invisibility has not gone unnoticed by a few groups in Santiago and neighboring areas who are working to preserve the history and the culture of Chilean people of Africandescent.
The Afro-Chilean Alliance is one such group striving to ensure this segment of thepopulation is not invisible. The three organizations that form the Afro-Chilean Alliance —
Lumbanga, Oro Negro, and Arica Negro — say that there are more than 8,000 people of Africandescent in Chile, mainly in Arica.
“Most of my classmates were indigenous. In Arica, it is really hard to find pure white though."
It is estimated that Chile’s population is around 18 million. According to a study conducted by the University of Chile, less than one percent of the country’s population identifies
as ‘other.’ People who identify as black must choose other because they have no alternative option. People of African descent are not included in the national census.
Cristián Báez, head of Lumbanga, says he knows this all too well.
“We don’t even exist in the country’s society,” Báez says. “That’s what we do a lot of, fighting against the structural and political racism.”
Báez says this is difficult to understand when the Chilean government has acknowledged some of the different cultures that co-exist in the country. According to Minority Rights Group International, the Chilean government legally recognized eight indigenous groups as of 1993, and a ninth group was added in 2006. Chile’s ‘minor ethnic’ people, many who identify as ‘Mapuche,’ make up roughly 4 percent of the nation’s population.
Many Chileans self-identify as white, according to the CIA World Factbook. However, Chileans who do identify as black mostly live in a region that is known for celebrating cultural diversity.
Báez, who has been an activist for more than 15 years, says that in order for people to understand why most of the black population is concentrated in Arica, they must first understand the history of the Afro-Chilean population.
Báez says that the presence of African people in Arica had to do solely with geography.
“It was strategic,” he says. “We were here when el Cerro Rico de Potosi was discovered.”
El Cerro Rico, “Rich Mountain,” was the area where Spain mined large quantities of silver, in present-day Bolivia, during the period of the New World Spanish Empire.
“The Africans here mixed alot with other races of people, andin phonotypical terms they sort of disappeared.”
“In Potosi, there was no ocean, no coast, so people had to find a means of transporting and meeting the demands that existed with the mining of silver,” Báez says. “The potential wasall in Potosi. Silver was very valuable in Spanish colonial times.”
Arica was founded as a port at the same time Cerro Potosi was discovered, and it was the closest place to the coast to bring and export large quantities of minerals. Arica was a Peruvianterritory at this time. While silver and other minerals were traveling through the port of Arica, another commodity was traveling through Valparaiso’s port in Chile 1,300 miles south.
Valparaiso, Chile’s second largest metropolitan city, was used to transport slaves duringthe transatlantic slave trade. Attempts to end slavery began in 1810 with the War ofIndependence. Slavery ended in 1823, when 4,000 African descendants were freed.
Báez says in Valparaiso, a small community known as ‘La Chimba,’ was where freed slaves lived. He says although there were some communities of black people, in Chile, they werenever centralized in terms of specific territories.
“They could not maintain traditions and culture like some of the other Afro-Latinogroups could,” Báez says. “Like in the cases of Los Yungas in Bolivia, Esmeralda in Ecuador,and Quilombo de los Palmares in Brazil, these are certain places where you could see concentrated communities where the African presence created a culture.”
The only place people of African descent in Chile could create and celebrate their culture was in Arica. Arica was part of Peru until Chile seized the city in 1880 following the War of thePacific. Freed slaves of African and indigenous descent intermingled. Today, people of African descent in Arica, like Báez, realize they have many bloodlines running through their veins.
“The Africans here mixed a lot with other races of people, and in phonotypical terms, they sort of disappeared,” Báez says. “Many of us who identify as Afro-Chilean look mixed race because we are.”
The mixed race of many Afro-Chileans has led to a number of studies to officially document the presence of African DNA in Chile. However, Florencia Valdes, an AfroMandingue dance instructor, says in terms of culture there is a traditional African presence that does not need percentages or statistics to prove its roots.
The cueca, Chile’s national dance, has African origins. According to various historians, the word “cueca” comes directly from “zamacueca,” a traditional dance with African rhythms.
Valdes teaches Chileans around the Santiago area Afro Mandingue, a type of dance that originated in Ghana, the part of Africa where her husband is from.
“African influences are present throughout all of Latin America, and Chile is enriched by this culture and these dances,” Valdes says. “The Chilean is very hybrid. Chileans are mixed with flavors from the Spanish, Africans, Mapuche and many more. Chile is enriched by the celebration of the different cultures here, and hopefully more and more people will start to realize that.”
Valdes says she and her husband have experienced some racism, but many people regard him as a “novelty.”
With a greater influx of Afro Chileans into larger metropolitan cities like Santiago and with more cultural events celebrating Afro Chilean heritage, acceptance and change could be in the future.
“More and more people are becoming interested in African culture, and the younger generation especially is always interested to meet him,” Valdes says of her Ghanian husband.
Valdes says more people are starting to celebrate African heritage, which has led AfroChileans to embrace their own culture and ethnicity.
“I knew a girl named Juana,” Valdes says. “She was African, but she would always tell people she was Brazilian. There weren’t many Africans here in Santiago. Now that more African people are coming to this area, and they are accepted by the other residents of the city, she feels more comfortable. She now tells people ‘I am African’ and she is proud.”