Se dire ou ne pas se dire « raizal ». Subalternités indicibles sur l’île de San Andres (Colombie)

Abstract

Inseparable from the multiculturalist turn that transformed the concept of citizenship in Colombia in the 1990s, the raizal ethnic category emerged from plural factors. Among them, this article will focus on the conflictual nature of this differentialist citizenship by examining two levels of subalternization which are present in the affirmation of “raizal difference.” On the one hand, the violent experience of assimilation by the Afro-Anglo-Creole community of the islands of San Andres and Old Providence has produced a distrustful relationship with the Colombian nationality, reinforced by a socio-cultural and territorial dispossession over the course of the twentieth century, and by the increase in violence caused by the expansion of drug trafficking. On the other hand, the raizal community was derives from the legacy of the post-emancipation society that was consolidated at the end of the nineteenth century, characterized by the dominance of egalitarianism in the face of persisting socio-racial hierarchies. This article analyzes the reproduction of subaltern relations in the emergence and use of the raizal or Afro-Anglo-Creole insular identity, in the light of these juxtaposed conditions.

Keywords

• memory
• subalternity
• raizal
• San Andres Island
• minority