Inflections of Anti-Racism in Latin America

Dr Mónica Moreno Figueroa and Professor Peter Wade will present their recent research as part of our Research Seminar Series.

There has been an incipient turn to antiracism in Latin America and in this context we launched a research project looking at different styles of antiracist activity in four countries:  Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico. One of our key findings was the variation in how different organisations understand and use the language of racism and antiracism to define or organise their activities. We found cases that explicitly use the language of racism. In other examples, we found that organisations did not explicitly use the language of racism, even though they are engaged in struggles for land, rights, etc., which clearly had a racialised dimension. This also implied variations on the awareness of racism, which came in and out of focus in their practice. We became interested in what the antiracist effects of these ‘alternative grammars’ of struggle could be. We end by questioning the assumption that the explicit naming of racism per se is a sign of advancing antiracist work, and suggest that employment of strategic language and awareness of structural racism have distinct advantages for antiracist practice.

Mónica Moreno Figueroa is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow in Social Sciences at Downing College, Cambridge. Mónica's research has primarily developed around three areas: the lived experience of ‘race’ and racism; feminist theory and the interconnections between beauty, emotions and racism; visual methodologies and applied research collaborations. She has focussed on Mexico and Latin America more broadly. 

Peter Wade is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. He works on issues of race, ethnicity and nation in Latin America, with special reference to Afro-descendant groups and to Colombia.