UNIDADE VERSUS DIVERSIDADE: compassos e descompassos da Política para afrodescendentes em Bogotá

Abstract

The Colombian state, since 1991, proposes to "recognize and protect the ethnic and cultural diversity of the Colombian nation," according to the National Political Constitution (CP-91, art. 7). The reflection that I develop in this thesis seeks to investigate the position that the State, through its policies, has taken in relation to ethnic and cultural diversity" at the time of the state discourse on ethno-racial differences, which took place in Colombia since the 90's. The research focuses on interrogating the discourse on recognition of "ethnic and cultural diversity" in Colombia, built by the Colombian state. In order to reach that goal, I proposed the following path: to identify and analyze how the state formulates its laws and policies designed specifically for black people (including the Law No. 70/1993). The empirical field of research was the "public district policy for the recognition of the cultural diversity and the guarantee of rights for Afro-descendent people or "Public Policy for the Afro-descendent population living in Bogota" - (PPPARB). My analysis departs from the comprehensive sociology perspective, from the questions raised by post-colonial studies on race and ethnicity in Latin America and the look on the practices of intervention. The perspective that I use emphasizes the qualitative nature of this study, whose focus would be on the construction (symbolic, normative) of ethnic and racial difference, its recognition and the political formulation for its intervention. For this research, I used three types of sources: official documents, observations and fieldwork notes, and thirty semi-structured interviews conducted between February and July of 2010. In general, I present the complex way in which discourses and practices underlie the ideal of "recognition" of ethno-racial diversity in Colombia. So that the the dynamics of agreement and disagreement emerging in official discourses of the state are embodied in laws and normativities, and in the interpretations that are made from them in the management of PPPARB by multiple actors involved.