African American & African Diaspora Studies

Visiting Fellow Monica Carrillo and Afro-Latin American/Latinx Studies at AADS

Posted on August 15, 2021

AADS shines a light on the African Diaspora in Latin America with CACE conference programing, classes (e.g. AADS Special Topics “Afro-Latin America”), public talks (e.g. Afro-Colombian scholar Nohora Arrieta Fernandez), publications by faculty members (e.g. ReVista article “African and Afro-Indian Rebel Leaders”), including the work of Omar Ali, Nodia Mena, Nicole Scalissi, Ana Paula Höfling, and, in partnership with Lloyd International Honors College, most recently co-hosting the Afro-Peruvian visiting fellow Monica Carrillo.

Background: During the sixteenth century Africans and their descendants outnumbered Europeans and their descendants in Lima, Mexico City, and Salvador da Bahia–the three principal cities of colonial Latin America. Over the next three centuries millions of Central Africans and West Africans were forcibly migrated to work the plantations, mines, and in the cities of Spanish and Portuguese settlers. While resistance to slavery took place at first point of contact in Africa, continuing throughout the Middle Passages and in the Iberian colonies themselves (in the form of armed rebellions and maroon settlements, among other strategies), many enslaved Africans and their descendants assimilated into the existing colonial systems and Native American communities helping to shape societies across the Americas. (Photos below: CACE conference with Mena speaking as part of a roundtable and AADS group)