ISLAC Working Group: Afrodescendants of the Americas

Afrodescendant Communities in Latin America and the Caribbean: Creating Networks, Capabilities, and Agency

This project seeks to establish a collaborative network of social movements, activists, scholars, and funding agencies across Latin America and the Caribbean working around the theme of Afro-descendants and their living conditions.

In this panorama, this project seeks to contribute to the strengthening of race-based civil society organizations across Latin America and the Caribbean by establishing an international network of organizations/activists and researchers/universities, working on issues pertaining to this segment of the population, such as poverty and inequality, public policy and advocacy, education and training, etc. We believe that by building bridges of collaboration between the academic and grassroots organizations it is possible to have a larger impact on people’s lives. It is accepted that individual welfare is enhanced by collective action; hence, by establishing a network of networks we expect to contribute to the development of the people of African descent in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Conference Page

General Objectives

1. To establish a collaborative transnational network of Afro-descendants’ social movements, activists and scholars across Latin America and the Caribbean.
2. To develop a five-year action plan that will match resources with necessities. This plan would seek to establish lines of collaboration across borders and replicate successful initiatives within specific contexts. Placing an important weight on human capital formation and active civil society participation.
3. To develop the first version of the yearly summer school at USF Panama with all network members. Participants will share experiences, practice and perfect critical aspects defined previously in the five-year action plan. The summer school is visualized as a cohort experiment so to facilitate assessment evaluation and dataset building.

Specific Objectives

1. To further populate the small database of activists, civil society organizations and scholars working on issues of Afro-descendants in Latin America and the Caribbean that started with the conference.
2. To implement a survey according to the categories specified in the data set, with the aim of identifying and matching the specific capabilities and necessities of each Afro-descendant activist/social movement/scholar.
3. To develop and build constantly a network database that will facilitate constant improvement of the network while allowing primary research initiatives to take place

• Bernd Reiter, University of South Florida (US)
• Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman, University of South Florida (US)
• Paula Lezama, University of South Florida (US)
• Mabel Duran-Sanzhez, University of South Florida (US)
• Department of International Law; Secretariat for Legal Affairs; Organization of American States(US)
• Organización de Desarrollo Etnico Communitario, ODECO (Honduras)
• Centro de Desarrollo Etnico, CEDET (Perú)
• Movimietno Nacional Cimarron, Cimarron (Colombia)
• Centro Afroboliviano para el Desarrollo Integral y Comunitario, CADIC (Bolivia)