(In)Visibility in the Black Caribbean: The cases of Cuba, Nicaragua and Colombia Julie Cupples, Charlotte Gleghorn and Raquel Ribeiro (University of Edinburgh)

This presentation will discuss the emerging results of an AHRC Network project, ‘Afro-Latin (in)visibility and the UN Decade: Cultural politics in motion in Nicaragua, Colombia and the UK’ (2017-18). The Network has organised three events, in collaboration with URACCAN university in Nicaragua and Carabantú association in Colombia, all designed to examine the role of media and film in brokering and sustaining transnational Afro-descendant linkages in the Central America-Caribbean region. Geographies of media and film offer crucial intercultural spaces where Afro-descendant peoples can articulate their demands to diverse constituencies and confront entrenched and immovable colonial constructions.

We will discuss how the case of Cuba has often been upheld – erroneously – as a solution to the invisibility of Afro-descendants elsewhere in the Caribbean. Through the Network it has also been possible to witness how film and media events often mobilise tactics which disrupt territorial borders, as for instance in the case of the Colombian islands of San Andrés y Providencia through their links to the Creole Nicaraguan Caribbean coast. Such strategies might be seen as viable and visible strategies of re-identification, abetting the fragmentation of cultural ties and overcoming perceived linguistic barriers.