The Black Doll of Mary Grueso: Counternarrative, Resistance, and Representation (peer-reviewed)

By Ángela CastroTranslated by Ángela Castro

This article went through a peer review process with all identities visible to editors, reviewers, and authors.

Mary Grueso Romero with her doll. Photo Credits: Jair F. Coll

I heard, for the first time, the poet Mary Grueso Romero in 2020 in the virtual series Aproximaciones Afrolatinaomericanas , an online platform dedicated to discussing Afro-Latin American history, literature, and arts.¹ She read several of her poems, including “Muñeca Negra” and “Si Dios hubiera nacido aquí” or “If God Had Been Born Here.” The poem “If God Had Been Born Here,” has become a song of resistance to Western impositions on religion, power, and representation. In her verses, Grueso envisions a God born in the Pacific who is black, a fisherman, and a farmer. She imagined him eating chontaduro (peach palm) and borojó, a man… who dances currulao with marimba and guasá. That God would understand firsthand what it means to be black and poor on the coast.²

At this virtual public talk, Grueso spoke about the importance of representing black childhood in textbooks and the lack of writing about Afro-descendant history in Colombia. For her, there are no texts where representations and images of Afro-descendant children appear. The poet mentioned that the Ministry of Education and Culture has received her stories and poems well, but including this new literature in Colombian high schools has been arduous. She has mobilized to include Afro-descendant issues in academic curricula. Grueso mentions that when she began teaching in schools, she found representations of African descent in social science books, but only concerning the celebration of Colombia’s Race Day on October 12. In the illustrations of these books, only the transatlantic history and semi-naked Afro-Colombians appeared. From there, the poet emphasizes that the institutional acknowledgment in the Colombian constitution of 1991 dignifies ethnic groups by recognizing their rights as people. However, everything has remained on paper since, in the classroom, such history and teaching are null. This is why childhood and the identity formed during this period are decisive elements in Grueso’s writing and poetic work. For her, the work of education in the classroom is necessary to dissipate racial discrimination. It is in the classroom, she says, where racial exclusion begins and is taught.

When I spoke with the editor of Contours: ArteCalle and she told me that the second edition will focus on manufacturers, collectors, designers, and academics of the black doll; the conversation I had with Mary Grueso Romero in Approximations came to mind. The poet not only writes about the black doll but also creates her own fabric doll and travels through Colombia, Latin America, and the Caribbean to reflect on the importance of representing black childhoods. Through her writing and the handmade doll, Grueso creates counternarratives. I decided to interview her and inform her that Contours had invited her to participate in the inaugural Research Residency: The Black Doll, scheduled to take place in Havana, Cuba, in February 2024.

Why Counternarratives? Meeting Point

While Mary could not attend the Cuba Residency this year, we have discussed how her work is similar to the experiences of Afro-Cuban doll makers, including the famous Margarita Montalvo and her family. Margarita, director of the Black Doll Project in Cuba, has taught workshops and created black dolls since 1980. Grueso and the Montalvo family are creators of counter-narratives who use fabric and recyclable materials as mediums to conduct workshops for both adolescents and adults. Although this article will not make a parallel between the Montalvo and Grueso family project, in this writing, I focus on the cultural, identity, and educational counter-narratives that appear in the poetics, narrative, and black dolls of the poet, Mary Grueso. I propose that these artistic manifestations are acts of resistance and responses to the forgetting and silencing of Afro-descendant stories in Colombia. I study counternarratives as those stories that detail the experiences and perspectives of those historically oppressed, excluded, or silenced in educational settings³. However, beyond emphasizing exclusion, I focus on the acts of resistance created by the oppressed, excluded, or silenced to respond to stories that make them invisible. Based on this definition, we could say that the first counternarrative memory that Grueso evokes begins in her childhood. It is in her childhood and the memories of that period in her life that she returns to her writing and the making of the poet’s black dolls. Grueso uses her poetry, childhood stories, and black dolls to respond to a nation that has insufficiently represented Afro-Colombian people historically or literarily. The black doll created by Grueso is a creative transition that begins with the writing of the poem “Muñeca Negra” in the collection of poems. The Other Self That is Me, Poems of Love and the Sea (1997), the story “The Black Doll” (2011) and is externalized in the fabric and the family production of the dolls conceived and imagined by the writer and her family.

In Mary Grueso’s writing and black doll making, the poet wishes to emphasize the lack of representation in the doll industry in Colombia when she was a child. However, according to the poet, this lack made it possible for the imagination of parents and children on the coast to reinvent dolls made of bread and banana that were and are part of the Catholic baptism ritual imposed during Spanish colonization in Colombia in the 14th century. It is understood that after baptism, the Holy Spirit is received through immersion in water. After the ritual, there is a dinner, where the bread and water are blessed and distributed to the congregation. The bread represents the body, and the water the blood. Thus, the making of the doll, more than a reproduction of the past, is and will continue to be an act of community formation that imparts ancestral knowledge. Grueso, just as many families in the Pacific do, transforms the ritual and legacy of Catholicism and offers it a new protocolary and ancestral value. This act responds to the imposition of cultural knowledge and becomes religious syncretism; however, this act goes beyond the composition or mixtures of traditional customs. What Grueso emphasizes is the resignification of a ritual and the response to the omission of the deficiencies of visual representation in Afro-descendant childhood.

Cultural and Identity Counternarrative: Who is Mary Grueso Romero?

Mary Grueso Romero was born in the town of Chuare Napi, in Cauca. She is one of the most relevant and important intellectual figures of the Colombian Pacific, considered one of the best Afro-Colombian poets due to her work and advocacy for her race, identity, libertarian struggle, and ancestral legacy. She has explored various narrative realms, ranging from romantic and erotic themes to later delving into social poetry and, finally, into the realm of children’s literature. Grueso is a specialist in teaching literature and a high school teacher at the Guapi National Normal School. She has taught at the Universidad del Valle, Universidad Libre, and Universidad del Pacífico. The poet has fifteen books of poetry and nine of children’s literature. Among the most notable, From The Trunk To The School (2004), I Am Black (2008), Take Me Before The Night Comes (2009), When The Ancestors Call (2009), La Cucarachita Mandinga (2017).

Books by Mary Grueso Romero. Photo Credits: Ángela Castro

Grueso considers that her poetry is not only appreciated and read in Colombia but also across the Americas. She recalls, particularly, her encounter with the Nobel Prize in Literature Derek Walcott, who told her, after listening to her verses, that she was “the great poet.” Grueso, an admirer of the Caribbean poet from the island of Santa Lucia, received this statement with humility, acknowledging that his lyrics and voice have a transformative effect on the listener and the reader. Yet, what distinguishes Grueso the most is the counternarrative she crafts through the redefinition of blackness in her writing. This resignification of blackness in her poems is achieved through the description of different perspectives; One of them, as Paula Cuero Valencia assures, is by drawing the daily life of the inhabitants of the Pacific, “without mockery, but exhorting those who with their way of proceeding continue to offer arguments for society to censor and satirize them.” (59) It also re-signifies blackness in the exaltation of the elements of its regional culture and its African heritage, among them: the songs, lullabies and praises that are part of the orality of its region.

The poet writes, from the periphery, about ancestry, orality, dispossession, and violence in Colombia, childhood, and the traditions of the Pacific. The Colombian Pacific is one of the six natural regions of the country. It includes part of the department of Chocó, the coastal areas of Valle del Cauca, Cauca, and Nariño. The Pacific region is also frequently characterized by the predominance of black Afro-descendant populations (between 92% and 96%). It is considered, in the social and political imagination, as the “black region” par excellence in Colombia (190 Eduardo Restrepo).⁴ For many years it has been a region exploited, plundered, and marginalized by national and foreign companies. However, as Nelly Mercedes Prado Paredes mentions in the book Origins of Verses to Fall in Love: Orality of the Southern Pacific of Colombia, “The sociologically marginal character of the territories that make up the Colombian Pacific has allowed the creation and maintenance of a unique tradition that has not been sufficiently explored and recreated… All this space is a collective history of multifaceted voices.” (192) In her extensive poetic work, Grueso not only describes the social imagery of the Pacific, including marginalization and exploitation, but also the strength and knowledge of collective voices, traditions, and natural wealth of this region.

Poetic and Narrative Counternarrative: Beginnings of the Black Doll

When I asked Mary Grueso Romero about her decision to write and create black dolls, she replied that this writing arises from childhood memories, as during those formative years, there is a natural inclination to have toys with which we inherently feel a sense of identification. However, she remembers that in the Pacific, no toys, specifically dolls, had her skin color. For Grueso, crafting these dolls is an act of resistance against the void created by not having access to a toy like the doll, given its significance as a representation and symbol of identity during childhood.

Grueso recounts that in the market, there was only access to plastic dolls that were mass-produced, usually white and with blue eyes. This assessment is confirmed by Betty Osorio, who points out that, “In the toy market, the most sought-after dolls are the blonde, white ones, while the black dolls have more status as handicrafts and function as folkloric ornaments” (158). It should be clarified that these dolls were not the original ones, but rather an imitation of the Mattel doll, namely, Barbies, made of a soft, yellow, translucent plastic.⁵ The poet was part of the childhood that desired a black doll like herself, one that had the same color as her eyes. This is how the poet recognizes the role of adults, especially women, who reinvented dolls made of bread and banana leaves, to which they added fabric and eyes that resembled the body and certain human features. These bread and banana dolls are important because their creation is subject to the Catholic baptism ritual, where their “heads” were wet with relief water (river water). In this ritual, three of our fathers are prayed for and then assigned a name, which is then divided and shared while repeating: “María Corcoma, I baptize you and I eat you.” This ritual is today practiced by Grueso in her workshops on the creation of the black doll in Cauca, Cali, Bogotá and Cartagena.

These memories and cultural legacy, narrated orally, appear for the first time in the collection of poems The Other Self That Is Me: Poems of Love and the Sea, under the name “Muñeca negra.” The poem reads:

I asked God for a doll
But He didn’t send it to me;
I asked Him so much, so much,
But He didn’t remember me.

I asked my mom for it
And she said, “Ask God hard for it”,
And I knelt down
But He didn’t listen to me.

I asked for it early in the morning
Before the sun rose
So that early
He would hear me first.

I wanted a doll
That was like me:
With chocolate eyes
And skin like coal.

And when I told my dad
What I was asking for
He said that a Black doll
God doesn’t send from heaven;
“Find yourself a piece of cloth
And make your own doll.”

I, very sad,
Went to cry in a corner
Because I wanted a doll
That was my color.

My mom, very distressed,
Took pity on me
And made me a doll
Dark like me. (50)

The poem makes it possible for the reader to participate in the imagination of the girl who wishes to be represented, to be able to see her skin and eyes reflected in the doll/object she claims. However, even though this oral poem emphasizes ideals of personification and beauty, I want to highlight how it also underscores the relationship and communication between the girl and her mother. This relationship, as Orozco mentions, accentuates the central role that black women have in the Colombian Pacific (157). This bond is also expressed in the way the mother uses rags or fabrics to create the doll for her daughter, a practice similar to the Brazilian Abayomí dolls.⁶ Thus, Grueso’s poem becomes a call to resistance and the transmission of feminine knowledge. It is important to note that what accentuates the poem is the girl’s voice without any type of intervention, thus rescuing her orality. Taking into account that orality is a mode of “knowledge production that projects cultural ideals,”⁷ we note that this cultural production in Grueso’s narrative appears throughout all of her work. In this case, we experience it in the poem “Black Doll,” and it extends the writing of the short story “The Black Doll.”

The short story “The Black Doll” tells the story of a girl who lived with her parents in a stilt house, her daily activities, and interactions with the sea. She watches the waves crashing into the mangroves in the distance, the snails and seahorses surrounding her. The girl in the story recalls that a few years ago, her mother gave her banana leaves or “pachas” to play with, since “black girls didn’t have dolls to play with.” (6) This banana pacha was baptized, roasted on the wood stove and distributed among the people who were gathered. The girl grows up and realizes that she has never had a doll that looked like her. In a conversation that the girl has with her mother, she asks for a real doll that has her color, chocolate eyes, and “skin like coal.” (11) The mother, seeing her daughter’s sadness, sews her a rag doll that she assembles with brown fabric and buttons. The girl finally sings and dances while holding her black doll.

In this story, Grueso emphasizes beauty, appreciation of the bright color of black skin, nature, orality, and the mother-daughter connection. There is in the story’s narrative an appreciation and parallel between the beauty of the girl and the sublimity of her environment. So, the story is an ode to the Colombian Pacific, where nature and the gallantry of its inhabitants are indivisible. This parallel is introduced through the revival of orality. Both the story and the poem are narrated through the use of the characters’ everyday speech, evidencing the cultural practices, memories, and appreciations of the poet. These memories are described through the exaltation of childhood experiences and the maternal bond. The poet describes this fraternal closeness to reclaim and emphasize intimate stories that had not previously been told in children’s literature in Colombia.

In Colombia, before “The Black Doll” there was no story that had an Afro-descendant girl as the main character, unlike other countries like Brazil that already had “Pretty Girl” (1986) by Ana María Machado.⁸ Afro-descendant female characters appeared in canonical novels, such as Nay in María (1867) by Jorge Isaacs.⁹ However, the characters are not protagonists, but appear in certain chapters to talk about the Colombian national formation. On the other hand, novels that talk about Afro-descendants have featured male characters, as is the case of Oscar Collazos, Helcías Martán Góngora, Arnoldo Palacios, Rogerio Velásquez, Candelario Obeso, among others. Although these characters portray problems of exploitation, violence, racism, and scarcity of Afro-descendant populations, women and children do not appear as the central narrative axis.¹⁰ From there, both the poem and the story of Grueso become a milestone and reference for Afro-descendant children’s literature, which has been considered a revolutionary book because it creates a counter-narrative to Colombian national canonical writing.

The story that appears in “The Black Doll,” not only offers more details about the origin of the black doll, but is, from the first lines, an ode to the identity of the inhabitants of the Pacific, especially to the identity of the woman of the coast.¹¹ Now, how does the black doll come into being, and how does the transition from oral narration to the creation of the fabric doll occur? Is the fabric black doll also a device for counter-narrative?

Creation of the Black Doll: Community and Educational Counternarrative

In Colombia, ethno-education first appears in Article 23 of Law 115 of 1994, which establishes the mandatory Afro-Colombian Studies or Cátedra as part of the social sciences area; however, Fabio Alberto García Araque asserts that:

There is not a single entity within the Ministry (Ministerio) that addresses Afro-Colombian studies and ethno-education. The Afro-Colombian approach must be transversal in all directions of the Ministry of Education, because the introduction of ethno-education studies requires that each group, that each direction recognize Afro-Colombian identity. (13)

Grueso recognizes the work being done in Colombia on ethno-education and suggests that one must be a participant in one’s own multicultural culture. One way to promote ethno-education is to educate future educators on the history of heritage and the history of the Pacific. Now, in Colombia, there is a lack of texts that expose Afro-descendant history, and what is commonly taught is a curriculum or readings in which Afro-descendant history does not appear, and if it is mentioned, it is done and narrated in a victimized manner.¹²

Grueso decides to move away from such victimized narratives to incorporate more comprehensive and complete stories of her culture, where the protagonists are aware of their identity and history. In addition to the lack of literature and writing that highlights Afro-Colombian values and culture, there is also a non-existent representation of childhood. For this reason, Grueso decides to write children’s literature. Her stories focus on childhood experiences that question and affirm her identity. Several of her stories, Grueso points out, tell the stories of her students. For example, in the story “The Girl in the Mirror” (2019), the poet writes about Alba Rocío, one of her students. In “The Girl in the Mirror”, Grueso talks about “a girl who recognizes herself as black and beautiful when she looks in the mirror.” “The Girl in the Mirror”, also exposes the relationship that the inhabitants of the Pacific have with nature and how they live in communion with it. Another theme that also appears in the story is the exaltation of the beauty of Afro-descendant childhood, the San José neighborhood, “in contrast with the modern architecture of Buenaventura Bay, and the fishermen who seek daily sustenance” (26).

Grueso began creating black dolls in 2012, when she was asked for custom dolls, that is, after she told in her writing about her desire that she had since she was a child to have a doll that was the color of charcoal. They gave her dolls and sheets with instructions in which the narrated story of her black doll appeared. They sent her dolls from Brazil and various parts of Latin America. The act of receiving dolls made Grueso start making them together with her family. It started with gray dolls and now includes honey and brown colors. The writer buys the fabrics, her son-in-law paints the eyes, and her daughter sews them by hand, and puts braids on them similar to Grueso’s braids. She orders the dresses to be made. At first Grueso and her family created medium-sized dolls and now they make dolls that are articulated, larger, that can move and sit. The poet calls these dolls “crawlers,” which are four times the size of the black dolls she started with. Grueso describes this act of doll creation as a family and community project.

Mary Grueso Romero and her crawler. Photo Credits: Aldemar Castillo

The making of the dolls has had a profound reception in schools, where a collective movement and educational counter-narrative has been generated, in which parents, in the schools they visit, are also involved in the purchasing and dissemination process. The poet now wants color not to be taken into account, but for her dolls to be part of the toy industry, that is, an industry in which color is normalized and sold like any other toy. Along with her books, the writer has constant orders for dolls in Colombia and has taken them to Madrid at the Book Fair, to Brazil, the United States, Costa Rica, Mexico, Venezuela, and Cuba. On these trips, there is also an exchange of knowledge, where they ask about the process and importance of the creation of the black doll.

Currently, the poet teaches workshops at the Pedagogical School of Bogotá, at the University of Cauca to students of Ethno-education and Education in Bogotá and Valle del Cauca. Their workshops span three days, with both men and women participating to learn the doll-making craft, which Grueso adeptly assembles. The poet reminds them that they do not necessarily have to be commercialized, but that they can be a gift for their children. These workshops generate exchanges and sisterhoods. In the same way, the workshops also generate spaces to cry out lullabies from the Pacific. Grueso recounts that on one occasion, she was invited to Medellín and took the bread doll to a meeting of teachers organized by the Governorship and the director of Afro-Colombian affairs. With the pedagogues they talked about education and with bread, they did the baptism with water on the head, and they sang in unison the lullaby: “Gentlemen, I come from heaven, Mary as she was / Gentlemen, I come from heaven, Mary as she was / Mary was very good and greetings he sent him and greetings he sent him¹³. ” It is clear that Grueso generates a cultural, social, and fraternal exchange with these workshops.

Black doll workshop at the University of Cauca, Guapi. Photo Credits: Mary Grueso

Conclusions: I return to the Montalvo family

For Grueso, memory is an important part of her cultural heritage, but she also recognizes that for black communities, orality is the backbone. Thus, poetry becomes a relief tool, representing the sea and its people. The fabric doll is an extension of her writing that transmits both an individual desire and collective values. The doll is also a tool of ethno-education in Colombia, a response to the invisibility of Afro-Colombians, their history, orality, and culture. Making black dolls is an act of resilience against ideas of Mestizaje in Colombia, a colonial legacy in Latin America, which exalts whiteness and denies systemic and structural racism towards Afro-descendants in the nation’s imagination.¹⁴

When I returned from the research residency in Cuba, I realized that doll-making is a movement that embodies female resistance and serves as a mechanism of empowerment. Mary (as I now call her) should go to Cuba next year to meet Margarita, and her family, and learn the history behind her workshops, perhaps encouraging transnational dialogues and exchanges of resistance.

Margarita Montalvo. Manufacturer of black dolls in Cuba, since 1980. Montalvo is holding a doll by artist Rosalyn Myles at Contours ArteCalle Residency in Cuba 2024. Photo Credits: Ángela Castro

Bibliography

Castillo Laspriella , Alicia. The Abayomi doll. Watchers of the cultural heritage of Northern Cauca, http://patrimonio.mincultura.gov.co/.

Bergen, Jenn K., et al. “Contemporary Challenges and Approaches in Anti- racist Teacher Education .” Elsevier , 18 Nov. 2022, www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/counter-narratives.

“Library of Afro-Colombian Literature.” https://www.banrepcultural.org/proyectos/afrocolombianidad/biblioteca-de-literatura-afrocolombiana, www.banrepcultural.org/proyectos/afrocolombianidad/biblioteca-de-literatura-afrocolombiana. Accessed 27 Sep. 2023.

Buñuelos, José F and Perret, Sally. Voices of the resistance . Ultramarina Editorial, 2021.

“Cocorobé songs and lullabies from the Colombian Pacific.” https://babel.banrepcultural.org/digital/collection/p17054coll3/id/27/, babel.banrepcultural.org/digital/collection/p17054coll3/id/27. Accessed 27 Sep. 2023.

Córdoba Gutiérrez, César Alberto. “Lullaby of the Colombian Pacific, a Cultural, Spiritual, Musical, and Social Phenomenon.” Dialnet , no. 7, 2012, pp. 56-69.

Thick Rosemary, Mary. When the ancestors call: Afro-Colombian poetry. Editorial Universidad del Cauca, 2020.

———————-. The black doll. Apidama Editions, 2021.

———————-. The girl in the mirror. Apidama Editions, 2019.

García Araque, Fabio Alberto. “Ethnoeducation as a fundamental element in Afro-Colombian communities.” Dialogues on education , no. 15, 2017.

Machado, Ana María. Pretty girl. Kane/Miller Book Publisher, 1996.

Osorio, Betty. “Strategic construction of black otherness in three stories by Mary Grueso.” Magazine of Latin American Literary Criticism, no. 18, 2014, pp.149-161.

Restrepo, Eduardo. “Afro-descendant spatialities in the Colombian Pacific.” Territories of black people: processes, transformations, and adaptations : essays on Colombia and Brazil, UFRB, 2016.

Wade, Peter. Race and Ethnicity in Latin America. Abya – Yala, 2000.

Dr. Ángela Castro is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Colorado College. Her research focuses on predominant representations of twentieth-century Afro-Caribbean female writing. She co-founded “Aproximaciones Afrolatinoamericanas,” a virtual space that questions and examines Afro-Latin American history, literature, and art.

1
I founded this space together with two Colombian professors during the pandemic. So far we have shared dialogues with twenty-six participants, including the poets Ashanti Dinah Osorio, Lilia Ferrer; the Spanish novelist Lucía Asué Mbomio Rubio, historians, musicians and university professors.
2
Chontaduro is a fruit of the Amazonian palm tree from South and Central America. Borojó is a fruit that is grown in the Colombian Pacific, known in South America for its energy contribution and nutritional capacity. Some indigenous groups and black communities attribute medicinal properties to it. The currulao is a musical genre from the Pacific, closely related to the African descendant culture of the region. The marimba is a percussion instrument, which consists of a series of wooden sheets of different sizes, arranged from largest to smallest, each one with a different pitch of sound. In Colombia it is a typical instrument of the traditional musical context of the Pacific. On the banks of the Guapi River, marimba is made in an artisanal way. The guasá is a percussion musical instrument characteristic of Colombia and Ecuador, specifically of the southern Pacific coast and the province of Esmeraldas. It is a rattle, in which the sound is generated by shaking the instrument, causing the seeds inside to hit the frame.
3
See proposed definition of counternarrative by Jenn K. Bergen, Sharissa Unger Hantke , Verna St. Denis in “The International Encyclopedia of Education” fourth edition.
4
See Restrepo, Eduardo (2016). Spatialities Afro-descendants en he Pacific Colombian. En Liberac , Antonio Territories of Black people : processes , transformations and adaptations : essays about Colombia and Brazil . Cruz das Almas ( Brazil ): EDUFRB.
5
Photo taken from Facebook. Beautiful Barbie dolls – Imitation. There are no photographs online of the dolls which were much cheaper than the one shown in this photograph.
6
It could be said that the introduction of black dolls in Latin America and the Caribbean began with the making of the Abayomí doll. According to Alicia Castillo Lasprilla , the history of the black doll dates back to the enslaved women brought from Africa to America on slave ships. On this journey the women “torn their tunics and made knotted dolls to alleviate the pain of their sons and daughters.” It is in 1988, during the celebration of the one hundred years of the abolition of slavery in Brazil, that Lena Martins (artisan, popular educator and activist of the Black Women movement of Brazil), recreated the Abayomi doll , which in Yoruba means “precious encounter” or “the one that brings joy.” For Castillo, it is through cultural exchanges between the Abayomí doll from Brazil and other Latin American countries that its identity value is redefined.
7
See Voices of the Resistance , translated by José F. Buñuelos and Sally Perret.
8
Machado’s story tells the adventures of a white rabbit who admires and wants to be like the girl with olive eyes, curly hair and dark, shiny black skin. The central theme of the Machado story is the beauty and identity of the black girl.
9
Nay is a slave brought from Gambia, from the nation of Achanti in Isaacs ‘ novel . Nay is the one who takes care of María, the main character of the novel of the same name.
10
See Afro-Colombian literature library which contains 18 titles and an essay written by prominent Afro-Colombian authors in the last 200 years: https://www.banrepcultural.org/proyectos/afrocolombianidad/biblioteca-de-literatura-afrocolombiana
11
It is worth highlighting the work of poets such as María Teresa Ramírez, María Elcina Valencia, and Lucrecia Panchano, among others, who give voice to Afro-descendant women in Colombia, whose verses have also given way to descriptions of women in the imagination of the Colombian nation.
12
This canonical literature begins with the Chronicles of the Indies, passing through costumbrista literature, romanticism, and symbolism with Rafael Pombo, Jorge Isaacs , Eustaquio Palacios, among others. In literary studies, Nadaism is emphasized, the Golpe de Dice generation, represented by Raúl Gómez Jattin , ending with the Barranquilla Group, headed by Gabriel García Márquez, among others.
13
As César Alberto Córdoba Gutiérrez compiles in “Arrullo of the Colombian Pacific: A cultural, spiritual, musical and social phenomenon”, “The arroyo as a song of a religious nature is a song that is presented in certain celebrations such as Christmas, the patron saint’s day or the saint’s day and funerals. These celebrations cover specific stages of life: Christmas represents birth, where childhood is reflected; In the patron saint festivities you see life in general; the funerals that, of course, represent the departure from this world… In Chocó there are totally original songs where allusion is made to the Virgin and the child with songs like “Ay ve”, a song where Jesus is the main protagonist…There the child He learns to recognize the deities that will guide his pattern of behavior in the rest of his life, and to become familiar with the saints to whom his parents entrust themselves daily” (62).
14
Speaking about miscegenation in his book Race and Ethnicity in Latin America (2000), Peter Wade defines miscegenation as the sexual and spatial mixing of peoples in the Americas between Spaniards, Creoles, indigenous people and free blacks (38). However, Wade also mentions that Afro-descendants “suffer exclusion when whites and mestizos define them as beyond the limits of a legitimate nationality, as non-nationals, distant from the basic values that being white or mestizos (of color) entails. of course), urban, civilized and with a formal education” (103).