“Racial Economies”: Land, Labor, and Black and Indigenous Leftist Politics in Colombia, 1930–40

This paper makes the case for studying Black and Indigenous mobilization within a single frame to deepen our understanding of debates and struggles over land, race and democracy after slavery across the Americas. It examines what a prominent Black Colombian socialist termed in 1937 “racial economies.” A concept that pointed to the fact that black and indigenous struggles over land and labour were inextricably linked to their experiences as racialized citizens and the political economic structures they inherited from the colonial and slave periods. The decades following the abolition of slavery in Colombia in 1851 saw the consolidation of a capitalist export economy that entrenched the power of a largely white or mestizo landed elite, the dispossession of indigenous lands and the expansion of US economic influence. By 1930, the year of the founding of the Colombian Communist Party, the majority of Black and Indigenous rural folk were either landless, subsistence farmers or being forced out of their resguardos (collective lands) or small plots of land. Many became rural proletarians and were forced to work under highly coercive labor regimes in haciendas or in export industries. Yet, this period also saw the emergence of radical leftist movements and politics across the country and many Black and Indigenous leaders played a key role in these movements. Black and Indigenous activists in Colombia in the 1930s and 1940s mobilized Marxist ideas and platforms to challenge traditional land structures and racial hierarchies. Some Indigenous leaders deployed Marxism to redefine the terms of their inclusion and participation in the nation in ways that guaranteed their collective territorial rights and cultural and political autonomy. Meanwhile, Black leaders found in leftist ideas a rich framework to explain the situation of black Colombians, confront the legacies of slavery and renovate republican struggles for land and equal citizenship.