BEYOND “OUR AMERICA”

Abiayala, Amefrica Ladina, and Our Afroamerica as Critical Geo-Historical Categories

Resumo

If Jose Marti coined the concept Our America as a key construct in the invention of Latin America as a continent, here we are proposing two geo-historical categories with the aim of decolonizing the spatial and temporal imaginary: Our Abiayala from Native American feel-thinking and Our Afroamerica from Afro-descendant feel-thinking. Our Afroamerica is a translocal territory that crosses over and transcends national borders throughout the Americas, while composing those spaces. Its historical universe and its spaces of culture and politics mark a geography extending from South to North, sketching the length and the width of the routes of enslavement and resistance, from Argentina to Canada, transgressing the –imaginary as well as material— ramparts of the Rio Grande, that separate Our America from the Northern Colossus. On that key, Our Afroamerica includes the Afro-Latin American histories and cultures from the Mexican North to the Patagonia, as well as the Afro-Latinx ones that exist in the United States, thus composing (together with the Afro-North American spaces, in themselves a montage of the cultures of Africanity) a vast and diverse historical archipelago that we denominate Afro-American Diasporas. The main argument of the article is that Our Abiayala and Our Afroamerica constitute critical geo-historical categories to decolonize our collective imaginaries and engender modes of re-identification of self, history, and future horizons, which are key in the new wave of antisystemic movements. The monograph will layout both categories but will focus in Our Afroamerica.