RACISM AND XENOPHOBIA IN MEXICO AND COLOMBIA IN THE 21ST CENTURY: PERSISTENCES AND DISCONTINUITIES
In this symposium we will reflect on and analyze what has happened in both Mexico and Colombia, throughout the twenty-first century so far, in the field of academic studies on racism and xenophobia, and in the fight against these two dangerous systems of oppression that have so profoundly marked their history and current reality.
Although Colombia and Mexico are Latin American countries with a colonial past dominated by the Spanish Crown and a modern history marked by internal colonialism, the modalities of their colonial and modern histories differ. The paths adopted by power relations and interethnic relations differ, as do the realities of the enslavement of people from Africa and of Afro-descendants during the colonial period. The ideological-cultural model on which the imagined national community and national identity were built in Mexico differs from that of Colombia, and this contrast offers an interesting opportunity to understand the political and cultural mechanisms within which racism and xenophobia take shape.
The role of mestizaje in each of these two models also presents different modalities, as does the weight of the liberal political model in both contexts. The current composition of their indigenous populations also differs (4.7% in Colombia, 20% in Mexico), as does their Afro-descendant population (2.9% in Mexico, 10% in Colombia). The paths taken by the political regimes governing each of these two nation-states during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have not been the same: in one, the twentieth century is marked by the legacy of the Mexican Revolution, and in the other by conservative hegemony and alliances among elites—marking differentiated commitments to the cross-cutting project of modernization.
Moreover, although Colombia and Mexico both entered the territory of constitutional multiculturalism at the end of the twentieth century, the way they have navigated this universe has not been the same. Finally, while Mexico began entering a spiral of extreme violence tied to the link between power and drug trafficking at the start of the twenty-first century, Colombia’s history in this respect is longer, with paramilitary groups and guerrillas among its by-no-means-minor components.
For all these reasons, we believe the beginning of the second quarter of the twenty-first century is a good moment to establish a binational dialogue on the persistences and discontinuities that have occurred, between 2000 and 2025, in the field of study, analysis and combat against racism and xenophobia in these two countries. We are convinced this dialogue will be very fruitful.
