anti-blackness, authoritarian rule & state violence in colombia & Brazil

Those invested in the abolition of the police and militarized state understand that anti-Blackness is deeply embedded in these systems, both in the United States and globally. However, the experiences of Black and Afro-descendent communities in the Americas remain obscured and unarticulated in human rights discourses of racial injustice and authoritarian attacks on civil society. This neglect has real and material implications for Black and Afro-descendent organizers in Latin America and the Caribbean whose battles against the spread of white supremacist nationalism are undetectable in philanthropic racial justice and human rights funding strategies. Whether in Cauca, Minneapolis, San Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, or Chicago, fascist regimes inform one another and are threatened by the power of the people and emboldened in their increasingly violent efforts of suppression. In Brazil and Colombia there has been an increase in extra-judicial killings of civilians, activists and peaceful protestors in recent weeks. As in the United States, the majority of those targeted have been particularly racialized, either as Black, Afro-descendant and/or Indigenous.

We invite funders to learn about the current situation in both Colombia and Brazil, as a way to understand the particular manifestation of authoritarian rule and anti-Blackness in the Americas. Further, we invite funders to strategize together to resource activists in this region in a more substantive way.