Hand in hand with the steady increase in the entry of migrants to countries of African descent throughout the country, the demand for the recognition of the African root in Chile and its history, as well as the need to know the number of people who identify themselves as such, becomes latent while at the same time an initiative slowly advances in the National Congress.
This is how last Wednesday 13 of September, without major objections or modifications to the original proposal, The Human Rights and Native Peoples Commission of the Chamber of Deputies approved and sent to the court the bill that grants legal recognition to the Chilean Afro-descendant tribal people.
The parliamentary motion asks the State to promote culture and respect the symbols of these peoples, in addition to including the history of Afro-descendants within the national education plan. It also asks to incorporate these peoples as a category in the census surveys of the 2017-2022 from the country, in order to have information for the correct promotion of inclusion policies.
The initiative began its processing in that legislative body in April of 2016 and was driven mainly by organizations from the north, from the Arica and Parinacota region mainly, who in the year 2013 achieve this with the first characterization survey of the Afro-descendant population of the National Institute of Statistics (OTHER), which he estimated at eight thousand 500 Afro-descendant people in the region, which is equivalent to a 4,7 percent.
Due to the historical denial that has existed towards this part of Chilean history, the Afro-descendant population at the national level is still unknown. The figures provided by the survey carried out by INE may be complemented at the same time with the first official results of the Census 2017, those that will be published in December of this year. It should be remembered that prior to the consultation carried out at the beginning of 2017, the same organizations launched a campaign calling on the Afro-descendant population to mark in the census and recognize themselves as such, When faced with the question, do you consider yourself to belong to an indigenous or native?, it is these results that will also be able to provide a sample of reality at the national level.
Meanwhile, the approved project (bulletin 10625) must be reviewed and submitted to a vote by the 120 members of the Lower House to continue their second process in the Senate.
To understand: What does the bill that came out of commission establish?
Although the project dispatched by the Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples Commission was approved almost the same as the initial proposal, it was modified only in its first article. The original text contemplated an acknowledgment by the State of the discrimination and historical stigmatization to which the Afro-descendant population was a victim in the national territory since the time of the Colony., pointing out a violation of human rights because they are currently considered crimes against humanity.
The paragraph was edited, the first part of the text was eliminated, removing any reference to a possible responsibility of the State, those that –as it is based on the comparative- could lead to eventual international demands. With everything, the final document dispatched and that the Chamber must legislate, stipulates the following:
– Grants legal recognition to the Chilean Afro-descendant tribal people, your cultural identity, language, historical tradition, culture, institutions and worldview.
– Chilean Afro-descendants are understood to be the human group that, having Chilean nationality in accordance with the Constitution of the Republic, shares the same culture, history, habit, united by awareness of identity and anthropological discourse, descendants of the African diaspora, and that it identifies itself as such.
– The knowledges, traditional knowledge, traditional medicine, Languages, rituals, Chilean symbols and clothing tribal people of African descent are and will be assessed, respected and promoted by the State. Recognizing them as intangible cultural heritage of the country.
– Chile's national education system will endeavor to contemplate a programmatic unit that enables students to have an adequate knowledge of history, language and culture of Afro-descendants and promote their artistic and cultural expressions from the preschool level, basic, middle and university.
– Afro-descendants have the right to be consulted through the agreement 169 of the International Labor Organization, each time legislative or administrative measures that may affect them are envisaged, in particular in those that are reasoned by social policies, cultural and educational rights or that affect the Afro-descendant community in their third generation rights.
– The State shall endeavor to include the Afro-descendant category within the Afro-descendant tribal group in censuses of the national population in accordance with the agreement. 169 of the International Labor Organization, since the approval and publication of this law.
