from 15 hrs, the Commission on Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples begins its regular session on Wednesday. This time and at the third point of the table, It is contemplated to begin the discussion of the parliamentary motion that gives legal recognition to the Chilean Afro -descendant tribal people.
The initiative (Bulletin No. 10.625) admitted to the past 8 March of this year, It aims for the State of Chile to legally recognize the Chilean Afro -descendant population, your cultural identity, language, historical tradition, culture, institutions and worldview. The project also proposes that traditions such as medicine, the rituals, and clothing, to name a few, are valued, respected and promoted by the State, being recognized as the country's intangible heritage.
The creation of a programmatic unit is also stipulated so that teachers have adequate knowledge of history, language and culture of people of African descent, promoting this culture in educational establishments from the preschool level to the University, as well as the inclusion of this category in population censuses, as established by the agreement 169 of the International Labor Organization.
Reggae Chalice talked with Rodrigo Calderón, Priest Representative of the Ethiopian African Black Congress (E.A.B.I.C Office in Chile), One of the branches of the Rastafari movement that has joined the initiative promoted by the Afro -descendant community of northern Chile, Arica particularly, who referred to the importance of the initiative.
“We expect this process in the camera that can have a continuity in its processing, that all demands can be well considered, All requests regarding recognition; that the look is extended a little because the Afro -descendants are not alone in Arica. We hope that there are benefits and recognition, be for the entire population, As well as we hope that with this point the door will open so that Afro -descendant people have their own representatives in the Senate, In Parliament, that really represents the voices and interests of the black population ”, Calderón said.
The representative of the Boboashanti Rastafari order called on the State of Chile to pronounce and ask for a formal apology to the black population, as has happened in countries in Europe and the Caribbean, countries that received African slaves, "Then we also hope there is recognition of that injustice, To that damage, We know all the atrocities that have been committed ".
In the same line Susana Castro, Rastafari woman of the Nyahbinghi Order in Chile, He said that “getting to this scenario has not been easy. That today we are talking about a social and legal recognition of black people in Chile is the product of a long struggle to conquer rights that the colonizers snatched the black people who arrived here more than four centuries ago ”.
Consulted about the implications that this project would bring to the law promptly, the Sister Susy –As recognize it among their peers- He argued that “this recognition implies that the State must look again how history has been told and bleached in Chile, and recognize that black people have always been part of it (…) Recognition is important because it is not only legal, but also social and cultural, What leads us to the next step, that when the State recognizes the reasons why black people came to this territory, It must inevitably recognize the implications in slave trafficking and the genocide that allowed the colonizers to be installed, Until today, In this territory ".
