Politics, public sphere and new ethnicities

Abstract

The miscegenation discourse, in which the image of a tolerant nation is consolidated- the nation capable of assimilating all demands for recognition of peculiarities and cultural differences – prevailed during several decades as an hegemonic way of self representation of Brazil. However, recently, a variety of social actors (descendants of refugee slaves – quilombolas - , Unified Black Movement, indigenous organizations) have been questioning such a discourse, denouncing the historical injustices and the increasing prejudice they have been victims of. The relationship among these actors and the politics and the national public space is ambivalent. On one hand, they depend on the domestic politics as a context for the articulation of their differences and for the fight for the concretizing of their demands. On the other hand, the construction of their protest identity implies denouncing the nation that has conceded them a subordinated place and in searching transnational alliances which support their initiatives. The paper discusses, in a general way, such movements, going deeper in the studies of the new mobilizations of Afrob-Brazilians. It be showed how some political achievments (implementation of compensatory policies, cultural recognition) can only be properly understood when you take into account the relation of interdependence between the insertion of such actors in the national public space and their links to transnational political networks.