Today, as in the past, the Afro-American communities in Latin America and the Caribbean live the Christian experience rooted in their own particular cultural context, but open to and in dialogue with the experiences of Indigenous peoples, mestizos and whites. They constitute a population of approximately 133 million, scattered throughout the continent and the islands, who have suffered a structural racism that has also been expressed in Christian religious institutions.

Since the 1990s, and in particular as a result of the reflection on the significance of 500 years of the presence of Western and Christian culture, there has been a gradual but important recognition of the oblivion and discrimination in which these populations have lived together with the Amerindians. Some decades earlier, the Bishop of Buenaventua, Colombia, Gerardo Valencia Cano – recognised for his work among the Afro population of his diocese and in charge of the Missions Department of the Latin American Episcopal Council (CELAM) – in 1968 laid the foundations for a change in missionary pastoral practice, so that the Afro-descendant and Amerindian communities, as part of their Christian experience, would become the subjects of their own decisions, also giving them the tools to fight for their own rights. Although today they are recognised as having rights, structural racism is still anchored in the Western colonial institutions that continue to be the basis of the organisation not only of Latin American and Caribbean states but also of the Christian churches.

Effects of the Slave Trade

During the course of almost four centuries, from the 1500s until around 1880, the slave trade expeditions ploughed the Atlantic. As a result, 12–15 million African captives were deported to the Caribbean, North America and Latin America. These numbers do not include those who died during the crossing, whose deaths transformed the Atlantic into a graveyard. The African captives were to work as slaves on sugar cane, coffee, tobacco, cotton and indigo plantations, or in sugar production workshops, or as servants. The whole of Europe participated in this massive enterprise, which was fundamental to its economic development. Yet the memory of this event for a long time remained rather dim; then, between 1990 and 2000 there occurred a revival of this memory, which at long last was called a duty of remembrance.