UC Santa Barbara

This thesis focuses on the representations and stereotypes of Afrocolombians in the press from 1970 to 1980. The two newspapers used in the study were El Tiempo, the widest circulated paper in the country with its publishing house in the capital, Bogotá, and El País, the most influential paper of the Pacific Coast hailing from the third-largest city in the country, Santiago de Cali. During the 1970s, Black social and political leaders were creating the first congresses focusing on racial discrimination, unequal opportunities, and cultural identifiers for which to promote in the country. However, the majority of Black presence in the press was of mainly how Afrocolombians used their body as athletes, dancers, musicians, and laborers/domestic help. Although the country was promoting mestizaje as its’ national identity, blackness had been largely stigmatized and/or ignored in general ideas of patrimony and citizenship. Therefore, this thesis will show the complexities of how Afrocolombians were represented in the press on a national and regional scale through the lens of el negro permitido: what is permissible or follows in line with historical notions of how blackness has been constructed by a White or Mestizo/a elite.

The findings of this thesis mostly derive from image and text analysis of microfilms of El País and El Tiempo during the 1970s, building on comparative approaches which span many sectors of society and their perspectives and has its strength in clarifying some of the nuances to how racism is produced and understood in a Colombian context. This is significant in the sense that the central government was promoting the nation to be free of racism while reserving these acts of discrimination and inequity of power to the United States. This thesis will explain how racism, through el negro permitido operated, thrived, and continued to normalize Black subordination through a color-blind rhetoric.