Afro-Indigenous History in Chile, Peru, and Colombia
Reflections and theoretical proposals

The maroonage of Africans is a factor that has been minimally referenced and investigated in Chilean historiography. We must acknowledge the difficulty of tracing it, because if they succeeded in their feat, all that remained was the record of their sale, in some cases parish records, in others the report of the escape made by the master before the corresponding notary, or when they were captured. The investigative experience of palenques or quilombos has demonstrated that maroons created true territorial enclaves of resistance, preserving their cultural systems, forging links with indigenous peoples or individuals. The presence of Afro-descendants in Chile seems difficult to trace, especially after the second half of the 19th century. The context is complex, as the country was undergoing a process of national consolidation. The problem of alterity, that is, the representation of bodies and cultures that have apparently disappeared, concerns us in the Chilean case, where a culturally and genetically homogeneous country is assumed, when in reality it is quite the opposite.