No Longer Invisible cont'd.

Given the dynamics of the real world, however, the predicament of Afro-Latin Americans may be defined as an issue of human rights. This reformulation of the issue effectively expands the conceptual and discursive parameters of the continuing discussion about race, allows for specific responses to specific situations and situates it in the context of debates and struggles that no state, and no society, will easily ignore. Yet if, as so often happens, the official response is mere lip-service, then little is to be gained; the issue of Afro-Latin America will simply languish under the rubric of a broader, more intractable problem.

The importance of this volume is that it raises the 'visibility' of Afro-Latin Americans from likely, and unlikely, parts of the region. All the countries covered here offer examples of the socioeconomic and political deprivation of their black populations - a deprivation that suggests absence from national and regional power structures, What makes the problems of Afro-Latin Americans particularly tricky is that in the post-colonial period there has been no explicit legal exclusion of blacks from participation at various levels of society. A closer look, however, points to pervasive areas of exclusion, some intended, others not.

Complicating the issue is the very role of the law in defining and managing race relations in the region. A fundamental fact about Latin American polities has to be confronted and 'deconstructed'. This is that, in the absence of post-abolition legislation specifically targeting former slaves and their descendants, and in the absence of a tradition of compliance - either because such legal provisions do not exist or because the law has an ambiguous role in assuring equality of rights to all citizens - it is highly problematic to plunge headlong into recommending possible roles for the law when there has been no history of the law functioning in such a manner. 
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