ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the notions of race mixture that exist m Colombia, their relationship to the system of power that produced and sustains them, and their construction of the past, with specific reference to the black population of the country. The Iberian colonial enterprise was marked, in ethnic terms, by a contradiction of power. There were factors reinforcing the segregation of Indians, black slaves and white settlers. Discrimination against blacks has been a continued feature of Colombian society. In colonial New Granada, the so-called sockdad de castas existed, casta being the general term for the various people of different categories who made up the middle and lower strata of society. Power and wealth are connected with whiteness and whiter regions of the country. Lo mestizo is an abstract concept of ‘mixedness’. It celebrates the obliteration of difference in a democratic, non-hierarchical form.
