This presentation will connect the colonial inception of legal systems across the Latin American region that enforced racialized social hierarchies with present-day local discourses on the legal rights of indigenous and black peoples. Starting with an examination of the politics of social hierarchy during colonial times, I will explore how liberal ideas in...
Many Candomblé communities in Brazil trace their central knowledge and practices to the Yoruba people who reside primarily in modern-day south-western Nigeria and who were trafficked in large numbers to Brazil during the final decades of the Atlantic slave trade. In June of 2014, the Alaafin (ruler) of Nigeria’s Oyo state (once the center of the Yoruba Empire) made a...
