Recognizing Blackness in Chile

It is 2007, and the whole time we are in southern Chile, I keep trying to write a poem about my mother’s hands. Light brown, sinewy, and freckled in some places, her hands remind me of my Tata’s, and being here in Villarica makes me think about Mami’s lineage in a way I haven’t yet. They are her father’s hands, I write in my journal—a spiral-bound notebook with a map of the New York City subway system printed on the cover—and maybe someone else’s before that. I am just a couple months shy of thirteen, and still struggling to find language to articulate my own relationship to race.

One day, while my brothers and I are walking around town, a group of white children, all small boys, approach us to ask where we’re from. They note our brown skin and curly hair, our Blackness—or proximity to it, depending on who is looking and where— and try making guesses. Brasileños? One of them says. We laugh, and tell them our mother is from Chile, just like them. The boys don’t seem to believe us, and as we walk away, they continue watching.

Twelve years later, in 2019, I am on the phone with Cristián Báez Lazcano, listening as he talks toAfro-Chilenos in the northern province of Arica.