This book tells the compelling story of postemancipation Colombia,
from the liberation of the slaves in the 1850s through the
country's first general labor strikes in the 1910s. As Jason McGraw
demonstrates, ending slavery fostered a new sense of citizenship,
one shaped both by a model of universal rights and by the
particular freedom struggles of African-descended people.
Colombia's Caribbean coast was at the center of these
transformations, in which women and men of color, the region's
majority population, increasingly asserted the freedom to control
their working conditions, fight in civil wars, and express their
religious beliefs.
The history of Afro-Colombians as principal social actors after
emancipation, McGraw argues, opens up a new view on the practice
and meaning of citizenship. Crucial to this conception of
citizenship was the right of recognition. Indeed, attempts to deny
the role of people of color in the republic occurred at key turning
points exactly because they demanded public recognition as
citizens. In connecting Afro-Colombians to national development,
The Work of Recognition also places the story within the
broader contexts of Latin American popular politics, culture, and
the African diaspora.