We are an organization made up of Afrodiasporic women located in Santiago de Chile, we have been together since 2018 and have a trajectory of 5 years of anti-racist feminist activism in the country. We have members from Mexico, Haiti, Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil and Chile, which allows us to have a broad perspective on the experience of what it means to be black in different contexts throughout the continent. We reject borders imposed by nationalism, because we chose to unite in our blackness, our «Amefricanidad» (L. González, 1960).
We constantly work to generate spaces of encounter, resistance and strengthening of Afro-descendant identity, through different educational and sociocultural strategies. Over the years we have built and strengthened alliances with other organizations that advocate for feminism, migrants, refugees, LGBTQ+, domestic workers, sex workers, informal workers, etcetera, developing a variety of activities, events, written work, and interventions, facing a deeply racist and patriarchal society that makes our existences invisible and marginalizes us.
The Kilombo is born out of the necessity to day to day racist violence visible; the constant harassment of our black existences, the mockery of our hair, skin and bodies, to denounce humiliation, rapes and attacks of all kinds. We have been brought together by the understanding that we are not alone, and that it is unacceptable that any of us should die at the hands of agents of the State for not speaking the language, for the color of our skin, or for being foreigners, as happened to Joane Florvil or Carmen Chávez. We come together to survive, to exist collectively, to reconfigure the concept of family and challenge the structure, to inspire the youngest and open paths for those who come after. We empower ourselves to resist as a community.
We aim to to promote the participation of black people in spaces of social and political impact to the community in local, regional and national levels; promote the artistic and cultural expression of people of African descent; contribute to economic self-management, develop preventive, critical and proactive strategies against racism and xenophobia through concrete actions that confront the prejudices on which structural racism and patriarchy are based. Likewise, we generate spaces for reflection about identity and community, which allow us to recognize the contributions of the African diaspora to society and generate strategies of visibility, resistance and construction, claiming our collective identity through the knowledge of our rights..
Those goals are approached through the perspective of black feminism, and the belief in an intercultural society, building bridges between the diverse communities that inhabit Chile. We direct our efforts to respond to the permanent crisis of systematic racism and its consequences in everyday life, through solidarity, equity, social justice and the fight for black people’s full access to economic, social and cultural rights. We dream of participating in decision-making regarding our community. We want to be regional references of resistance, advocacy and organization. We want to integrate technical teams for the construction of public policies that positively impact our community and contribute to reducin
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