Myths of Harmony: Race and Republicanism During the Age of Revolution, Colombia, 1795-1831
Marixa Lasso,
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007
THIS IS AN important contribution to the growing historical reassessment of the role of black people in Latin American history, taking as its focus the part played by people of colour from Colombia’s Caribbean coast in the Independence revolutions. The book challenges the understanding of this era as one dominated by elite nation-builders, and charts the contribution to the ideas of the time made by racial constructions and the notion of racial democracy. The author argues that the keys to understanding the origins of racial tolerance or its absence lie in the Age of Revolution, not the colonial era, and that from the outset of the Independence uprisings patriots were declaring legal racial equality for all citizens. This would help to foster a myth of racial equality that itself became a revolutionary tool in the region. – GO’T
