Afro Peruvians
Afro-Peruvians have been among the most marginalized ethnic groups in Peru due to the legacies of slavery, colonialism, and the plantation economy. Afro-Peruvians have been constantly and systematically excluded from national narratives through the politics of mestizaje, the narrative that promotes the myth of racial harmony and renders racial inequality invisible. As Marisol de La Cadena argues, racism in Peru is silent. Susazne Ozbler notes that racism in Peru is asolapado (covered) because there has been “an absence in the explicit legal institutional framework [..] that confirmed that Peru still has a racist and colonial legacy.” This has resulted in a lack of opportunities and insufficient government action to address the issues that affect the Afro-Peruvian community, due in part to continuing color-blind policies. Structural racism leaves many Afro-Peruvian people without fundamental human rights. In addition to structural racism, there is also the daily interpersonal racism that Afro-Peruvians face. Interpersonal discrimination, colonial stereotypes, and inflammatory racist jokes make it difficult for them to inhabit a country that constantly denies and normalizes racism.
According to the 2017 national census, Afro-Peruvians constitute 3.6% of the Peruvian population, approximately 828,894 people. This could be interpreted as a minority, but Afro-Peruvians are the second-largest ethnic group after the Quechua population. Afro-Peruvian populations are concentrated more in the coastal regions of Peru, as we can observe in the Map obtained after the 2017 census, which highlights the districts with the most concentrated Afro-Peruvian populations
Statistical data also reveal persistent inequalities in access to education, employment, health care, and living conditions among Afro-Peruvian populations. According to the Estudio Especializado sobre Población Afroperuana (EEPA), only a small percentage of Afro-Peruvian youth access and complete higher education. Both the 1017 Census and this study also show that Afro-Peruvian households face precarious labor conditions, higher levels of informal employment, limited access to health services, and limited access to adequate living conditions and basic services. This data demonstrates that racial inequality in Peru is not only symbolic but material, shaping everyday life through lack of access to basic services and the deprivation of basic human rights.
Racism in Peru is also gendered. Male Afro-Peruvians deal with criminalization and hyper-sexualization, while Afro-Peruvian women face gendered and racialized stereotypes that put them in subjugated positions. Afro-Peruvian women have to constantly fight against structural racism and colorblind public policies that ignore the particular vulnerabilities of Black women. Afro-Peruvian women are also viewed as hypersexualized bodies. This increases the risk of suffering from domestic and sexual violence and not being seen as victims when they report it. Additionally, Afro-Peruvian women face limited access to education, housing, political power, and employment; they remain underrepresented in national history, politics, media, and cultural production.
Even though Afro-Peruvian women have faced constant racial and gendered violence, they are also producers of knowledge, memory, and resistance. They have created spaces to narrate their experiences, build community, and redefine Afro-Peruvian identity beyond oppression. For that reason, this project extends Victoria Santa Cruz’s questions and premise: “¿Qué cosa es ser negra?” or, in English, “What does it mean to be a Black woman?” or “What does it mean to be an Afro-Peruvian woman?”
Victoria Santa Cruz is one of the most important Afro-Peruvian women. She was a choreographer, professor, and artist. Her most famous work is the poem "Me gritaron Negra." In this poem, she talks about her experience growing up as a Black woman in Peru. She narrates how her identity journey was marked by being called out and reduced to just her Blackness from a young age. Victoria asks questions to try to understand the implications of being racialized and gendered in a country like Peru.
This question resonates with this project, which reflects on Afro-Peruvian identity constructed by Afro-Peruvian women through their bodies, memories, testimonies, and lived experiences. This project approaches the question “¿Qué cosa es ser negra?” through Afro-Peruvian women’s own narratives as they appear in documentary film. This project understands documentaries as audiovisual archives in which Afro-Peruvian women narrate their lives, identities, and histories. Through four films: El precio del color (1986), Color de mujer (1990), Black and Woman (1978), and El quinto suyo (2002), this project traces different ways of answering the question of what it means to be Black in Peru: Que cosa es ser afroperuana?
First, “Ser afroperuana” is to face racism and denial
Afro-Peruvian women navigate a society where racism is publicly denied yet deeply embedded in everyday life. El precio del color (1986) reveals how discrimination persists through daily interactions, stereotypes, and the enduring logic of mestizaje.
Second, “Ser afroperuana” is to live through labor and inequality.
Afro-Peruvian women’s lives are shaped by unequal labor conditions rooted in historical processes such as the agrarian reform and the legacy of servitude. Color de mujer (1990) shows how race, gender, and class intersect in structuring economic precarity and limited opportunities.
Third, “Ser afroperuana” is resisting through art. Cultural expression becomes a space of resistance, memory, and self-definition. In Black and Woman (1978), Victoria Santa Cruz centers the body, rhythm, and voice as ways of reclaiming Black identity.
Lastly, “Ser afroperuana” is to imagine a new nation. Afro-Peruvian identity also emerges as a collective political project that challenges exclusion from the nation. El quinto suyo (2002) repositions Afro-Peruvians as central to Peru’s past and future through community, visibility, and belonging.