Diana M. Ruggiero University of Memphis, USA
Abstract
Though recent scholarship illuminates the significance
of film in increasing visibility of Afro-Latinos and expanding
the Spanish language curriculum, it fails to consider how
film validates oral traditions in the African Diaspora
as well as challenge the curricular assumptions
that marginalize orality. I therefore consider the
counterhegemonic potential of film through a discussion
of my 2008 Fulbright funded documentary film on the
Afro-Ecuadorian communities of the Chota-Mira valley.
A decolonizing process and project, Más allá del fútbol
documents the oral tradition of bomba as a means of
celebrating afrochoteño culture and raising awareness
of their subalternity. Interdisciplinary, it presents bomba
and afrochoteño culture as represented by afrochoteños
themselves. It thus provides a space within and through
which afrochoteños counter their silence.
This article reveals the necessity of critically engaging film
and filmmaking as decolonial tools that validate afro
descendant oral traditions and counter the epistemological
violence of colonialism and colonial slavery.
Keywords
Afro-Latinos; Afro-Ecuadorians; film and filmmaking; subalternity; decoloniality.
