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Emerald Freedom: “With Pride In The Face Of The Sun”, Norman E. Whitten Jr.

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Esmeraldas, Ecuador, became home to free African and Afro-Hispanic people in the mid 1500s. It is the only region in the Americas where self liberation— cimarronaje—of Afro-descendant people preceded slavery. It is also the region that soon gave birth to zambaje, the emergence of an African-Indigenous population. This article sets forth salient dimensions of historical and contemporary blackness before sketching the enduring and transforming cultural dynamics of this rain-forest littoral region of the neotropics by reference to cosmovision, the marimba dance, arrullos, chigualos, alabados, la tumba, and la tropa. Following this sketch I turn to political economy, cultural ecology, and …