Abstract

This article focuses on reading some of Zapata Olivella’s early writings, scattered in little known journals and newspapers, in order to reconstruct part of the processes that informed his thinking about the African diaspora in the Americas in general and in Colombia in particular. The analysis reveals the basis upon which Zapata Olivella built his tireless counterpoint to the images created by the local cultural and political elites around the idea of both the nation-state and the African Diaspora in Colombia, from colonial times throughout the twentieth century.