These videos are part of a collection that accompanies the book Styling Blackness in Chile: Music and Dance in the African Diaspora. The entire collection can be viewed on IU’s Media Collection Online. This video is a short clip showing a male dance troupe performing caporales, a traditional Andean dance, at the annual Carnaval Andino.
View the entire collection here: Styling Blackness in Chile: Music and Dance in the African Diaspora.
The Atlantic Slave Trade forcibly brought millions of African slaves to coastal trade points throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. As a result, African-descendant populations are more visible along the coast of South American countries like Chile. Colonization and the slave trade forced racial and ethnic groups to interact and resulted in a hierarchy that is represented in the caporal dance. The character of the ‘caporal’ is the overseer of Black slaves and most often represented as a mixed-race person wearing boots and holding a whip. Caporales today are folklore dances popular in festivals in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and Peru.
