Chocó: A Historically Excluded Region

The aim of this chapter is to begin developing the theme of how the consequences of exclusion were brought about. The chapter advances this objective by analyzing the case study of ChocóChocó, the Colombian region with a historically greater component of Afro-descendant people and lower social and economic performance. Then, a general description of the case study is presented together with a range of qualitative and quantitative evidence on how the implicit institution of racial exclusionRacial exclusion was maintained in ChocóChocó. Analysis of the data shows that, despite there being no explicit rules for excluding Afro-descendant territories, the region of ChocóChocó received implicit racialized treatments. More importantly for the purposes of the book, these racialized implicit practices limited the provision of goods, services, and rights such as limitations to political participation, self-determination, public services, or the imposition of projects of internal colonization over the territory and its people. The chapter also shows how, as a critical fact, these restrictions were related to both the national geo-racializedGeo-racialized project and more critically, the subnational alignment of local elites with the discriminatory project.