Editorial Unimagdalena

Description in English: The purpose of this book is to raise awareness among a wide audience of one of the most significant and shameful phenomena for humanity, as was the enslavement of over twelve and a half million Africans who were brought to America and forced to work and live as slaves. Many countries participated in the slave trade at different times and with varied intensity (Great Britain, Portugal, France, Spain, Denmark, Netherlands,Germany, United States...). The slavery caused the invisibility of the peoples and cultures reduced to terms like Africans, slaves or blacks. Slavery and its memory has led over the centuries to a stigmatization of those who were slaves and, at times, of their descendants as well. Superficial physical differences such as skin color, non-genetic, of African populations helped reinforce the ideas about the distances established between populations (superiority/ inferiority; civilized/barbaric; civilized/savage) that justified slavery and subsequently exclusion and racism.