Collective memory and ethnic identities in the Colombian Pacific

In the Pacific region of Colombia the new conditions for acceding to land and to territory are arousing a strong drive to redefine identities. Blacks who had never perceived or "categorized" themselves as such in their own milieux, unless as "free agents" or in reference to names of places or rivers in areas where they had lived, without land rights, for more than a century "became" so in order to ensure themselves a degree of land security, in application of a law (N° 70 of 1993). This legislation provides for the assignment of collective land titles to "black communities inhabiting the Pacific coastal region". For similar reasons, some Whites associate themselves (become assimilated?) with the Blacks and the mixed-race people, often close to the South-American Indians, sometimes claim to be "blacks", causing incomprehension and annoyance among their neighbours and officials alike, who are white