Our right to Write: Nelson Estupiñán Bass Against the Necropolitics of the State in Los canarios pintaron el aire de amarillo

Abstract

The work of Nelson Estupiñán Bass constitutes a point of reference for Afro-Latin American literature that transgresses the white-mestizo paradigm by making visible the false equality on which the Latin American nations were constituted. Starting from the notion of Necropolitics developed by the Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe, I analyze the narrative strategies that Estupiñán uses in the novel Los canarios pintaron el aire de Amarillo (1993), to vindicate the emancipatory struggles of Indigenous and Afro communities, by showing the politics of death exercised by the state on unwanted bodies and asserting how the alliance of these bodies is the only way to survive the loss caused by the dispossession to which they have historically been subjected. Estupiñán reaffirms, through his work, the right that We Afro-descendants have to make writing not only a means of resistance but also of emancipation that allows us to dispute other possible imaginaries.