Preface

In 2013 the twentieth anniversary of the enactment of the Law 70 of 1993 or Law of the Black Communities was celebrated. It led our editorial team to prepare a dossier that could trigger reflection on issues related with black communities in our country. Thus, in this issue of Memoria y Sociedad we present to the academic and research community, as well as to our general public, a journal that brought together recent research on conflicts, customs and the realities of different African descent people that, in some cases, go beyond the Colombian scenario.

In our first article, written by Andrea Guerrero Mosquera, entitled Missions, missionaries and baptisms across the Atlantic: evangelization in Cartagena de Indias and the kingdoms of Kongo and Ngola. Seventeenth century, through a sharp analysis of the writings of missionaries in Africa from the first half of the seventeenth century as well as of the Jesuit priests in America, it is possible to find some answers to questions like: why were the Africans evangelized on both sides of the Atlantic?, how were the Africans evangelized in Central African kingdoms and in Cartagena de Indias?, what aspects evidenced an adequate evangelization?, what mechanisms were used for the evangelization of Africans?

In the text History of ethnic conflicts over territory in Northern Cauca and Chocó. Its impact on the land restitution policy, 2011, Daniela López Gómez, based on the historical reconstruction of the conflicts for territory that have existed between indigenous and black communities in the Chocó and Cauca populations, analyzes how "Law" affects the current policy of land restitution taking into account it makes the importance of inter-ethnic confrontations imperceptible, thus intensifying internal strife.

The Western notion of prostitution in Africa, article by Diana Triviño, offers elements to analyze and understand prostitution beyond the economistic interpretations, recognizing it as a social and cultural phenomenon, generating in this way possibilities for breaking away from the positions that have built an idea on legitimate and illegitimate sexualities.

Diego Giovanni Castellanos, in Ethnicity and Religion in the Muslim community of Buenaventura, shows how the relationships between ethnic and religious identity have allowed Muslims not only to strengthen their traditions, myths and customs, but also have allowed that, in spite of the various economic and socio-cultural issues that its community faces, they can develop agendas for action in pursuit of political or economic interests, individual or communal.

Social representations of African descent: the cultural adventure, the sexual and gender violence and the multidimensional struggles, by Yeison Arcadio Meneses Copete, exhorts us to reflect on the importance that the representations that have been proposed on African descent have and their direct relationship with their job opportunities, social mobility as well as loving, affectionate and family relationships in everyday life.

The last article of this dossier, written by Luz Stella Rodríguez Cáceres, entitled Ethnic recognition, right to housing and the impasses in the custody of the Afro patrimony in Rio de Janeiro, through the case study of the Pedra do Sal quilombo, analyzes the contradictions faced when claiming a place for black memory in the port region becomes in turn a struggle for urban territory.

On the other hand, in the section Open Issues, Edwin Monsalvo Mendoza and Hector Miguel López Castrillón, in the text Police action in a peripheral territory. Justice in the Parish of Manizales 1855-1865, after analyzing various court cases show how the application of justice became unfair and responded mainly to power relations.

The press in Buenos Aires in the face of "the suicide of Europe. " The outbreak of the Great War as a civilizing crisis and the resurgence of the national identity issue, written by Emiliano Gastón Sánchez, brings us closer to the impact that the Great War had in the Argentine society. Using as a source a set of journals of the time, it analyzes how, from the conflict, the ideal of a Europe hitherto example of civilization experimented a crisis, questioning and reconfiguring the Argentine national identity.

Felix Raúl Eduardo Martínez Cleves, in History of cities by some Colombian architects. An approach to the fundamentals of urban history, questions the abandonment that the Colombian Association of History has had regarding urban history, which has been of interest to other professionals such as architects. He recovers representative authors of the twentieth century, through which he presents an overview of the historiography of cities in Colombia.

We close this issue with a text by Heraclio Bonilla y Marco Manuel Forero Polo, The "conductions" and the native workforce in the Mariquita "mita" in the seventeenth century, which presents the complex circumstances that indigenous workers faced in the Mariquita mines located in the New Kingdom of Granada.

We hope you enjoy reading this journal as much as we did preparing it for you.

Editorial Team