The global discourse on Black liberation and racial justice has, for decades, been a topic of profound scholarly interest. Yet, this discourse is often dominated by a US-centric perspective, inadvertently marginalizing the deep-rooted and parallel struggles occurring throughout the hemisphere. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, while originating in the United States, resonates with a long history of resistance that has been unfolding for centuries across Latin America. It is precisely this gap that Black Lives Matter in Latin America: Continuities in Racism, Cross-National Resistance and Mobilization in the Americas, a new edited volume by Cloves Luiz Pereira Oliveira, Gladys Lanier Mitchell-Walthour, and Minion K. C. Morrison, masterfully addresses. This collection stands as a long-awaited and essential contribution, offering an expansive, multidisciplinary, and transnational perspective on the fight for Black lives in the Americas.

The volume’s central argument, articulated powerfully throughout its chapters, is that the fight for Black liberation in Latin America is not a recent phenomenon imported from the North American context. Rather, it is an enduring struggle against the persistent legacies of white supremacy, which manifest in unique and complex ways across the region. The editors and contributors demonstrate that from the shores of Brazil and Colombia to the highlands of Peru, Afro-descendants have continuously resisted oppression through a diverse repertoire of strategies. This book’s great achievement is its meticulous documentation of these myriad forms of mobilization, spanning street protests, academic production, legislative advocacy, and innovative digital activism.

The book is thoughtfully organized into three parts, guiding the reader from the foundational aspects of the struggle to its concrete impacts and alternative forms of expression.

Part I, “Making Black Lives Matter in the Academy, Government, and Politics,” establishes the institutional and intellectual groundwork of Black mobilization. It begins with Minion K. C. Morrison’s chapter tracing the history of the transnational “Race and Democracy Project,” which connected US and Brazilian scholars and activists long before the BLM hashtag became a global phenomenon. Subsequent chapters delve into the crucial role of academia, both in producing critical scholarship on race and in debunking reactionary myths, such as the baseless claim that affirmative action policies would incite violent racial conflict in Brazilian universities. This section also confronts the stark realities of political underrepresentation, analyzing the paradox of why Salvador, Brazil’s “Black Rome,” has never elected a Black mayor, and exploring the broader challenges and recent gains for marginalized candidates in Brazil and Colombia. A particularly compelling chapter by Lopes, Leal, and Melo exposes the “necropolitics” of the Brazilian state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, where the willful absence of race-disaggregated data amounted to a systemic disregard for Black lives.

Part II, “The Impact of Black Activism on Policy and Legislation in Latin America,” shifts the focus to the tangible outcomes of these struggles. The chapters here offer a compelling comparative view of how Black movements have shaped state policy. Cristiano Rodrigues provides a detailed account of the Afro-Colombian movement’s institutional activism, which culminated in the landmark Law 70 of 1993. This success is contrasted with the more arduous battles for recognition and rights in Peru, where the promise of full citizenship remains unfulfilled after two centuries of independence, and in Uruguay, where debates over affirmative action reveal deep-seated societal contradictions. The section also examines the construction of racial equality policies at the municipal level in Brazil and offers an innovative analysis of “ethnic entrepreneurship” as a form of political participation for the new Black diaspora in São Paulo.

Part III, “Alternative Forms of Black Mobilization in the Era of the Black Lives Matter Movement,” explores the new frontiers of resistance. This is perhaps the most forward-looking section of the volume, highlighting the creative and adaptive strategies of contemporary movements. Chapters by Alejandra J. Josiowicz and Mariela Méndez on decolonial feminist digital activism on Twitter, and by Gladys Lanier Mitchell-Walthour and Reighan Gillam on Black Brazilian YouTubers, reveal how social media has become a vital space for political education, community building, and mobilization against the far-right. The section also includes an ethnographic study of Palenquera and Quilombola women, whose daily labor constitutes a form of “living technology” for community survival, and a nuanced analysis of resistance in Cuba, where activists must navigate the rigid boundaries of the state.

This volume makes a monumental contribution by definitively demonstrating that Black lives have always mattered to those fighting for them in Latin America, and this fight has a rich, independent history. The collection’s strength lies in its ability to decenter the US narrative while simultaneously building transnational bridges, showing the interconnectedness of these hemispheric struggles against a common backdrop of systemic racism. By bringing together a diverse cohort of scholars, many from Latin America, the book provides a vital platform for voices from the Global South, enriching the field with perspectives that are too often overlooked.

If there is a minor critique to be offered, it is that the sheer breadth of the case studies, while a significant strength, occasionally leaves the reader wishing for a more extended, systematic comparative chapter that explicitly synthesizes the divergent political trajectories of key countries like Brazil, Colombia, and Cuba. Such a chapter could further illuminate why certain strategies for mobilization have been more effective in some national contexts than in others.

This minor point, however, does not detract from the book’s overall excellence. Ultimately, Black Lives Matter in Latin America is an essential, pathbreaking collection. It is indispensable reading for scholars, students, and activists seeking to grasp the full, hemispheric scope of the African diaspora’s ongoing struggle for justice, recognition, and liberation.