that Afrodescendants were unsuited for the Canadian climate and society, State authorities long ago created a narrative that was regularly applied as an excuse to explain Afrodescendants' low rates of admission to the country. The author covers in her chapter the voluntary and involuntary movements of African peoples from the Caribbean to Canada and from Canada to the United States and Sierra Leone.  
Also from a long durée perspective, Paulette A. Ramsay writes about Afrodescendent communities in Mexico from the fourteenth century to the present. She explores key elements of this history, such as the importation of captives from Africa to work in silver mines and plantations, various forms of slave resistance and institutions grounded on the idea of racial mixing. Ramsay argues that the lack of research on Afro-Mexicans reflects the absence of affirmative action policies in the country. She challenges the Eurocentric discourse of negation and discusses Afro-Mexican traditions that are essential to understanding Mexican society.  
Rina Cáceres examines how Central America has been a locus of African diasporas since the sixteenth century. Using a comparative and long-term approach, she discusses the dynamics of slavery in the region, as well as the resistance strategies adopted by enslaved people, such as palenques (runaway communities), negotiations with slavers and legal challenges in the pursuit of individual freedom, and the struggle for general emancipation. In the chapter she has written, Cáceres also explains transformations in the social, political and literary realms of Costa Rica and other Caribbean societies that took place at the end of the nineteenth century. In addition, she describes more recent struggles for citizenship.