the self-identification of people of African descent, not only in Colombia but also across the global African diaspora. ${ }^{28}$ As stated previously, our argument is that these terms, which are used by grassroots communities, black social movements and intellectual activists, can constitute relevant forms of selfdefinition if they are invested with meanings of positive self-recognition and a sense of collective belonging, and if they encourage collective actions and a project of decolonization and liberation.  
The book No Longer Invisible: Afro-Latin Americans Today, published in 1995, describes how Afro-Latin Americans tended to be erased, not only from hegemonic regional and national maps, but also from many cartographies of the African diaspora. In the 1990s, the supposed sleeping giant awoke and, by the end of the century, a report from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean estimated the black population of the region to reach some 150 million. The so-called lost decade of the 1980s was a time of tremendous growth for the organizational capacity and political advocacy of Afro-Latin Americans. The effervescence of local organizing grew into the national emergence of black social movements in several countries. In the 1990s, webs of black social movements were created throughout the region. During this process, negro and afrodescendiente flourished as positive signifiers of blackness and Africanity across Latin America.