A plea to count black populations in each national census has provided another key ingredient in the region's progress towards the recognition of AfroLatin Americans and the fight against negative attributions to blackness. Taken together, pretos (blacks) and pardos (mulattoes) now account for more than 50 per cent of Brazil's total population. During the last Colombian census, following a debate about the categories to be used to enhance the underestimated numbers of Afro-Colombians, more diverse categories were introduced into the national survey, enabling people to identify themselves as, among others, afrocolombiana, afrodescendiente, and negro. There is consensus among academics, activists, and even governmental agencies that the figure of 4.5 million, representing 10 per cent of the population, still seriously underestimates the actual size of the AfroColombian population. Indeed, other estimates put the figure at 10 million, accounting for 25 per cent of the total population. One of the arguments put forward to explain this severe lack in representation is that signifiers of blackness, such as moreno on the Caribbean coast and raizal on the islands of San Andrés and Providencia, were not included in the Colombian census.  
The diaspora having been declared the 'sixth region of Africa', it may thus be argued that Africanity is a global space of flows in multiple directions  
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[^0]:    29 On the changes brought about by the wave of black activism that has flourished in Latin America since the 1980s, see, among others, García, Laó-Montes, and Paschel.  
across oceans and continents constituted by a plurality of travels of bodies, movements, music, spiritualities, and ideas. A Puerto Rican radio programme, Rumba Africana, broadcasts this Africana universe of reciprocal exchanges once a week, where the soukous music and dance of the former Zaire is influenced by Trinidadian calypso, and Congolese salsa modifies Cuban rumba, while Cuban Santeria experiments and debates with contemporary Yoruban spirituality, in which it is rooted.