{"id":27350,"date":"2013-05-30T01:35:20","date_gmt":"2013-05-30T01:35:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=27350"},"modified":"2017-08-13T22:05:40","modified_gmt":"2017-08-13T22:05:40","slug":"kings-for-three-days-the-play-of-race-and-gender-in-an-afro-ecuadorian-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=27350","title":{"rendered":"Kings for Three Days: The Play of Race and Gender in an Afro-Ecuadorian Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kings for Three Days: The Play of Race and Gender in an Afro-Ecuadorian Festival<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

University of Illinois Press<\/a>
\nMay 2013
\n216 pages
\n6 x 9 in.
\n16 black & white photographs, 3 maps
\nCloth ISBN: 978-0-252-03751-1
\nPaper ISBN: 978-0-252-07901-6<\/p>\n

Jean Muteba Rahier<\/a><\/strong>, Associate Professor of Anthropology and African & African Diaspora Studies
\nFlorida International University<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A vibrant study of symbol and social significance in one of Ecuador’s black populations<\/em><\/p>\n

With its rich mix of cultures, European influences, colonial tensions, and migration from bordering nations, Ecuador<\/a> has long drawn the interest of ethnographers, historians, and political scientists. In this book, Jean Muteba Rahier delivers a highly detailed, thought-provoking examination of the racial, sexual, and social complexities of Afro-Ecuadorian culture, as revealed through the annual Festival of the Kings. During the Festival, the people of various villages and towns of Esmeraldas<\/a>\u2014Ecuador’s province most associated with blackness\u2014engage in celebratory and parodic portrayals, often donning masks, cross-dressing, and disguising themselves as blacks, indigenous people, and whites, in an obvious critique of local, provincial, and national white, white-mestizo, and light-mulatto elites. Rahier shows that this festival, as performed in different locations, reveals each time a specific location’s perspective on the larger struggles over identity, class, and gender relations in the racial-spatial order of Esmeraldas and of the Ecuadorian nation in general.<\/p>\n

Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n