Jorge Medina

Jorge Medina Barra (Spanish: [ˈxoɾxe meˈðina]; 24 April 1968 – 23 November 2022) was a Bolivian civil rights activist and politician who served as a member of the Chamber of Deputies from La Paz, representing its special indigenous circumscription from 2010 to 2015.

Raised in the Afro-Bolivian community of the tropical Yungas region, Medina became active in the Afro civil rights movement after moving to the city of La Paz. He was a founding member of the Afro-Bolivian Saya Cultural Movement and co-founded the Afro-Bolivian Center for Integral and Community Development, two organizations dedicated to promoting public and state recognition of Afro cultural identity.

Having succeeded in securing the inclusion of Afro-Bolivians in the 2009 Constitution, Medina was later elected to represent La Paz's minority indigenous peoples in the Chamber of Deputies, becoming the first Afro-Bolivian to serve in either chamber of the Bolivian legislature. In parliament, Medina spearheaded Bolivia's flagship Law Against Racism and promoted other pro-Afro pieces of legislation. He was not nominated for reelection.

Jorge Medina was born on 24 April 1968 to Paulino Medina and Sergia Barra, an Afro-Bolivian family from the rural community of Chijchipa in the La Paz Department's agricultural Nor Yungas Province. Medina completed his primary schooling in the nearby town of Tocaña before moving with his parents to Caranavi in Alto Beni, where he attended the city's Martín Cárdenas School. After graduating in 1988, Medina moved to the city of La Paz to pursue a college education; he studied business administration at the Higher University of San Andrés and took courses in systems engineering at the University of Aquinas. In the ensuing years, Medina worked a number of odd jobs, spending six years as a chauffeur for the Golden Eagle Mining Company before being employed as a mechanic at a local workshop, and later as a laborer for a nearby paper company. He also spent short stints as an employee at YPFB – the state-owned petroleum enterprise – and the Ministry of Labor.

Medina's entry into the Afro-Bolivian civil rights movement was precipitated by his early experiences residing in La Paz, a city "devoid of Afro-Bolivians ... [where] it was not uncommon for other Bolivians to be oblivious to the existence of black people". Recognition of the Afro-Bolivian population was niche, limited in academia to Western scholars studying the African diaspora. Their presence in public often promoted racial discrimination, including physical harassment, due to the superstitious belief that pinching a black person would bring good luck. "It was 'lucky negro'; they surrounded us ... and fought among themselves over who saw us first", Medina recalled.

Starting from the late 1980s, Medina became active in promoting the saya, a style of Afro-Bolivian folk songs mixed with drums, which the Afro movement had begun using to generate cultural visibility. During this time, Medina also distinguished himself as a popular saya composer and performer in his own right, writing the songs "Flor de Alelí", "Ser Líder de un Grupo", and "Guarachera de Cuba", among others. Along with other activists, Medina founded the Afro-Bolivian Saya Cultural Movement [es] (MOCUSABOL) in 1988, which became one of the country's leading Afro-Bolivian civil rights and awareness organizations. He served as vice president and later president of the body for five years between 1999 and 2004.

Despite MOCUSABOL's successes in spreading the saya's popularity, Medina soon grew frustrated with the growing perception that Afro-Bolivians were just "'the negros who dance.' That made me angry because we are not only good at dancing we can do other things", he stated. In 2006, together with Marfa Inofuentes, Medina founded the Afro-Bolivian Center for Integral and Community Development (CADIC), of which he served as executive director. The organization actively worked to advance Afro-Bolivian civil and political rights, taking a leading role in attaining state recognition of the Afro community during the 2006–2007 Constituent Assembly, which was then redrafting the Bolivian constitution. By the end of the process, CADIC was successful in securing the same minority rights for Afro-Bolivians as those granted to the country's indigenous peoples.

With minority groups increasingly encouraged to participate in politics, Medina was nominated to contest a seat in the Chamber of Deputies on behalf of the Movement for Socialism. Given the offer, Medina recalled stating, "Barack Obama is president of the United States; why should an Afro not be able to be in parliament here in Bolivia". He ran to represent the La Paz Department's newly created special rural native indigenous circumscription – an innovation of the 2009 Constitution – a district with constituents comprising the department's Afro-Bolivian, Araona, Kallawaya, Leco, Mosetén, and Tacana peoples. He received one of the highest vote shares of the entire election cycle, winning nearly ninety-two percent of the popular vote, becoming the first Afro-Bolivian in history to serve in either chamber of the Legislative Assembly.