Reivindicación identitaria y características lingüísticas del dialecto afroesmeraldeño en Fiebre de carnaval de Yuliana Ortiz Ruano

Abstract

Over time, the struggle of the Afro-Ecuadorian people has sou ght to strengthen their identity traits and the recognition of their culture, understood as the diverse ancestral manifestations and traditions such as music, dance, sports, gastronomy, oral tradition, and literature, among others. This process responds to the need to highlight the bias in their historical representa tion in order to revalue and revitalize the different represen tations and meanings of Afro culture and its worldview. This article specifically addresses the dialect of Afro-Esmeraldeños in relation to its origin, structure, and characteristics, with par ticular attention to its intentional use by the author Yuliana Ortiz in the novel Fiebre de carnaval as a narrative strategy aimed at transmitting an identity trait and a distinctive feature of the Afro-descendant community. It also considers how the Afro-Esmeraldeño dialect constitutes a fundamental cultural element in the speech of a specific region of Ecuador, the pro vince of Esmeraldas. In this regard, the article highlights the use of the Afro-Esmeraldeño dialect as an aesthetic-literary resource in Fiebre de carnaval and explores its socio-historical origins, which stem from contact with the Atacame language and subsequent linguistic variations resulting from the African diaspora. Furthermore, it emphasizes Ortiz’s intentional use of the Afro-Esmeraldeño dialect as a means of cultural vindica tion through its main dialectal features, which serve both as di fferentiating resources and as elements of identity affirmation of Afro culture, particularly in the Esmeraldas region.