Addressing the existence of a black middle class in Colombia is not only difficult but an apparent contradiction, an oxymoron, because black people are inevitably imagined as poor and "lower class". But are there not other class experiences within this population? In order to respond to the research gap on this social group, this essay examines the configuration of the black middle classes since the late 1930s, based on life histories of members of three generations of families from the Pacific and Caribbean region who identify themselves as part of this class.

Mara Viveros Vigoya is a doctor in Anthropology, School of Higher Studies in Social Sciences of Paris (EHESS); Master in Latin American Studies (IHEAL, Paris III), and an economist at the National University of Colombia. Titular Professor of the Faculty of Human Sciences of the National University of Colombia, she has taught and developed a good part of her research projects since 1998 in the Department of Anthropology and the School of Gender Studies, where she was a director in 2010-2012 and 2016-2018.