August 2013 marked twenty years since the passing of Law 70, which legally recognizes the ethnic, territorial, and socioeconomic rights of black communities in Colombia. In the past two decades its implementation has been mixed at best, and the actual political and economic status of most Afro-Colombians remains grim. Yet this flawed law remains an important icon and political instrument of Afro-Colombian struggles. A retrospective look at the processes and peoples that led up to Law 70 may be useful in the context of ongoing Afro-Latin(o) struggles to obtain real and sustained cultural, political, and economic rights.