Blacks and Latinos have numerous historical connections. The moors of North Africa occupied Spain from about 700-1400 A.D., about the time of the Spanish King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Additionally, the slave trade which began with [Henry Louis Gates] the Navigator flourished from the 1440s, taking Africans into Portugal and Spain as servants. Many conquistadors of the New World brought with them free men of African ancestry. Finally, the Transatlantic Slave Trade sealed Afro-Hispanic connections as slaves intermingled voluntarily and involuntarily with their captors, creating variations in our color palate. Thus, our connections are longstanding. My point is that the African Diaspora experience, as was evidenced on Oscar night, is diverse and includes influences of blacks in Europe, Africa and all the Americas and the Caribbean. There are strands of the Diaspora in the Middle East, including Arab nations, and in places as unlikely as Mexico and China. So, blacks in America must begin to embrace our global heritage and we must also learn that our experiences are not superior but mere pieces of a wider tapestry of "colors." All are worth celebrating, researching and understanding. We are one great people cast to the winds by emigration and immigration, historical slavery, war, racial mixing and chance.
"Black in Latin America" (NYU Press), by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.: This spring, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. produced a four-episode series for PBS tracing the legacy of the slave trade in six Caribbean and Latin American countries. "Black in Latin America" is the book companion to the television series of the same title.
Here is a big bomb. What people need to do is to examine the number of people who list themselves as Negro in Central and South American countries. Then cultural shock sets in. Spain imported in its possessions, Negroes by the thousands. Mexico, Peru, Panama, Columbia, and Argentina, all had large Negro populations. Today many of these Negroes have assimilated into the population, and are no longer distinguished as Negroes.
One way the Spanish used to make money like the British in New York was to rent slaves which was called Half Slavery to Freedom. In New York, the master would allow the slave to be free as long as the slave paid a yearly fee to the master. In the Spanish possessions, a slave master would rent his slaves to people who had need of their labor. This means the master did not have to be accountable, or responsible for the upkeep of the slave or the actions of the slave. Either way it was dehumanizing for the slave.
Black In Latin America, premiering nationally Tuesdays April 19, 26 and May 3, 10, 2011, at 8 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings), examines how Africa and Europe came together to create the rich cultures of Latin America and the Caribbean. Latin America is often associated with music, monuments and sun, but each of the six countries featured in Black in Latin America including Brazil, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico and Peru, has a secret history. On his journey, Professor Gates discovers, behind a shared legacy of colonialism and slavery, vivid stories and people marked by African roots.
