"We're trying to work in compliance with the principles of Durban," Judge [Graciela Dixon], the current president of Panama's Supreme Court, said. "There's an emphasis on establishing the precise policies our countries need to assure inclusion for African descendants in Latin America." Late last year, Congresswoman Campbell hosted some 75 delegates from 20 countries who came to Costa Rica to attend the third Conference of Afro-Descendant Legislators in the Americas and the Caribbean. "I don't come from the activist Afro tradition," [Edgard Ortuno Silva] confesses, "but from the militant tradition of change. I admit that what has happened to me is that I overcame the problems of Blacks in Uruguay, of people of my skin color. And most people who have overcome no longer have a consciousness of being Black. But in my case, the political process I have been a part of made me aware of the African activist movement and I have talked with them and they have made me conscious."
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
342 p., Analyzes how imperial control met with resistance and how Africans, Indians, and Spaniards, and their descendants interacted with one another. Her study uncovers an intersection and cross-fertilization of sociocultural measurements identifiable in the workplace, courts, church, and private lives. Brockington innovatively uses Spanish colonial documentary sources, including serial financial accounts of wealthy orphans, court cases, parish records, and census information of hacienda workers to elucidate race, ethnic, class, and gender issues within the colonial reality of contradiction and ambiguity.
The Caribbean branch of the Toronto-based Global Afrikan Congress (GAC) this week welcomed British Prime Minister Tony Blair's comments on the horrors of slavery, saying he has done much more for the cause than "our own" Black-led governments in the region on the issue. Maxie Fox, a spokesman for the GAC formed in Barbados in 2002, said the GAC and other Afro organizations have been trying for years to persuade regional governments to "have a discourse" on slavery, its effects on Blacks and even reparations, but only Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo, a Hindu, has seen it fit to acknowledge correspondence.
Peter Webley, publisher of the South Florida monthly newspaper, Caribbean Today, has been selected as a recipient of the Caribbean Peer Awards Life Time Achievement Award for 2006. Webley was among four awardees, all Caribbean nationals, who were honored for their sterling contribution to the growth and ongoing development of Caribbean media in the area of sales, marketing and advertising. The other awardees include: Ken Gordon, of Trinidad and Tobago; and Lester Spaulding and Neville Blythe, both well-known Jamaican media personnel. Described as one of the pioneers of Caribbean news publishing in South Florida, Webley launched the Caribbean monthly newspaper in Dec. 1989. As the Caribbean diaspora began to grow in the early 1980s in this region, Webley told JIS News that he saw a need for greater and better news coverage of the Caribbean region and of the nationals here in Florida.
The program, which is sponsored by the Haitian Heritage Museum, featured traditional lecture format, intermingled with question and answer sessions, and a line up of local artists - Caheej, Flo and Mecca aka "Grimo." Throughout the presentation, the performers and speakers itnteracted with the audience. The program was designed for that purpose, explained Evaline Pierre, CEO and founder of the Haitian Heritage Museum, to keep them paying attention. "I chose artists to teach the culture because art transcends all boundries. Anyone can identify a beautiful painting." Attention is important because one of the program goals is to teach Haitian culture, a culture that is not widely known about, and by extension increase tolerance for differences. "It's a starting point," said Serge Rodrique, cofounder of Haitian Heritage Museum, "[so] you can start to understand similarities."
Representatives of several major Jamaican corporations, primarily representing companies in the food distribution and financial services sectors, will also be participating in and co-sponsoring the event. This year's conference will be held under the theme: "The Jamaican Diaspora: Unleashing the Potential".
