A critical analysis of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s PBS documentary film series Black in Latin America. The author discusses Gates' exploration of the history of early race mixture, the contemporary valorization of Blackness, and racial inequality in Brazil.
The intensification of ethno-racial protest in Latin America has led to the adoption of targeted legislation for Black and indigenous populations, signaling a new moment in race politics in this region. Existing literature has failed to account for this shift either because it held that race was not salient in Latin America, or it presumed that racial hierarchy existed, but that the obstacles to Black mobilization were insurmountable. Argues that the literature must contend with this new reality of “Black politics” in Latin America.
Examines racial politics in Brazil by analyzing the city of Salvador da Bahia's cultural policies over time and their relationship to national ideology and racial identity in Brazil more generally. It argues that the re-Africanization of Salvador's Carnival and its historical center, the Pelourinho, although initially products of the mobilization of Afro-Bahians themselves, have become institutionalized and ironically serve today as testaments to Brazil's diversity, tolerance, and integration.
"The description of Negro family life in Bahia, Brazil, as given by E. F. Frazier is reviewed. The disintegration of African patterns held to have resulted from white contact, when analyzed in terms of aboriginal tribal family organization, particularly with reference to underlying sanctions, is found to exist to a very slight degree. The Afro-Bahian family manifests traits particular to it, but these are the results of accommodation to an acculturative situation, and are not a sign of demoralization." --The Author
