Attempts to understand what the presence of Black music means in the absence of Black people. Is this an expression of a global circulation of Afro-Caribbean cultural trends as symbols of belonging and difference among urban youngsters? Does it take us back to the history of Quintana Roo as a Caribbean region and the Black Atlantic? Is it a form of revision of Mexican national ethnic mixture and inclusion of other population groups? Adapted from the source document.
Journal Article, Taking an Afrocentric approach to the study of Africans who were enslaved by the Spanish in Mexico, the author traveled to Mexico on many occasions to study the retention of African cultural forms, concepts, practices, and values. This article provides the reader with a critical literature brief on the issues surrounding the current discourse.
On Christmas Day 1521, in the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo, the first recorded slave revolt in the Americas occurred. A group of African, likely Wolof, slaves came together with native Indians led by the Taino cacique Enriquillo to assert their independence. Beyond being the first slave revolt in the Americas, it was also one of the most important moments in Colonial American history because it was the first known instance when Africans and Indians united against their Spanish overlords in the Americas.
If Africans' forced Atlantic passage ushered in a colonial era that violently connected Africa and the Americas to Europe, Africans' travel to and on the Pacific as sailors, soldiers, dockworkers, and curious voyagers traced other kinds of crossings: linkages between black Atlantic subjects and Mexico, Native America, Polynesia, Micronesia, the Philippines, and other sites of flow through the global South. "Water, Shoulders, Into the Black Pacific" looks to innovate discussions of the African diaspora by tracing one possible route of this less-explored oceanography. Where does the black Atlantic meet the black Pacific? What would it mean to chart a story of the African diaspora not through the triangle trade crisscrossing that first ocean but as a continual navigation of many bodies of water -- Atlantic, Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, Mississippi, Pacific -- and many waves of migration?
A critical analysis of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s PBS documentary film series Black in Latin America. The authors examine Gates' presentation of blackness in Mexico and Peru. Their critique of the film focuses on the themes of national ideology, racial categorization, and portrayals of the 'black' experience.
Recent scholarly interest in the populations of African descent in Latin America has contributed to a growing body of literature. Although a number of studies have explored the issue of blackness in Afro-Latin American countries, much less attention has been paid to how blackness functions in mestizo American countries. Furthermore, in mestizo America, the theoretical emphasis has oftentimes been placed on the mestizo/Indian divide, leaving no conceptual room to explore the issue of blackness.
Journal Article, Examines the experiences of Afro-Cuban immigrants in non-traditional settlement sites in the Southwest. Drawing on 45 interviews with Afro-Cubans in Austin, Texas and Albuquerque, New Mexico, the authors explore how respondents position themselves relative to the local Mexican-origin population. Specifically focuses on the implications of 'Hispanic' identity in these cities as a category that is heavily tied to Mexican origin, 'brownness,' and the suspicion of illegality. As Afro-Cubans, respondents face a different racialization process than many non-black Latino immigrants, in that their blackness marks them as outside the bounds of regional constructions of Hispanic identity.
