(NNPA) - Brazil has long been the best kept secret of the Black Diaspora. Its population of more than 100 million Blacks (51 percent of the total population) makes it at least the second largest Black population in the world. This nation has been a sleeping giant in the global arena but is taking big steps to enter into the distinction of a First World Nation. Right now it is a leader of the emerging Second World nations and takes the leadership role with India at all global and United Nations conferences and summits. Brazil's President Lula da Silva proudly considers himself the leader of "People of Color". On the other hand, Brazil's bid via Rio de Janeiro was a super winner. It vowed to rebuild the slums of Rio and empower the masses. The infrastructure, job opportunities and contractual bidding would be thoroughly diverse and would make the Olympics Committee proud. It was a slam dunk! In the end it was Rio de Janeiro in first place, Madrid in second, Tokyo is third and the stinky Chicago bid dead last.
"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."
Chicago: University of Chicago, Dept. of Anthropology
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
272 p., Analyzes the relations between macropolitical changes and the lives of people in Alcantara. Chapters detail: (1) the changing social, economic, and ecological lives of Alcantara's villagers; (2) the contested effects of recent multicultural governance in Brazil--specifically remanescentes das comunidades dos quilombos (escaped-slave descended communities); (3) how state-sanctioned experts in Alcantara help shape people's understanding of the region's deep social inequality; and (4) the circulation of rumors of US plans to undermine Brazil's space program and invade the Amazon forest.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
221 p, Rodney was disturbed by the inability of intellectuals to share common cause with the masses, thus ensuring that they would be unable to contribute to uplifting their talents or participate in the growth of the nation. Guyana and the Caribbean were subject to sugar and slave traffic that constituted cheap labor for the plantations and buttressed the capitalist-industrial system. A significant byproduct of that system was the master-slave relationship; a no-less iniquitous consequence was an active racism. Thus, social inequality became the heritage of Guyanese and Caribbean history.
