Black History (from a Latino Perspective)

As January moves over to make way for February, we get ready for Black History Month. You know, McDonald’s “365” commercials, jokes about black people getting the shortest month of the year, factoids about George Washington Carver and pictures of Harriet Tubman appearing on the walls of elementary schools, and reminders that we shall not simply delegate this celebration to one month. We’ve seen and heard these images, phrases and American cultural attachés to the point where the month becomes a cliché, a corporate slogan, even unnecessary in the supposed “post racial age” of Obama.

jacked via Joe Maldonado's Facebook page

Let me try to take it from a different angle.

What does black history mean to me? This is not one of those essays that says “Black History is American History”, though we are all deeply interconnected. This is also not a tribute piece to African American historical figures gave me hope and inspiration, though they did.

Let me attempt to explain and expand “Black” History Month from a Latino perspective.

More after the jump.

THE PAST: Let’s look at the facts, Blackness is not only a part of the United States, but a part of the America(S). The Transatlantic Slave trade attempted to bring 11.5 million of our ancestors from Sub-Saharan Africa across the Atlantic. Less than ten percent of Africans arrived in what is now the United States. Where did the rest go?

38 percent went to the British, Dutch, Danish, and French West Indies
38 percent went to Brazil
18 percent went to the Spanish empire

Over half of those brought in captivity to the Americas became what we now call “Latinos”. They gave birth to our bisabuelos, our abuelitas, our mothers, our tias, our fathers, our primos, and yes, even us. They were raped by Spanish and Portuguese slave owners, or chose willingly to make families with indigenas or poor white campesinos. Whether our skin is cinnamon or milky, our eyes blue, brown, or green, they gave us their caderas, labios, narizes anchos, jawlines, and yes, that so called “pelo malo” that we try so desperately to cover up. They taught us how to dance by taking the Castillian ballroom dances of their masters and making them their own. Because of them, we know how to cook, how to pray, how to speak Spanish with an African twang, how to improvise, struggle, turn quince centavos into cien pesos.

Our ancestors were mobile, not content with staying in one place. Some of them went to (or came from) the British West Indies, others to the United States to live and work side by side with Black Americans. They built the Panama Canal, freed Cuba from Spain, screamed for the Independence of Puerto Rico from the United States, developed Capoeira as a form of self-defense, developed Salsa, Merengue, Bachata, Reggaeton, and yes, they created Hip Hop.

But we often downplay our ancestors. We discredit them. Sometimes we flat out deny them when they are on our faces as clear as day. My grandmother describes her husband’s father as trigueno (light brown complexion) lived in Utuado, a phenotypically white town in the center of Puerto Rico. He married a woman from Spain and forbade his daughters to marry dark skinned men. His son (my late grandfather who gave me my name) gave his daughters the same terms and conditions. Many of us prefer to “pass” than to acknowledge ALL of our raices.

It is sometimes hard for a people so racially and culturally mixed to identify with or to feel pride for a place called Africa. Our grandparents did not see the one-drop rule, Jim Crow, lynching, or voter intimidation like their North American counterparts. For many Latinos, talking about blackness, suggesting Afrolatinidad, or discussing racism are all taboo. But whether we acknowledge our blackness or not, it is there. It is a part of us. We are plagued by our silence. It is the driving force behind many of our inequalities, past and present. In Belize and Honduras, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Venezuela, Puerto Rico Panama, Cuba and Brazil, many Afro descendent communities face vast economic and educational disparities. They live in favelas, are displaced from their land, face police discrimination, lack government and corporate representation, and play the roles of maids and villains on telenovelas.

But this essay is not about victimization; it is about agency. For all of the struggle, there is indeed progress. This month will be about our gifts and curses. For the next month, I will highlight achievements and atrocities, presenting events, people, places, artforms, and social movements. It is my desire that by the end of the month, I will have helped broaden your scope of Black History to include the entire Diaspora.

Stay tuned y que se disfruten!

Posted by:

The Editor