Black in Latin America
My home in Miami is filled with people from all over Latin America and the Caribbean. Their history of slavery is not unlike ours, but what is different is that there is very little prejudice and bigotry between races in these nations.
In this four part series starting TONIGHT (April 19), Harvard professor and scholar, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., examines how Africa and Europe came together to create the rich cultures of Latin America and the Caribbean.
Latin America is often associated with music, monuments and sun, but each of the six countries featured in Black in Latin America including the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, and Peru, has a secret history. On his journey, Professor Gates discovers, behind a shared legacy of colonialism and slavery, vivid stories and people marked by African roots. Latin America and the Caribbean have the largest concentration of people with African ancestry outside Africa — up to 70 percent of the population in some countries. The region imported over ten times as many slaves as the United States, and kept them in bondage far longer. On this series of journeys, Professor Gates celebrates the massive influence of millions of people of African descent on the history and culture of Latin America and the Caribbean, and considers why and how their contribution is often forgotten or ignored.
Maybe us white folks could learn a thing or two about our brothers and sisters from the south. That is, the WAY south!
