The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise: African Americans Y 'El Mundo Latino.'

About four years ago, the subject of Black/Latino relations took on a sudden urgency in my life. One lazy May afternoon, home from school and slapping bones on the boardwalk with a retired dockworker and a couple of local brothers from Venice, we got into one of those conversations about difference: L.A. and Oakland, Magic and Mike, Shoreline Crips and Venice 13. Several shootings had placed the last topic on the agenda, the most recent of which had taken place that very morning. Mid-game, a couple of vatos - the oldest maybe 15 - strolled past. One parted the folds of an oversized Ben Davis work shirt, flashing a piece. And goddamn if the two brothers I'm sitting between didn't pull back their own shirts to flash the pistols they had. Well, I knew I didn't have a gat, looked at my waist anyway, and glanced back as the cholos continued on toward the handball courts and a spectator asked whose turn it was to play. That summer proved to be the bloodiest between Black and Mexican gang members in two decades. And if the violence has, to a degree, lost steam, it is nevertheless true that events of the past years point to an increasingly difficult and dangerous state of affairs between this nation's two largest nonwhite populations. A few examples must suffice. * In 1990, several hundred aging remnants of Cuba's defeated bourgeoisie demonstrated noisily against the welcome extended to Nelson Mandela by Miami residents. Although vastly outnumbered by supporters of Azania's current head of state, exile groups successfully prevented representatives of the City of Miami - including African-American members of the city and county commissions - from attending Mandela's speech. * Recent fights between Black and Latino/a youth have closed six Los Angeles area high schools. Interracial gang violence between Latino/a and Black gang sets has expanded to become, for the first time, a countywide phenomenon. Meanwhile, in Hawaiian Gardens, more than 30 "hate crime" incidents have taken place in a one square mile area in the last year alone. * In New York, hard-won gains of Boricuas (Puerto Ricans) and African-Americans deteriorate as the racist assaults of the Ghouliani [Giuliani] administration fuel fires begun by middle-class politicians, renewed residential segregation, and a steep decline in the living standards of New York's Black and Brown majority. Competition eclipses cooperation in many city government agencies, as African-Americans and Puerto Ricans attempt not only to outmaneuver each other, but also Dominicans, Haitians, and English-speaking West Indians. These incidents, and others like them, have led too many African-American and Latino/a organizers, scholars, and community workers to wonder if the answer to the question "do platanos go with collard greens" is a loud "No!" Neoconservatives such as Linda Chavez, who argue that successful integration on the part of Spanish-speakers requires distance from Blacks, exacerbate matters. At the same time, the inability of Black theoreticians to conceptualize the relationship between communities of color in anything other than hackneyed phrases has left a gaping mental, spiritual, and organizational vacuum. Moderate and conservative forces have been more than happy to fill that vacuum. Furthermore, a legacy of chauvinism on the part of Black activists who regard the antiracist struggle as our private political property increases our distance from potential allies. With this problem in mind, we all need to remember the long, proud, and complicated history of cooperation that exists between Black North Americans and Latino/as of various national backgrounds. Every one of the three largest Latino/a groups in this country - Chicano/Mexicanos, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans - possesses a unique historical experience of contact, cooperation, and conflict with African-Americans. It is to some of these stories we turn. Judging from numerous scholarly works, one might think that before the last two decades, peoples of Latin and African descent hardly knew of each other's existence. …