Black in Latin America
By: Henry Louis Gates, Jr
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 270
ISBN-13: 9780814732984; 9780814732991; 9780814733424
Subjects: Race relations; Civilization; Race identity; Blacks; Slavery; African influences; History
Description: 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World during the Middle Passage. While just over 11.0 million survived the arduous journey, only about 450,000 of them arrived in the United States. The rest, over ten and a half million, were taken to the Caribbean and Latin America. This astonishing fact changes the entire picture of the history of slavery in the Western hemisphere, and of its lasting cultural impact. These millions of Africans created new and vibrant cultures, magnificently compelling syntheses of various African, English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish influences. Despite their great numbers, the cultural and social worlds that they created remain largely unknown to most Americans, except for certain popular, cross-over musical forms. So the author set out on a quest to discover how Latin Americans of African descent live now, and how the countries of their origin acknowledge or deny their African past; how the fact of race and African ancestry play themselves out in the multicultural worlds of the Caribbean and Latin America. Starting with the slave experience and extending to the present, he unveils the history of the African presence in six Latin American countries: Brazil, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico, and Peru, through art, music, cuisine, dance, politics, and religion, but also the very palpable presence of anti-black racism that has sometimes sought to keep the black cultural presence from view.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Brazil : "May Exú give me the power of speech"; title: Mexico : "The black grandma in the closet"; title: Peru : the black soul of Peru; title: The Dominican Republic : "Black behind the ears"; title: Haiti : "From my ashes I rise; God is my cause and my sword" (motto on King Henri Christophe's Haitian flag, 1811-1820); title: Cuba : the next Cuban revolution.