Black in Latin America

Selected as a 2012 Outstanding Title by AAUP University Press Books for Public and Secondary School Libraries The history of how six Latin American countries acknowledgeor denytheir African past 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 restover ten and a half millionwere taken to the Caribbean and Latin America. This astonishing fact changes our 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 Henry Louis Gates Jr. set out on a quest to discover how Latin Americans of African descent live now and how the countries acknowledgeor denytheir 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 Gates unveils the history of the African presence in six Latin American countriesBrazil Cuba the Dominican Republic Haiti Mexico and Peruthrough 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. In Brazil he delves behind the faade of Carnaval to discover how this rainbow nation is waking up to its legacy as the worlds largest slave economy. In Cuba he finds out how the culture religion politics and music of this island is inextricably linked to the huge amount of slave labor imported to produce its enormously profitable 19th century sugar industry and how race and racism have fared since Fidel Castros Communist revolution in 1959. In Haiti he tells the story of the birth of the first-ever black republic and finds out how the slavess hard fought liberation over Napoleon Bonapartes French Empire became a double-edged sword. In Mexico and Peru he explores the almost unknown history of the significant numbers of black peoplefar greater than the number brought to the United Statesbrought to these countries as early as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the worlds of culture that their descendants have created in Vera Cruz on the Gulf of Mexico the Costa Chica region on the Pacific and in and around Lima Peru. Professor Gates journey becomes ours as we are introduced to the faces and voices of the descendants of the Africans who created these worlds. He shows both the similarities and distinctions between these cultures and how the New World manifestations are rooted in but distinct from their African antecedents. Black in Latin America is the third instalment of Gatess documentary trilogy on the Black Experience in Africa the United States and in Latin America. In America Behind the Color Line Professor Gates examined the fortunes of the black population of modern-day America. In Wonders of the African World he embarked upon a series of journeys to reveal the history of African culture. Now he brings that quest full-circle in an effort to discover how Africa and Europe combined to create the vibrant cultures of Latin America with a rich legacy of thoughtful articulate subjects whose stories are astonishingly moving and irresistibly compelling.