The Black-Latin Experience
- Thread starter QueEx
- Start date
<font size="5">
Black Latin Americans Mentioned
Above in the BBC article:
</font size>
<font size="4">Paula Paim</font size>
Paula Paim
Senator from the State of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
<font size="4">Paula Marcela Moreno </font size>
2007- Minister of Culture
First female black Minister in history of Colombia.
<font size="4">Epsy Campbell</font size>
PANAMA CITY -- Epsy Campbell, whose grandparents moved to Costa Rica
from Jamaica to work on the country's railroads, is an economist-turned
activist-turned politician who came within 3,300 votes of becoming vice
president of Costa Rica last year.
Outside the Caribbean, no Afro-descendant has ever reached such political
heights in the hemisphere. She's even mentioned as a serious contender for
the presidency in the next elections.
"I am the most atypical of the Costa Rican stereotype," she says, flashing a
politician's easy smile. "I'm black, and I'm a woman."
For 42-year old Campbell, racism can be subtle.
"I can't say racism doesn't exist," she told The Miami Herald at a conference
for black activists in Panama City, "but in a person like me it manifests in
ways that are so sophisticated that many times it is hard to spot."
Occasionally, she notes expressions of surprise in people she meets, as if her
intelligence and eloquence defy expectations. It's almost racism in reverse,
she says, as though people are overcome with an "excess of admiration."
Campbell is a busy woman these days, heading the Citizens' Action Party --
a coalition of grassroots organizations that was created in 2002 and is now
Costa Rica's second biggest party.
But she still finds time to address Latin American black activists, with
speeches that are a mix of pep talk and hard facts.
There are few black judges in the region but many blacks in jail, she tells her
audiences. Latin American blacks in positions of power -- cabinet posts and
other senior government jobs -- number fewer than 20 and only 2 percent of
all elected legislators are black.
The novelty of a black female face in Costa Rican politics is beginning to wear
off, she said, and that's probably a good thing.
"You are no longer the exception, the rarity," she says. "Racism and
discrimination have much to do with ignorance and fear of the unknown."
http://www.miamiherald.com/multimedia/news/afrolatin/part5/achieve.html
`
Black Latin Americans Mentioned
Above in the BBC article:
</font size>
<font size="4">Paula Paim</font size>
Paula Paim
Senator from the State of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
<font size="4">Paula Marcela Moreno </font size>
2007- Minister of Culture
First female black Minister in history of Colombia.
<font size="4">Epsy Campbell</font size>
PANAMA CITY -- Epsy Campbell, whose grandparents moved to Costa Rica
from Jamaica to work on the country's railroads, is an economist-turned
activist-turned politician who came within 3,300 votes of becoming vice
president of Costa Rica last year.
Outside the Caribbean, no Afro-descendant has ever reached such political
heights in the hemisphere. She's even mentioned as a serious contender for
the presidency in the next elections.
"I am the most atypical of the Costa Rican stereotype," she says, flashing a
politician's easy smile. "I'm black, and I'm a woman."
For 42-year old Campbell, racism can be subtle.
"I can't say racism doesn't exist," she told The Miami Herald at a conference
for black activists in Panama City, "but in a person like me it manifests in
ways that are so sophisticated that many times it is hard to spot."
Occasionally, she notes expressions of surprise in people she meets, as if her
intelligence and eloquence defy expectations. It's almost racism in reverse,
she says, as though people are overcome with an "excess of admiration."
Campbell is a busy woman these days, heading the Citizens' Action Party --
a coalition of grassroots organizations that was created in 2002 and is now
Costa Rica's second biggest party.
But she still finds time to address Latin American black activists, with
speeches that are a mix of pep talk and hard facts.
There are few black judges in the region but many blacks in jail, she tells her
audiences. Latin American blacks in positions of power -- cabinet posts and
other senior government jobs -- number fewer than 20 and only 2 percent of
all elected legislators are black.
The novelty of a black female face in Costa Rican politics is beginning to wear
off, she said, and that's probably a good thing.
"You are no longer the exception, the rarity," she says. "Racism and
discrimination have much to do with ignorance and fear of the unknown."
http://www.miamiherald.com/multimedia/news/afrolatin/part5/achieve.html
`
Brazilian black and mixed-race people discriminated
Brazil is one of the most racially-mixed countries on the planet: half the population has African origins. Yet black and mixed-race people suffer discrimination. Many are fighting for better recognition of this "invisible majority".
Re: Brazilian black and mixed-race people discriminated
That's OK White Supremacy is on its way out.
That's OK White Supremacy is on its way out.
Re: Brazilian black and mixed-race people discriminated
I thought it was common knowledge that Brazil was majority black and mixed
Good find on the vid though.
I thought it was common knowledge that Brazil was majority black and mixed
Good find on the vid though.MilkaJunkie
Banned
Re: Brazilian black and mixed-race people discriminated
not by a long shot, man. but even so, it's more of a "majority supremacy" .. obviously if the majority of people in a society are white, they will want to reign supreme over "others" ... if the society was majority purple, then there would be "purple supremacy" ...
take from this what you will ..
not by a long shot, man. but even so, it's more of a "majority supremacy" .. obviously if the majority of people in a society are white, they will want to reign supreme over "others" ... if the society was majority purple, then there would be "purple supremacy" ...
take from this what you will ..
Re: Brazilian black and mixed-race people discriminated
Sorry my friend there is a just god and the Most High will destroy this fake society. Its crumbling as we speak.
Sorry my friend there is a just god and the Most High will destroy this fake society. Its crumbling as we speak.
Re: Brazilian black and mixed-race people discriminated
. . . then the world is due to be destroyed; unless you know of a place where racism doesn't exist ? ? ?
QueEx
Sorry my friend there is a just god and the Most High will destroy this fake society. Its crumbling as we speak.
. . . then the world is due to be destroyed; unless you know of a place where racism doesn't exist ? ? ?
QueEx
Cuban Hip-Hop, Underground revolution
by Annelise **********
Researcher: Eve Lotter
It's a late Friday afternoon in downtown Havana and an old man in a worn-out tuxedo opens the doors under the flickering green and red neon of Club Las Vegas. A poster on the wall, its corners curling, advertises the usual cabaret fare: live salsa, banana daiquiris, beautiful women. But the people standing outside are not tourists looking for an exotic thrill. They are mostly young, mostly black, and dressed in the latest styles from Fubu and Tommy Hilfiger. And despite the $1 cover charge—steep for most Cubans—the line to get in is long.
Inside, two young Afrocubans appear on a small stage in the back; one tall and languid, the other shorter and in constant motion. They wear baggy jeans, oversized T-shirts, and sprinkle their songs with "c'mon now" and "awww' ight." But while they admire American hip-hop style, MC Kokino and MC Yosmel rap about a distinctly Cuban reality.
"It's time to break the silence…this isn't what they teach in school…in search of the American dream, Latinos suffer in the hands of others…"
A young man wearing a Chicago Bulls jersey stands near the stage and waves his hand high in the air. "This music is not for dancing. It's for listening," he says. "And for Cubans, believe me, it takes a lot to keep us from dancing."
Kokino criss-crosses his arms as he moves across the stage, and the crowd follows him, word for word. Yosmel stands toward the back of the stage, his handsome face impassive as he delivers a steady flow of verse. The audience is enrapt. Anonimo Consejo—Anonymous Advice—is one of Cuba's top rap groups, waiting for the next big break: a record contract and a living wage to do what they love.
The two young men are not the only ones. Three girls, decked out in bright tank tops and spandex, sit on the sidelines and watch Kokino's every move. Yordanka, 20, Yaima 19, and Noiris 17, are cousins, and a year ago started their own rap group, Explosion Femenina. So far, the only explosion has been in their living rooms or at school talent shows, but that could change. In a week, they will perform for the first time at Club Las Vegas. If Cuba's top rap producer likes them, he'll groom them just as he has Kokino and Yosmel.
Right now that producer—Pablo Herrera—is in the DJ's booth, looking down at the two rappers. "What you're seeing is Cuba's underground. I’m talking the empowerment of youth as a battle spear for a more conscious society," he says in English so flawless that he's sure he lived another life in Brooklyn. And he looks it—from the braids in his hair to the New York attitude.
Herrera and a fellow representative of the Young Communist Party put on the weekly Las Vegas hip-hop show. With more than 250 rap groups in Havana alone, he chooses each Friday night's line-up carefully. "I can't work with everybody, I'm not a machine," he says with a shrug. "I mostly go with what I like."
But even with Herrera’s approval, the world for young rappers here is full of contradictions. They believe in Cuba, but they're not ideologues—they just want to make music from their own reality. Anonimo Consejo's lyrics are edgy, but getting too edgy could end their careers. The girls in Explosion Femenina try to be tough in the macho rap scene, but rely on their sex appeal to get in the door. Each day is a political and social balancing act.
Orishas, the only Cuban rap group to make it big, traveled to Paris to perform in 1998 and stayed. Kokino and Yosmel look at them with both awe and disappointment. Once abroad, Orishas made a hit record, but they did so by adding Cuba’s beloved salsa and rumba beats to their music. Kokino and Yosmel want to succeed by sticking purely to rap, but they've been at it for four years and their parents—supportive up until now—are beginning to talk about "real" jobs. All of these pressures bear down on a passion that began as a hobby.
When they met eight years ago, Kokino, then 13, and Yosmel, 17, were just kids looking for fun on an island so depressed that scores of their countrymen were building rafts out of everything from styrofoam to old tubes to take their chance at sea. Yosmel and Kokino watched them from their homes in Cojímar, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Havana where Ernest Hemingway once lived. Back then it was Havana's sleepy beach town, but by the time Yosmel and Kokino grew up, dilapidated Soviet-style high-rise apartment buildings and cement block homes had taken over.
For relief from the dog days of 1993, the two young men and their friends hung out at Alamar, a sprawling housing complex nearby. The kids entertained themselves in an empty pool improvising, break dancing, and listening hard to the American music coming from antennas they rigged on their rooftops to catch Miami radio stations. This is what they heard:
"’Cause I'm black and I'm proud/ I'm ready and hyped plus I’m amped/Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps," rhymed Public Enemy in "Fight the Power." Yosmel was hooked. "Their songs spoke to me in a new way. There was nothing in Cuba that sounded like it."
Or anything that talked about issues that Afrocubans had only begun to face. Instead, Cubans have been taught to ignore race and the Revolution tried to blur color lines by opening all professions, universities and government to Afrocubans. Officially, race all but disappeared as a part of national identity.
But increasingly, race is an issue in Cuba. If Afrocubans benefited most from the revolution, they've also suffered the most during its crisis. Every Cuban needs dollars to survive and the bulk of the easy money coming in remittances goes to the white Cubans because it was their relatives who left early on. Darker Cubans also face discrimination getting the island's best jobs in the tourism industry. Skin color—despite the Revolution’s best intentions—has once again become the marker of a class divide.
Kokino, Yosmel and others in Cojímar felt it. "Because we are black, wear baggy pants and have braids—which is strange in Cuba—on every block the police ask for our identification cards. There is this perception that all white people are saints and all blacks are delinquents."
Like disaffected youth everywhere, they looked for role models that gave them a sense of pride. In school, when Yosmel tried to talk about his African ancestry, teachers called him "unpatriotic" for thinking of himself as something other than Cuban. Yosmel turned to his mother to find out more about his African roots, and before long, her stories became his lyrics: "In my poor bed, I read my history/Memories of titans/Africans kicking out the Spanish."
She also taught him about santeria, Cuba’s African-derived religion that has outlasted any political regime. "In school they taught him about slavery, but they didn’t go into depth," his mother says, standing in the dirt yard in front of their small, wooden clapboard house. Lines of laundry hang to dry in the hot sun. A single mother, she washes her neighbor's clothes in exchange for a few extra pesos each month. Yosmel weaves her lessons throughout songs like this one: "If you don't know your history/ You won't know who you are/There’s a fortune under your dark skin/The power is yours."
He sought other teachers as well. Cuba has long welcomed black American activists and intellectuals. Yosmel and Kokino often stop by the house of Nehanda Abiodun, a Black Panther living in exile. There, Abiodun gives them informal sessions about African American history, poetry, and world politics. The messages in their music, says the 54-year old American, come from being "born in a revolutionary process where they were encouraged to ask questions and challenge the status quo." It also comes from their daily lives: "their parents, their experiences on the street growing up, what's going on in the world."
If expats like Abiodun served as historical guides, African Americans gave Kokino and Yosmel their beat. "It was amazing to hear rappers from another country worried about the same issues I was," Yosmel says. Rap artists like Common Sense and Black Star have been travelling to Cuba since 1998 as part of the Black August Collective, a group of African American activists and musicians dedicated to promoting hip-hop culture globally.
Even when unsure about the movement, the Cuban government welcomed American rappers because of their support for the revolution, says Vera Abiodun, co-director of the Brooklyn branch of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, and part of the Collective. Cuban youth responded to the rhythm, but also to the visitors' obvious pride in being black. "We didn't know how huge this would become in the beginning," she says.
Just as black Americans did in the 1960s, Afrocubans in the 1990s embraced their African heritage. "Every time that the police harass me, I don't feel like being here anymore," Yosmel says. "When that happens, the first place I think about is here," he touches an African amulet hanging around his neck. "When I feel African, I don't feel black." And for many young Afrocubans, rap music—not the syrupy lyrics of salsa—validates the ancestry they've been taught to overlook.
Along with Che Guevara and Jose Marti, Yosmel and Kokino admire Malcolm X, Mumia Abu Jamal, Nelson Mandela and other black icons. They and thousands of other young Cubans heard Mumia Abu Jamal’s son speak at an anti-imperialist rally last year. And when Yosmel and Kokino talk about meeting rap artists like Mos Def and dead prez, their faces beam. These members of the American rap scene’s "underground" make social progress and black empowerment a running theme in their lyrics. Rap has similarly linked Kokino and Yosmel to a heritage that validates their existence – and they hope their music will also improve it.
Even in poverty, the frequent foreign visitors and word-of-mouth popularity have given them a certain cachet in Cojímar. "What bug crawled out of your hair and ran around all night?" A middle-aged woman yells at Kokino as he walks by her front porch, his long afro gently bobbing in the wind. "People around here think we're a little crazy," he grins. "But they love us anyway."
But you can't live on love. That’s where Pablo Herrera comes in. A former professor who taught English and hip hop culture at Havana University, Herrera is both a devotee of black American culture and passionate about Cuba. He has also emerged as Cuban rap’s main spokesperson internationally and at home.
On an island where the government controls just about everything, rap is no exception. A few years ago, police regularly shut down hip-hop shows and labeled rap as "imperialist" music. But Herrera and other hip-hop disciples waged a campaign to revamp rap’s troublemaker image. Young writers like Ariel Fernandez published numerous articles on rap in state-run newspapers and cultural journals, while Herrera organized round-table discussions with government committees about rap’s relevance for the Revolution. Herrera reminded the old guard that the younger Cubans needed a voice—and rap music was their expression of choice. "The purpose of hip-hop is serving the country, not being an antagonistic tool," he says. "The idea is to improve what is already in place."
His efforts were rewarded. In 1998 Abel Prieto, the Minister of Culture, officially declared rap "an authentic expression of cubanidad’ and began nominally funding an annual rap festival. Even Fidel himself rapped along with the group Doble Filo at the national baseball championship two years ago.
Although officially accepted rap is still in its infancy, Herrera estimates that Havana alone now has more than 250 rap groups. He is the only producer with professional equipment. Herrera, 34, works out of his sun-filled studio with a turn-table, a mixer, a drum machine, a sampler, and cartons of classic Cuban LPs. It may not seem like much, but by Cuban standards, it’s a soundman’s paradise. "Since most music here is not really produced electronically, there’s not many people who can do this," he says.
He produced Orishas, Cuba’s only commercially successful rap group, before they left the island and became famous. Now that Orisha’s remake of Compay Segundo’s tune "Chanchan" can be heard all over Havana, rap music is more popular that ever in Cuba. Herrera hopes Anonimo Consejo can achieve the same stardom—without defecting from la patria.
In a T-shirt with the words "God is a DJ," Herrera shuffles through a stack of CDs and smokes a cigarette while Yosmel and Kokino sit on his couch, intently studying every page of an old Vibe magazine. "Yo, check this out," Herrera finds what he's looking for. "En la revolucion, cada quien hace su parte." In the Revolution, everyone must do his part. Fidel’s unmistakable voice loops back and repeats the phrase again and again over a hard-driving beat. Herrera nods to Yosmel, who takes his cue: "The solution is not leaving/New days will be here soon/We deserve and want to always go forward/Solving problems is important work." The music stops when a neighbor comes to the window and tells Herrera that he has a phone call. Off he goes, dodging boys playing baseball and dogs scrounging for food as he makes his way to the neighborhood phone.
Herrera may not be the only hip-hop promoter on the island, but rappers say he is the best connected to the government. As a key member of the Asociacion Hermanos Saiz, the youth branch of the Ministry of Culture, Herrera has rare access to music clubs like Las Vegas. Any rapper who hopes to be seen at a decent venue must first get the Association’s approval, and that can only happen if their music is seen to serve the Revolution.
Herrera is also the unofficial ambassador of Cuban hip-hop for the recent flood of foreign reporters, musicians and record producers coming to the island in search of the next big Cuban musical export. He discovered Yosmel and Kokino at the first rap festival six years ago. "I work with them because their music is really authentic," Herrera says. "I like their flow, but what is really striking is what they say…so mind-boggling."
Up to a point. Cuban rap—and Anonimo Consejo is no exception—pushes the envelope, but not so far that it offends the government. The duo has become a favorite at state sponsored shows, warning young Cubans against the temptations of American-style capitalism. In the song "Appearances are deceiving" they rap, "Don't crush me, I'm staying here, don't push me, let me live, I would give anything for my Cuba, I'm happy here." Their nationalist pride recently helped them land a contract with a state-run promotion company. All that means, though, is that their travel expenses are covered when they tour the island and they receive a modest paycheck, usually around 350 pesos each (US$ 17.50), after each major show. That money doesn't go far in an economy increasingly dependent on U.S. dollars. And it's getting harder to convince their parents that a rap career is worthwhile.
Kokino quietly slips out of the recording session at Herrera's studio and doesn't return all afternoon. Later he says that he was upset and needed to cool off after an argument he had with his mother that morning. "She says that I'm a grown man now and she's tired of supporting me. She thinks that I should get a real job," he says, twisting the end of a braid between his fingers and looking at the ground. "She doesn't understand that this is what I want to do—this is my job."
Five years ago, both Kokino and Yosmel decided to forego Cuba's legendary free university education and devote themselves to making music. Today, they both still live at home with their mothers, depending on the state's meager ration cards to eat. Herrera is trying to help them pay the bills. "They are already the top group in the country," he says. "They deserve a very good record deal, and they deserve to be working at a studio every day making their music." But for now, when their session is over, they still need to borrow a dollar to catch a bus back home.
Record deal or no, the girls from Explosion Femenina would do almost anything to be in Anonimo Consejo’s place. A faded portrait of Fidel smiles from the dark walls of their tiny apartment in a rundown tenement in Central Havana. The girls fill up the entire space as they crank up the volume on their boom-box and rap about boy troubles over U.S. rapper Eminem's hit song, "Real Slim Shady." Whatever they lack in technique they make up for with sheer enthusiasm.
"When they first started out, I thought it was just a fad," their mother says. "But then they wouldn't let me watch my soap opera because they were practicing all the time. We live like this," she squeezes her palms together, "So I had no choice but to go next door to watch my show." All the practicing has paid off. At next Friday's Las Vegas show, Herrera will be listening.
On their rooftop, with the sun setting over the maze of narrow streets below them, they practice their one finished song. Yaima, born for the spotlight, undulates and shimmies as all three harmonize about the hardships they've faced as women rappers: "With my feminine appearance I've come to rival you/If you want to compete, if you want to waste time trying to destroy me/I'll get rowdy and impress you." The song is a flirtatious challenge to the male rapper’s ego. "If you are a man, stop right there/Don’t hide, kneel before me/Put your feet on the ground and come down from the sky."
They know their music needs a sharper edge to win over Herrera and they practice another song about prostitutes. "We wrote this because so many guys we know assume we're jinateras just because we like to look good," Yaima explains. "Even though about 70 per cent of the girls we know do it, we don't, and we're sick of them judging us."
Their most pressing worry at the moment is how to pay for their outfits. "It will be about $30 for each of us just to buy the clothes," Yaima complains. "It's also about $25 for a producer to make us original background music. That's impossible. We would have to give up going to the disco for about three months if we wanted to come up with that." She laughs, but the danger to their budding career as rap artists is real. Without the right look or sound, they won't get much respect on stage. And without dollars, those essential elements are out of reach.
The next Friday, outside Club Las Vegas, the girls are giddy. They excitedly snap photos of one another and different rapper friends, laughing to disguise their nervousness. They huddle with Magia, one of the few women rappers in Havana, and also their mentor. "Remember to pay attention to where you are standing on stage. And sing in tune," she warns, rubbing their backs in encouragement. Yaima frequently whispers to Papo Record, her rapper boyfriend, and looks worriedly around the crowd gathered out front. Papo, wearing a white Adidas headband and a spider tattoo, puts his arm around her and kisses her forehead. Time to go in.
Santuario, a group visiting from Venezuela, are the first on. Adorned with heavy gold chains, gold-capped teeth, and designer labels, they clearly come from a different economic situation than their Cuban hosts. Their manager films them with an expensive video camera, and their background music is slickly produced. Yaima, Noiris and Jordanka look on. Unable to afford the outfits they wanted, they wear ordinary street clothes. "[Santuario] are so amazing," Noiris says, biting her lip. "Do you really think we are good enough to be up there after them?"
Good enough or not, DJ Ariel soon calls out, "Explosion Femenina." The girls breathe deeply and take the stage, looking very young and decidedly unglamorous. Spare background beats boom out of the speakers, and they begin. Tentative at first, it doesn't take Yaima long to get into the groove, and soon all three are rapping and shaking their hips with confidence.
Their one song is over fast, and the applause is friendly rather than deafening. Herrera takes Yaima off to a corner. When she returns, her eyes are moist. She forces a smile. "Pablo says that he is used to strong rappers," she says. "He still sees us as very weak. He says that for our first time we sounded good." But not good enough for Herrera to produce.
Nevertheless, the youth branch of the Communist Party schedules the girls for an early appointment to audition at the Ministry of Culture. They show up in their best clothes, with boom box in hand, but no one is there to greet them. They wait for an hour, and then leave. "It's always hard for rappers just starting out," Yordanka says. "We just need to get some good background music and keep practicing." But that will be difficult. Yaima will leave Havana for a six-month stint as a cabaret dancer at a resort in Trinidad, and Noiris and Yordanka have a lot of schoolwork. "I love rap, but I am also really invested in my studies," says Yordanka, who wants to be an orthodontist.
For Pablo, there's only one formula for success, in Cuba or anywhere. "Write great lyrics, have dignity and be hard working," he says. But it takes more. A week later, Club Las Vegas closes its Friday hip-hop show to make room for a salsa band. "That's the way it goes in Cuba," Kokino says, bitterness in his voice. "With salsa comes the money."
For now that leaves them with Alamar, the first and last refuge of Cuban rap. Located on the eastern side of Havana, on the other side of a long tunnel, Alamar is home to more than 10,000 of Havana's poorest residents—most of them black. Once billed as a shining example of communal living, the giant housing complex was Fidel Castro's pet building project in the 1970s. Now, rows of shabby white buildings look out over the sea, far from most jobs and services.
It is here in a giant empty pool where Cuban rap began and continues. Every Friday night, Havana's aspiring and already established rap groups pace the pool's concrete steps and strain to be heard over a lone speaker in a corner. For only five pesos, hip-hop fans can make the long trek out here to hear what they won't hear on the radio: the music of their generation.
Yosmel and Kokino pay the entrance fee like everyone else and mill with the crowd. Kokino sips from a small bottle of rum and greets his friends with high-fives, while Yosmel cuddles with his girlfriend off to the side of the pool. This is their territory—everyone knows them, and no one cares much if they have a record deal—here they are already famous.
When it comes to time to perform, the sound system fades and in the middle of one song the CD skips, leaving them with no background music. Yosmel glares angrily into the bright light coming from the DJ's booth. They start again, but their energy is low. Next, a group of five young rappers come out grabbing their crotches and doing a poor imitation of the American gangsta poses they've seen on TV. Kokino cheers them on, but Yosmel sulks on the sidelines. "I'm tired of this place. There are always problems," he mutters.
Despite their lyrics about staying put in Cuba, Yosmel and Kokino want more. "We are waiting around for an angel to come from abroad who recognizes our talent and is willing to invest a lot of attention and money in our project," Kokino says. But celestial intervention moves slowly. Anonimo Consejo has appeared on an US-produced compilation that has yet to be released, and Kokino and Yosmel were featured in recent issues of Source and Vibe magazines. But so far, none of that has translated into a deal or dollars.
"Sometimes I think we’re supposed to live on hope alone," Kokino says, back at his mother’s house where his bedroom is plastered with magazine photos of NBA basketball stars and his favorite rap musicians from the United States.
Then he hikes up his baggy pants and goes outside to wait for a crowded bus to Herrera’s studio. A couple of British hip-hop producers were supposed to swing by to hear he and Yosmel lay down some beats.
by Annelise **********
Researcher: Eve Lotter
It's a late Friday afternoon in downtown Havana and an old man in a worn-out tuxedo opens the doors under the flickering green and red neon of Club Las Vegas. A poster on the wall, its corners curling, advertises the usual cabaret fare: live salsa, banana daiquiris, beautiful women. But the people standing outside are not tourists looking for an exotic thrill. They are mostly young, mostly black, and dressed in the latest styles from Fubu and Tommy Hilfiger. And despite the $1 cover charge—steep for most Cubans—the line to get in is long.
Inside, two young Afrocubans appear on a small stage in the back; one tall and languid, the other shorter and in constant motion. They wear baggy jeans, oversized T-shirts, and sprinkle their songs with "c'mon now" and "awww' ight." But while they admire American hip-hop style, MC Kokino and MC Yosmel rap about a distinctly Cuban reality.
"It's time to break the silence…this isn't what they teach in school…in search of the American dream, Latinos suffer in the hands of others…"
A young man wearing a Chicago Bulls jersey stands near the stage and waves his hand high in the air. "This music is not for dancing. It's for listening," he says. "And for Cubans, believe me, it takes a lot to keep us from dancing."
Kokino criss-crosses his arms as he moves across the stage, and the crowd follows him, word for word. Yosmel stands toward the back of the stage, his handsome face impassive as he delivers a steady flow of verse. The audience is enrapt. Anonimo Consejo—Anonymous Advice—is one of Cuba's top rap groups, waiting for the next big break: a record contract and a living wage to do what they love.
The two young men are not the only ones. Three girls, decked out in bright tank tops and spandex, sit on the sidelines and watch Kokino's every move. Yordanka, 20, Yaima 19, and Noiris 17, are cousins, and a year ago started their own rap group, Explosion Femenina. So far, the only explosion has been in their living rooms or at school talent shows, but that could change. In a week, they will perform for the first time at Club Las Vegas. If Cuba's top rap producer likes them, he'll groom them just as he has Kokino and Yosmel.
Right now that producer—Pablo Herrera—is in the DJ's booth, looking down at the two rappers. "What you're seeing is Cuba's underground. I’m talking the empowerment of youth as a battle spear for a more conscious society," he says in English so flawless that he's sure he lived another life in Brooklyn. And he looks it—from the braids in his hair to the New York attitude.
Herrera and a fellow representative of the Young Communist Party put on the weekly Las Vegas hip-hop show. With more than 250 rap groups in Havana alone, he chooses each Friday night's line-up carefully. "I can't work with everybody, I'm not a machine," he says with a shrug. "I mostly go with what I like."
But even with Herrera’s approval, the world for young rappers here is full of contradictions. They believe in Cuba, but they're not ideologues—they just want to make music from their own reality. Anonimo Consejo's lyrics are edgy, but getting too edgy could end their careers. The girls in Explosion Femenina try to be tough in the macho rap scene, but rely on their sex appeal to get in the door. Each day is a political and social balancing act.
Orishas, the only Cuban rap group to make it big, traveled to Paris to perform in 1998 and stayed. Kokino and Yosmel look at them with both awe and disappointment. Once abroad, Orishas made a hit record, but they did so by adding Cuba’s beloved salsa and rumba beats to their music. Kokino and Yosmel want to succeed by sticking purely to rap, but they've been at it for four years and their parents—supportive up until now—are beginning to talk about "real" jobs. All of these pressures bear down on a passion that began as a hobby.
When they met eight years ago, Kokino, then 13, and Yosmel, 17, were just kids looking for fun on an island so depressed that scores of their countrymen were building rafts out of everything from styrofoam to old tubes to take their chance at sea. Yosmel and Kokino watched them from their homes in Cojímar, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Havana where Ernest Hemingway once lived. Back then it was Havana's sleepy beach town, but by the time Yosmel and Kokino grew up, dilapidated Soviet-style high-rise apartment buildings and cement block homes had taken over.
For relief from the dog days of 1993, the two young men and their friends hung out at Alamar, a sprawling housing complex nearby. The kids entertained themselves in an empty pool improvising, break dancing, and listening hard to the American music coming from antennas they rigged on their rooftops to catch Miami radio stations. This is what they heard:
"’Cause I'm black and I'm proud/ I'm ready and hyped plus I’m amped/Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps," rhymed Public Enemy in "Fight the Power." Yosmel was hooked. "Their songs spoke to me in a new way. There was nothing in Cuba that sounded like it."
Or anything that talked about issues that Afrocubans had only begun to face. Instead, Cubans have been taught to ignore race and the Revolution tried to blur color lines by opening all professions, universities and government to Afrocubans. Officially, race all but disappeared as a part of national identity.
But increasingly, race is an issue in Cuba. If Afrocubans benefited most from the revolution, they've also suffered the most during its crisis. Every Cuban needs dollars to survive and the bulk of the easy money coming in remittances goes to the white Cubans because it was their relatives who left early on. Darker Cubans also face discrimination getting the island's best jobs in the tourism industry. Skin color—despite the Revolution’s best intentions—has once again become the marker of a class divide.
Kokino, Yosmel and others in Cojímar felt it. "Because we are black, wear baggy pants and have braids—which is strange in Cuba—on every block the police ask for our identification cards. There is this perception that all white people are saints and all blacks are delinquents."
Like disaffected youth everywhere, they looked for role models that gave them a sense of pride. In school, when Yosmel tried to talk about his African ancestry, teachers called him "unpatriotic" for thinking of himself as something other than Cuban. Yosmel turned to his mother to find out more about his African roots, and before long, her stories became his lyrics: "In my poor bed, I read my history/Memories of titans/Africans kicking out the Spanish."
She also taught him about santeria, Cuba’s African-derived religion that has outlasted any political regime. "In school they taught him about slavery, but they didn’t go into depth," his mother says, standing in the dirt yard in front of their small, wooden clapboard house. Lines of laundry hang to dry in the hot sun. A single mother, she washes her neighbor's clothes in exchange for a few extra pesos each month. Yosmel weaves her lessons throughout songs like this one: "If you don't know your history/ You won't know who you are/There’s a fortune under your dark skin/The power is yours."
He sought other teachers as well. Cuba has long welcomed black American activists and intellectuals. Yosmel and Kokino often stop by the house of Nehanda Abiodun, a Black Panther living in exile. There, Abiodun gives them informal sessions about African American history, poetry, and world politics. The messages in their music, says the 54-year old American, come from being "born in a revolutionary process where they were encouraged to ask questions and challenge the status quo." It also comes from their daily lives: "their parents, their experiences on the street growing up, what's going on in the world."
If expats like Abiodun served as historical guides, African Americans gave Kokino and Yosmel their beat. "It was amazing to hear rappers from another country worried about the same issues I was," Yosmel says. Rap artists like Common Sense and Black Star have been travelling to Cuba since 1998 as part of the Black August Collective, a group of African American activists and musicians dedicated to promoting hip-hop culture globally.
Even when unsure about the movement, the Cuban government welcomed American rappers because of their support for the revolution, says Vera Abiodun, co-director of the Brooklyn branch of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, and part of the Collective. Cuban youth responded to the rhythm, but also to the visitors' obvious pride in being black. "We didn't know how huge this would become in the beginning," she says.
Just as black Americans did in the 1960s, Afrocubans in the 1990s embraced their African heritage. "Every time that the police harass me, I don't feel like being here anymore," Yosmel says. "When that happens, the first place I think about is here," he touches an African amulet hanging around his neck. "When I feel African, I don't feel black." And for many young Afrocubans, rap music—not the syrupy lyrics of salsa—validates the ancestry they've been taught to overlook.
Along with Che Guevara and Jose Marti, Yosmel and Kokino admire Malcolm X, Mumia Abu Jamal, Nelson Mandela and other black icons. They and thousands of other young Cubans heard Mumia Abu Jamal’s son speak at an anti-imperialist rally last year. And when Yosmel and Kokino talk about meeting rap artists like Mos Def and dead prez, their faces beam. These members of the American rap scene’s "underground" make social progress and black empowerment a running theme in their lyrics. Rap has similarly linked Kokino and Yosmel to a heritage that validates their existence – and they hope their music will also improve it.
Even in poverty, the frequent foreign visitors and word-of-mouth popularity have given them a certain cachet in Cojímar. "What bug crawled out of your hair and ran around all night?" A middle-aged woman yells at Kokino as he walks by her front porch, his long afro gently bobbing in the wind. "People around here think we're a little crazy," he grins. "But they love us anyway."
But you can't live on love. That’s where Pablo Herrera comes in. A former professor who taught English and hip hop culture at Havana University, Herrera is both a devotee of black American culture and passionate about Cuba. He has also emerged as Cuban rap’s main spokesperson internationally and at home.
On an island where the government controls just about everything, rap is no exception. A few years ago, police regularly shut down hip-hop shows and labeled rap as "imperialist" music. But Herrera and other hip-hop disciples waged a campaign to revamp rap’s troublemaker image. Young writers like Ariel Fernandez published numerous articles on rap in state-run newspapers and cultural journals, while Herrera organized round-table discussions with government committees about rap’s relevance for the Revolution. Herrera reminded the old guard that the younger Cubans needed a voice—and rap music was their expression of choice. "The purpose of hip-hop is serving the country, not being an antagonistic tool," he says. "The idea is to improve what is already in place."
His efforts were rewarded. In 1998 Abel Prieto, the Minister of Culture, officially declared rap "an authentic expression of cubanidad’ and began nominally funding an annual rap festival. Even Fidel himself rapped along with the group Doble Filo at the national baseball championship two years ago.
Although officially accepted rap is still in its infancy, Herrera estimates that Havana alone now has more than 250 rap groups. He is the only producer with professional equipment. Herrera, 34, works out of his sun-filled studio with a turn-table, a mixer, a drum machine, a sampler, and cartons of classic Cuban LPs. It may not seem like much, but by Cuban standards, it’s a soundman’s paradise. "Since most music here is not really produced electronically, there’s not many people who can do this," he says.
He produced Orishas, Cuba’s only commercially successful rap group, before they left the island and became famous. Now that Orisha’s remake of Compay Segundo’s tune "Chanchan" can be heard all over Havana, rap music is more popular that ever in Cuba. Herrera hopes Anonimo Consejo can achieve the same stardom—without defecting from la patria.
In a T-shirt with the words "God is a DJ," Herrera shuffles through a stack of CDs and smokes a cigarette while Yosmel and Kokino sit on his couch, intently studying every page of an old Vibe magazine. "Yo, check this out," Herrera finds what he's looking for. "En la revolucion, cada quien hace su parte." In the Revolution, everyone must do his part. Fidel’s unmistakable voice loops back and repeats the phrase again and again over a hard-driving beat. Herrera nods to Yosmel, who takes his cue: "The solution is not leaving/New days will be here soon/We deserve and want to always go forward/Solving problems is important work." The music stops when a neighbor comes to the window and tells Herrera that he has a phone call. Off he goes, dodging boys playing baseball and dogs scrounging for food as he makes his way to the neighborhood phone.
Herrera may not be the only hip-hop promoter on the island, but rappers say he is the best connected to the government. As a key member of the Asociacion Hermanos Saiz, the youth branch of the Ministry of Culture, Herrera has rare access to music clubs like Las Vegas. Any rapper who hopes to be seen at a decent venue must first get the Association’s approval, and that can only happen if their music is seen to serve the Revolution.
Herrera is also the unofficial ambassador of Cuban hip-hop for the recent flood of foreign reporters, musicians and record producers coming to the island in search of the next big Cuban musical export. He discovered Yosmel and Kokino at the first rap festival six years ago. "I work with them because their music is really authentic," Herrera says. "I like their flow, but what is really striking is what they say…so mind-boggling."
Up to a point. Cuban rap—and Anonimo Consejo is no exception—pushes the envelope, but not so far that it offends the government. The duo has become a favorite at state sponsored shows, warning young Cubans against the temptations of American-style capitalism. In the song "Appearances are deceiving" they rap, "Don't crush me, I'm staying here, don't push me, let me live, I would give anything for my Cuba, I'm happy here." Their nationalist pride recently helped them land a contract with a state-run promotion company. All that means, though, is that their travel expenses are covered when they tour the island and they receive a modest paycheck, usually around 350 pesos each (US$ 17.50), after each major show. That money doesn't go far in an economy increasingly dependent on U.S. dollars. And it's getting harder to convince their parents that a rap career is worthwhile.
Kokino quietly slips out of the recording session at Herrera's studio and doesn't return all afternoon. Later he says that he was upset and needed to cool off after an argument he had with his mother that morning. "She says that I'm a grown man now and she's tired of supporting me. She thinks that I should get a real job," he says, twisting the end of a braid between his fingers and looking at the ground. "She doesn't understand that this is what I want to do—this is my job."
Five years ago, both Kokino and Yosmel decided to forego Cuba's legendary free university education and devote themselves to making music. Today, they both still live at home with their mothers, depending on the state's meager ration cards to eat. Herrera is trying to help them pay the bills. "They are already the top group in the country," he says. "They deserve a very good record deal, and they deserve to be working at a studio every day making their music." But for now, when their session is over, they still need to borrow a dollar to catch a bus back home.
Record deal or no, the girls from Explosion Femenina would do almost anything to be in Anonimo Consejo’s place. A faded portrait of Fidel smiles from the dark walls of their tiny apartment in a rundown tenement in Central Havana. The girls fill up the entire space as they crank up the volume on their boom-box and rap about boy troubles over U.S. rapper Eminem's hit song, "Real Slim Shady." Whatever they lack in technique they make up for with sheer enthusiasm.
"When they first started out, I thought it was just a fad," their mother says. "But then they wouldn't let me watch my soap opera because they were practicing all the time. We live like this," she squeezes her palms together, "So I had no choice but to go next door to watch my show." All the practicing has paid off. At next Friday's Las Vegas show, Herrera will be listening.
On their rooftop, with the sun setting over the maze of narrow streets below them, they practice their one finished song. Yaima, born for the spotlight, undulates and shimmies as all three harmonize about the hardships they've faced as women rappers: "With my feminine appearance I've come to rival you/If you want to compete, if you want to waste time trying to destroy me/I'll get rowdy and impress you." The song is a flirtatious challenge to the male rapper’s ego. "If you are a man, stop right there/Don’t hide, kneel before me/Put your feet on the ground and come down from the sky."
They know their music needs a sharper edge to win over Herrera and they practice another song about prostitutes. "We wrote this because so many guys we know assume we're jinateras just because we like to look good," Yaima explains. "Even though about 70 per cent of the girls we know do it, we don't, and we're sick of them judging us."
Their most pressing worry at the moment is how to pay for their outfits. "It will be about $30 for each of us just to buy the clothes," Yaima complains. "It's also about $25 for a producer to make us original background music. That's impossible. We would have to give up going to the disco for about three months if we wanted to come up with that." She laughs, but the danger to their budding career as rap artists is real. Without the right look or sound, they won't get much respect on stage. And without dollars, those essential elements are out of reach.
The next Friday, outside Club Las Vegas, the girls are giddy. They excitedly snap photos of one another and different rapper friends, laughing to disguise their nervousness. They huddle with Magia, one of the few women rappers in Havana, and also their mentor. "Remember to pay attention to where you are standing on stage. And sing in tune," she warns, rubbing their backs in encouragement. Yaima frequently whispers to Papo Record, her rapper boyfriend, and looks worriedly around the crowd gathered out front. Papo, wearing a white Adidas headband and a spider tattoo, puts his arm around her and kisses her forehead. Time to go in.
Santuario, a group visiting from Venezuela, are the first on. Adorned with heavy gold chains, gold-capped teeth, and designer labels, they clearly come from a different economic situation than their Cuban hosts. Their manager films them with an expensive video camera, and their background music is slickly produced. Yaima, Noiris and Jordanka look on. Unable to afford the outfits they wanted, they wear ordinary street clothes. "[Santuario] are so amazing," Noiris says, biting her lip. "Do you really think we are good enough to be up there after them?"
Good enough or not, DJ Ariel soon calls out, "Explosion Femenina." The girls breathe deeply and take the stage, looking very young and decidedly unglamorous. Spare background beats boom out of the speakers, and they begin. Tentative at first, it doesn't take Yaima long to get into the groove, and soon all three are rapping and shaking their hips with confidence.
Their one song is over fast, and the applause is friendly rather than deafening. Herrera takes Yaima off to a corner. When she returns, her eyes are moist. She forces a smile. "Pablo says that he is used to strong rappers," she says. "He still sees us as very weak. He says that for our first time we sounded good." But not good enough for Herrera to produce.
Nevertheless, the youth branch of the Communist Party schedules the girls for an early appointment to audition at the Ministry of Culture. They show up in their best clothes, with boom box in hand, but no one is there to greet them. They wait for an hour, and then leave. "It's always hard for rappers just starting out," Yordanka says. "We just need to get some good background music and keep practicing." But that will be difficult. Yaima will leave Havana for a six-month stint as a cabaret dancer at a resort in Trinidad, and Noiris and Yordanka have a lot of schoolwork. "I love rap, but I am also really invested in my studies," says Yordanka, who wants to be an orthodontist.
For Pablo, there's only one formula for success, in Cuba or anywhere. "Write great lyrics, have dignity and be hard working," he says. But it takes more. A week later, Club Las Vegas closes its Friday hip-hop show to make room for a salsa band. "That's the way it goes in Cuba," Kokino says, bitterness in his voice. "With salsa comes the money."
For now that leaves them with Alamar, the first and last refuge of Cuban rap. Located on the eastern side of Havana, on the other side of a long tunnel, Alamar is home to more than 10,000 of Havana's poorest residents—most of them black. Once billed as a shining example of communal living, the giant housing complex was Fidel Castro's pet building project in the 1970s. Now, rows of shabby white buildings look out over the sea, far from most jobs and services.
It is here in a giant empty pool where Cuban rap began and continues. Every Friday night, Havana's aspiring and already established rap groups pace the pool's concrete steps and strain to be heard over a lone speaker in a corner. For only five pesos, hip-hop fans can make the long trek out here to hear what they won't hear on the radio: the music of their generation.
Yosmel and Kokino pay the entrance fee like everyone else and mill with the crowd. Kokino sips from a small bottle of rum and greets his friends with high-fives, while Yosmel cuddles with his girlfriend off to the side of the pool. This is their territory—everyone knows them, and no one cares much if they have a record deal—here they are already famous.
When it comes to time to perform, the sound system fades and in the middle of one song the CD skips, leaving them with no background music. Yosmel glares angrily into the bright light coming from the DJ's booth. They start again, but their energy is low. Next, a group of five young rappers come out grabbing their crotches and doing a poor imitation of the American gangsta poses they've seen on TV. Kokino cheers them on, but Yosmel sulks on the sidelines. "I'm tired of this place. There are always problems," he mutters.
Despite their lyrics about staying put in Cuba, Yosmel and Kokino want more. "We are waiting around for an angel to come from abroad who recognizes our talent and is willing to invest a lot of attention and money in our project," Kokino says. But celestial intervention moves slowly. Anonimo Consejo has appeared on an US-produced compilation that has yet to be released, and Kokino and Yosmel were featured in recent issues of Source and Vibe magazines. But so far, none of that has translated into a deal or dollars.
"Sometimes I think we’re supposed to live on hope alone," Kokino says, back at his mother’s house where his bedroom is plastered with magazine photos of NBA basketball stars and his favorite rap musicians from the United States.
Then he hikes up his baggy pants and goes outside to wait for a crowded bus to Herrera’s studio. A couple of British hip-hop producers were supposed to swing by to hear he and Yosmel lay down some beats.
Re: Cuban Hip-Hop, Underground revolution
`
An excerpt from the thread, Looking to a Post-Castro Cuba.
`
An excerpt from the thread, Looking to a Post-Castro Cuba.
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Cuban Rap - In Pictures
</font size>
Earlier this year the curtain fell on
nearly half a century of Fidel Castro’s
rule. The Cuba he bequeathed to his
younger brother Raul is economically
crippled and its people are hungry
for change.
The revolution has lost the loyalty of
many young Cubans, and the discontent -
that many dare only whisper about - is
being voiced by a number of rappers.
Their music can be heard emanating from
crumbling tenements, but it is harder than
ever for these rappers to find a stage.
Mestizo, 28, is part of a rap duo in
Havana where he works as a barber.
"We are marginalised because our lyrics
deal with problems that Cubans are
facing right now."
His songs talk about police harassment,
racism and poverty.
"Young people are living through very hard
times. The media is the biggest barrier to
getting our music heard. They don’t want
to broadcast the kind of rap we do because
we think they’re afraid of people knowing
the real truth of the situation."
Mestizo is softly spoken but there is
anger in his voice: "I take my inspiration
from my environment and experiences I
have lived through. During military service
I was sent to army prison for my way of
thinking. On the streets I have seen police
beating up a young guy because he gave
a bad reply when asked for ID.
"Malcolm X has been an inspiration for me.
He was an Afro-American leader who fought
against racism – not specifically Cuban – but
a lot of his thoughts are relevant."
In an attempt to exert its influence
over rap, the government created
the Cuban Rap Agency in 2002. But
there are no government critics on
their books as these rappers say
they won’t be compromised.
"Politics here is in everything.
Unfortunately it is one of the things
that will not let us move forward. Our
lyrics refer to everything stepping in
our way," says Mestizo. "I want to
keep making music, keep fighting for
our ideal, which is fundamentally to
achieve a change in Cuban society."
It is an uphill struggle for rappers who
choose to remain independent. To record
tracks they must use the services of
producers such as Emilio.
The 33-year-old used to rap but
crossed over to the more lucrative
production side several years ago.
He runs a crude recording studio
from his house, where artists pay
$20(£10) per track.
His father, a musician who earned
a decent salary performing overseas,
helped set Emilio up with his first
computer.
Emilio is self-taught and now makes a
living from music. "As far as the
government is concerned I’m not a
music producer and I don’t declare
my earnings – this is underground. I
see two or three acts per day, and
there are probably about 50 different
bands that come regularly throughout
the year.
"In Cuba there’s now more reggaeton
(a mix of rap, reggae and Latin dancehall)
than rap. Most have migrated from one
to the other. Reggaeton is fashionable
but it’s also more commercially viable."
Surprisingly, whatever else young
Cubans may think of Fidel Castro's
legacy, many still respect him as
the leader of the revolution and the
man who has defied the United
States time and again.
"Fidel is an idol for me. The problem
is not Fidel; the problem is the
bosses under him. There are so
many layers of bureaucracy that
the goal gets lost." Although Maceo
sings for change, he says continuity
is what he expects, at least for the
moment.
Photos: Steve Franck www.stevefranck.com
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/08/in_pictures_cuban_rap/html/1.stm
bump
That is the reason on any application i check both Latin and Black.........Panamanian background !!!!!!
Good read!!!
See, the thing about that is that usually it says "Black (non-Hispanic)", so usually I don't do it for the sake of accuracy.
yea, it also says white (non-Hispanic)
Tru indeed.
Lol. Man, the thing is, though. If they sub-divide Latinos, they would have to sub-divide Asians too, there are too many ethnicities out there
Great Posts!!! BUMP!
This is great news, I didn't even know there are so many blacks in Nicaragua. We are close (if not) to 200 million strong in this hemisphere and didn't even know it. Let the awakening continue!!!!!!!
Yup! Only 1 in 6 slaves imported from Africa ended up in the 13 colonies that became the U.S.A.
Unfortunately, even today, racism is an even bigger problem in the U.S.A. than anywhere else in the Western Hemisphere. Fact is, the U.S.A. has done it's best to export our brand of racism wherever we go. You don't have to look any further than our dealings with Haiti. It will be interesting to see how THAT changes now that Barack Obama is the HNIC!
Sorry I have to say fuck Colin on this one. This is a must read!!!!
Colin doesn't have to read this, because his family is Jamaican! It's the Roots Niggas on this board claiming, "I'm not African, I'm an American!" that need to read.
Keep this thought in mind as you read: All these countries are located in the Americas - North America and South America. All these Blacks are African-Americans, too.
Many people in these countries, both white and Black, resent that we have appropriated the term American for ourselves. They call us Gringos or Yankees or anything else.
honkey's strategy has always been "Divide and Conquer" knowing that "United we stand". Black Unity is as important now as it has ever been. It's past due time to take it to the level of Pan-Americanism, Pan-Africanism, and beyond.
"One world,
one love,
let's get together and be alright."
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An Appeal to Justice
Afro-Colombians take on
"The Devil in Military Boots"
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</center>
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An Appeal to Justice
Afro-Colombians take on
"The Devil in Military Boots"
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</center>
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BUMP
I am Afro-Latino Of Panamanian decent and unlike Afro-Latinos in Latin America here in the USA African-Americans had a civil rights movement slavery is long and gone in Latin America but Institutional Racism is in full affect keeping the people.
slavery is long and gone in Latin America but Institutional Racism is in full affect keeping the people.
<object width = "512" height = "328" > <param name = "movie" value = "http://www-tc.pbs.org/video/media/swf/PBSPlayer.swf" > </param><param name="flashvars" value="video=1822481755&player=viral&end=0" /> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param > <param name = "allowscriptaccess" value = "always" > </param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param ><embed src="http://www-tc.pbs.org/video/media/swf/PBSPlayer.swf" flashvars="video=1822481755&player=viral&end=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" wmode="transparent" allowfullscreen="true" width="512" height="328" bgcolor="#000000"></embed></object><p style="font-size:11px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #808080; margin-top: 5px; background: transparent; text-align: center; width: 512px;">Watch the <a style="text-decoration:none !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px; color:#4eb2fe !important;" href="http://video.pbs.org/video/1822481755" target="_blank">full episode</a>. See more <a style="text-decoration:none !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px; color:#4eb2fe !important;" href="http://video.pbs.org/program/1803657667" target="_blank">Black in Latin America.</a></p>
Black in Latin America
Haiti & the Dominican Republic: An Island Divided
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<object width = "512" height = "328" > <param name = "movie" value = "http://www-tc.pbs.org/video/media/swf/PBSPlayer.swf" > </param><param name="flashvars" value="video=1877436791&player=viral&chapter=1" /> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param > <param name = "allowscriptaccess" value = "always" > </param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param ><embed src="http://www-tc.pbs.org/video/media/swf/PBSPlayer.swf" flashvars="video=1877436791&player=viral&chapter=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" wmode="transparent" allowfullscreen="true" width="512" height="328" bgcolor="#000000"></embed></object><p style="font-size:11px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #808080; margin-top: 5px; background: transparent; text-align: center; width: 512px;">Watch the <a style="text-decoration:none !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px; color:#4eb2fe !important;" href="http://video.pbs.org/video/1877436791" target="_blank">full episode</a>. See more <a style="text-decoration:none !important; font-weight:normal !important; height: 13px; color:#4eb2fe !important;" href="http://video.pbs.org/program/1803657667" target="_blank">Black in Latin America.</a></p>
Part Two
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I am Afro-Latino Of Panamanian decent and unlike Afro-Latinos in Latin America here in the USA African-Americans had a civil rights movement
I understand Brazil is currently experiencing a nascent form of the Black/Afro civil rights movement. But in general, most nations in the New World did not give up much of their African cultural and traditions as we did in the United States and Canada. We African Americans had the Civil War which empowered us, at least technically, to full legal citizens of the the US, with equal rights...theocrically. We also had the US Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which again, theoretically instilled a sense of self esteem solely apart from the European paradigm of beauty and relevance, dispute what many African Americans claim was just left wing radicalism.
bump
I have to agree with this post, I posted this article in a another thread a couple of weeks ago.
http://www.bgol.us/board/showthread.php?p=2488935#post2488935
Blacks around the world will never unite because we will use nationalities, languages, and cultures to separate of us from each other even though we are the same in skin color
Yeah...but you know this is a double edged issue. Those of us who been around for a bit can pick and choose a moment in our lives where we have seen stuff like what you described but then you have the other side...
Like when a Dominican cat embraces his heritage from all it's sources. Recognizing that he is from African and Hispanic descent with some (if they have it) "insert other label" descent.
Then you will have a cat say...'I thought you was just Dominican?' and clown those that embraces their heritages. So this battle is a LONG LONG LONG way from being over.
In fact, recently I was at a book fair and this one dude was selling books from different genre's ...he had a particular book with a 'black character' on the cover manning a space ship with some aliens and other characters (aliens and humans). This cat picked it up...read the back...made a rude but silent remark...and the vendor was like 'What's up?' Dude, was like 'I thought he was Black...I not interested in reading about some Dominican.' The vendor was offended but remained cool and was talking to this dude about how Dominicans are Black (proceeding to give a good history recount) but you could already tell this cat was not hearing it.
We can always talk about how others (white, those in power...etc) treat us but the most fucked up experiences that hurts us the most come from the way 'our own' treat us.
Great insight.
I think a lot of why we treat each other the way that we do has much to do with our own ignorance of each other. Somehow, we African Americans seem to think that we're the center of the Black universe. Of course, we know of our roots from the motherland, but we seem to know so little about the rest of the African diaspora, primarily, I believe, because our education system (or lack of it) de-emphasized our heritage as well as the Black experience outside of Africa and the Tarzan movies' depiction of life within Black Africa was a literal bomb of cultural disinformation.
QueEx
is there any way we can get that Black in Latin America on DvD
i would love to share it with a few people i know
i would love to share it with a few people i know
A Latina 'Comes Out' as Black
I'm Black. After many years in the closet, after many years of breathing that stale air of self-denial, I can finally say this.
Growing up, I dreaded the question "What are you?" I always proudly answered that I was Hispanic. In fact, I made it a point to emphasize my Hispanicity simply because I knew what was coming next. "I'm Hispanic; I speak Spanish; my parents come from Dominican Republic. I'm Hispanic. And, just to clarify, I'm Hispanic." To this, the other person confessed: "Oh... I thought you were Black. You definitely look Black." The problem was I perceived the identification of "Hispanic" outside the realm of Blackness; but then, I wasn't the only one. Take note that the other person in my scenario thought the same thing. Right after my declaration of Hispanicity, he/she stripped away the "Black" label with the phrases "I thought" and "You definitely look."
The conventional definition of "Black" completely leaves out Hispanics, and this is because the latter is ashamed of African ancestry. As a result of this shame, American society has excused Latinos from identifying themselves as Black or African American. I recently read Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s Black in Latin America, and I'm amazed at what I learned. Eleven million Africans survived the Middle Passage and came to the Western Hemisphere. Out of this almost unfathomable number, only 450,000 Africans came to the United States. Gates expresses the significance of these numbers nicely: "The 'real' African American experience...unfolded in places south... of Texas, south of California, in the Caribbean islands and throughout Latin America." [1] Why, then, has the stereotypical Hispanic comprised mostly European and Indigenous features? Where did the Black go? It was buried under unofficial segregation, under whitening campaigns of populations and national histories, under racism.
In a previous post titled "Another Latina Nerd Tells Her Story (With a Twist)," I acknowledged the fact Hispanics are expressive of a spectrum of skin pigments and general physical features. However, I stressed the fact I was Latina. I deliberately avoided saying I was Black. I'm writing in a way that implies the struggle to grasp my Blackness happened exclusively during my childhood; the truth is, the struggle spanned my childhood and lasted up until last year. I felt acknowledging my Blackness would erase my Hispanic heritage. That being written, Dominican culture, the half portion of my bicultural makeup (adjoining that of American culture) is a curious case. For a good amount of time, Dominican Republic was the Western entry point of African slaves; its population is an abundance of Negroid features.
However, instead of racially identifying themselves as "Black," most Dominicans choose the term "Indio," which literally means Indian. The guise of Whiteness is still upheld, but to avoid the foolishness of associating extremely dark skin with Whiteness, pigmented skin under that of the Native American is embraced. The rejection of Blackness was intensified by the country's subjugation under Haiti, a period of brutal military occupation that lasted for 22 years in the 19th century. As Haitians were a very Black people, even more so than Dominicans, the pigment of their skin became further associated with barbarity. All of these factoids are merely simplifications of very complex historical happenings; to avoid a totally thorough history lesson, they are presented to add perspective to my racial realization. That is, my personal issue of racial identification is not just personal; it spans a long history of racially divergent peoples.
I began to seriously contemplate my Blackness when I decided to stop chemically straightening my hair. Then, college application season came around and the Common Application befuddled me. First, it asked if I was Hispanic or Latino. Of course, I answered "yes" to that. But, following this question, it asked me to identify myself more specifically. Was I Native American, Asian, White, Pacific Islander, Black? I was hesitant, unsure. The first time I perused the Common Application, I left that question blank. Gradually, though, I grasped that Black didn't just mean born-and-raised, purely Afro-descended Americans; Africans; and non-Hispanic Afro-Caribbeans.
The scenario I talked about in the beginning of this post still happens today on a regular basis. There is, however, one important modification. While "the other person" continues to separate Blackness and Hispanicity, I now include Blackness under the Hispanic umbrella. A couple of days ago, a classmate of mine, yet another individual fulfilling the role of "the other person," asked me, "What are you?" I responded with the short, sweet, and accurate "I'm Hispanic." She was surprised and answered with the typical "I thought you were Black." I swiftly confirmed I was. At that point, she was confused, and questioned how I could be both. I explained.
In an effort to understand my racial roots, I'm currently engaging in an academic research project that explores the roles and identities of Black Hispanics immediately after slavery and into modern times. Part of this project will involve interviews with current Black Hispanic students, some raised in the United States, some recent immigrants. How have American racial norms affected the former? How have the racial norms of different Latin American countries (with a special focus on my parents' native Dominican Republic) affected the latter? While these pursuits are by no means unique (as Gates fulfilled similar, more extensive, work in his book), I'm eager to share my findings with you all in my next post.
Growing up, I dreaded the question "What are you?" I always proudly answered that I was Hispanic. In fact, I made it a point to emphasize my Hispanicity simply because I knew what was coming next. "I'm Hispanic; I speak Spanish; my parents come from Dominican Republic. I'm Hispanic. And, just to clarify, I'm Hispanic." To this, the other person confessed: "Oh... I thought you were Black. You definitely look Black." The problem was I perceived the identification of "Hispanic" outside the realm of Blackness; but then, I wasn't the only one. Take note that the other person in my scenario thought the same thing. Right after my declaration of Hispanicity, he/she stripped away the "Black" label with the phrases "I thought" and "You definitely look."
The conventional definition of "Black" completely leaves out Hispanics, and this is because the latter is ashamed of African ancestry. As a result of this shame, American society has excused Latinos from identifying themselves as Black or African American. I recently read Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s Black in Latin America, and I'm amazed at what I learned. Eleven million Africans survived the Middle Passage and came to the Western Hemisphere. Out of this almost unfathomable number, only 450,000 Africans came to the United States. Gates expresses the significance of these numbers nicely: "The 'real' African American experience...unfolded in places south... of Texas, south of California, in the Caribbean islands and throughout Latin America." [1] Why, then, has the stereotypical Hispanic comprised mostly European and Indigenous features? Where did the Black go? It was buried under unofficial segregation, under whitening campaigns of populations and national histories, under racism.
In a previous post titled "Another Latina Nerd Tells Her Story (With a Twist)," I acknowledged the fact Hispanics are expressive of a spectrum of skin pigments and general physical features. However, I stressed the fact I was Latina. I deliberately avoided saying I was Black. I'm writing in a way that implies the struggle to grasp my Blackness happened exclusively during my childhood; the truth is, the struggle spanned my childhood and lasted up until last year. I felt acknowledging my Blackness would erase my Hispanic heritage. That being written, Dominican culture, the half portion of my bicultural makeup (adjoining that of American culture) is a curious case. For a good amount of time, Dominican Republic was the Western entry point of African slaves; its population is an abundance of Negroid features.
However, instead of racially identifying themselves as "Black," most Dominicans choose the term "Indio," which literally means Indian. The guise of Whiteness is still upheld, but to avoid the foolishness of associating extremely dark skin with Whiteness, pigmented skin under that of the Native American is embraced. The rejection of Blackness was intensified by the country's subjugation under Haiti, a period of brutal military occupation that lasted for 22 years in the 19th century. As Haitians were a very Black people, even more so than Dominicans, the pigment of their skin became further associated with barbarity. All of these factoids are merely simplifications of very complex historical happenings; to avoid a totally thorough history lesson, they are presented to add perspective to my racial realization. That is, my personal issue of racial identification is not just personal; it spans a long history of racially divergent peoples.
I began to seriously contemplate my Blackness when I decided to stop chemically straightening my hair. Then, college application season came around and the Common Application befuddled me. First, it asked if I was Hispanic or Latino. Of course, I answered "yes" to that. But, following this question, it asked me to identify myself more specifically. Was I Native American, Asian, White, Pacific Islander, Black? I was hesitant, unsure. The first time I perused the Common Application, I left that question blank. Gradually, though, I grasped that Black didn't just mean born-and-raised, purely Afro-descended Americans; Africans; and non-Hispanic Afro-Caribbeans.
The scenario I talked about in the beginning of this post still happens today on a regular basis. There is, however, one important modification. While "the other person" continues to separate Blackness and Hispanicity, I now include Blackness under the Hispanic umbrella. A couple of days ago, a classmate of mine, yet another individual fulfilling the role of "the other person," asked me, "What are you?" I responded with the short, sweet, and accurate "I'm Hispanic." She was surprised and answered with the typical "I thought you were Black." I swiftly confirmed I was. At that point, she was confused, and questioned how I could be both. I explained.
In an effort to understand my racial roots, I'm currently engaging in an academic research project that explores the roles and identities of Black Hispanics immediately after slavery and into modern times. Part of this project will involve interviews with current Black Hispanic students, some raised in the United States, some recent immigrants. How have American racial norms affected the former? How have the racial norms of different Latin American countries (with a special focus on my parents' native Dominican Republic) affected the latter? While these pursuits are by no means unique (as Gates fulfilled similar, more extensive, work in his book), I'm eager to share my findings with you all in my next post.
SOURCES: The Root and HuffPost
Dominican Republic
Black Denial
Nearly all Dominican women straighten their hair,
which experts say is a direct result of a historical
learned rejection of all things black
yara matos holds her hair extensions as a
stylist in the herrera neighborhood prepares
to give her the look of long, straight hair.
(candace barbot/miami herald)
by frances robles
frobles@miamiherald.com
santo domingo -- yara matos sat still while long, shiny locks from china were fastened, bit by bit, to her coarse hair.
Not that matos has anything against her natural curls, even though dominicans call that pelo malo -- bad hair.
But a professional dominican woman just should not have bad hair, she said. "if you're working in a bank, you don't want some barrio-looking hair. Straight hair looks elegant," the bank teller said. "it's not that as a person of color i want to look white. I want to look pretty."
and to many in the dominican republic, to look pretty is to look less black.
Dominican hairdressers are internationally known for the best hair-straightening techniques. Store shelves are lined with rows of skin whiteners, hair relaxers and extensions.
Racial identification here is thorny and complex, defined not so much by skin color but by the texture of your hair, the width of your nose and even the depth of your pocket. The richer, the "whiter." and, experts say, it is fueled by a rejection of anything black.
"i always associated black with ugly. I was too dark and didn't have nice hair," said catherine de la rosa, a dark-skinned dominican-american college student spending a semester here. "with time passing, i see i'm not black. I'm latina.
"at home in new york everyone speaks of color of skin. Here, it's not about skin color. It's culture."
the only country in the americas to be freed from black colonial rule -- neighboring haiti -- the dominican republic still shows signs of racial wounds more than 200 years later. Presidents historically encouraged dominicans to embrace spanish catholic roots rather than african ancestry.
Here, as in much of latin america -- the "one drop rule'' works in reverse: One drop of white blood allows even very dark-skinned people to be considered white.
capellan dominquez, center, and anthony rosario, right, join
others as they warm up for carnival in february in the cristo
rey area of santo domingo. (candace barbot/miami herald)
lack of interest
as black intellectuals here try to muster a movement to embrace the nation's african roots, they acknowledge that it has been a mostly fruitless cause. Black pride organizations such as black woman's identity fizzled for lack of widespread interest. There was outcry in the media when the brotherhood of the congos of the holy spirit -- a community with roots in africa -- was declared an oral patrimony of humanity by unesco. "there are many times that i think of just leaving this country because it's too hard," said juan rodríguez acosta, curator of the museum of the dominican man. Acosta, who is black, has pushed for the museum to include controversial exhibits that reflect many dominicans' african background. "but then i think: Well if i don't stay here to change things, how will things ever change?"
a walk down city streets shows a country where blacks and dark-skinned people vastly outnumber whites, and most estimates say that 90 percent of dominicans are black or of mixed race. Yet census figures say only 11 percent of the country's nine million people are black.
To many dominicans, to be black is to be haitian. So dark-skinned dominicans tend to describe themselves as any of the dozen or so racial categories that date back hundreds of years -- indian, burned indian, dirty indian, washed indian, dark indian, cinnamon, moreno or mulatto, but rarely negro.
The dominican republic is not the only nation with so many words to describe skin color. Asked in a 1976 census survey to describe their own complexions, brazilians came up with 136 different terms, including café au lait, sunburned, morena, malaysian woman, singed and "toasted."
"the cuban black was told he was black. The dominican black was told he was indian," said dominican historian celsa albert, who is black. "i am not indian. That color does not exist. People used to tell me, ‘you are not black.' if i am not black, then i guess there are no blacks anywhere, because i have curly hair and dark skin."
manuel núñez, a dominican author, writes about the
issues of 'black' and 'dominican' as they relate to the
history in his country. (candace barbot/miami herald)
the history
using the word indian to describe dark-skinned people is an attempt to distance dominicans from any african roots, albert and other experts said. She noted that it's not even historically accurate: The country's taino indians were virtually annihilated in the 1500s, shortly after spanish colonizers arrived.
Researchers say the de-emphasizing of race in the dominican republic dates to the 1700s, when the sugar plantation economy collapsed and many slaves were freed and rose up in society.
Later came the rocky history with haiti, which shares the island of hispaniola with the dominican republic. Haiti's slaves revolted against the french and in 1804 established their own nation. In 1822, haitians took over the entire island, ruling the predominantly hispanic dominican republic for 22 years.
To this day, the dominican republic celebrates its independence not from centuries-long colonizer spain, but from haiti.
"the problem is haitians developed a policy of black-centrism and . . . Dominicans don't respond to that," said scholar manuel núñez, who is black. "dominican is not a color of skin, like the haitian."
dictator rafael trujillo, who ruled from 1930 to 1961, strongly promoted anti-haitian sentiments, and is blamed for creating the many racial categories that avoided the use of the word "black."
the practice continued under president joaquín balaguer, who often complained that haitians were "darkening'' the country. In the 1990s, he was blamed for thwarting the presidential aspirations of leading black candidate josé francisco peña gómez by spreading rumors that he was actually haitian.
"under trujillo, being black was the worst thing you could be," said afro-dominican poet blas jiménez. "now we are dominican, because we are not haitian. We are something, because we are not that."
jiménez remembers when he got his first passport, the clerk labeled him "indian." he protested to the director of the agency.
"i remember the man saying, ‘if he wants to be black, let him be black!' '' jiménez said.
Resentment toward anything haitian continues, as an estimated one million haitians live in the dominican republic, most working in the sugar and construction industries. Mass deportations often mistakenly include black dominicans, and haitians have been periodically lynched in mob violence. The government has been trying to deny citizenship and public education to the dominican-born children of illegal haitian migrants.
When migrant-rights activist sonia pierre won the prestigious robert f. Kennedy human rights award in 2006, the government responded by trying to revoke her citizenship, saying she is actually haitian.
"there's tremendous resistance to blackness -- black is something bad," said black feminist sergia galván. ‘‘black is associated with dark, illegal, ugly, clandestine things. There is a prototype of beauty here and a lot of social pressure. There are schools where braids and natural hair are prohibited."
galván and a loosely knit group of women have protested european canons of beauty, once going so far as to rally outside a beauty pageant. She and other experts say it is now more common to see darker-skinned women in the contests -- but they never win.
mariana ramirez smiles as she sits in daisy
gran salon in santo domingo, dominican
republic. (candace barbot/miami herald)
product promoter margarita munoz, right, tidies up the
shelf displaying her company's hair-straightening products
in a santo domingo market. (candace barbot/miami herald)
culture pull
several women said the cultural rejection of african looking hair is so strong that people often shout insults at women with natural curls.
"i cannot take the bus because people pull my hair and stick combs in it," said wavy haired performance artist xiomara fortuna. "they ask me if i just got out of prison. People just don't want that image to be seen."
the hours spent on hair extensions and painful chemical straightening treatments are actually an expression of nationalism, said ginetta candelario, who studies the complexities of dominican race and beauty at smith college in massachusetts. And to some of the women who relax their hair, it's simply a way to have soft manageable hair in the dominican republic's stifling humidity.
"it's not self-hate," candelario said. "going through that is to love yourself a lot. That's someone saying, ‘i am going to take care of me.' it's nationalist, it's affirmative and celebrating self."
money, education, class -- and of course straight hair -- can make dark-skinned dominicans be perceived as more "white," she said. Many black dominicans here say they never knew they were black -- until they visited the united states.
"during the trujillo regime, people who were dark skinned were rejected, so they created their own mechanism to fight it," said ramona hernández, director of the dominican studies institute at city college in new york. "when you ask, ‘what are you?' they don't give you the answer you want . . . Saying we don't want to deal with our blackness is simply what you want to hear."
hernández, who has olive-toned skin and a long mane of hair she blows out straight, acknowledges she would "never, never, never'' go to a university meeting with her natural curls.
"that's a woman trying to look cute; i'm a sociologist," she said.
Asked if a black dominican woman can be considered beautiful in her country, hernández leapt to her feet.
"you should see how they come in here with their big asses!'' she said, shuffling across her office with her arms extended behind her back, simulating an enormous rear-end. "they come in here thinking they are all that, and i think, 'doesn't she know she's not really pretty?' "
maria elena polanca is a black woman with the striking good looks. She said most dominicans look at her with curiosity, as if a black woman being beautiful were something strange.
She spends her days promoting a hair straightener at la sirena, a santo domingo department store that features an astonishing array of hair straightening products.
"look, we have bad hair, bad. Nobody says 'curly.' it's bad," she said. "you can't go out like that. People will say, 'look at that nest! Someone light a match!' ''
angela martinez, 12, left, entertains friend estefany diaz, 10,
as estefany's sister ariela does her hair in the paraiso de dios
neighborhood west of santo domingo, a scene that plays out
on the streets throughout much of the dominican republic.
(candace barbot/miami herald)
'it was hurtful'
purdue university professor dawn stinchcomb, who is african american, said that when she came here in 1999 to study african influences in literature, people insulted her in the street.
Waiters refused to serve her. People wouldn't help stinchcomb with her research, saying if she wanted to study africans, she'd have to go to haiti.
"i had people on the streets . . . Yell at me to get out of the sun because i was already black enough," she said. "it was hurtful. . . . I was raised in the south and thought i could handle any racial comment. I never before experienced anything like i did in the dominican republic.
"i don't have a problem when people who don't look like me say hurtful things. But when it's people who look just like me?"
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In Naming What’s Racist, Junot Díaz Has to Re-Assert
That Yes, He’s Dominican
Junot Díaz recently spoke out against the Dominican Republic’s
court ruling ("Sentencia") that could strip citizenship from
thousands of Haitian immigrants. Díaz, calls the ruling racist;
some well-known politicians and intellectuals on the island
say Díaz is a “fake and overrated pseudo intellectual” who
“should learn better to speak Spanish before coming to this
country to talk nonsense.”
Junot Díaz recently spoke out against the Dominican Republic’s court ruling that could strip citizenship from thousands of Haitian immigrants. Díaz, who was born in the DR, called the ruling racist.
His outspoken criticism has drawn disapproval from some well-known politicians and intellectuals on the island. In an email that was later published by Latino Rebels, Executive Director for the Dominican Presidency’s International Commission on Science and Technology José Santana called Díaz a “fake and overrated pseudo intellectual” who “should learn better to speak Spanish before coming to this country to talk nonsense.”
Díaz responded with a message on his Facebook page this week:
The Huffington Post notes that human rights groups estimate <SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">the ruling could strip more than 200,000 people — mostly Haitians — of citizenship</SPAN>, a figure the Dominican government disputes.
His outspoken criticism has drawn disapproval from some well-known politicians and intellectuals on the island. In an email that was later published by Latino Rebels, Executive Director for the Dominican Presidency’s International Commission on Science and Technology José Santana called Díaz a “fake and overrated pseudo intellectual” who “should learn better to speak Spanish before coming to this country to talk nonsense.”
Díaz responded with a message on his Facebook page this week:
The Huffington Post notes that human rights groups estimate <SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">the ruling could strip more than 200,000 people — mostly Haitians — of citizenship</SPAN>, a figure the Dominican government disputes.
SOURCE: COLORLINES
SEE ALSO: A Crisis of Nationality: Dominicans of Haitian Descent