WINTER 2018

HARVARD REVIEW OF LATIN AMERICA

AFRO-LATIN AMERICANS

MUSICAFRO-LATIN AMERICANS EDITOR’S LETTER BY JUNE CAROLYN ERLICK

HARVARD REVIEW OF LATIN AMERICA

WINTER 2018 Resistance, Democracy and Music VOLUME XVI NO. 2

Published by the David Rockefeller Center My dear friend and photographer Richard Cross (R.I.P.) introduced me to the unexpected VOLUME XVII NO.2 for Latin American Studies world of San Basilio de Palenque in Colombia in 1977. He was then working closely with David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies Harvard University Colombian anthropologist Nina de Friedemann, and I’d been called upon by Sports Illustrated Director to research a story why this little community off the Colombian coast had produced three Brian Farrell world-champion boxers. I soon found out that Palenque—as most call it—had been a runaway Executive Director slave community. The boxing techniques grew out of fist-heavy martial arts intended to fend Ned Strong off attacks. ReVista Richard, who knew everyone in the community, took me to talk to young and old alike, Editor-in-Chief to watch girls and boys practicing their boxing-like martial arts, to learn of the history of June Carolyn Erlick this valiant community. Now the struggle was not only one of resistance: it was one of Copy Editor democratic evolution, as the community aimed to make its voice heard to demand roads and Anita Safran AFRO-LATIN AMERICANS other basic services. Publication Interns Resistance and democracy became the two foundation stones on which this ReVista Isabel Espinosa FIRST TAKE BUILDING BRIDGES Sylvie Stoloff about Afro-Latin Americans has been built. But I also wanted to include a section on The Rise of Afro-Latin America by Alejandro de la Fuente 2 Compañeros En Salud humanities. At first, I thought of seeking articles on art, literature, music, dance and film... Design by Mercedes Aguerrebere Gómez Urquiza 75 Jane Simon Design certainly Afro-Latin American culture has been accomplished in all of these areas, both in the MEMORY AND RESISTANCE Printer past and nowadays. Slavery and Precarious Freedom by Sidney Chalhoub 10 BOOK TALK P+R Publications But I feared I would be expanding in too many directions. I settled on music alone, Afro-Boricua Agency by Agustín Laó-Montes 12 Social Policy in Cuba A Review by Chris Tilly 76 Contact Us A View of Afro-Diasporic History from Colombia by Cristina García Navas 16 Consumption as Resistance although I feared at first that it could be interpreted as a cliché. But I thought about the 1730 Cambridge Street Mining and the Defense of Afro-Colombian Territory in the Age of Late Capitalism shape of the issue. Music is resistance and the music of Afrodescendants past and present Cambridge, MA 02138 by Stephen and Elizabeth Ferry 18 A Review by Eduardo Ledesma 78 has been used to resist the dominant white culture. Music is identity—it is a way of asserting Telephone: 617-495-5428 African and Afro-Indian Rebel Leaders In Latin America by Omar H. Ali 21 Fighting Corruption through Diplomacy oneself and one’s heritage. And music is often democratic, allowing all to participate, Subscriptions, Back Copies and Comments [email protected] The Routine of an Unconventional Path by Antonio J. Copete 24 A Review by Claudia Escobar 80 whether as performer and artist or spectator. “I Found My Island” by Miari Taina Stephens 26 (Junk) Food for Thought Website And besides, San Basilio de Palenque—my first intensive experience with an Afro-Latin revista.drclas.harvard.edu Transforming Havana’s Gay Ambiente by Matthew Leslie Santana 28 A Review by Glenn Garvin 82 American community—literally explodes with the sound of drums. The performers of martial Sandoval Redux by Nicholas T Rinehart 30 Facebook arts move with the grace of dance, and the turban-clad Palenque women with basins of fruit ReVista, the Harvard Review of Latin America LAST LOOK 84 on their heads who ply the beaches of Cartagena sell their wares with uncanny songlike DISCRIMINATION AND FORMS OF ACTION Copyright © 2018 by the President and chants. Fellows of Harvard College. Reflections on the Afro-Chilean Social Movement So there we had it, resistance, democracy and music, a bit of Brazil and Colombia ISSN 1541—1443 by Cristian Alejandro Báez Lazcano 34 and Chile and Cuba and a flurry of other places. One issue ofReVista can’t pretend to ReVista is printed on recycled stock. Afro-Latin America by the Numbers by George Reid Andrews 38 ONLINE Prejudice and Pride by Lowell Gudmundson 41 Look for more content online at cover everything about a significant part of Latin America’s population and history. It’s This issue of ReVista is made possible Salvador de Bahia by Enrique Aureng Silva 44 revista.drclas.harvard.edu a beginning, an exploration. And it’s one that wouldn’t have been possible without the through generous support of Witches, Wives, Secretaries and Black Feminists by Tianna S. Paschel 46 excellent collaboration of Alejandro de la Fuente, director of the Afro-Latin American Santander Universities Global Division. Research Institute at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research here MUSIC AND DANCE at Harvard. Not only did he provide inspiration and consultation with his deep and broad The Bearers by Ned Sublette 5 1 knowledge of Afro-Latin America, but he also is reponsible for the beautiful artwork that Afro-Roots and Mozart Too by Yosvany Terry 56 graces this issue and its cover. Thank you, Alejandro! Negra/Anger by Álvaro Restrepo 58 La Candela Viva by Rebecca Kennedy de Lorenzini 60 Multi-Faith Lives of Brazilian Congadeiros and Umbandistas ON THE COVER by Genevieve E. V. Dempsey 64 Sin Titulo, 2017 mixed media In the Footsteps of La Rebambaramba by Belén Vega Pichaco 68 on cardboard 40x30cm By Juan Roberto Diago Black Aesthetics and Afro-Latinx Hip Hop by Sujatha Fernandes 71

REVISTA.DRCLAS.HARVARD.EDU ReVista 1 FIRST TAKE FIRST TAKE

later, as I came to Harvard to found the The Rise Afro-Latin American Research Institute, Romero Rodríguez, then president of the the first research institution in the United Uruguayan organization Mundo Afro, synthetized of Afro-Latin States devoted to studying the history and cultures of peoples of African descent in brilliantly the impact of these events: “entramos America Latin America and the Caribbean. The new field of study had come of age and negros, salimos Afrodescendientes” (“we came in By ALEJANDRO DE LA FUENTE this process owed much to the Santiago as blacks, but came out as Afrodescendants”). Regional Conference. The Conference contributed to the cre- ation of a transnational agenda on race, IT WAS A FOUNDATIONAL EVENT. NEVER justice and human rights focused on the before had so many activists concerned specific needs and histories of people of with issues of race and justice in Latin African descent, who in Latin America America come together to discuss their represent between 20 and 30 percent of experiences and to chart new agendas the total population. States began to see for the future. Never before had racism people of African descent as distinctive and racial inequality been so visible, political subjects with new legal, cultural so central in Latin America. Seventeen and ethnic connotations. The Plan of Ac- years ago, on December 5-7, 2000, more tion approved by the Conference “urged” than 1,700 activists, government officials states to compile and disseminate infor- and representatives from regional and mation that could be used to implement international organizations gathered programs of social inclusion and equal- in Santiago de Chile for the Regional ity, leading to important policy changes. Conference of the Americas. They were In country after country, activists used preparing for the World Conference these guidelines to demand the inclusion against Racism, Racial Discrimination, of ethno-racial categories in national cen- Xenophobia and Related Intolerance that suses and other official statistics, seeking would take place in Durban, South Africa, to counteract the previous invisibility of a year later. Romero Rodríguez, then Afrodescendants. The results are telling. president of the Uruguayan organization Whereas only the censuses of Cuba and Mundo Afro, synthetized brilliantly the Brazil gathered information according A young violinist plays in Cuba. impact of these events: “entramos negros, to skin color or race in the 1980s, today salimos Afrodescendientes” (“we came in as almost all countries in the region include inequality. These included conditional- their entering places for graduates of the blacks, but came out as Afrodescendants”). this question in some way. Numerous cash-transfer and income-maintenance country’s public schools; to guarantee that Romero was highlighting a momen- countries introduced constitutional re- programs such as Bolsa Família, which black, brown and indigenous students tous transformation. In many cases for forms to acknowledge the existence and supports families below the poverty level are represented in numbers equivalent to the very first time, the participating specificity of peoples of African descent on condition that their children attend their proportion in the local population; states officially recognized the persis- and to explicitly condemn racial discrimi- school regularly. At the same time, since and also to guarantee that at least half of tence of racism and discrimination in nation. The number of state offices devot- the 1990s different forms of racial quotas the quota students meet certain income countries that had frequently claimed to ed to issues of discrimination proliferated and affirmative action policies in higher criteria. These quotas are being phased be free from such ills. As the Conference’s across the region. Several countries intro- education and employment were imple- in gradually and it will take some time concluding declaration stated, “ignoring duced compensatory policies to counter mented in that nation, home to the second before we can evaluate their full impact the existence of discrimination and rac- the historical effects of racism and to cre- largest Afrodescendant population in the on Brazilian society. All analysts concur, ism, at both the State and the society ate educational and economic opportuni- world, after Nigeria. however, that their impact is significant level, contributes directly and indirectly ties for individuals of African descent. These policies were hotly debated and and, as President Dilma Rousseff told me to perpetuating the practices of racism, Brazil led many of these efforts, as the even challenged legally, but in 2012 the in one of her visits to Harvard, the quo- racial discrimination, xenophobia and re- administrations of Fernando Henrique Supreme Court decided unanimously tas are probably irreversible. Indeed, it is lated intolerance.” I followed these events Cardoso (1995-2002), Luis Inácio Lula that racial quotas were constitutional. noteworthy that the two most prestigious carefully, sensing that they would impact da Silva (2003-2011) and Dilma Rousseff That same year the Brazilian Senate ap- universities in the country, UNICAMP our scholarly work and the nascent field (2011-2016) implemented a variety of proved, almost unanimously, the Law of and São Paulo, approved racial quotas in of Afro-Latin American studies. Antici- policies that sought to reduce income in- Social Quotas, requiring the country’s admissions only recently, in the summer pation became certainty thirteen years equality—including some forms of racial federal universities to reserve one-half of of 2017.

ABOVE LEFT: ELEGGUÁ NIÑO, 2007, MIXED MEDIA ON WOOD 2 ReVista WINTER 2018 42 X 19 INCHES BY CLARA MORERA. PHOTO BY JONATHAN MOLLER REVISTA.DRCLAS.HARVARD.EDU ReVista 3 AFRO-LATIN AMERICANS FIRST TAKE

Photographer Steve Cagan captures the faces of Afro-Colombians. A Cuban doctor examines a young patient.

In any case, thanks to the concerted ef- Most scholars and activists have inter- policies such as affirmative action. These tions, which tend to ignore some of the harmful, contributing in the process to forts of the activists of the Afrodescendant Afrodescendant activists, preted this transformation as conclusive explanations are based on the belief that specificities of race making and nation the reproduction of social hierarchies race-justice policies are only possible if building in Latin America. It is true that and racial prejudice. Afrodescendant movement, of state institutions, and of a artists and politicians evidence that the traditional ideologies of variety of international organizations and mestizaje and racial harmony that came previous formulations of race and nation the ideologies of mestizaje and racial har- activists, artists and politicians who ar- actors, it is now impossible to sustain that who articulated demands to define the nations of Latin America that downplayed racial conflicts are de- mony glossed over social and racial injus- ticulated demands for racial justice could bunked as pernicious lies. It is an either/ tices, since they advertised harmony and be depicted as ungrateful and resentful, the countries of Latin America are free for racial justice could be for decades are now bankrupt. The typi- from racial discrimination and inequal- cal explanation states that the countries or approach that leaves little room to inde- mixture as the essence of Latin America. even as traitors. That is why the history ity. This is a major transformation in how depicted as ungrateful of the region have transited “from” ideas terminacy and creativity: it is either mes- It is also true that by linking racial har- of Latin America is littered with examples tizaje or racial justice, racial harmony or mony with the fate of the nation, these of upwardly mobile blacks who were shut the peoples of Latin America think about and resentful, even as of mestizaje and racial democracy “to” themselves, their nations, their cultures, the recognition of racial differences and racial equality. ideologies condemned certain forms of down, contained, repressed or executed. and their history. traitors. the implementation of racially-based I beg to differ with these interpreta- racial mobilization as antipatriotic and But this is not the whole story of race

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AFRO-LATIN AMERICANS

Barbers are at work—maybe a first haircut? and nation in Latin America. There are cades lynching the others. Todo mezclado, such as Brazil and Colombia, continue to other possibilities, other paths. The ide- as Afro-Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén wrote embrace the ideologies of mestizaje and ologies of mestizaje and harmony were in the 1940s. It was a familiar metaphor, perceive racial mixing as a positive trait not just tools of social control, but uto- as illustrated by the Mexican raza cósmica of their nations. Most importantly, this be- pian visions of racially harmonious and of José Vasconcelos, by the Luso-tropical lief is widely shared across racial groups racially integrated nations, anticipations civilization of Brazilian Gilberto Freyre, by and finds similar levels of support among of a future when racial distinctions would the Cuban ajiaco of Fernando Ortiz, or by whites, blacks, mestizos and mulattos. eventually cease to have social meaning the café con leche of Venezuela’s Andrés This would suggest that these ideologies and impact. Places so utterly mixed, so Eloy Blanco. Todo mezclado. are truly national, in the sense that they hopefully mestizo, that they would be the Polling data from the 2010 Ameri- are embraced by most people, regardless envy of the allegedly civilized populations cas Barometer, analyzed by sociologist of social and racial background. In what of Europe, who spent the early decades of Edward Telles and collaborators, con- sense, then, have Latin Americans moved the 20th century killing each other, or of firms that most residents in countries away “from” their cherished utopias of ra- the United States, who spent the same de- with large Afrodescendant populations, cial mixture and harmony?

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Young Men at the Beach

More to the point, the same data suggest movement in the region is any indication, skin invites police repression and incar- that most people in the region do not see and I believe it is, there is little evidence ceration. Dark skin means lower salaries, any contradiction between these national that such representations are necessarily fewer opportunities, higher infant mortal- ideologies and public policies that seek to paralyzing or fatal. The recent history of ity, lower life expectancy. Dreams and uto- redress racial inequality and discrimina- race and mobilization in the region rather pias matter, but precisely because they do, tion, including policies of affirmative ac- suggests that these ideologies can become Afrodescendants demand results. Now. tion. Many Latin Americans support such platforms for emancipatory approaches to policies not despite the ideologies of mes- race and justice. Alejandro de la Fuente is the Robert tizaje and racial harmony, but rather be- Still, the fact is that for most Afrode- Woods Bliss Professor of Latin American Sidney Chalhoub Slavery and Precarious Freedom • Agustín Laó-Montes Afro-Boricua Agency • Cristina García Navas cause of those ideologies, which posit that scendants in the region, these possibilities History and Economics and Professor of Photoessay • Stephen and Elizabeth Ferry Mining and Defense of Afro-Colombian Territory • Omar H. Ali African and Latin American nations should be, even if remain unrealized. People of African de- African and African American studies at they are not in practice, racially egalitarian scent continue to face formidable barriers Harvard University. He is the director of Afro-Indian Rebel Leaders in Latin America • Antonio J. Copete The Routine of an Unconventional Path and inclusive. As any other utopian vision, to social mobility and equality. Dark skin the Afro-Latin American Research Insti- Miari Taina Stephens “I Found My Island” • Matthew Leslie Santana Transforming Havana’s Gay Ambiente these national myths misrepresent social continues to predict poverty and margin- tute at the Hutchins Center for African & realities. But if the vibrant Afrodescendant alization with appalling precision. Dark African American Research. Nicholas T Rinehart Sandoval Redux

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Slavery and Precarious Freedom A Strange Co-Existence in 19th-century Brazil By SIDNEY CHALHOUB

SLAVERY WAS A FORM OF LABOR EXPLOITATION indigenous. People of African descent could be revoked. Many freedoms were in which workers became the property of (blacks and pardos together, including all revoked informally, as for example when others; slaves were considered things, social conditions–that is, free, freed and a proprietor promised to free a slave in thus routinely exposed to transactions slave) comprised 58 percent of the total his or her last will and testament, but such as sale, auction, mortgage, renting. population, or approximately 5.7 million then decided to sell the slave before his or people. Another way of looking at these her death and the ensuing opening of the They appeared in last will and testaments, numbers is that about three out of every testament. A letter of manumission could scribes duly recorded them in post mortem four people of African descent in Brazil also be revoked by means of another letter inventories, and masters bequeathed them lived as free or freed while slavery still explicitly annulling the freedom previously to their heirs. Deeds of sale are common existed in the country, a sharp contrast granted. Revocation of freedoms remained in surviving archives pertaining to slave with just about 11 percent of African a legal possibility for owners until the societies, often recording the separation descendants who were free or freed in the gradual emancipation law of 1871. A of couples, of parents and children, the United States in 1860. slave could buy his or her liberty from the constant disruption of families and slave The different demographics of slavery owner, but self-purchase often involved communities. Violence against them was in Brazil and the United States raise a borrowing money from a third party, and number of interesting questions, but in then working for years under slave-like rampant, often combined with other this text let us just think about the fact conditions to pay the sum back to the strategies to intimidate and discipline that in Brazil, to a greater extent than in lender. the labor force. Twelve million Africans other slave societies, a significant number Perhaps the main fact that rendered were taken from their native lands to be of enslaved people achieved freedom, for freedom precarious for people of African enslaved in the Americas from the 16th to themselves and their descendants while descent in 19th-century Brazil was the F. Biard, “A slave sale in Rio de Janeiro,” in Deux années au Brésil, Paris, 1862. the 19th centuries. slavery continued to exist, with about 74 widespread practice of illegal enslavement. Beyond these common characteristics, percent of people of African descent being Despite a law that prohibited the African however, slave societies differed sharply free or freed in 1872. What consequences slave trade to Brazil in 1831, Africans On the one hand, postulating that by the police or others invested with the were João Antônio da Silva, a black from one another. Readers familiar with do these demographics have in regard continued to arrive there as contraband Africans and their descendants should mantle of white supremacy, thus ensuing freedman (…).” Here the approximation the characteristics of slavery in the U.S. to the experience of freedom? What was until 1850, when a new law again be presumed slaves allowed authorities harassment, arrest as a runaway, and risk of the words “black,” “freed” and “vagrant” South may find surprising that about five it like to live as a free or freed person of abolished the slave trade, but this time not to investigate the possible right to of auction and enslavement. indicates a looming threat to the scores million Africans arrived in Brazil as a result African descent in a society in which so was enforced. More than 750,000 people freedom of hundreds of thousands of Police correspondence pertaining to the of free and freed people of African of the slave trade, as opposed to fewer than many people who shared your race and were illegally enslaved as a result of the Africans smuggled into the country; on city of Rio allows fascinating glimpses of descent living in the city of Rio—then four hundred thousand coming to the cultural legacies remained in bondage, contraband trade after 1831 (about twice the other hand, free and freed people of the daily construction of the subtleties in and now. As slavery declined in the 1870s United States. While achieving freedom performing similar jobs, moving in the the total number of Africans brought African descent found themselves under the perception of race originating in this and 1880s, harassment and detentions seemed a meaningful possibility for slaves same spaces? In sum, what was freedom to the United States!). Pretending not the constant threat of being suspected of tense and conflictual world of uncertain associated with the suspicion of being in Brazil, manumission was virtually like for black people in Brazilian slave to see that so many enslaved Africans being slaves, thus running the risk of being frontiers between slavery and freedom. For a runaway slave gave away to a rapidly impossible for slaves in the U.S. South; society, and what were the legacies of working in the plantations and urban auctioned off back to slavery in case they example, on November 11, 1835, “the black rising number of arrests for “vagrancy.” while slaves in Brazil were distributed that situation for the post emancipation areas had been smuggled to the country did not manage to prove their status as Domingos Cabinda, a slave of Mariano So- The politics of racial designations and throughout the national territory, with a period? required certain institutional and policy free or freed. and-So, was arrested as a runaway and meanings, in Brazil, originated in the tense significant number of them living in urban The short answer to the questions “adaptations,” so to speak. For example, Conditional manumissions, revocation sent to the Calabouço” (a prison for slaves exercise of negotiating social places and areas, the United States is known for its above is that freedom was very precarious in the 1830s, the chief of police of the of freedoms, illegal enslavements, and in Rio; my italics). “Cabinda” indicated the conditions in a society where slavery and sharp North/South divide in regard to while slavery existed. People of African city of Rio de Janeiro defended the police assumptions about the bondage of African origin of Domingos and it seemed freedom coexisted in intense and largely slavery and for the concentration of the descent remained vulnerable in the post- idea that in the case of “blacks” (pretos) people of African descent show that the to be enough justification for suspecting indeterminate ways for a very long time. enslaved in the plantation economy. emancipation period in part because of arrested by the police because they were boundaries between slavery and freedom in that he was a runaway slave. On March 11, According to the census of 1872, the the risks associated with freedom during suspected of being runaway slaves: “it is 19th-century Brazil were often uncertain. 1836, “Joaquim Kassange, who says that Sidney Chalhoub is Professor of only national census carried out in Brazil slavery. Although manumission rates were more reasonable (…) to presume their In this situation, and considering the high he is a freed man,” was “seized for begging History and of African and African percentage of free and freed people of needlessly.” In this case, “Kassange” was before the abolition of slavery in 1888, relatively high in 19th-century Brazil, slave bondage, until they present a certificate American Studies at Harvard Uni- African descent in the population while another sure indication of African origin; the country had a population of nearly owners granted a significant number of baptism or a letter of liberty to prove versity. A Brazilian historian, he has 10 million people, of whom about 8.5 of conditional freedoms. Usually about otherwise” (Arquivo Nacional, Rio de slavery still existed, meanings associated for this reason, Joaquim’s allegation published five books, including A força million were free and 1.5 million remained 30 to 50 percent of freedoms depended Janeiro, police correspondence). In other with skin color, command of the Portuguese that he was free led the scribe to express slaves. Regarding the racial composition, on the fulfillment of a condition stated words, according to this doctrine, which language, body language, modes of some misgivings: he “says that he is a da escravidão: ilegalidade e costume 38 percent were white, approximately in a letter of liberty, such as continued clearly prevailed in the long run, blacks dressing and other cultural traits became a freed man.” Another entry for November no Brasil oitocentista (2012), on illegal 20 percent black, more than 38 percent service for a number of years or until the apprehended by the police should all be decisive aspect of black experience. Giving 11, 1835, begins this way: “Arrested for enslavement and the precariousness of pardos (mixed race), and 3.9 percent death of the owner. In addition, freedoms deemed slaves until proven otherwise. the wrong signs might trigger suspicion vagrants, and sent (…) for naval service freedom 19th-century Brazil.

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Afro-Boricua Agency Against the Myth of the Whitest of the Antilles By AGUSTÍN LAÓ-MONTES

PUERTO RICO IS IN CRISIS. MADE UNIMAGINABLY as non-white and therefore as allegedly of formally holding U.S. citizenship, are worse by Hurricane Maria, this ongoing inferior to the authentic citizens of the de facto second class citizens. They face crisis highlights the racial character of American White Republic. This attitude ethnic-racial discrimination as non- our colonial condition. President Trump, can be traced to three factors 1) the white subjects (regardless of their skin who charged that Puerto Ricans just civilizational/racial divide between color), with subordinate inscription in want things to be done for them and that Anglos and Latinos which premised U.S. economy, polity and society in what providing disaster relief to the island the hemispheric dialectic between the Kelvin Santiago-Valles has characterized represented a problem for the U.S. budget, two Americas, the one that Jose Martí as a colonized labor force. reveals the ugly face of imperial policy, called Our America in contrast to The racialization of Puerto Rico as a neglecting basic aid to the devastated Anglo-America in the British Protestant Latin American/Caribbean archipelago archipelago, while giving post-hurricane tradition; 2) the U.S. imperial labeling of and of Puerto Ricans as non-white support to Texas and Florida. When he the Caribbean as its backyard with Puerto should not deny the specificity of Afro- threw paper towels to an audience during Puerto Rican difference. Indeed, the very his brief visit to the island after the storms existence and nature of Afro-Boricua Irma and Maria, his racist utterances difference and of racism among Puerto upset international opinion just when As in the rest of the Ricans are matters of debate in Puerto the profound humanitarian crisis of Americas, darker-skin Rican intellectual and political scenarios. Puerto Ricans—U.S. citizens— began to As in the rest of the Americas, darker-skin be acknowledged. Puerto Ricans had Puerto Ricans had historically suffered The catastrophe of the late modern historically suffered from structural racism that includes colony in the aftermath of the hurricanes relative social marginalization, lack of resurfaces the discontents of the double from structural racism political representation and denial of coloniality confronted by Afro-Puerto that includes relative historical and cultural recognition, as well A rally at Boston’s Villa Victoria prominently displays the Puerto Rican flag. Ricans. The collapse of the colonial state as everyday experiences of discrimination was triggered by its fiscal fall leaving it social marginalization, both in Puerto Rico and the United States. Schomburg, an Afro-Boricua born in the championed the Boricua movements of of the Puerto Rican movement of the with a $74 billion debt to speculators lack of political The peculiarities of anti-black racism island, became active in New York in the the 1960s-70s. 1960s-70s, militated against colonialism, from Big Finance Capital, and governed in Puerto Rico and among Puerto Ricans movement for independence of Cuba and The Puerto Rican liberation movement capitalism, sexism and racism. This sort of de facto by a Financial Control Board representation and are colored by the condition of long-term Puerto Rico. A key figure in the African of the 1960s-70s in the United States politics—that we now call intersectional capable of suppressing basic labor and denial of historical and colonialism. Through this long history, diaspora’s intellectual and political combatted colonialism, capitalism and because it understands power as based citizens rights to pursue the primary goal Afro-Puerto Ricans confront a double life, he founded the first and still most racism as entangled forms of oppression. on articulations of class, ethnic-racial, of milking money from the ill insular cultural recognition, colonial condition, as colonial subjects important archive of Africana studies This entailed fighting U.S. white racism gender and sexual oppressions—shaped economy. After the hurricane Puerto as well as everyday of the empire, and as racialized internal in the world, now hosted in a branch of against Puerto Rican colonial subjects, the political culture of Puerto Rican Rico definitely became a failed state others of the nation. The efforts by both the New York Public Library in Harlem. as well as racial discrimination of Afro- radicalism. The racial politics of the Young without the ability and practical will to experiences of the Spanish empire and creole elites to Given that a large percentage of Puerto Puerto Ricans by lighter-skin Boricuas. Lords were expressed with poetic justice solve basic needs like supplying electricity discrimination both in whiten the island by conceding land and Rican migrants to New York City since the This is also mediated by class and in Felipe Luciano’s verse Jíbaro My Pretty and fresh water. As we write, close to rights to European immigrants in the late 19th century was black, the cultural, gender domination, especially in Puerto Nigger, Jíbaro Mi Negro Lindo, in which 200,000 Puerto Ricans emigrated to the Puerto Rico and the 19th century, in an archipelago where intellectual and political leadership Rico where the colonial ruling class is he challenges the idea of the Puerto Rican United States. Afro-Boricuas remained United States. the plantation system was less developed of the Boricua community in the city mostly white males. As counterpoint, in subject as a white peasant, an image that overrepresented among those who have that in other Caribbean spaces, resulted in has historically been Afrodescendant. many working-class U.S. barrios, Puerto has circulated since the 19th century and suffered the most from the crisis, before Puerto Rico being perceived as the whitest In the generation after Schomburg, Ricans of all colors and U.S. blacks share became emblematic in the 1930s. and after the storms. Rico as its prime colonial playground and of the Antilles. we can highlight librarian Pura Beltré in a conviviality that gave rise to shared The next generation, the one that The racialization of Puerto Rico and laboratory (as evidenced by sugar cane Nevertheless, Afro-Puerto Ricans and socialist journalist Jesus Colón. cultural productions such as hip-hop produced hip-hop culture—an urban Puerto Ricans is a complex matter that plantations and mass sterilization of a have excelled providing meaningful One generation later, Antonia Pantojas culture, and a dialectics of affinity and mixture of music, dance, style, art, requires investigation. In U.S. imperial colonized population) and 3) the location leadership in both the Puerto Rican and promoted the emergence of a network of conflict in urban political coalition- economy and politics—spawned imaginary and discourse, Puerto Ricans of Puerto Ricans living in the United African diasporas at least since the 19th Puerto Rican institutions such as Aspira building. community cultural institutions such as as a people-nation tend to be racialized States as colonial migrants who in spite century. For example, Arturo Alfonso that educated and inspired the youth who The Young Lords, a key organization Taller Boricua and Nuyorican Poets Café

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organize a public burial of Chianita, a emerge that highlight Afro-Boricua that compose and configure the colonial of decolonization and liberation from theatrical happening that motivated a cultural components. condition of Puerto Rico and Puerto the intertwined powers of colonialism, debate about racism in the media and The dissemination of Bomba music Ricans. capitalism, patriarchy and racism, in both the meaning of blackface. Chianita fans and dance, perceived as been from The combined injuries of race and shores of the Atlantic pond that divides accused her critics of using arguments supposedly subaltern black territories class faced by Afro-Boricua subaltern and connect the U.S. empire-nation and similar to those used by terrorists against such as Loiza and San Anton, into youth sectors who circulate between the island the archipelago of Puerto Rico. Charlie Hebdo. and activist spaces, also show a sort barrios and the U.S. ghettos deepen with Another arena of racial politics of blackening of Puerto Rican public the world crisis of neoliberal capitalist Agustín Laó-Montes is an Associ- in Puerto Rico is the census. More cultures. In the public sphere, matched globalization. In the Caribbean context ate Professor of Sociology and Afro- than 80% of Puerto Ricans from the with academic recognition, Afro-Puerto that means, as Maurice Bishop said, American Studies at the University of archipelago were recorded as white in Rican writers like Mayra Santos Febres, that when the empire catches a cold, we Massachusetts-Amherst. He has several the 2000 census— provoking alarm and Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro and Ivonne Denis get pneumonia. Projecting its optimal publications primarily in the fields debate. The history and visible human represent and cultivate the values of Afro- critical potential, a cultivated double of historical sociology, social move- landscape of Puerto Rico, a Caribbean Boricua histories and cultures through consciousness of Afro-Puerto Ricans ments, decolonial critique, and Africana island with strong African ancestry, their literature, while performing a could turn our collective historical studies. His forthcoming book is titled reveal these numbers as counterintuitive. critique of the intersections of racial, agency into a powerful transformative Diasporic Counterpoints: Political Con- A combination of the relative success of class, gender and sexual domination, force within a long and complex process stellations of Our Afroamerica. a whitening ideology, displacement of blackness to U.S. blacks—given that we are using U.S. census categories, and lack of educational campaigns to enhance black self-affirmation—account for the dramatic increase in the population identified as white. Colectivo Ilé’s subsequent campaign for people to acknowledge African descent seems to influenced a Celebrating at Villa Victoria, a Puerto Rican cultural center in Boston. decrease of white demographics in the 2010 Puerto Rican census to 75%. The with an Afro-Puerto Rican aesthetics of Afrodescendance. The First Congress growing visibility of a movement fighting linked to the politics of Latina/o self- of Afrodescendants in Puerto Rico in racism and advocating Afro-Puerto Rican affirmation. In this context, Marta Moreno November 2015 convened more than identity, culture and politics, will likely Vega, an Afro-Boricua woman, founded a thousand activists, intellectuals and change the equation more. in 1976 the Caribbean Cultural Center cultural agents at the University of Puerto The roles and significance of Afro- African Diaspora Institute (CCCADI), Rico in Rio Piedras. At the inauguration, Boricuas in Puerto Rico itself and in its which became one of the primary global then-University Chancellor Carlos situation as a translocal nation, as well as spaces for cultural, religious and political Severino, an Afro-Puerto Rican himself, in the African diaspora, are mediated by exchanges in the Africana world. The denounced the racist history of the prime class and gender. Cultural genres such as CCCADI, which organized three world institution of higher education in the regaetton explicitly give voice to subaltern congresses of Yoruba religion, launched island, advocating for a new era in which sectors in terms of race and class. The the Global Afro-Latino and Caribbean Black Studies would become an integral lyrics of lead artists such as Tego Calderón Initiative (GALCI) that has been part of the university’s agenda. Maria Elba and Don Omar, vindicate Afro-Boricua instrumental in weaving networks of Torres, its main organizer, is now leading popular cultures from the barrios and Afro-Latina/o social movements across efforts toward the Second Congress of caserios (public housing projects) using the Americas. Afrodescendance in Puerto Rico. a challenging masculinist tone. These Afro-Puerto Ricans on the island The contested terrain of racial politics spaces of Puerto Rican-ness, racialized, also participate in the web of activism clearly came to public light in Puerto marginalized and criminalized in both that placed Afro-Latin American social Rico when television actress Angela Puerto Rico and the U.S. mainland, tend movements at the forefront of worldwide Meyer recently tried to revive a blackface to be identified as black, unruly and movements against racism and for character from the 1970s called Chianita. dangerous as evidenced in the scholarship racial justice. Afro-Boricuas provided After protest from Puerto Rico’s anti-racist of Afro-Boricua sociologists Kelvin leadership in the 2001 Third World and black movement, television networks Santiago-Valles and Zaire Dinzey. They Conference Against Racism in Durban, decided not to broadcast the character. are also places where Afro-Puerto Rican South Africa, conceiving there the Decade Anti-racist poets and performance artists identities flourish and aesthetic genres

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Teotihuacán - 37.jpg? Do we need a caption? Clockwise; 1.Professor Sergio Antonio, opposite page. 2. Group of children and teenagers dancing in front of the San Francisco de Asis Cathedral, central plaza of Quibdo, Choco. July 2016 3. “Afro Power,” Graffiti at the Universidad Tecnológica del Chocó (UTCH) 4. Muntu Bantu view from the outside 5. Chirimia Group of students from the Licenciatura en Música y Danza at the UTCH A View of Afro-Diasporic History 6. Atrato river from Quibdo’s malecón, July 2016. from Colombia A PHOTOESSAY BY CRISTINA GARCÍA NAVAS

THE MUNTU BANTU, A MEMORIAL MUSEUM AND CULTURAL CENTER IN over many years by the Chocoan historian Sergio Mosquera, coast of Colombia. and corporal practices of the Pacific littoral region, and the Quibdo, Chocó, on Colombia’s Pacific coast region, seeks to work professor at the Universidad Tecnológica del Chocó. The The museum, open to the community and guided by Pro- Association for Cultural Research of Choco (ASINCH), this “for the study, promotion and diffusion of the Afro-Colombian mural at the entrance depicts black Colombian politicians fessor Mosquera himself, is frequently visited by school and space nourishes the vibrant and innovative cultural, musical culture, and the advancement and improvement of the living and Independence heroes from Latin America and the college student groups to learn about the worldwide African and historical research of Choco and the black Pacific Coast of conditions of Afrodescendant populations.” Working from an Caribbean. A film room, where movies are frequently played diaspora and the histories and cultures of Afro-Colombian Colombia. “Afrogenetic and Afrocentric” perspective, it proposes to look for the community, showcases internationally famous black communities, with a special emphasis on Chocó. Muntu Bantu Cristina García Navas is a Ph.D. Candidate in Latin Ameri- for the union of human beings among cultural diversity, serving singers and movie stars. With three floors and multiple the- also functions as a cultural center for events and has published can Literatures and Cultures at the Department of Romance both as a cultural center for the Chocoan population and an matic rooms, the museum is dedicated to topics going from books by Mosquera and magazines such as Cuadernos de Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. This travel educational center for the Colombian society as a whole on the the slave trade in the Americas and the symbolism of the Muntú-Bantú. to Chocó was made possible by a summer research grant from history of the country’s African diaspora. African and Chocoan fauna myths, to those of slavery, gold Together with other institutions such as the Corp-Oralo- the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. The center was imagined, designed and built piecemeal mining and armed conflict-related violence on the Pacific teca, a documentation and research center for the sound, oral

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Mining and the Defense of Afro-Colombian Territory The Community of Yolombó, Colombia By STEPHEN AND ELIZABETH FERRY

WE—AN ANTHROPOLOGIST AND PHOTOGRA- The media called their movement “The arguments and declared that the mining pher, sister and brother—visited Yolombó March of the Turbans,” in reference to titles must be suspended. Again, leaders in the department of Cauca, Colombia, in the scarves many of the women wrapped received death threats in the form of pam- June 2017. Yolombó is part of a federation around their heads in traditional Afro- phlets, phone calls and text messages. of five towns known as the Corregimiento Colombian fashion. The marchers reached In the face of these threats, residents de La Toma, governed by an autonomous out for national and international support. formed the Maroon Guard. The word community council, as are many Afro- Their efforts worked, perhaps too well. “maroon” refers historically to commu- Colombian areas in the Pacific region. They had hoped for administrative action nities of escaped slaves, but its meaning When we asked María Yein Mina about that would compel the backhoes’ owners has expanded to refer to black resistance mining in her community, she said, “I’ll to remove them; the police simply showed in Latin America and the Caribbean in its have to divide my answer into ‘before’ and up and burned the machinery. As a conse- many forms. The Guard is a community ‘after’ the arrival of the retros,” the back- quence, leaders of the movement received police force of about forty young men and hoes that outsiders brought to the Ovejas multiple death threats. women, which manages internal conflicts River beginning in the late 1980s. The people of La Toma had to defend and protects the community from outside Until then, members of the five towns their territory on a second front, this one threats. They based their movement on practiced a balanced economy of mining, underground. This conflictive history the Palenque Police, set up by residents fishing and subsistence agriculture along had historical roots. In the early 2000s, of the historic maroon community of San with a few commercial crops such as cof- the multinational company AngloGold Basilio de Palenque. The Maroon Guard fee. People usually worked on the farm Ashanti had begun taking core samples also shares methods with the Indigenous on Mondays and Tuesdays and spent the in the area, sending agents into the com- Guard, an organized force within the rest of the week mining and fishing. At munity as social workers, festival sponsors nearby reservations of the Nasa people first some members of the community and contributors to public works such as that has confronted leftist guerrillas, A group of miners, members of several families who have owned land in Yolombó for centuries, direct jets of water at the hill to form fell into the trap of the retros, neglecting repairing the highway. This is a common— right-wing paramilitaries and the state in a channel of red mud at its base. Next page: Miner, Yolombó, Cauca, 2017 their farms in order to mine the strata of and from the corporate perspective, widely defense of native territory. gold particles exposed by the machinery accepted—strategy, but one that was The families that live in the five towns Africa as slaves, it also made them free; was drafted in 2001 in collaboration with corporations, with the Colombian state, in the banks of the Ovejas River. But then viewed with suspicion in the villages of in the jurisdiction of La Toma—Yolom- many bought their liberty by mining for Canadian advisers, and favors large-scale and with companies from outside their they realized that this way led to ruin: the La Toma. Sure enough, they soon learned bó, Gelima, El Hato, Dos Aguas and La gold in the Ovejas River, while others es- projects over traditional mining. Foreign communities who bring in mechanized banks were churned up, gold was becom- that the Ministry of Mines had granted Toma—have inhabited this region on the caped and lived as maroons. Their fami- mining companies now see Colombia as a and highly destructive machinery such ing scarce, and people no longer wanted mining titles to AngloGold Ashanti and Pacific coast of Colombia since the early lies, and the families of those emancipated new frontier. as the retros. Yolombó is just one place to swim or fish because of mercury in the to private citizens with no links to the 17th century, when they were brought as in the mid-19th century, bought the land In all this planning, the government among many where these conflicts have water. They petitioned the authorities to community. These concessions entailed slaves to work the Gelima gold mine and from the proceeds of mining and defend- and foreign corporations tend to ignore come to a head. enforce environmental laws, without suc- the removal of the families living there— surrounding farms. The gold from Gelima ed it from successive attempts to displace local communities that have been min- When we visited in June 2017, the cess. practically the entire town of La Toma. In and other smaller mines enriched the city them over the centuries. ing gold for centuries. At least 350,000 river was too high for alluvial mining, so Led by the younger residents of 2009, the government sent the police to of Popayán, and the whole Real Audiencia In recent years these attempts have Colombians make their livelihood directly we went to an area close to the school in Yolombó, the community went en masse displace the residents. The community de Quito, which included parts of south- become even more aggressive. Begin- through small-scale gold mining activi- Yolombó, to see a form of mining called to the river, boarded the machines and had stood its ground, facing security forces ern Colombia, current-day Ecuador and ning in the early 2000s, a combination ties, with many more depending on them minería de chorreo or “water-jet mining.” compelled the owners to turn them off. with crowbars and machetes in hand. northern Peru. The Jesuits mainly owned of high prices for metals, more efficient through family ties and commerce. These We watched a group of some fifteen min- In 2014, a group of fifteen women trav- They had also fought back through the mines until their expulsion from the technologies, and greatly improved se- miners have dense social and territorial ers, members of several families who have eled, mostly on foot, to a series of other the courts, filing lawsuits on grounds of Americas in 1767. curity conditions have made Colombia relations with gold, customary rights, and owned land in Yolombó for centuries, di- Afro-Colombian communities also faced loss of livelihood and the lack of prior Francia Márquez Mina, community newly attractive for transnational cor- long histories. recting jets of water at the hill to form a with the imposition of mechanized alluvial consultation, in violation of the Interna- member, lawyer, and recipient of the Na- porations. The Colombian government As the “mining locomotive” (to use channel of red mud at its base. They then mining in their territories. Strengthened tional Labor Organization convention to tional Prize for the Defense of Human prioritizes large-scale resource extraction President Juan Manuel Santos’s phrase) use bateas (a wooden pan used in min- by numbers, they arrived in Bogotá to which Colombia is a signatory. In 2010, Rights in Colombia, told us that although as a central feature of its economic devel- gained momentum, these local miners ing since Pre-Columbian times) and al- pressure the national government to act. the Constitutional Court accepted their mining brought their ancestors from opment agenda. The current mining code have come into conflict with multinational mocafres (a traditional tool shaped like a

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African and Afro-Indian Rebel Leaders in Latin America Con Tanta Arrogancia By OMAR H. ALI

ON CHRISTMAS DAY IN THE YEAR 1521, AND HALF a world away from home, a group of en- slaved West African Muslim warriors led a slave revolt on the island of Hispaniola, a distant island across a vast ocean. The Wolof slaves had little chance of success, facing the long steel swords, lances, and guns of their Spanish captors. Their val- iant, albeit desperate, revolt was quickly put down. Nevertheless, they unsettled their Iberian captors, whose quest for power and wealth stoked the fires of war on both sides of the Atlantic. Spanish authorities, relying increas- ingly on Portuguese slave traffickers, soon passed a series of ordinances to “The Three Mulattoes of Esmeraldas” is an Ecuadoran painting from 1599 by Andrés limit the number of Muslim Africans Sánchez Gallque. taken to their colonies in the Americas. Many of these Africans were captives of escaping and armed rebellions. Although Africa, in 1596, Biohó was shackled and war with military experience, and they many enslaved Africans and their descen- shipped to the port of Cartagena. Within were viewed as particularly dangerous. dants also assimilated into colonial societ- three years of his arrival to New Grenada Still, the Spaniards’ insatiable desire for ies, no one (colonists, servants or slaves) (now Colombia), Biohó organized a slave labor outweighed their fears, which were could escape the violence of slavery that revolt involving nearly three dozen people. well-founded as enslaved Africans (Mus- permeated the Atlantic world, either as The rebellion included his wife, Wiwa, lims and non-Muslims alike) continued perpetrators, victims or witnesses. and a grown daughter, Orika, among thir- garden hoe) to separate the gold. Instead The families that live in the five towns Stephen Ferry is co-author of La to rebel. Over the next three centuries Once they landed on American soil, ty others whom he led deep into the forest. of mercury, they use the viscous sap of a in the jurisdiction of La Toma—Yolombó, there would be hundreds of documented some Africans escaped to join Native There, they formed and defended one of Gelima, El Hato, Dos Aguas and La Batea (Icono/Red Hook, 2017), his plant known as escoba babosa, tradition- Toma—have inhabited this region on the third book. He has contributed to instances of African revolts in the Spanish Americans. These Africans mixed with the longest-lasting maroon settlements ally used in Colombia as an anti-inflam- Pacific coast of Colombia since the early the New York Times, GEO, TIME and Portuguese colonies of the Americas. Taino and Arawak peoples in the Carib- in the Americas, known as San Basilio de matory, that also helps separate gold from 17th century, when they were brought as During the 16th century, Africans and bean, and Wayuu, Caquetio, and Chocó, Palenque. slaves to work the Gelima gold mine and and National Geographic. He its surroundings. By these methods, they surrounding farms. The gold from Gelima was the winner in the professional their descendants outnumbered Iberians among other tribes, and their descen- From Palenque at the base of the Mon- can mine for decades in the same area. and other smaller mines enriched the city category of the 2017 Best of ReVista and their descendants in Mexico City, dants, on the mainland. Many others tes de María, Biohó launched multiple The threats have continued. Sent by of Popoyán, and the whole Real Lima and Salvador da Bahia—the three escaped slavery by taking their own lives attacks on Spanish colonists in Carta- Audiencia de Quito, which included parts photo contest. His website is ste- email from unknown parties, they accuse of Southern Colombia, current-day Ecua- phenferry.com. principal cities of colonial Latin America. and “flying” back to Africa, rather than gena. The attacks went on for fourteen the community of “opposing progress” and dor, and northern Peru. The Jesuits mainly Between the 16th and mid-19th centuries, face the social death and brutality of slav- years, until 1613, when he agreed to a undermining the government’s plans for owned the mines until their expulsion more than ten million West and Cen- ery—or they ran away into the hinterland. peace treaty with the Spaniards. By then from the Americas in 1767. Elizabeth Ferry is Professor of development through foreign investment. Anthropology at Brandeis Universi- tral West Africans (with an additional The latter runaways, called “maroons”— Biohó had become known as “el rey del For her safety, Francia Márquez no longer permanent threat” to the survival of the ty. Her research interests lie in value, 720,000 from Southeastern Africa) were a word that comes from the Spanish ci- arcabuco,” “the king of the thick forest.” lives in the area and travels accompanied community. materiality, mining, finance, Mexico, forcibly taken to work on the plantations, marrón (used to describe wild or escaped However, Biohó openly visited Cartagena by armed bodyguards provided by the Against this uncertain future, the Colombia and the United States. She gold and silver mines, and in the cities cattle)—fled into the forests, swamps, hills under protection of the treaty, and he did state. towns remain organized. Among other is co-author of La Batea (Icono/Red of Spanish and Portuguese colonists in and mountains, where they entrenched so dressed in Spanish gentleman’s attire AngloGold Ashanti appears to have things, the community council conducts Hook, 2017), her third book. Her the Americas. Resistance to slavery took themselves—and, from there, continued with sword and dagger at his side. But the left the region and its titles have been media relations and legal actions, pro- website is elizabeth-ferry.com place at the first point of contact in Africa to wage war. audacity of a free African walking into the suspended, but not cancelled. Sabino motes ancestral culture for youth, and is and continued at sea and in the colonies Among the most prominent maroon colonial stronghold con tanta arrogancia Lucumí Chocó, president of the La Toma planning an independent environmental Their book’s website is https://red- in various ways such as feigning illness, leaders of the Atlantic world was Benkos (“with such arrogance”), would only be Community Council, calls these titles “a school, to be called “La Batea.” hookeditions.com/product/la-batea/ poisoning masters, setting fire to crops, Biohó. Captured in Guinea-Bissau, West tolerated for so long by the Spaniards.

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Betrayed, Biohó was arrested on one of early as 1444. the coast of St. Vincent in 1675 and who labor, and publicly flogged dozens of other chez Galque in 1599 powerfully depicts over the course of several centuries, how- his visits and executed. But even in death The most famous African soldier fight- intermixed with Carib and Arawak peoples black rebels; others were simply deported one of its Afro-Indian leaders, Don Fran- ever, is the ongoing resistance of men and Biohó would continue to inspire others to ing for Spanish interests was Juan Gar- on the island. After a century of warfare back to Africa. While Brazil ended the slave cisco (de) Arobe, flanked by his two sons, women born in Africa or descended from resist their enslavement, take up arms and rido, originally from West Africa, who and a series of forced migrations, the Gari- trade in 1851, it would take the country un- depicting a mix of Spanish, African and those who originally came from Africa. follow his footsteps into the forest. fought on the side of Spanish conquista- funa people eventually settled in Central til 1888 to abolish slavery itself—the last Native American influences. Maroon settlements and slave insur- dor Hernán Cortéz whose army invaded America after their greatest leader, Joseph place in the Americas to do so. Today, African and Afro-Indian reb- Omar H. Ali is Dean of Lloyd Inter- rections would haunt colonial authorities Mexico and lay siege on the Aztec capital Chatoyer, was killed in battle in 1796. Cuba, like Brazil, witnessed slave re- els are remembered to varying extents in national Honors College and Professor for generations to come. Over the next at Tenochtitlan in 1519. But whether in the Rebellions in South America mirrored volts throughout this same time. By the Latin America. There are reconstructed of Global and Comparative African two hundred years, successive waves of battles for domination over the Aztecs or those across the Caribbean and North early 19th century, Cuba had become the images, such as statues of figures such as Diaspora History at The University of maroons in New Grenada included many in other colonizing efforts elsewhere in America. The largest maroon settlement in most productive sugar colony in the Ca- Biohó in Colombia or Zumbi in Brazil. North Carolina at Greensboro. A former who took Biohó‘s name, or variations the Americas—including the Spanish the Americas was formed in Brazil in 1604 ribbean and had a reputation as one of the In each of those countries these figures DRCLAS Library Scholar, he was select- thereof, as a title. The name ‘Biohó’ had conquest of Peru—Africans and people in what is now the state of Alagoas, south most brutal plantation complexes. In the are considered national folk heroes, es- ed as The Carnegie Foundation North effectively become synonymous with Af- of African descent at times found them- of Recife. Called Quilombo dos Palmares, area of Matanzas, enslaved Africans with pecially among Afro-Colombians and Carolina Professor of the Year. His latest rican resistance, his story forming part of selves on the defensive, even stranded and founded by an African named Ganga military experience organized a series of Afro-Brazilians, respectively. In Peru, book is Malik Ambar: Power and Slav- the collective memory of African and Af- with Spaniards. Zumba in the Serra de Barriga, the settle- large-scale rebellions. Ten years before however, most citizens are unaware ery Across the Indian Ocean (Oxford rican-descended rebel leaders across Latin One such occasion took place in the ment of Africans and Native Americans the Malê revolt in Brazil, and starting on of black resistance to slavery because University Press, 2016). America. These figures included Gaspar spring of 1568. Eighteen months earlier, grew to more than 11,000 strong and lasted June 15, 1825, about two hundred slaves the history of its African- Yanga, a contemporary of Biohó, who and some forty years before the Eng- for nearly a century—that is, until its last participated in a coordinated revolt that descended population is formed a powerful maroon settlement in lish settlement of Jamestown, Virginia, leader, Zumbi (like Biohó) was betrayed spread to over two dozen plantations. No- little known (despite such the highlands near Veracruz, Mexico; the soldiers of African descent were part of and executed. Resistance to Portuguese tably, the vast majority of the slave rebels, eminent religious figures, maroon Miguel, who escaped from the Spanish expeditionary forces in the Pied- forces continued well into the next century including leaders such as Pablo Ganga most strikingly, San Marin mines near Barquisimeto, Venezuela, and mont of North Carolina. The soldiers were but it was Muslims in the area of Bahia that and Lorenzo Lucumi, were born in Afri- de Porres, the son of an Af- formed a free settlement made up of Afri- left stranded—marooned—in the small were at the forefront of a powerful series of ca. Even though the rebels originally came rodescendant mother and a can slaves and enslaved Native Americans; forts they had built in the North Ameri- revolts during the early 19th century. from different geographic regions and Spanish father). Meanwhile Joseph Chatoyer of St. Vincent, a Garifu- can southeast when Native Americans Over the course of the transatlantic ethnic backgrounds in Africa, they were Garifunas in Honduras, Be- na (mixed African and Native American) pushed back against Spanish incursions. slave trade, Brazil received nearly four and joined by their common desire to be free. lize, Guatemala and Nicara- leader who led a protracted war against Among these Spanish forts was San Juan, half million Africans (some 40 percent of Slave rebellions were also part of the gua, struggle to have a voice colonists during the 18th century; Dutty built next to Joara (Xuala), a large Na- the total number of Africans taken out of African diaspora on the Andean side of in their respective countries, Boukman, a contemporary of Chatoyer, tive American settlement and regional the continent). Among these captives were South America. In Peru, where more than where they remain segre- who was an early leader of what became chiefdom of Mississippian culture in the at least 800,000 Muslims—an estimated 100,000 Africans were imported, slaves gated from most national the Haitian Revolution; and Ganga Zum- foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. twenty percent of Africans enslaved in the cleared land, laid the streets, and carried histories. Nevertheless, ba, the son of an Angolan princess and the In a coordinated attack in May 1568, Na- Americas. And nowhere was their pres- supplies, among others duties; mortality their history is performed first leader of a massive maroon settle- tive Americans destroyed Fort San Juan ence more acutely felt than in Salvador rates among enslaved African-descended through dance and music— ment Quilombo dos Palmares in Brazil. along with four other small Spanish forts da Bahia, culminating in the Malê revolt populations working the silver mines in as is the case across much of To be sure, not all Africans were slaves that had been built under the orders of of 1835 (Muslims were called Malê in Ba- the Andes were especially high. Afro-Latin America (carni- and not all slaves were Africans. Iberi- Governor Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, hia, derived from the word imale, a Yoruba As elsewhere in Latin America, Afri- val being an expression of ans first enslaved Native Americans, who who wished to claim the interior of North Muslim). cans and their descendants in Peru re- this across Latin America). fought back and proved difficult to keep America for Spain to establish an overland Led by Muslim Yoruba and Hausa sisted slavery in a number of ways—most For instance, the battles alive and in bondage, as many died be- route to the silver mines near Zacatecas, slaves, leaders of the revolt included Ma- commonly, by running away. In 1595, waged by Garifunas against cause of their lack of immunity to certain Mexico (the colonists were more than two noel Calafate, who recruited slaves on the for instance, one Domingo Biafara took colonists are performed to- diseases (especially small pox), fought thousand miles off in their calculations). eve of the attack, scheduled for Sunday, flight for weeks at a time; in 1645, Fran- day as yankunu by men in back, or escaped, being familiar with the Africans fighting alongside Spaniards, January 25. However, plans of the revolt cisca Criolla was sold “without guaran- which they depict the ways terrain of their own land. In the compli- however, were a small number compared were leaked and the rebels were forced tee” because of her reputation for escap- their ancestors launched at- cated political conditions of the trans- to those who fought against the Iberians. to launch their attack a day earlier. Street ing. The official punishment for running tacks on colonists. Garifuna atlantic slave trade and early colonial From the earliest moments of Iberian col- fighting broke out and spilled into neigh- away changed over time, but starting off women sing and dance other stories in period, Africans and people of African onizing efforts in the Americas, Africans boring areas, including near the barracks. with 100 lashes was not uncommon. One punta, which like yankunu is accompa- descent sometimes even fought alongside joined forces with Native Americans. If Under heavy fire, including multiple cav- group of slaves destined for Lima was nied by multiple drums. Spaniards. People of African descent had they had been successful in their Christ- alry charges, the Iberians were able to con- shipwrecked off the coast of Guayaquil. To the extent that African and Af- been part of Christopher Columbus’ crew mas day rebellion, the Wolof warriors tain the rebellion. In the aftermath, and Many of those who survived would join rodescendant rebels have a history, it at the end of the 15th century—by which might have joined Native Americans, as fearing another Haiti—where slaves seized Native Americans to form what became is reconstruction upon reconstruction. time sub-Saharan Africans had already others did across the Caribbean. Among power and abolished slavery in 1804—colo- the largest maroon society on the western Layers of history and legend intermixing. become a presence in southern Iberia with these rebels were Garifuna, West Africans nial authorities executed nearly half a doz- coast of South America, in what is today What comes through when panning out the first African captives taken to Iberia as who escaped from a slave shipwreck off en leaders, sent others to prison and hard Esmeraldas. A painting by Adrián Sán- across the whole of Latin America and

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The Routine of an Unconventional Path My life as an Afro-Latin American at Harvard By ANTONIO J. COPETE

AS A SCIENTIST BY TRAINING AND BY CON- alleviating the poverty and inequality viction, I wish sometimes that I could just in his native country of Mexico. While I be like so many of my esteemed colleagues: have no reason to doubt the sincerity of just keep doing research in High-Energy his convictions, this episode illustrates Astrophysics, build a career around it, and the reality of environments where hopefully derive my life’s satisfaction from members of underrepresented groups it. But I happen to sit at an intersection of are still regarded as outsiders—however identities that constantly remind me of a unconsciously—and where purported larger life’s purpose that stretches beyond good intentions towards those groups and challenge the ideas and assumptions the lab. As a black Colombian at Harvard, are no match for the leverage of having of the dominant groups, as to opposed to first as a Ph.D. student in Physics and now a voice and a seat at the table. When blindly following them. as a postdoctoral researcher in Astronomy, those are the same environments where For my part, both inside and outside I’ve become used to spending most of groundbreaking ideas are hatched and the lab, my heart will continue to be my life as a trailblazer, walking down leaders are groomed—as is the case at the heart of a scientist. Advancing the an uncertain path that few have walked Harvard—the visibility that diversity boundaries of our knowledge of the before me, yet with a responsibility to affords has the potential to change natural world is one of the most noble set an example and open doors for those the destiny of whole countries and and visionary of human activities, and it coming behind. communities. is my life’s purpose to continue to support Coming from parents of humble In the case of the Afro-Latin American and contribute to that mission. Yet I Top photos: Scenes from the Brazil con- and so many others of my generation of beginnings in the far reaches of Colombia, community in particular, there is a broad ference; bottom photo: Antonio Copete my father from the town of Tadó (Chocó) and deep reservoir of talent and agency (far right) with his family in Colombia.. Afro-Latin Americans will also continue in the Pacific region, and my mother from “If something’s black, it’s beautiful.” to occupy leadership spaces, though to engage in our own form of activism, which will consist in just being ourselves, Guamal (Magdalena) in the Caribbean largely hidden in plain sight. A recent of their own future. reaffirming our identity, occupying spaces region, I’m humbled to see how far As a casual example of how these personal experience was my visit this For countries and institutions, diversity that people like us haven’t occupied we’ve come in just over one generation. worlds collide as a matter of course for past summer to Salvador, Bahía, the is a popular buzzword, often trivialized as before, speaking our mind without fearing It feels oftentimes like a heavy weight someone like me, a couple of years ago capital of the Afrodescendant population a politically correct exercise in achieving the reaction from the dominant groups, to carry, though, made all the heavier I happened to be in a Harvard-owned of Brazil, where I was invited to speak at numbers and quotas. Yet its true power and taking the inevitable challenges as it has become increasingly clear how building, carrying a box of drinks into an a forum on technology and innovation. lies in the way the characteristics of and disappointments with grace. Taking massively underrepresented people of apartment I had just started renting. As I It was heartening and hopeful to see individuals become encoded in the way our rightful place in society will likely my background are in the high academic got into an elevator with a student I hadn’t many colleagues being trailblazers and each of them thinks. When those diverse take generations to achieve, and in my environments. It was difficult enough back met before, he innocently asked me: “Hi, making a difference for their communities ways of thinking are truly represented at personal case, I am thankful that my in Bogotá, where despite my being born where are you from?” As I was just about in their own way, seeing many young the table to achieve inclusion, it becomes experience at Harvard has given me both and raised there, people in certain social to reply “I’m from Colombia,” he stopped Afro-Brazilians eagerly participating a powerful tool for progress. At a place the perspective and the tools to advance and academic circles would routinely view me to clarify what he meant by his original in hackathons, designing solutions to like Harvard, true inclusion is the key lies in that people generally support the that goal, however slightly. and treat me as an outsider, in no small part question: “I mean, what service do you technology-based challenges, and using to opening doors to innovative ideas notion of rights and freedoms for us as a due to assumptions and judgments made work for?” To keep things simple while as a staging ground—of all places— and solutions, in a way that could not group, yet the same people suppress and based on my appearance. In my entire time making clear I wasn’t there just to deliver Salvador’s soccer stadium of World Cup be achieved by any smaller subgroup marginalize our distinct way of thinking as Antonio Copete is a postdoctoral at Harvard, being one of only a handful of a box, I replied: “I’m a student,” to which fame. In sum, they were challenging the of people, thereby enhancing the chief individuals when it diverges from theirs, researcher at the Harvard-Smithso- black students and scholars not only from I got an embarrassed expression that notions about their ethnic group and their contribution of the university to the world. or it challenges their preconceived notions nian Center for Astrophysics. Among Colombia but from all of Latin America at evidenced the many wrong assumptions disadvantaged part of Brazil by channeling At the same time, diverse ways of of what people in our group should do other distinctions, he was named the any given time, the contrast was even more that led to the question he had asked. their talents in unconventional ways, thinking often produce discomfort, or say. What truly gives meaning to the 2012 Afro-Colombian of the Year, Sci- dramatic. Such underrepresentation of one To compound the situation, that such as the pursuit of science, technology by their very nature of challenging or presence of blacks or any other minority ence and Technology category, and he of the core ethnic groups of our region is Harvard student not only turned out to and innovation. They, like many others even directly contradicting the ideas group at Harvard, or at any other place was recognized in 2017 at the Embassy indicative of a massive problem not only be a student from Latin America, but one across the region, are just waiting for of others—just as we scientists do in that aspires to inclusion in its truest of Colombia as one the 22 most out- for Colombia and Latin America, but also who was quoted in a university website opportunities to be welcomed as the our labs. As I see it, the true paradox of sense, is the commitment to stimulate standing Colombians in the United for Harvard. as being particularly concerned about protagonists and not just the spectators diversity and inclusion for black people and enhance our ability to add perspective States.

24 ReVista WINTER 2018 PHOTOS COURTESY OF ANTONIO COPETE REVISTA.DRCLAS.HARVARD.EDU ReVista 25 AFRO-LATIN AMERICANS MEMORY AND RESISTANCE

as Puerto Rican—I do not fit the (false) and scurried off. I had a similar exchange belonging and cultural ownership. And, “I Found My Island” image of the light-skinned Latina people when a man with skin complexion similar honestly, the same antiblack rhetoric generally imagine Puerto Ricans to be. My to mine asked me where I was from. I is present in Puerto Rico in similar but Field Reflections of a Black Nuyorican in Puerto Rico By MIARI TAINA STEPHENS insecurities of being a dark-skinned black ignored his question and told him I was distinct ways that deny black Puerto girl led me to emotionally cling to Puerto Puerto Rican—since I knew what he Ricans a sense of belonging in their own Rican identity as a symbolic escape from wanted to know was where to place me home. I can love Puerto Rico, everything being black. I also internalized the false racially and ethnically, and how to make it’s given me, how it has shaped me and Heights in New York City. In Lin Manuel conception of Puerto Rican and black as sense of a dark-skinned girl with locs in my family while recognizing that trips to Miranda’s Tony Award-winning musical, mutually exclusive categories. My research San Juan. He asked if I was from Loíza, a the island don’t make it my own in the Dominican-American bodega owner as an undergraduate indirectly addressed town east of San Juan known for its large way I had hoped when I arrived in San Usnavi de la Vega yearns for a place that this insecurity and other questions I had Afro-Puerto Rican population. He seemed Juan. Being Puerto Rican from Brooklyn feels like home since his parents passed about my family—why did my mom identify baffled when I said no. does not change the reality that I am away. He hopes that by eventually going as black? Why did my grandma vehemently Discourses of racial mixing, mestizaje, the third generation in my family born back to his parents’ homeland, he can deny it? and whitening, blanqueamiento, and raised in the country that does try find the feeling of home he is searching By the end of my first year of college I attempt to rid the island of blackness, or to claim Puerto Rico as its own while for. He dreams of his Cuban neighbor, the had decided to major in African American compartmentalize it as folklore (Davilla simultaneously ignoring it. This is made abuela of the block—Abuela Claudia—of studies and Latin American studies, 1997; Rivero 2005;Godreau, Cruz, Ortiz especially evident right now as I write returning to the Caribbean. but the disconnection between the two & Cuadrado 2008; Rodriguez-Silva 2012; this essay about being Puerto Rican with curricula was apparent. Puerto Rico Godreau 2015). My insecurities in being lights overhead and clean, running water They sing: was especially lost in this gap—widely ‘too black’ to claim my Puerto Rican in my house while Puerto Ricans on the Think of the hundreds of stories We’ll regarded as racially mixed or ambiguous identity, then, were not just products island are suffering the devastating, life- create/ You and I!. Ay… Latin American country, but also not of the misinformed racial imagination threatening effects of Hurricane Maria in [Abuela] We’ll find your island perceived as Latin American enough due of Americans about black Puerto Rican the exact moment that I type these words. [Usnavi] I’ll find my island sky to its commonwealth status. identity; rather, they were products of While my research on the (racialized, global anti-blackness that did not skip classed, gendered and sexualized) politics I’ll find my island. These lyrics [Abuela] Dream of the seaside air! over the island. My grandma’s distancing of beauty in Puerto Rico is driven by my resonated with me in the most cliché way See me beside you there! from her own blackness, for example, experiences as a dark-skinned black throughout my summer but I couldn’t Think of the hundreds of stories we is intertwined in this systematic, Puerto Rican woman and has drawn me shake them. The essence of my academic will share! You and I! sociopolitical ideology in Puerto Rico, the closer to this place that was once home interests in racial identity and black wider Latin American Caribbean and the for my family, I cannot lose sight of my womanhood through the lens of beauty While my research throughout entire Latin American region. positionality in relation to Puerto Rico. in the Latino Caribbean has been fueled undergraduate studies quelled these I left San Juan that summer with my by this same quest. I can trace these identity crises, my summer in Puerto [Usnavi] “If you close your eyes that bright orange suitcase, my dog Zora, and intellectual interests and questions back Rico still had a resonance of finding home hydrant is a beach/ That siren is a the comfort of embracing my identity as a to an anthropology class I took in my which I expected to encounter through breeze/ that fire escape’s a leaf on a black Nuyorican—in spite of insecurities first year of college.“The Black Church in building community in my process palm tree!” embedded by anti-blackness—by claiming the U.S.” course introduced me to Samiri research. On the one hand, I found this the island that continues to shape me, Hernandez Hiraldo’s ethnography Black palpable connection I had been searching On the day that Usnavi plans to leave New York City. Puerto Rican Identity and Religious for on the island through food, through Manhattan to go to the Dominican Experience about the black community music, seeing elements of myself, my Republic, he realizes his role in his [Usnavi]“I found my island/ I been Miari Taina Stephens, a black Nuyorican in Puerto Rico. of Loiza, Puerto Rico. I had never heard home and family. On the other hand, community and the fact that New York is on it this whole time/ I’m home!” anyone mention black Puerto Ricans in a I faced the same questions and doubts his home. Manhattan is his island. I had I LANDED IN SAN JUAN FOR THE FIRST TIME the humid, Caribbean summer air. book or classroom. The book drew me to about being Puerto Rican while there. already reversed this idea of myself as a Miari Taina Stephens is a second year as a young adult with a bright orange While I planned to conduct preliminary explore academia and research as a means I recall one exchange in a restaurant paradox based on narrow U.S-centered Ph.D. student in African & African 52-pound suitcase, my dog Zora, and fieldwork and brush up on my Spanish in to answer questions about my identity where an elderly white man sitting at notions of race; and later realized, too, American studies with a primary field an eager excitement to be reunited anticipation of my future, yet very distant that I hadn’t consciously acknowledged. the table next to me said “bon appétit” that my own quest for home and forged in Anthropology at Harvard University. with the island. My exhaustion from dissertation, this trip was also intimately For me, a third generation black once my food arrived. I simply replied connection on the island was actually kind She is interested in the politics of beauty, having recently survived my first year of personal. Nuyorican, Puerto Rico itself was “gracias.” He audibly gasped and asked of nonsensical. This is not at all to say black womanhood and black feminisms graduate school—packed with required Often during that summer, I found an unfamiliar place with an ubiquitous me in Spanish where I learned Spanish. that black folks’ quest for a home(land) in the Latino Caribbean. Her current seminars, thousands of pages of readings, myself listening to the soundtrack of In presence. I could identify puertorriquenidad Continuing our exchange in Spanish, I is not valuable or meaningful; but rather work explores the politics of beauty and building new communities, and chronic the Heights often, a musical that I have in my home, my church, my childhood told him I was Puerto Rican. He put his that the antiblack rhetoric that denies my its entanglement with race, gender, class imposter syndrome—was alleviated by seen four times, which narrates the stories neighborhood, in my comfort food. Yet, hands up, slightly crouching, dramatizing relationship to this place does not have and sexuality in Puerto Rico. the refreshing breezes cutting through of Caribbean Latinos in Washington people generally did not recognize me the slight attitude I gave off. He apologized to be supplanted with a forced sense of

26 ReVista WINTER 2018 PHOTO COURTESY OF MIARI STEPHENS REVISTA.DRCLAS.HARVARD.EDU ReVista 27 AFRO-LATIN AMERICANS MEMORY AND RESISTANCE

THE EPICENTER OF HAVANA’S GAY AMBIENTE possibly the only non-Cuban citizens, and rumberos came the night before to play a Transforming Havana’s Gay Ambiente might be La Rampa—a stretch of Calle 23 in our solitude we did not attract a great set of songs for the orishas, deities in the in the touristy El Vedado neighborhood— deal of attention. Yoruba religion Regla de Ocha. Dancers Black Lesbian Gender Performers and Cuba’s Sexual Revolution but the peripheral neighborhoods of In my fieldwork for my Ph.D. sat on stage dressed as various orishas, Havana are also home to drag shows dissertation on race, gender performance, waiting for their canto to sound. Among By MATTHEW LESLIE SANTANA and other queer nightlife. Recently, my and sexual revolution in Cuba, I focus them was the drag queen who runs this friends Argelia and Ana invited me and on the barriers these black lesbian drag party, who was dressed as Yemayá. As my partner to see them perform at a performers face in finding steady work her song began, she rose, dancing and privately run party in the neighborhood as gender performers. While drag queen swirling so her blue and white dress of Párraga on the outskirts of Havana. performance has flourished in Havana resembled the foam of the ocean over Párraga is roughly seven miles south of El in recent years, brought above ground which Yemayá presides. Women dressed Vedado and a journey of at least an hour by the state’s more accepting approach as Obbatalá and Ochún also rose and on multiple city busses. We met up with toward nonnormative sexualities that is danced when their respective orishas our friends—a black lesbian couple who often described as a “sexual revolution,” were called. The audience responded with also perform as drag kings—caught a bus Havana’s drag king scene is just getting particular enthusiasm to this part of the to Párraga, climbed a steep hill on foot, off the ground. This lag is indicative of evening, stuffing tips in the dresses of the and followed the sound of music at the end one aspect of the sexual revolution that performers. While Afro-Cuban cultural of the block to reach the party. has been criticized for its failure to fully production and folkloric elements are The venue was handsome, an open include lesbian women in its drive for not absent from the stages of Havana’s space in the patio and backyard of a large change. The nascent drag king scene downtown performance, this kind of house with tables and chairs, a bar and a emphasizes the need for lesbian space dwelling on Afrodiasporic themes was small stage. That night, perhaps as a result in Havana, and it calls attention to how certainly more than would be typical on of my friends’ appearance, an audience the changes brought about by the sexual La Rampa. made up mostly of Afrodescendant lesbian revolution have not made a sufficient We stayed with our friends at the women arrived behind us. This already impact on the lives of working-class and party until the first city buses would start differentiated the event from most of Afrodescendant Cubans. running in the neighborhood a little after those in the El Vedado nightclubs, where Back at the party, my partner and I 4 a.m. We waited a long while on a street the audience is predominantly gay male. settled in to listen to our friends perform corner near the party and eventually We spent the night sharing a table with a “Mientes” by the Mexican group Camila: caught a bus back to the hub. There group of women who had participated at the women emerged from backstage our two friends caught another bus to one time or another in Grupo OREMI, the with their hair slicked back and facial nearby Mantilla—where they live—and network of lesbian and bisexual women hair carefully pasted on to their faces. we caught one back to El Vedado along of the National Center for Sex Education They wore three-piece suits, shirts and with the various performers who lived in (CENESEX), the most prominent player ties. When they reached the chorus, the Centro Habana and our neighborhood. in Cuba’s sexual revolution. audience shouted along at full voice, a We checked in with our friends when One of these women told us that she somewhat ironic performance given that we got off the bus, and they were already lived in the Playa neighborhood, meaning my friends were silently lip-synching to home, settling in to bed just before 6 a.m., she had traveled even further than we the recording. This kind of anthemic song which is relatively common for gender had to come to the party. When I asked is a typical opener for them: they will often performers in Havana. her why she had come such a long distance begin with a romantic piece, pass through Neighborhoods like Párraga are often when there was desirable nightlife in her some salsa or reggaetón, and finish with referred to as the “barrios marginales” neighborhood, she responded that she felt rumba, animating their audience bit by bit of Havana, referring to both their she could have a better, more relaxing, and over the course of their selections. True to geographical placement in relation to the less costly night in Párraga than at any form, they closed their portion of the show city as well as the socioeconomic status club in the city center. I imagined that this with “Estoy aquí” by the famed folkloric of their residents. The marginal nature had something to do with the conspicuous ensemble Yoruba Andabo. By this point, of these neighborhoods is reflected in the absence of tourists in this space. The gay the public was primed to jump to their lives and work of female gender performers parties in El Vedado are characterized feet, dance with the performers, and break in Havana. While they do occasionally by the tourists who attend them and the the barrier between audience and artist. appear in mainstream gay nightclubs, jineteros or hustlers who chase after them. This was not the only folkloric they more often perform at early evening These parties represent a heavily male, element of the night. One day a week, this performances known as peñas or at parties transnational and commercial scene. In establishment hosts an afternoon rumba on the outskirts of the city, where they also Drag king performers are led by working-class black lesbians. Párraga, however, my partner and I were performance, and on this occasion the live. They face considerable economic

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The performativity of this masculinity, in an ethnographic style typical text. Sandoval himself recognized the Nevertheless, drag however, gets obscured as they step Sandoval of 16th- and 17th-century ambivalent position of Jesuit missions king performance out on to the street and blend in to the missionary writings, whereas striving to baptize, catechize and spiritually larger canvas of gender presentation Redux Book II argues that slaves’ purify newly disembarked African slaves remains an unrealized in Havana. By contrast, female gender suffering is rooted primarily in while working within institutions that BY NICHOLAS T RINEHART proposition in Havana. performers put that masculine veneer their ignorance of the Christian depended upon their bondage. The college on stage to be ogled, applauded, laughed God. Book III provides in Cartagena where Sandoval worked at. Their transformation underscores instructions for baptizing and owned several haciendas, including La and social hardships: Not long before the fluid and performative nature of catechizing enslaved Africans, Ceiba—where sugarcane and cattle were our night spent together in Párraga, the masculinity more generally and takes “WHILE I LIE ON A CUSHION OF WORM SLIME, paying particular attention to raised—and its two satellite tile factories cement column that supported their place in a context in which men have Father Alonso de Sandoval appears”: the logistical difficulties posed (tejares) Alcivia and Preceptor, where 111 water tank in their back patio collapsed, disproportionate access to the formal So remarks one of the several enslaved by linguistic difference. Book IV, slaves were employed at the time of the making it considerably harder for them portion Cuba’s tourist economy and the narrators in Afro-Colombian author moreover, largely abandons the Jesuit expulsion from the Americas in 1767. to store and access the water that comes better-paying jobs that characterize it. Manuel Zapata Olivella’s 1983 novel previous focus on the plight of This state of affairs was neither in from the city once a day. A couple Nevertheless, drag king performance Changó, el gran putas, translated into enslaved Africans in Cartagena paradoxical nor hypocritical according to of months later, the effects Hurricane remains an unrealized proposition English in 2010 by Jonathan Tittler as and instead articulates a the theology of Sandoval and his Jesuit Irma exacerbated existing problems in Havana. My friends have had a Changó, the Biggest Badass. global vision of Jesuit mission colleagues, the most famous of whom— with electricity and leaking in their old frustratingly difficult time securing Zapata Olivella thereby reimagines— work—and its spiritual and Sandoval’s apprentice and “companion” wooden house. And all the while they steady work as gender performers on the granular level of everyday intimate ethical imperatives—across the Pedro Claver, another character in Zapata had been caring for Ana’s father as he in the city, as male hosts and artistic contact—the life and work of the Jesuit Americas, Africa and Asia. Olivella’s novel—was ultimately beatified suffered from dementia and finally directors often prefer to hire the missionary Alonso de Sandoval (1577- Known more commonly as in 1850 and canonized in 1888 for his passed away in October. glamorous drag queens to which gay 1652), whose theological writings betray De instauranda Aethiopum spiritual work among African slaves in Tellingly, these are also the male audiences are accustomed. It the profound moral contradictions and salute (“On restoring salvation Cartagena. The Society of Jesus, while characteristics that put them on the also remains to be seen whether and epistemological blindspots at the heart of to the Africans”)—the Latin title recognizing the misery of their African periphery of Cuba’s sexual revolution, his Christianizing project. how their work gets folded into Cuba’s Sandoval Manuscript affixed to an augmented 1647 subjects, did not seek in any demonstrable which has catered to gay men, cozied sexual revolution. At the 10th Jornada This conflict surfaces in the second edition of the text published way to protest, curb or even seriously to the spending of tourism, and Contra la Homofobia y la Transfobia in section of the novel, “The American in Madrid—Sandoval’s work question slavery itself; they perceived Splitting them open with his fingernails, he underplayed the linkages between racism May of this year, my friends—who have Muntu,” as newly arrived African slaves frequently includes material gathered the pagan bozal as capable of spiritual squeezed their juice into my mouth. Only and homophobia in Cuba. By contrast, also become important interlocutors in the Colombian port city of Cartagena from daily interactions with enslaved redemption through baptism, catechism at that moment, when life ripped off my the nascent drag king performance in for my dissertation—performed at the de Indias encounter the proselytizing Afro-Cartagenans, whose voices are and confession. death mask, did he recognize me. Havana has been led by working-class nationally televised Gala Contra la zeal of the Society of Jesus—which, from ventriloquized and refracted in the body Indeed, Sandoval is at pains throughout black lesbians whose explicit aims are Homofobia in the immense Karl Marx its founding until its ultimate expulsion This failure of recognition—Sandoval’s of the text. In the chapter “The Slave De instauranda to distinguish his to combat lesbophobia and generate Theater, becoming the first drag kings from Spanish America in 1767, was among delayed realization that the nearly dead Ships,” for instance, Sandoval writes of own benevolent practices from forms sorely needed lesbian spaces in Cuba’s ever to have done so. However, the the largest slaveholders in the Americas. figure before him is no anonymous bozal the Middle Passage: “I know individuals of mass conversion carried out before capital. They often clearly articulate that announcer failed to point out that the Father Sandoval’s entrance onto the stage but rather a former colleague of sorts, an who have endured this journey. They say disembarkation from the African slave their consciousness comes from their people on stage were female gender of Zapata Olivella’s novel is shaped both enslaved translator who had helped the they are extremely cramped, nauseous coast. In one striking passage, Sandoval marginal position as black, working- performers, and many spectators by coercion and elation. His commands— “novice” during his early missions to the and mistreated.” Evidently basing his relates how Africans aboard slave ships class, lesbian women. assumed they were men. It is unsure “‘Open your mouth and drink,’” “‘Suck on African continent—structures the entire description on accounts told to him by or held captive at slave ports understood When I ask my interlocutors why whether they will be invited to perform this grain of salt,’” “‘Receive the Lord’s section of Changó. This collision of the enslaved people themselves, Sandoval their forced baptisms. “Some respond that they do drag performance, they often at the 11th Jornada in May 2018 and grace’”—receive no verbal response until priest’s triumphal joy and the stoicism of considers how Africans’ testimony of the they are afraid of this water and believe the tell me they do it to show that they—as whether it will be made clear to the the nameless speaker, regaining his voice now-named Domingo Falupo (“we suffer transatlantic crossing has altered his own whites do this to kill them. Others think women—can. While it is easy to think audience that the artists they are from extreme thirst, speaks to Sandoval very little and feel only the affliction and perception of the trade. “The slaves look that the water is like a brand, a mark put of gender performance as a liberating enjoying are black lesbian women “‘in his own tongue.’” The renowned Jesuit joy of the dead”) establishes a spiritual forward to eating once every twenty-four on them so that their masters know who practice that promotes gender fluidity, performing masculinity as a job in missionary exclaims excitedly “You are a conflict hardly legible in Sandoval’s own hours, although they get no more than they are when they buy and sell them,” he it is important to understand it as well Cuba’s challenging economy. Christian! Praise the Lord!” and “jumps writings on slavery. a half cup of corn or crude millet and a writes. “One slave told me that water was as an industry that is dominated by for joy.” Zapata Olivella continues: First published in Seville in 1627 as small cup of water. Other than that, they poured on him to enchant him, to prevent men—drag queens, artistic directors, Matthew Leslie Santana is a Cuban- I don’t know how much he paid for me Naturaleza, policia sagrada i profana, get nothing else besides beating, whipping him from rising up against the whites in and nightclub owners—and too often American music scholar and performer or if he managed to beg for my freedom. He costumbres i ritos, disciplina i catechismo and cursing,” he continues. “Many people this ship in the course of the voyage. He adheres to rigid gender norms. Male from Miami, Florida. He received himself, pulling the cart that transports the evangélico de todos etíopes, Sandoval’s I know have experienced this, although also thought it was done so he would live performers in Havana are often expected a Doctor of Musical Arts from the sick, takes me through the door that used magnum opus is a thoroughly hybrid I once believed that some of the slavers many more years and bring gold to his to arrive in masculine garb so as to University of Michigan in 2015 and is to open only to vomit out the dead. [...] text. Book I of the so-called Treatise on treated them more gently and kindly these masters.” appear “normal” and to highlight the currently pursuing a Ph.D. in ethno- While Moncholo shoos the flies from my Slavery describes African geography, days.” In contrast to these images of coercion, transformation into their stage persona. musicology at Harvard University. face, Father Alonso brought some oranges. languages, cultures, religions and dress But the Treatise is no anti-slavery Sandoval depicts his own baptismal

30 ReVista WINTER 2018 REVISTA.DRCLAS.HARVARD.EDU ReVista 31 AFRO-LATIN AMERICANS DISCRIMINATION practices as moments of celebration. “Miguel feels so much gratitude for Here, the “joy” of an enslaved African named AND the benefits of baptism that to this day, whenever he sees me he stops before me, Miguel at the prospect of spiritual salvation falls on his knees, and claps his hands as reflects the fictional Sandoval’s “jumps for joy” a sign of joy,” he writes of one encounter. in Zapata Olivella’s novel written across a gulf of FORMS “Then he asks me for my hands and puts them over his eyes, and then he gets three hundred years. up and goes on his way.” Here, the “joy” of an enslaved African named Miguel Bolanos was condemned to one (re)encounter, the priest meets the same response. “‘In my silence you will find my OF ACTION at the prospect of spiritual salvation hundred lashes and public shaming as reflects the fictional Sandoval’s “jumps a lesson to the Africans who, having answer,’” Falupo remarks. “‘None of those for joy” in Zapata Olivella’s novel written received holy baptism, feign practicing ekobios who speak languages unknown across a gulf of three hundred years. But the faith, going to mass, confessing, to you and to your interpreters, for whom Changó foregrounds and excavates this and taking communion in order to I served as interpreter, disavowed their misrecognition at the heart of Sandoval’s make a show of being good Christians, Orichas.’” With that, Sandoval’s “grieving” Christianizing enterprise. but who, in their hidden life practice ghost retreats from Falupo’s cell “as if it Structured like the Treatise in several the most nefarious concupiscence and really had been his body and not his Shadow discrete sections, the novel narrates the obscenities learned from their elders. that entered therein.” history of the African diaspora—what Changó thereby enacts a narrative Zapata Olivella calls the ekobios—through The joyous redemption described repetition that signifies, in miniature, the key moments of insurgent conspiracy, in Sandoval’s text is here rendered as novel’s broader historical reenactment. political revolution and outright rebellion: subterfuge, and Domingo Falupo is the The surreal return of the figure of Father an uprising aboard a slave ship; the culprit. The translator himself is brought Sandoval within the spiritual world of the Maroon wars in 17th-century Cartagena before the Inquisition: text ripples outward as Zapata Olivella’s led by religious heretic Benkos Biojo; implicit conjuring of De Instauranda. If the Haitian Revolution, as narrated by It is ordained that all the baptisms the Treatise surprisingly comprises an Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques in which the Moor Domingo Falupo ethnographic repository for the memories Dessalines, and Henri Christophe; the participated to be subject to review, and beliefs, joys and terrors of enslaved Afro- Latin American wars of independence, because of his tergiversation in bad Cartagenans under Sandoval’s spiritual featuring appearances by Simón Bolívar, faith of the questions that through supervision, it also spurns the possibility José Prudencio Padilla, and José María his mediation were asked of the of their duplicity, fugitivity, or resistance. Morelos; and finally a near-parodic Africans…. Zapata Olivella’s novel reimagines that gathering of prominent black Americans— For all of the above, it would misrecognition between Jesuit priest and including Nat Turner, Frederick Douglass, be appropriate to obtain from the pagan slave not as a momentary lapse and Harriet Tubman; Booker T. reprobate a complete and candid ultimately to be reconciled, but rather as a Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus confession and, if said confession fundamental precondition for the history Garvey; and Langston Hughes, Richard should prove to be contrary to our of the African diaspora in the Americas. Wright, and Claude McKay—told through aims, to cloak it in the greatest secrecy, the fictional character Agne Brown, a lest a wave of disbelief was over the Nicholas T Rinehart is a doctoral young Columbia University anthropologist baptisms verified by the company, candidate in English at Harvard Uni- and spiritual medium likely modeled on with those who are sincerely and really versity. His writing has appeared in Zora Neale Hurston. Christians being taken for Moors, and Transition, Callaloo, Journal of Social Zapata Olivella splices his rendering of the most abominable reprobates being History, and Journal of American Studies, early modern Cartagena—where slave and taken for Christians. with additional pieces forthcoming in free Africans conducted a series of battles MELUS, the Dictionary of Caribbean and in order to establish and defend their own Father Sandoval then reappears, Afro-Latin American Biography (Oxford free town (Palenque) at San Basilio, a small this time as a “Friendly Shadow” who is UP), and the Cambridge Companion to George Reid Andrews Afro-Latin America by the Numbers • Cristian Alejandro Báez Lazcano village amid the foothills south of the city— “buried in Seville and is only retracing his Richard Wright. He is also a co-editor, with the judicial language of Inquisition footsteps in Cartagena,” imploring Falupo to with Wai Chee Dimock et al., of American Reflections on the Afro-Chilean Social Movement • Lowell Gudmundson Avoiding and Encountering Blackness tribunals. He writes: appease the Inquisition and reveal “whose Literature in the World: An Anthology in the Nation of the Black Virgin • Enrique Aureng Silva Salvador de Bahia For being a proven and confessed baptisms were done sub conditione of your from Anne Bradstreet to Octavia Butler fornicator with four burros, Antonio wayward conduct.” Echoing their initial (Columbia UP, 2017). Tianna S. Paschel Witches, Wives, Secretaries and Black Feminists

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Reflections on the Afro-Chilean Social Movement We Entered as Blacks, and We Left as Afrodescendants...and Afro-Chileans Appeared on the Scene By CRISTIAN ALEJANDRO BÁEZ LAZCANO

A SAYING POPULARIZED BY THE AFRO- led by the then-mayor of a community Organizations to articulate local issues Uruguayan leader Romero Rodríguez in the north of Chile, Sonia Salgado and negotiate with the Chilean state. In comes up again and again in the history Henríquez. The very establishment of addition to Oro Negro and Lumbanga, of the Afro-Latino and Afro-Caribbean this organization called into question the other groups such as Arica Negro, Seniors movements: “We entered as blacks myth that blacks did not exist in Chile; Club Julia Corvacho and the Luanda and left as Afrodescendants.” It’s not had they ever been there, however, they Afrodescendant Women’s Collective just about words. At the December must all have perished because of the joined the network. 2000 conference in Santiago de Chile cold, hostile weather. Oro Negro made We had to come up with a plan, on racism, xenophobia and other Afrodescendants visible in the social, developed along many fronts: • A legal framework that recognizes forms of discrimination, the term cultural, legal and political realms in this the presence and contribution of Afro- “Afrodescendants” was adopted through long, narrow country perceived by many Chileans. consensus after much discussion. And as exclusively white. •An institutional framework with the that’s when we Afrodescendants in Chile The movement began as a social and creation of a public entity to deal with the realized we were Afro-Chileans. cultural one. Archives and academic demands and needs of the Afrodescendant So many terms had been imposed studies about Afro-Chileans are few and community. by the colonizers to describe us: negro, far between. Thus, in the first stage of •A political framework to justify zambo, mulato, zambaigo, moreno. With the organization (2001-2007), research immediate social, cultural and economic the term Afrodescendant, we get to define became a priority. Customs, traditions, actions on the local level in favor of Afrodescendants. ourselves as “people of African origin who history and territories were documented •A statistical framework that defines were brought as slaves during colonial in an attempt to define and promote the technically the number of Afro-Chileans times and who historically have been legacy of Afro-Chileans. In 2003, the at the present time and our economic and victims of racism, racial discrimination Lumbanga organization was set up to social situations. and slavery, with the consequent denial conduct oral histories and to promote the •We recognize the plethora of local of their human rights, experiencing living and intangible patrimony of Afro actions by Afrodescendant organizations, conditions based on marginalization, culture in Chile. The point was clear: “We especially in the provinces of Arica and poverty and exclusion that are expressed Afro-Chileans are here and present and Parinacota, where the largest communities through the profound social and economic we haven’t disappeared.” identifying as Afro-Chilean are found, but inequality under which they live,” in the It was not only a matter of convincing I want to share some experiences that words of the Declaration of Santiago. others that Afro-Chileans existed; in indicate the challenges still facing the And here, in Chile, we are still trying to many cases, it involved self-recognition, movement. be counted. because many descendants of slaves in The term Afrodescendant—as set Chile simply had not acknowledged their BUILDING COMMUNITY THROUGH forth in the Declaration of Santiago and race. We needed to reconstruct from LAW AND INSTITUTIONS adopted in the 2001 Declaration and Plan the inside to develop and feel ourselves We’ve found that few legal instruments of Action of Durban, South Africa—was Afrodescendants. exist to obligate the Chilean state to put officially recognized as both a legal and At the same time, Afrodescendant into effect measures for inclusion and political term by many countries and the organizations had to implement the for making the Afro-Chilean community United Nations. plan of action formulated at the world visible, although an article in our Following the words came action. The conference in Durban, which was more Constitution, similar to that of many first non-governmental Afro-Chilean technical and political than the initial countries in Latin America, establishes organization, founded in December cultural agenda. The Afro movement in that people should not be discriminated 2000, was Oro Negro—Black Gold— Chile formed the Alliance of Afro-Chilean against because of race or religion. An A family portrait, Cristian Báez Lazcano on right.

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THE STRUGGLE FOR STATISTICS In 2001, following the Durban meeting, Oro Negro had tried to get Afrodescendants included in the 2002 census. But the census was only a year away, so the effort was postponed until 2005, when a pilot program took place in the Arica region to get Afrodescendants to identify as such in preparation for full inclusion of the Afrodescendant category in the 2012 census, working together with the National Institute of Statistics (INE). The effort was underway to include the census question, “Do you consider yourself Afrodescendant/black?” with the possible answers of “yes,” “no,” or “don’t know” in the 2012 census. But a technical analysis, based on the pilot program and subsequent focus groups, concluded that it was premature to include the question because people did not understand the Afrodescendents in Chile want to be included in census; opposite page, portraits of Afro-Chileans. meaning of “Afrodescendant” and that it was preferable just to use the term “black.” support. This official decision by INE did During its 17 years as a political movement, Finally, in 2016, the bill was revamped not definitively end the debate about with additional legal, historical, Afrodescendant inclusion in the 2012 Afro-Chilean organizations have made three anthropological and political arguments. census; we denounced the exclusion attempts to get a law recognizing the identity of This became bill N° 10625-17, a document as having a racist component, and that would guarantee the individual and international organizations began to listen Afrodescendants in Chile. collective rights of Afrodescendants in to our arguments, resulting in negotiation Chile. The bill, submitted by representative with INE to carry out the census on a indigenous law, passed in the 1990s Latin America and the Caribbean. Our Luis Rocafull in April 2016 and approved limited regional basis. It was found that in about native peoples, does not apply to organizational leaders learned about by the human rights and citizenship 2014, in the region of Arica and Parinacota, us because we are a transplanted people the currents of political-ethno/racial commission, passed into consideration by 8,415 people self-identified as part of who came to Chile at the same time as discourse and became more black- the Chamber of Deputies in the Chilean the Afrodescendant culture, the first the colonizers, but as slaves. identified, able to make greater strides Congress. recognition by the state of our community One of the strategies was to take within Chile because of alliances and The Chilean government in 2014, through statistics. Above, Marcos Baez Rios and his mother Francisca Rios Sanchez Below, Francisca Rios advantage of Chile’s post-dictatorship knowledge from beyond its borders. through the Culture Ministry, invited the The 2012 census in Chile was annulled, Sanchez with her grandson Diego Baez Baez commitment to human rights issues in During its 17 years as a political Afrodescendant groups to participate in a and the Economic Commission for Latin the international arena to pressure the movement, Afro-Chilean organizations “prior consultation” process in the context America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) To our surprise, we found that INE Cristian Alejandro Báez Lazcano, country to initiate actions of inclusion have made three attempts to get of agreement 169 of the international recommended a new “shortened census” had not included the question about an Azapeño Afrodescendant Chilean, is in favor of Afro-Chileans. We had to a law recognizing the identity of Treaty on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples. to be carried out in April 2017. Again, we Afrodescendant identity nor even the the founder of the NGO Lumbanga. He research agreements, pacts, conventions, Afrodescendants in Chile. In 2005, This was an important step in the entered into a struggle for statistics—the category, justifying the exclusion because works as a researcher and territorial declarations, protocols and other political congressional representative Iván recognition of Afrodescendants as a “tribal right to be counted—but this time, much the census itself was abbreviated. This coordinator of Afrodescendant Patri- and legal instruments to which Chile was Paredes, under the aegis of Lumbanga, people,” opening up a new legal space in strengthened because the census tools were act of exclusion forced the Afro-Chilean mony at the University of Tarapacá a subscriber and to commit government gathered historical arguments to justify which to argue for human rights. more sophisticated and inclusive. We also community to denounce the census in in Arica, Chile. In 2004, he received officials to apply these measures within such a law, but the effort never got off Prior to these measures, the first Office had other types of modern historical and local and national legal venues. Both the Inter-American Development Bank its borders. the ground. Later Lumbanga and Oro of Racial Equity, designed and proposed anthropological academic studies to bolster the Chilean Appeals Court and the (IDB) Youth Award for his project, The Afro-Chilean political movement Negro both put together a document by Oro Negro and Lumbanga, opened our efforts, as well as certain international Supreme Court rejected the petition, “Research, Recovery and Dissemina- had to venture forth into the world to be presented by congressional in 2011 in the municipality of Arica. The legal and political instruments that would and we have brought the case before tion of Afrodecendents in Chile.” to become politically mature and to representative Antonio Leal, but the Durban action plan calls for such offices to oblige INE to include at least one category the Inter-American Commission of form alliances, especially with our bill was shelved, even after another be created both on the national and local or variable about Afrodescendants in this Human Rights. We are still fighting to more experienced counterparts in representaitve, Orlando Vargas, lent his levels. shortened census. be counted and recognized.

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with a black and brown population of at were powerfully influenced by the CENSUSES NOW Afro-Latin America by the Numbers least 1.3 million; see map 1.) doctrines of scientific racism that Yet as we have seen, it was precisely prevailed throughout the Atlantic world. in the late 1970s that the concept of The Politics of the Census By GEORGE REID ANDREWS Individual and national destinies were Afro-Latin America—and the national MAP 1 1800 largely determined by racial inheritance, black movements that had given rise to those doctrines argued. Nations seeking that term—were taking form across the to improve and modernize needed to region. During the 1980s and 1990s, WHERE DID THE ALL-ENCOMPASSING TERM placing the census at the center of their know the obstacles they were up against, black movements in Brazil, Colombia, “Afro-Latin America” come from? While The idea of Afro-Latin demands for state action against racial hence the need for racial data. Or Costa Rica, Honduras, Panama, Peru and “Afro-Cuban,” “Afro-Brazilian” and other America was introduced discrimination and inequality. perhaps the opposite: nations seeking Uruguay pressed national governments national terms were invented in the first the path to modernity might prefer to to acknowledge the disparities between half of the 1900s, the broad regional to the United States by CENSUSES THEN ignore their racially mixed composition. racial democracy in theory and racial concept appears to have originated in political scientists Anani Modern censuses began in Europe in This was the case with Brazil, which democracy in practice, and to take action Brazil in the 1970s. A group of black the 1700s and arrived in Latin America after documenting a relative decline in to close those gaps. And in every country, socialist activists and intellectuals in Dzidzienyo and Pierre- in the 1770s and 1780s, when Spain and the black and brown population from high on the list of those movements’ policy the city of São Paulo were paying close Michel Fontaine, both Portugal both ordered comprehensive 58 percent of the national total in 1872 demands was the restoration (or in some attention to racial issues and struggles population counts of their New World to 47 percent in 1890, eliminated race countries, the inclusion for the first time not just in Brazil but in Africa, the of whom were doing colonies. In both empires, caste laws from the censuses of 1900 and 1920. ever) of racial data to the national census. United States, and throughout the research in Brazil on organized colonial societies into racially The resulting absence of racial data It was imperative, those movements African diaspora. These activists, many defined groups that owed different did not prevent census officials from argued, that Latin American nations of whom participated in the creation black social and political combinations of taxes and labor concluding in 1920 that “the coefficient document their racial composition, the of the Movimento Negro Unificado in movements. obligations to the Crown. In order to verify of the white race is constantly increasing actual size of their black and brown 1978, named their movement the Grupo the numbers of people falling into each in our population,” accompanied by “a populations, and the conditions of social Afro-Latino-América. When offered the group, the colonial censuses all gathered reduction in the coefficient of inferior and racial inequality under which those opportunity to publish a regular section of data on race, though using different Map 1. Afro-Latin America, 1800. Numbers blood.” populations lived. Further supporting systems of categorization in different parts under country names indicate the size of articles and commentary—edited by the the black and brown (pardo) population, During the next two decades, those demands were requests from young journalist Hamilton Cardoso—in of the empire. Officials in Cuba and Puerto in 000s. (Map by Lena Andrews.) however, notions of superior and international financial and development the leftist magazine Versus, they called Rico paid close attention to distinctions inferior blood fell increasingly out of agencies, which by the 1990s had come the section “Afro-Latino-América.” Thus between blacks and mulattoes, noting Following independence for most of favor in Brazil and other countries. In to see deeply rooted racial and gender was coined a paradigm-shifting concept the numbers of slaves and free people in the region in the 1820s, the new republics the 1940s, in response to the atrocities inequality as major obstacles to social that would eventually reverberate across each category. Census-takers in Colombia, faced the issue of whether they wished of German Nazism, scientific racism and economic development. As a first step the diaspora. Ecuador, Venezuela and Panama created to keep counting their populations by was roundly repudiated in the world toward combating those obstacles, the The idea of Afro-Latin America a “free people of all colors” category that race. All of the new nations, including community. Brazil and other Latin United Nations, World Bank and Inter- was introduced to the United States by drew no distinctions between blacks and monarchical Brazil, had overturned American countries now re-imagined American Development Bank all pushed political scientists Anani Dzidzienyo racially mixed pardos (browns). Officials the colonial racial laws and replaced themselves as “racial democracies,” Latin American countries to provide and Pierre-Michel Fontaine, both of in Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua them with constitutional declarations thoroughly egalitarian societies in which systematic data on their class, racial and whom were doing research in Brazil on might logically turn to Latin American followed a similar approach, counting of full civic and racial equality. Those the gathering of racial data served no gender composition. black social and political movements. censuses, an invaluable source of all free nonwhites (except for indigenous egalitarian principles seemed to argue useful purpose and might even provoke Under pressure from local movements Dzidzienyo published his findings in a information on national societies. But at people) as “ladinos.” against retaining colonial racial labels racial divisions. By the 1950s, only four and from international agencies, Latin 1978 article on “Activity and Inactivity in the time that Fontaine was writing, only Despite these varying approaches, in national censuses, and some countries nations (Brazil, Costa Rica, Cuba and American governments ultimately agreed the Politics of Afro-Latin America”; two two countries in the region, Brazil and the colonial censuses made clear that by (Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic) were still to add questions on Afrodescendants to years later Fontaine reported on “The Cuba, were gathering and publishing 1800, six present-day countries—Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay, Venezuela) did drop collecting data on their Afro-descent their censuses and national household Political Economy of Afro-Latin America.” census data on their African-descent the Dominican Republic, Panama, race from their 19th-century population populations; by 1980, only Brazil and surveys. Colombia and Uruguay Fontaine defined the term to include “all populations. Every other country had Venezuela, Puerto Rico, and Nicaragua— counts. Others, however, such as Cuba Cuba were doing so. inaugurated those questions in the 1990s, regions of Latin America where significant either removed questions on African were majority Afrodescendant (black (still a Spanish colony), Honduras, groups of people of known African ancestry from the census or, in some and brown), and another four—Cuba, Nicaragua, Peru and Brazil, continued ancestry are found.” But that definition cases, had never included any. In the Colombia, Argentina and Honduras— to count by race. They were joined in the Under pressure from local movements and left at least two questions unanswered. face of that statistical oblivion, how do were between one-third and one-half early 1900s by countries that were either from international agencies, Latin American First, how do we “know” when people are we document the presence of African- Afrodescendant. Even Mexico, only taking national censuses for the first of African ancestry? And second, how descent populations and the conditions ten percent black and mulatto, had time (Dominican Republic, Panama) or governments ultimately agreed to add questions large do groups of those people need to under which they live? Throughout the the second-largest Afrodescendant that had decided to return to gathering on Afrodescendants to their censuses and national be before we consider them “significant”? region, black activists posed precisely population in the region, at an estimated racial data (Colombia, Costa Rica). For answers to both questions, we this question during the 1980s and 1990s, 635,000 people. (Brazil was number one, Those turn-of-the-century censuses household surveys.

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Ecuador and most of the Central American 15 million live in Venezuela, and 8 million Brazil have long been informed by census countries in the census round of 2000, and in the Dominican Republic (map 2). and national household survey data Prejudice and Pride Argentina, Bolivia, Panama and Venezuela documenting pervasive racial inequality in in the census round of 2010. Mexico and MAP 2 2010 that country. Now that similar information Avoiding and Encountering Blackness in the Nation of the Black Virgin Peru have both agreed to gather racial data is becoming available for almost every By LOWELL GUDMUNDSON in censuses to be taken in 2017 and 2020, country in the region, comparable debates respectively. Chile and the Dominican will surely take place in those countries as Republic are currently the only Latin well. And just as Brazil has taken major American countries with no concrete steps toward racially compensatory plans to canvass their Afrodescendant policies in education, public health, and populations. employment, similar policies are already As in the colonial period, different being proposed and, in some cases, nations have framed census questions on adopted in Colombia, Panama, Uruguay race in different ways, with results that are and other countries. Without doubt, not always easy to compare across national census data will be a central component boundaries. Afro-Colombian activists of those policy debates. charge that, by failing to include the From left, Leda Artavia Rojas: The Baby of the Family Photo and as Dinga’s Narrator; Leda as Perfil’s Model of commonly used racial label “moreno” as a George Reid Andrews is Distinguished the Year; Leda in her international modeling career and as a symbol of black pride. possible response, Colombia’s 2005 census Professor of History at the University substantially undercounted the nation’s of Pittsburgh and the author of, most WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE BLACK IN CENTRAL case of Nicaragua’s Rubén Darío or the black and brown population. Conversely, recently, Afro-Latin America: Black America? From the Garifuna people along Costa Rican Communist Party militant, Venezuela’s use of the same term has led Costa Rica is home to Lives, 1600-2000 (Harvard Univer- the Atlantic Coast to the descendants of legendary children’s literature author, to intense debate over whether or not sity Press, 2016). For more on Latin Jamaican and other West Indian groups many a paradox—and and Benemérita de la Patria, María Isabel racially mixed “morenos,” the single largest American censuses, see Mara Loveman, throughout the isthmus, the region’s Carvajal, better known by her pen name category in the 2011 census, should be Map 2. Afro-Latin America, 2010). Num- National Colors: Racial Classification not just that a self- bers under country names indicate the citizens have become increasingly self- Carmen Lyra. Many such intellectual considered as Afrodescendants. size of the black and brown (pardo) popu - and the State in Latin America (2014). conscious, visible and interested in their proclaimed white nation and political figures aligned themselves Given the complexities of racial lation, in 000s. (Map by Lena Andrews.) To consult recent censuses, access either Afrodescendent legacy—to a degree. This with mestizo nationalist ideals of the day, identities (how one sees oneself) and venerates a black Virgin https://international.ipums.org/inter- reawakening has largely been associated at times employing or echoing overtly racial identifications (how one is seen by Even more important than those national/ or https://www.cepal.org/es/ with ethnically and linguistically as patron saint. anti-black imagery and rhetoric. More others) in Latin America, such debates population totals was the information that temas/censos-de-poblacion-y-vivienda/ distinct populations, recognizing and recently, at times no less controversially, are unavoidable and will surely continue the censuses offered on conditions of Afro- enlaces-institutos-nacionales-estadisti- even celebrating them while once again promotional publications in the mid- Afro-mestizo cultural expressions have into the coming decade and beyond. In the Latin American life. Public debates in ca-america-latina-caribe reinscribing blackness as something 19th century to the present. Beyond their emerged that not only embrace blackness meantime, numbers yielded by the 2010 belonging to “others.” However, only neighbors’ all too frequent civil wars, but seek to reposition it at the center of round of censuses do enable a provisional very recently has there been any serious greater poverty and inequality, a central national history and mythology. This estimate of the region’s black and brown attempt to reposition blackness at the element in all such comparisons has been interogation of public attitudes and lived populations. As of 2010, three nations center of dominant historical narratives the claim that, because of its colonial-era experiences reveal a minefield of silences were majority Afrodescendant, down of mestizo nationhood and contemporary isolation and poverty, Costa Ricans descend and ambiguities surrounding blackness from six in 1800: the Dominican Republic, self-identification. overwhelmingly from Spanish peasant and racial perceptions among the very Venezuela and Brazil. (Dominican How far we have come in recent times forebearers, with far less indigenous mestizo majority populations for whom Republic figures are taken not from the might best be measured by comparing and heritage, the “white legend” of national blackness may remain a shared, distant census, which does not count race, but contrasting early 20th-century imagery, origins, identity and distinction. Blackness ancestry and religious tradition, but also from the Latin American Public Opinion and its now often distorted memory, or African descent has been virtually something deeply other—even when this Project [LAPOP] survey of 2010; in with early 21st century visual and film ignored as a source of national origins blackness is inescapably part of their daily Venezuela, I have considered morenos to representations. Nowhere is this more and identity, consigned to foreign or more life and community. be Afrodescendants). Cuba’s black and striking than in Costa Rica, the nation most recent immigrants and distinctly minority In this more recent phenomenon, the brown population officially registered at 36 invested in a white identity, paradoxically groups in peripheral regions, as has been documentary film Si“ no es Dinga …” and percent of the national total; in all other juxtaposed with its veneration of a black the case elsewhere in Central America. its central figure/narrator, Leda Artavia countries, Afrodescendants accounted patron saint and protectress, La Virgen de Just as with many a Central American Rojas, provides a needed perspective on for 12 percent or less of the national los Angeles. Costa Rican national identity and Costa Rican president during the 19th questions being intensely reexamined by population. The total Afrodescendant has long involved invidious comparisons century, Afrodescendant public figures this generation of both public intellectuals population for the region as a whole was with its Central American neighbors, in the early 20th century made a point and young people. We will explore the an estimated 135-140 million, most of from the very first official histories and of ignoring their origins, whether in the lives and images of Carmen Lyra and Leda whom (97 million) live in Brazil. Another

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writer turned militant. At the ceremony to explore how very common words and society’s partial acceptance of Hispanic to found the Cátedra Carmen Lyra at the expressions, as well as local musical Afrodescendants. Universidad Nacional (the former teacher traditions, are clearly unrecognized as Dinga’s story deepens further in a training school in Heredia) in 2015, they African in origin. The film uses interviews series of on-camera conversations Leda publicized an image used by her friend and with a range of men and women on the has with her older sisters about their admirer, former Education Minister María street, as well as with academic specialists, experiences with color diversity within Eugenia Dengo Obregón, in her homage to try to understand how this peculiar the family. In a bittersweet exchange to Lyra as one of many iconic Costa Rican compartmentalization of attitudes came haunted by the all-too-fresh memories of educators in her book, Tierra de Maestros. to be. An often reflexive pride in national the premature death of their mother, the As was common throughout Central whiteness coexists alongside a quotidian discussion ranges from their grandfather’s America then and now, both official and recognition of dark-skinned mixedness, opposition to her relationship with Leda’s popular historical memory whitens as well as an abiding reverance for “La father, how her color difference was and softens their icons with the passage Negrita” and the pilgrimage to her shrine perceived by the sisters, and how they of time. Carmen Lyra, communist exile in the colonial capital of Cartago each identify themselves in color and ethnic and official villain for more than half a August 2. terms. In conversation with genealogist century, was rebranded as popular martyr The driving force of the documentary, Mauricio Meléndez Obando, they are able when she became Benemérita de la Patria however, is the narrative voice and on- to identify multiple generations of their in 2016. Her newly honorific, semi-official screen presence of Leda Artavia Rojas. forebearers from parish records and family Top, Carmen Lyra in official memory on the 20,000 colon note. Bottom Carmen Lyra, ca. 1920 image graces the largest denomination of Part youthful everywoman and explorer album photographs, learning ironically local currency in circulation, the 20,000 leading the viewer on a journey of that he and they are in fact not-so-distant colón note. discovery, more profoundly the muse cousins. These records show that they all Artavia to enter into the hall of mirrors that and the Blond Girls). Contemporary Carmen Lyra may well have cultivated offering a window on the world of Costa descend from distant indigenous, Spanish is blackness in the white nation of Costa literary analysts have puzzled over and the austere, proletarian “look” in her Rican stereotypes and misperceptions and African forebearers, however similar Rica. criticized this fable’s overtly anti-black many public images after returning from about blackness, she offers not only or different their phenotypes in the current and pro-Christian imagery of favor and Europe and founding the CP, but none firsthand, lived experience, but access generation, and also display an age-long, CARMEN LYRA AND redemption, particularly in a nation whose compares with the striking beauty of to her own complex family history. strong preference for Spanish and mestizo COLOR-BLIND POLITICS patron saint and virgin is popularly known that youthful image, of the Afromestiza Reframing the documentary enterprise identifiers. María Isabel Carvajal, or Carmen Lyra as “La Negrita.” firebrand poised to commit her life to the more fundamentally as if it were simply As her sisters leaf through family (1887-1949), was born to a single mother, However, like many such expressions “people’s cause.” Her contemporary and “getting to know someone,” and that photos and images, many Costa Rican raised in poverty in San José, and died of anti-black orthodoxy by 19th- and posthumous supporters have tirelessly someone as engaging and disarming as viewers of the film are forced to juggle their in exile in Mexico shortly after the 1948 20th-century Afro-mestizos elsewhere in noted her illegitimate birth and childhood Leda Artavia, proves a brilliant strategy own multiple images of Leda. In Dinga Revolution that expelled her and banned Central America, the fable could be read poverty, but in the centuries-old tradition to avoid the traditional academic pitfalls she presents herself as the unassuming, the Communist Party she had co-founded. against the grain rather than simply as of assimilationist silence, politely ignored of would-be objectivity and didacticism. casually dressed, twenty-something At age 17, she graduated from the Girls’ yet another pledge of allegiance to white her Afrodescendance. As she revisits various neighborhoods narrator confronting her identity and High School (Colegio de Señoritas) in supremacist national iconography. Lyra’s from her childhood, she reminds viewers positionality at home in the Central Valley, San José, and within a decade she began writings, both political and literary, give that she grew up entirely in the Central but others know her already as the high- to publish her first stories. She played a no hint of a fondness for irony bordering LEDA ARTAVIA: FROM Valley. Somewhere between joke and fashion model, winner of national prize central role in organizing the female-led and on satire, parody or sarcasm, but she was HIGH FASHION TO DINGA’S lament, she wonders aloud why she is competitions. Treading the path taken occasionally violent street demonstrations, not an orthodox author of socialist realism LEADING LADY always asked if she is from Limón or by Carmen Lyra in reverse, recognition including the burning of the pro-regime either, given her choice of the genre of fairy In late 2014, the screening of the Costa why she does not like “rice and beans”— for Leda Artavia involves foreign travel, newspaper, that brought down Costa Rica’s tales adapted to the local context, among Rican documentary film Si“ no es Dinga” both references invoke local code for study and work in Europe, Asia and the last military dictatorship in 1919. The new the first to be written to sound like popular became a local watershed—a “happening.” identifying “blackness” associated with Americas, not as prelude to a career choice civilian administration rewarded her with a her in 1931. speech. The fable of the favored Rubia Produced by Isis Campos Zeledón West Indian immigrants from the Atlantic at home but as inherent to the career fellowship the following year to study early Beyond partisan politics, however, and the disparaged Negra could thus be and Rodrigo “Kike” Molina Figuls, the coast. Or, why do people who seem to choice itself. Nor does it involve silencing childhood education in France and Italy. Carmen Lyra’s lasting fame came as the read as a not-so-veiled allegory describing 52-minute film explores a range of Costa want to be polite, assure her that she or submerging her Afrodescendance. Upon her return, she helped found the first author of classic children’s literature, in the social and psychic costs of deeply Ricans’ (mis)understandings of their is “not really” black. Later in the film, Far from it, both at home and abroad it Montessori School in San José and became particular, “Cuentos de Mi Tía Panchita. ” entrenched discriminatory attitudes and relationship to blackness. The producers many of the academic informants enter involves a foregrounding of blackness, its the first children’s literature professor at the The collection gave voice to countless folk beliefs the author herself was perhaps only use a variety of tropes and strategies, into conversations with Leda, seeking to beauty and its burdens, in a society which teacher training school in Heredia. Her tales familiar to generations of Costa Rican too aware of. beginning with the title itself which explain the very long history of willfull has been loath to recognize it; a society radical politics never failed to upset her children, including several tales of African Literary analysts who have yet to comes from the colonial-era saying from ignorance of colonial black populations’ whose imagined ethnic homogeneity relations with institutions and employers, origin such as the Tío Conejo (Brer Rabbit) detect or suspect such an undertext in Peru, “Si no es de Dinga es de Mandinga,” role in race mixture, the emergence of means that only Spanish and indigenous leading to a life-long collaboration with stories. The only explicitly “colorized” or Lyra’s story also rescued from national referring to race and cultural mixes having imagined “mestizo” majorities, and the heritages constitute the mythical national individuals who shared her ideas and color-based fairy tale in that collection was historical amnesia a particularly revealing either indigenous (Inca/Inga/Dinga) or denial of blackness as a form of polite “we” versus the “others.” jointly founded the Communist Party with titled, “La Negra y la Rubia,” (The Black and powerful photograph of the youthful African (Mandinga) roots. They proceed

42 ReVista WINTER 2018 PHOTOS COURTESY OF LOWELL GUDMUNDSON. REVISTA.DRCLAS.HARVARD.EDU ReVista 43 AFRO-LATIN AMERICANS DISCRIMINATION AND FORMS OF ACTION

Costa Rica is home to many a paradox—and not just that a self- Salvador de Bahia proclaimed white nation venerates a black Virgin as patron saint. At least Pelourinho as Inclusive Heritage half a dozen of Costa Rica’s presidents By ENRIQUE AURENG SILVA trace their lineage to an 18th-century enslaved woman, Ana Cardoso, whose invisibility can perhaps be gauged by the fact that generations of schoolchildren “BOM DIA, MOÇO! TODO BEM? BEM-VINDO À with tiled roofs and wooden doors, the continue to voice disbelief when told Bahia!” three enthusiastic women, one of magnificent baroque churches and the that Africans and slavery actually existed them dressed as a typical Baiana, greeted stone-paved streets that I had only seen in in colonial Costa Rica. Long a regional me warmly at the tourism office at books and websites. These historic sights bulwark of anti-Communist politics, here Salvador de Bahia in northeastern Brazil. dramatically disappear as I look for Rua once thrived Carmen Lyra’s Communist It was my first time there, and I needed to de Sao Francisco, where I had previously party-led nationalist reform well before know how to get from the airport to the booked a room in what supposedly was a Italy branded its own version as Euro- famous Pelourinho. centric and well-reviewed hostel. Communism. Today those less discerning As a second year student at the “Did you come from the south side or among its politicians anguish over how to Harvard University Graduate School of the north side of the street?” David, the join the “developed” world— in a society Design, I’m investigating the relation 40-year-old hostel owner, asks me as he already as transnational, postmodern and between the preservation of the built extends the map and highlights the main multiculural as any on the planet. heritage—frequently associated with touristic sites and best places to eat. “The Clockwise: Abandoned building on Ladeira do Carmo. Metal structures supporting old buildings are commonly seen throught the surround- Carmen Lyra lived and struggled in UNESCO World Heritage Sites (WHS)— south side,” is my answer. “Well, just walk ing streets of Pelourinho. Abandoned buildings without roofs are common in the deteriorated Cidade Baixa. Largo do Cruzeiro do São an era of proletarian internationalism and issues of social injustice, spatial the north side from now on, it’s better to Francisco in the heart of Pelourinho on an early winter afternoon. turned nationalist, of pro-mestizaje segregation and cultural inequality that avoid the south side when possible,” he Is it really possible to rescue and transform ideologies that ignored or excluded inevitably arise around such touristic insists, crossing out the ten blocks directly the peripheries and ladeiras without blackness. Both ideologies claimed to destinations. across the hostel that separate us from Many parts of the city have been neglected, even displacing their inhabitants? How can resolve their own paradoxes with healthy Salvador de Bahia, the first capital Praca da Se and Elevador Lacerda, two preservation and restoration be done doses of optimism, self-sacrifice, and of Brazil founded in 1549, is one of the of the main attractions of the city center. when their inherent beauty, historic value and without gentrification? How can the silence. Carmen Lyra’s Afrodescendance oldest colonial sites of America and one “And do not go into this area at all, walk economic potential is huge. touristic appeal proper to Pelourinho was politely ignored by her comrades- of the 14 cultural World Heritage Sites of around it. It will be safer.” be used in favor of the surrounding low- in-arms then and long thereafter. Leda the country. The city’s historic downtown, As the most important city on the street food made from blackeyed peas, and stop right by the Igreja de Sao Francisco to income neighborhoods? How could the Artavia was born at the dawn of an known as Pelourinho, received UNESCO’s Bahia de Todos os Santos (Bay of All enjoying a plate of delicious acaí berries the south and by the Convento do Carmo historic heritage value of Pelô benefit locals era of resurgent transnationalism and WHS status in 1985, and has undergone Saints), Salvador has always been right by Largo Terreiro de Jesus, I head to to the north, with the majority of tourists as well as visitors? multicultural ethnic identity politics. For preservation and restoration processes divided into the Cidade Baixa (Lower Ladeira de Misericordia to visit one of the walking exclusively around a very defined “This is going to be a very interesting her generation, blackness has become a ever since. Mainly financed by local and City) and the Cidade Alta (Upper City). most famous restoration projects created perimeter. The preservation of the cultural thesis topic,” I think to myself while sitting central existential question of who am state governments, the preservation Geographically linked to the bay and by Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi. and historic heritage helps to hide the on the steps of Monumento da Cruz Caida I, where do I come from, and why am efforts have gradually rescued the old its ports, the Cidade Baixa has always Built in 1980, the project was intended social inequalities and security problems (Fallen Cross Monument), as I watch the I perpetually surrounded by mistaken city’s historic quarters, which by the 1990s been the place for commercial activities, as the model that all future preservation that still today afflict the periphery of sunset magically silver-plating the Bay of assumptions? As diametrically opposed had fallen into total disrepair, focusing on while the Cidade Alta, where the endeavors should have aspired to emulate: the city center; tourists, attracted by the All Saints and its tranquil waters. I wish I as the two eras and their paths may seem preserving what UNESCO described as Pelourinho lies, has historically been the 17th- and 18th-century buildings were preserved area, generally just don’t go had the answers already. to us, these two Afro-mestizas shared a “the most important collection of baroque residential neighborhood and a center restored and used for affordable housing; elesewhere. struggle for recognition, always subject colonial architecture in the Americas.” for culture, politics and religion—a hub cheap prefabricated materials were used Architects and planners have always Enrique Aureng Silva is an architect. to reframing by friend and foe alike, one “What brings you to Salvador?” asks of Afrodescendent pride. While back in order to keep low costs and public aimed to restore the historic buildings Trained in Mexico City, he is currently never fully within their grasp perhaps, the Baiana as she hands me the touristic in the early 1990s governor Antonio amenities were built in a vacant lot. Thus, of the Pelourinho in a democratic and working towards a Master of Design but a struggle neither would shrink from. map and points towards the blue bus Carlos Magalhaes made efforts to clean, I was shocked when I found Lina Bo inclusive way, but it is evident that the Studies in Critical Conservation at that will take me to the historic district. preserve and make Pelourinho a safer Bardi’s project completely abandoned and task is still incomplete. Many parts of Harvard GSD. He is interested in the Lowell Gudmundson (Mount Holyoke “Pelourinho and the Bahia de Todos os place for both locals and tourists, a quick in ruins, just like many of the buildings on the city have been neglected, even when intervention, transformation and reuse College) is the co-editor of Blacks and Santos, of course. Muito obrigado!” I stroll around the historic district and a the periphery of the Pelourinho. their inherent beauty, historic value and of historic and old buildings in the Latin Blackness in Central America (Duke answer as I go out of the airport and into quick glance of the ladeiras (hillsides) The contrast between the UNESCO site economic potential is huge. And as with American context. When not practicing University Press 2010; EUNED Costa Salvador’s humid 80°F winter. that connect it with the Cidade Baixa and its surroundings became immediately the buildings, the local population has also architecture, he writes fiction in the form Rica 2012). His most recent book is As I arrive in the historic “Pelô”—as it demonstrate two very distinct scenes in apparent. The boutiques, artisan shops, been forgotten. of short stories. Instagram: @e_aureng Costa Rica después del café: La era is affectionately referred by locals—I keep the urban fabric. cultural institutions, restaurants, coffee As a student of architecture, I ask Personal blog: unadecalporlasquevan- cooperativa en la historia y la memoria. admiring the colorful colonial houses After eating some acarajé, a popular shops and hotels that abound in Pelourinho myself what would be the right approach. dearena.wordpress.com

44 ReVista WINTER 2018 OPPOSITE PAGE PHOTOS BY ENRIQUE AURENG SILVA. REVISTA.DRCLAS.HARVARD.EDU ReVista 45 AFRO-LATIN AMERICANS DISCRIMINATION AND FORMS OF ACTION

association became the Kambirí National Witches, Wives, Secretaries Network of Afro-Colombian Women. At the same time, another dynamic was and Black Feminists emerging in towns along riverbanks throughout Colombia’s countryside, as Finding Gender in Latin America’s Black Movements By TIANNA S. PASCHEL black women began to organize in groups and networks within the ethno-territorial movement. Just like their counterparts in urban black organizations, black THE ISSUE OF GENDER HAS BEEN FRONT region. I became intrigued by how much militancy in the “black movement.” Many rural women had also been central to and center for me, both as a subject the internal dynamics of these movements of them responded as Vilma Reis did, the intellectual, political and everyday of my fieldwork on black politics in were shaped by gender, in both explicit “The experience of the movement of black administrative functioning of black Latin America, and how I conducted and implicit ways. Gender was not only women, for me it isn’t the experience of peasant organizations. Nevertheless, that research, particularly in how I important for explaining the successes the black movement” (interview, Vilma and with few exceptions, it was men who navigated largely male-dominated black of black movements in the region, but Reis, June 2009). Other black feminists became the most visible protagonists of organizations. I am, after all, a black also for understanding ideological and corrected me, saying, “Oh, you mean these movements. In ethno-territorial woman, albeit one with certain outsider organizational differences, and was the black women’s movement?” These movements on Colombia’s Pacific Coast, and sometimes privileged status. As an critical to mapping the organizational activists wanted to make an important this contradiction became increasingly African American researcher from an fields of black movements in each case. ideological and historical distinction. As pronounced, and was at the center elite U.S. university, I found that at times Before going to the field, I knew from Edna Roland, one of the founders of the of the rise of black women’s groups I was able to dodge some of the sexism the work of Kia Caldwell and Sonia black feminist organization Speak Black and networks. Unlike their urban that was so commonplace within the Alvarez that black women activists in Woman! explained, organizations that counterparts, these black women’s groups movements I was studying. Still, there Brazil had fought for years to make the we typically understand as “the black were less likely to understand themselves were other times where my being a black case that the mainstream movement’s movement”—as well as state institutions as feminists, even though they were women trumped any other identity and political platform should pay more like the Conselho do Negro in São Paulo— radically challenging gender hierarchies. did not shield me from blatant sexism and attention to the unique ways that racism were in fact “fundamentally masculine” The experiences of black women active sexual harassment. This was especially and gender hierarchies differentially (interview, Edna Roland, May 2010). in Colombia’s male-dominated ethno- true because I was a relatively young affected black women. They raised Black women, fed up with both overt territorial movement sound strikingly black woman traveling alone. Because of many issues, including violence against and subtler forms of sexism within like those of black women throughout the this, I learned to schedule interviews with black women, state-led sterilization male-dominated black organizations, hemisphere. Fundamentally, patriarchy activists and bureaucrats early in the day campaigns, the exploitation of domestic began to build spaces within and and traditional ideas that “la politica es so as to not spill into the evening hours. workers, and the negative portrayals of outside mainstream black organizations cosa de hombre”—politics are a man’s I also learned to deal with background black women within popular culture. where black women could organize thing— as one activist put it, made noise on recordings because I insisted If male-dominated black organizations autonomously. Their critique of the male- the field of black politics a profoundly that we keep doors open while conducting addressed these issues at all, they often run black movement was multilayered. gendered space. One place where this interviews, especially with male leaders. relegated them to the margins. This Women who had worked within “mixed was particularly obvious in Colombia’s Perhaps most interesting, I learned that marginalization mirrored the ways in organizations”—or organizations made black movement was when black women only certain activists, under certain which a Brazilian women’s movement up of both men and women—found the stepped outside of traditional roles, and conditions, would talk to me about how dominated by white, middle-class women sexism palpable. Organizing separately appropriated political styles associated gender, and patriarchy more specifically, treated issues affecting black women. meant that women could take leadership with masculinity. In doing so, several figured into these movements. Because of this double marginalization, a positions in ways that they could not Afro-Colombian activists became known When I began my first book,Becoming black women’s movement in Brazil began in male-dominated organizations. as the brujas or witches of the movement. Black Political Subjects in Colombia to rise during the 1980s and 1990s. While Consequently, they could fully develop These women were often in organizations and Brazil, I was seeking to explain the the dozens of black women’s organizations their voices as militants. that they started themselves, and were role of black movements in the rise of that arose during this period had varying In Colombia, the black women’s powerful and polemic figures in the specific legislation for black populations degrees of relationships to both the black movement was slower to develop than movement. While I suspected that they beginning in the late 1980s. While I movement and the women’s movement, in Brazil. While the Association of appropriated the representations of thought gender figured into this story, they also sought to carve out their own Afro-Colombian Women was created in themselves as witches in order to sustain I did not know how central it would space. 1990, it was not for a decade later that their position in the movement, this was become. My time in the field made it Knowing this, but not fully under- the network would take shape. During confirmed in my interviews with some increasingly clear that telling that story standing this history, I remember naïvely the First National Assembly of Afro- of them. The women who occupy this required telling another one about how asking activists in Brazil’s black women’s Colombian Women held in Tolima, which symbolic category of “the witch” in the gender figured into black organizing in the organizations how they began their convened hundreds of black women, the movement are also the only women that I

46 ReVista WINTER 2018 PHOTOS BY STEVE CAGAN REVISTA.DRCLAS.HARVARD.EDU ReVista 47 AFRO-LATIN AMERICANS MUSIC saw at the center of male-dominated black example of this comes from black women movement gatherings literally fighting activists—from Colombia, the Dominican AND DANCE over the microphone and yelling at high Republic, Costa Rica and Brazil—who government officials, just as the male organized around the Third World leaders often did. Conference against Racism in Durban, While these women did not raise South Africa (2001). They told me that issues around gender in their political while the men in the movement loved to platforms, their presence did highlight “echar discurso” and grab the microphone some of the ways that gender functioned during meetings, when it was time in these movements. In particular, these to actually do the work of writing the brujas adopted a particular kind of documents, few men were left. As such, protagonism that allowed them to, as one rather than fight with their male compadres Afro-Colombian male activist said, “go over the inclusion of specific provisions head-to-head” with male leaders, which on black women’s rights in official black included adopting masculine oratorical movement declarations, they simply would styles. Yet while they acted like their male insert them at the crack of dawn, when only counterparts, their political performances they were left to do the work of writing were also tinged with something we might up the official declarations. It was a sly call the “witch persona.” For example, acceptance of a more appropriate gendered one such leader hardly ever misses an role for women—in this case, the role of the opportunity to cry, laugh hysterically, secretary. These women reminded me of enter political gatherings dramatically. the classic case of the Mothers of the Plaza Sometimes she would even take off de Mayo in Argentina where women were her head wrap in the midst of heated able to take a serious political stance against political debates, like a tornado swirling human rights violations (specifically forced above the crowd. Yet, as these women disappearances) in the midst of a repressive contested traditional gender roles within dictatorship precisely by appropriating the the movement, new gendered ways of acceptable role of the grieving apolitical understanding them emerged that had In understanding these mother. As I worked in solidarity with black to reconcile the conflation of political movements in both countries, I was often power and masculinity. In understanding women as witches, black was in charge of keeping notes, partially these women as witches, black activists activists reproduced the because of gender, but also because I had reproduced the idea that certain kinds of a laptop. As I typed away, I often thought political power, if held by women, must be idea that certain kinds about what kinds of power could be exerted supernatural. This kind of power seemed of political power, if in the act of writing meeting notes and juxtaposed with the natural political power official declarations. This is one of the many that men possess. held by women, must be questions I will tackle in this new project. The stories of the black women supernatural. activists I met while in the field, as well Tianna S. Paschel is assistant profes- as own experiences navigating a similarly to occupy more “appropriate” gendered sor of African American Studies at the treacherous political terrain, led me to areas and still challenge them? How do University of California-Berkeley. Her a new research project tentatively titled black female leaders understand their own research centers on understanding the Witches, Wives, Secretaries and Black protagonism? Finally, how are women relationship between racial inequal- Feminists: The Politics of Gender in Black who reject their so-called appropriate roles ity, politics, and globalization in the Movements in Latin America. In it, I draw understood and what are their relationships Americas. She is the author of the award- on some of this previous ethnographic with activists (female and male) of male- winning book, Becoming Black Political work as well as interviews with activists to dominated organizations? Subjects: Movements and Ethno-Racial Ned Sublette The Bearers • Yosvany Terry Afro-Roots and Mozart Too better understand how gender figures into Addressing these questions means Rights in Colombia and Brazil. Her work Álvaro Restrepo Negra/Anger • Rebecca Kennedy de Lorenzini La Candela Viva black organizing in this region. How do taking seriously the ways in which black can also be found in the American Journal black women in Latin America involved in women activists sometimes attempt of Sociology, the Dubois Review, Eth- Genevieve E.V. Dempsey Multi-Faith Lives of Brazilian Congadeiros and Umbandistas black movements reproduce, appropriate, to undermine patriarchy within male- nic and Racial Studies, and SOULS: A Bélen Vega Pichaco In the Footsteps of La Rebambaramba perform, and sometimes subvert expected dominated spaces and within dominant Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture gender roles? Relatedly, is there a way tropes for female participation. One and Society. Sujatha Fernandes Black Aesthetics and Afro-Latinx Hip Hop

48 ReVista WINTER 2018 PHOTO ABOVE BY STEVE CAGAN; PAINTING, OPPOSITE PAGE: LA ACADEMIA, 2016, OLEO SOBRE TELA, 50 X 70 CM. BY DOUGLAS PÉREZ CASTRO. REVISTA.DRCLAS.HARVARD.EDU ReVista 49 AFRO-LATIN AMERICANS MUSIC AND DANCE

The Bearers BY NED SUBLETTE

VIÑALES’S SPECTACULAR NATURAL BEAUTY its exportation to countries around the Bremer described during her 1850 visit makes it one of Cuba’s busiest tourist world, and above all its spectacular, to Cuba: attractions, but tourists don’t come to formalized repertoire of music. And The music consisted, besides the this mango grove, and the bus driver who there’s also Carabalí (including the singing, of drums. Three drummers brought us wasn’t happy about taking the Abakuá secret society for men in Havana, stood beside the tree-trunk beating beat-up road that leads here. Plus, it’s Matanzas, and Cárdenas, but also other with their hands, their fists, their raining. No matter, there’ll be a party. groups); Arará (from present-day Benin, thumbs, and drumsticks upon skin As we arrive, we see the piglet, roasting especially the city-states of Ardra and stretched over hollowed tree-stems. on a spit. Someone opens a bottle of rum. Ouidah); and Gangá (Sierra Leone). And They made as much noise as possible, We—my Cuban colleague, musicologist/ massively, there is Congo, which I think but always keeping time and tune producer Caridad Diez and I, along with of as the base layer of Afro-Cuban culture most correctly. 27 travelers from the United States—are since perhaps the 1580s. in the only part of Cuba (that we know of) All over Cuba, people continue The group has the typical African where traditional Congo tambores yuka ancestral musical and spiritual practices, three-drum configuration, with two are still played in family and community most commonly through the efforts of drums playing an ostinato while a third celebrations, summoning the neighbors particular families, maintaining and comments. Congo songs tend to be highly from over the hillside with drum calls to transforming them in turn. Prudencio repetitive–indeed, the origins of groove- fiestas that don’t stop the same day they Rivera, the director of Grupo Tambores based pop music the world over have start. Yuka and a truck driver by day, is one much to do with Congo musical tradition When sugar was creating fantastic of those people the Consejo Nacional –and, perhaps because Congo has been a wealth across a wide swath of western de Casas de Cultura calls portadores— part of Cuba for so long, Congo songs and Cuba in the 19th century, these drums bearers, who take charge of the tradition even religious ritual tend to incorporate were ubiquitous. When work stopped for a time and pass it on the next more Spanish than the other African long enough for a dance, the drummers generation. traditions of Cuba. brought out tambores yuka. Rumberos As we watch, the drummers lay the The singers repeat the line over and say that the yuka is behind the 19th drums on the ground and make a small over: El rey del Congo tiene que vení’, el rey -century style of rumba called the yambú, fire in order to tune them, as described del Congo. The Congo king has to come, still danced widely today—or, as Diosdado by Anselmo Suárez Romero in his 1838 the Congo king. Ramos, director of Los Muñequitos de Cuban novel Francisco: I’d heard about tambores yuka for Matanzas, put it, “slow down the baile years, but I’d never actually seen them. yuka a little and you have the yambú.” Then it was necessary to heat up * * * Different Cuban drums are classifiable the drums; for that reason they had lit In the Congo religion, called palo in by the way the drumhead is rigged to the bonfire, with which the skin that Cuba, there are two worlds, the land of the shell. These tambores yuka are covers the broader end of the drum the living and the land of dead, which hollowed-out avocado tree trunks with acquires its sonority, and springs to are in constant contact, separated by the heads nailed on; they’re Congo (which the touch, and the sound resonates a watery barrier called kalunga. On a I will spell here with a “c” instead of the better in the hollow cylinder of the Cuban sugar plantation, where the labor anthropologists ‘“k”), from Central Africa. drum’s body; it is the tuning key of the force was systematically worked to death Over the years in Cuba, I’ve seen instrument; without flame it doesn’t and replaced with fresh arrivals from ceremonies, or recreations of ceremonies get heard, it doesn’t reach far away to the other side of the water, the border by practitioners, from five different farms all around; it doesn’t thump, it between living and dead was a familiar African naciones. The most visible is doesn’t give pleasure, it doesn’t make one, with two-way communication. the Yoruba (or Lucumí, or Ifá, or Regla anyone leap. Fernando Ortiz tells us of a Congo de Ocha, or santería), with its beads, its instrument called kinfuiti that communicates color codes of dress, its white-clad first- Then they begin to play, continuing a with the dead. I didn’t think I’d ever see one Top: Groupo Tambor Yuka. Below: Musicians of Ojundegara, Arará group in Jovellanos. year initiates on every street in Havana, tradition that Swedish writer Frederika in real life, but that was before I went to

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The Kunalumbo house is small orishas. In front of Ojundegara’s house. but well kept—a dedicated space, a there is a monument that matches a testament to perseverance. Its interior counterpart erected in the modern nation walls are painted with cosmograms and of Benin following a visit the group made historical narrative, proudly noting a 1950 there in 1991. 150 years wasn’t that long performance there by Orquesta Aragón— ago: one of Ojundegara’s members, one of the grand names of Cuban dance Patricio Pastor Baró Céspedes, who died music, a flute-and-violins charanga in July 2016 at the age of 89, was the son founded in Cienfuegos in 1939. When they of Esteban Baró Tossú, brought in slavery played Kunalumbo, Aragón hadn’t made as a child from Dahomey ca. 1866. a record yet, but their career soon got a After 1850, Cuba was the last place boost with the help of their hometown in the Americas importing Africans. The friend Bartolomé Maximiliano Moré. The drummers lay the final decades of slavery were peak years A black guajiro, the oldest of eighteen drums on the ground for the introduction of kidnapped Yoruba, children, Moré grew up in the south who were brought where the sugar central part of the island, in a little town and make a small fire in mills were at that time: western Cuba, eight miles from Cienfuegos that the order to tune them, as particularly Matanzas province. world knows about primarily through Everyone agrees that Matanzas, his song extolling it: Santa Isabel de las described by Anselmo the port city and “Athens of Cuba” on Lajas. Beginning his career as a strolling Suárez Romero in the north coast, was and is the great singer in the dockside taverns of Old crossroads and transmitter of Afro- Havana, Moré became a singing star his 1838 Cuban novel Cuban religion. With time, the Yoruba during an extended stay in Mexico with Francisco. religion moved farther east, coming to the Conjunto Matamoros, in which he Oriente (eastern Cuba) only in the 20th sang with Francisco “Compay Segundo” around the perimeter of the house. century. Fundamento (the activating Repilado, and changed his professional An hour later, we’re down the road in element in the Yoruba batá drums) name to Benny (or Beny) Moré. After Palmira, a center of santeros and babalaos came to Camagüey in the middle of the appearing in Mexican movies and on hit in the Yoruba tradition. Palmira was island only in 1980, I was told by Ángel records with Pérez Prado, he returned to the site of Benny’s last concert; after a Echemendía, the erudite director of the Cuba in 1950. After starting his Banda short life with too much cheap rotgut, Conjunto Folklórico in Camagüey, and, Gigante, “El Benny” began his reign as he vomited blood before singing a show according to Abelardo Luardet Luaces, Cuba’s most loved singer, the one who there and died in the hospital in Havana only came to Santiago de Cuba in 1986. Conga de Paso Franco, Santiago de Cuba. Opposite page, flames and drumheads. sang all the Cuban genres to everyone’s on February 19, 1963 at the age of 43. In So there’s a layer of Congo that covers satisfaction. He was powerful enough to Palmira, we visited the leader of the group the country, and a Yoruba power in the the little town of Quiebra Hacha—also Yoruba deities (called orishas) that don’t and enthusiastically accepted baptism insist booking agents stop locking the Obacosó, who guarded a set of three two- west that moved east. People often are in western Cuba, in Artemisa—to see sound much like the orisha music I’ve as Rei João I, and converted his entire provincial Aragón out of the Havana headed cylindrical drums I’d never seen initiated in more than one Afro-Cuban the group Ta Makuende Yaya. Cuban previously heard. These are understood kingdom, which adopted the new power market. before: tambores de guerra, or war drums, system. In eastern Cuba, which was not musicologist Sonia Pérez Cassola, who’s to be distinct traditions, but they overlap objects and symbols while continuing Benny grew up in Lajas, where he lived consecrated to Changó, the orisha of 19th-century sugarland, people generally worked with the group for years, calls and cross in all kinds of ways, all over traditional practice. So the much next door to the Casino de los Congos, a drums and thunder. (Ethnomusicologist become rayado (initiated in palo, the kinfuiti el tambor de los muertos— Cuba. After the performance, we walk discussed syncretization began before the mutual aid society founded by his African- Amanda Villepastour has sent me a photo evidenced by permanent skin scratches) the drum of the dead, whose call reaches down the road to a small temple originally Middle Passage, and was carried to all born great-great-grandfather, Ta Ramón of a similar set in Jovellanos.) before making santo (Yoruba). to the other side of the kalunga line. founded by the enslaved, and rebuilt by parts of the Americas; all up and down Gunda Moré. From his earliest years, he The next day, in Trinidad, the group And there’s another factor: the lwa live It’s a friction drum. That is, instead the community, dedicated to San Antonio, the hemisphere, Congos were assumed to had free run of the place, a young Congo Leyenda Folk played for us tambores in Cuba too. There is plenty of vodú (or of percussing the drumhead, a wand or St. Anthony, whose name denotes be Catholic. prince dancing to tambores makuta, trinitarios—sawed-off little drums with vodou, or voodoo) in Oriente, and other attached to the drumhead is stroked with Congo. * * * drums that have long since disappeared a powerful crack. That made three kinds parts of Cuba, if you look. wet hands—an organological cousin of Throughout the history of transatlantic In the center of the island, Sagua la from daily Cuban musical life. I’d never of drums I’d never seen before in less than * * * the Brazilian cuica or the Venezuela furro. slavery the Congo were identified with Grande was once a wealthy river port for seen tambores makuta outside of a 48 hours, and I’ve been doing this since There’s no way to understand the It makes a sustained low-register push- Catholicism; the kingdom was first sugar, as the town’s elegant architecture museum before. But the Casino de los 1990. Cuba is inexhaustible. history of mountainous Oriente—or, for pull: grunk GRUNK, grunk GRUNK . . . Catholicized in 1491—yes, the year makes clear. It’s bristling with African Congos still exists in Lajas, in its own In Jovellanos, in Matanzas province, that matter, of the Cuban revolutions that The group performs for us in a video before Columbus—when missionaries religion: the Congo cabildo, Kunalumbo, house now as then, and the tambores the group Ojundegara, centered on the have blown from east to west—without projection room that serves as the town’s came to Mbanza-Kongo (in present-day was founded in 1809. There’s a strong makuta that Benny heard as a child are Baró family, maintains its Arará heritage, taking into account St. Domingue/Haiti, movie theater. They’re Congo-identified, northern Angola). Nzinga a Nkuwu, Yoruba presence in Sagua, and there’s still there. Its members perform a solemn singing in Fon to the fodduces who are whose mountains are visible from high but they also play songs addressed to the the manikongo, or king, immediately even a Gangá society. ceremony, advancing with the Cuban flag more or less counterparts to the Yoruba points in Oriente.

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There are three Domingan-descended and go on to Mayarí.” I haven’t stopped with stilts, a maypole, a hobbyhorse, and (famously syncretized with the orisha something I’ve always wondered: what Constance Sublette) The American Slave societies called tumbas francesas in Alto Cedro, but I took a group to visit propulsive drumming. Changó), whose day is December 4. And does Arsenio’s “No hay yaya sin guayacán” Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding (in Santiago de Cuba, Guantánamo, Cueto, where there’s a statue of Compay, In Colón, in Matanzas province, there’s the community project called Patio – there is no yaya without guayacán – Industry. He is a Fellow of the Commit- and a rural one in the foothills of the no tourists to speak of, and something Eneida Villegas Zulueta takes us into her de Tata Güines, named for Arístides Soto, mean? tee on Globalization and Social Change Sierra Cristal, near Sagua de Tánamo). that doesn’t appear in Buena Vista Social community, largely Yoruba-descended, whose professional name, Tata Güines, was Luis smiles, and points to a smaller at the CUNY Graduate Center, and is an Acknowledged by UNESCO as Oral and Club: vodú. that lives in the very barracones a Congo shoutout to his home town. The prenda alongside the big one. adjunct at the Clive Davis Institute of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, In Cueto, a group of schoolgirls in a (barracks) where their ancestors were Patio is in the solar (multiple apartments “This is yaya” – he points to one stick Recorded Music at NYU. His Postmam- their wardrobe references French salon community project sing songs in Kreyol enslaved at the infamous Julián Zulueta’s around a central patio) where Soto grew of wood sticking up out of the prenda, bo Cuban Music Seminars take people wear of the late 18th century. They dance before we visit the house of a recently Central Álava. She shows us the works of up, across the street from the house where then to another – “and this is guayacán.” to Cuba. Info: [email protected] contradanza as well as African dances, but deceased powerful mambo (female vodú their community project Tras las Huellas the great Arsenio Rodríguez lived. If you don’t have both, neither will be the music is entirely drums and voices. ritual expert). Family members salute de Nuestros Ancestros (in the footsteps For all his fame, Arsenio, who brought effective. The author acknowledges the help of The rural tumba francesa of the lwa, but one woman fails to get far of our ancestors), whose members black consciousness to Cuban popular If you want to know about Arsenio’s Caridad Diez, Orlando Vergés Mar- mountainous Bejuco was so isolated that enough away before the drums begin, and have created their own museum out of music beginning in the 1930s, is still an lyrics, go across the street from where he tínez, Doris Céspedes, Sonia Pérez Cuban scholars learned about it only she’s “mounted,” or “ridden,” by the spirits. artifacts conserved in their households understudied figure. Though he’s mostly grew up, and ask. Cassola, Eneida Villegas Zulueta, in 1976, but it’s recognizably the same In Guantánamo, we visit the home of since slavery days. After visiting a ring known for his musical innovations, the Teresita Baró, Elivania Lamothe, Queli set of instruments and rhythms as its the houngan (ritual expert) Francisco; in of magnificent casa templos (house texts of his songs contain a world of lore Ned Sublette is the author of four books Figueroa Quiala, Rodulfo Vaillaint, urban counterparts. Its story is a key to his humble back patio, the vodú group temples), we hear not one but two bembés and deserve a scholarly edition. Sitting in including Cuba and Its Music: From the Ben Socolov, Constance Sublette, and understanding all kinds of movements Los Cossía rehearse. But vodú doesn’t (sacred party for the gods) back-to-back: the Cabildo Briyumba Congo, I ask Luis First Drums to the Mambo, and (with many others. and migrations in post-Haitian Cuba. In only exist in pockets of Oriente; it’s in one with children dancing the orishas, Guantánamo, meanwhile, the beautifully central Cuba, too. It’s strong in Camagüey. one with adults. dressed Santa Catalina de Ricci (or There’s vodú in Ciego de Ávila; when I In Güines, home of the Amistad sugar Pompadour) society is regal in its ask Ariel “Goma” Gallardo Ruiz, director mill, Luis Pedroso Sotolongo guards the headquarters. The last time I saw them of the group Rumbávila, if vodú came Cabildo Briyumba Congo, which boasts was at a world music festival in Havana to central Cuba overland from the east, the largest prenda I’ve ever seen. (They in March, where their slamming battery he said, “it also entered by north and have a larger one, but you have to have a of drummers jammed memorably with a south”—that is, straight into central limpieza, or cleaning, before you can see group from the island of Reúnion; such Cuba via Haitian sugar workers during it.) Even though Luis performs Yoruba is Cuba. the first half of the 20th century when divination in front of it, this is straight- After a performance by the Tumba there was a demand for cane-cutters. I up Congo. A prenda (the Kikongo word Francesa La Caridad de Oriente, the show Goma a video of a vodou ceremony is nganga) is the center of the palero’s Santiago group, some years ago, one from New York the week previously, and practice—a large iron pot containing all of the group’s elders asked me if I was he identified it at once. “That looks like a sorts of power elements, significantly satisfied. When I made an affirmative ceremony for Erzulie,” he says. Pause. “We including human remains, but also response, she smiled and said, “you know, do it differently.” various natural elements, including sticks it’s not only we the living who are dancing * * * of different kinds of wood. here.” Meaning, the dead were dancing The Cuban sugar industry has been Briyumba Congo’s prenda is made with them. downsized, but it still exists, and wherever from a former sugar cauldron, making But though spirit is everywhere, there are still centrales (sugar mills), the connection explicit. There are also tumba francesa is not vodú (or vodou, or they’re important nuclei of culture. In other prendas in the room, and there is voodoo). There is indeed vodú in Cuba, the small central Cuban town of Primero a wooden chair that dates from the early much of it courtesy of the large number de Enero, home of the Violeta mill, a 20th century, when the police would bust of Haitian cane-cutters brought to Cuba community project plays vodú drums up rumbas and ceremonies, requiring the in the 20th century, when sugar had and dances, and then its directors take camouflage of drums as household items; expanded to eastern Cuba during the pre- us to the Casa de las Flores, an extensive no sir, no drums here, I’m just sitting in revolutionary neocolonial republic. Many orchid garden. Down the road in Baraguá, my chair. Luis’s chair is really a big box remained, becoming a Kreyol-speaking members of the group La Cinta offer drum, all of its parts giving different tones minority. their guests black cake (a delicious rum as he slams out a rhythm on the sides In his surprise worldwide hit “Chan cake, panatela in Spanish) and plays while sitting in it. Chan,” Compay Segundo commemorated Anglo-Antillean music handed down by Around the corner from Briyumba a line of railroad stops in eastern Cuba: cane-cutting ancestors from the English- Congo, in the barrio of Leguina, is “De Alto Cedro voy para Marcané / Llego speaking islands. It’s 90 degrees or so and the Catholic chapel of Santa Bárbara, a Cueto voy para Mayarí.” “From Alto there’s no fan, but they deliver an intense, which is the center of one of the biggest Cedro I go to Marcané / I get to Cueto impeccable, high-energy performance processions in Cuba for that saint La Cinta, Baraguá

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traditions from these continents. My latest musical adventure has been Afro-Roots and Mozart Too with the “Ancestral Memories” quartet, a project that was the result of a grant from Building Foundations for Jazz and Beyond By YOSVANY TERRY the Mid-Atlantic Foundation’s French- American jazz exchange program that provides resources for an American and a French jazz composer to work together. I DISCOVERED JAZZ AT 13 IN MY MUSICAL My musical journey had begun even terms of black and white, and the Cuban French pianist and composer Baptiste household in Cuba when my brother earlier than that discovery of jazz at 13. cultural mixture is from both Africa and Trotignon and I set out to research brought home a cassette tape of Chick My father’s orchestra, Maravilla de Europe. This marriage is so deep and the musical traditions that came out Corea’s record “Friends,” and ever since Florida, was one of the most important strong that the elements are hard to of French former colonies, including I have been obsessed with the genre. charanga orchestras in Cuba. Charanga, separate. Music has served as a unifying Martinique, Guadeloupe, Haiti, and New There was no such thing as jazz in the most popular music in the dance halls force, bringing Cuban people together in Orleans, as well as Cuba, to create a body the conservatory where I was already of the island, was created by the creoles, concert halls and on the dance floor. of compositions that reflects the cultural studying, not even a whisper from our and since the beginning featured mixed- narratives of the Caribbean. Included in teachers that this American form existed. I race ensembles and symbols of a new MY CREATIVE PROCESS IS the recording that came out of this project began to find out everything I could about cultural identity. NOT RANDOM. were Yunior Terry on bass and Jeff “Tain” jazz. I traveled to the National Library in It was a foregone conclusion that I Growing up in Cuba in a musical Watts on drums. We are continuing to tour Camagüey to see what I could learn, and would become a musician, and so my family I understood that music feels as part of this project in the United States then discovered two radio stations in Cuba parents engaged a teacher and I began fresh and spontaneous to the listener— and in France. that broadcast jazz, so I began teaching learning to play the violin at age five. after hours of practice by performers to myself by transcribing what I heard on When I was old enough they sent me to master our instruments, and rehearsals MY TEACHING REFLECTS AN cassettes and the radio. the conservatory. In the conservatory the to master the genre we want to play. I ATTENTION TO CONTEXT. By then at the conservatory I had teachers were from Russia and the then- have always been a questioner, even as As a professor I bring my personal chosen the saxophone as my major Eastern Block countries, and we studied a child. “Why, where, and how” were my knowledge and approach to research to instrument and the piano as my secondary the Western classical cannon exclusively. first responses to being asked to learn the students at Harvard in both my West instrument. I loved the freedom that jazz Monday through Friday I studied Western anything. This curiosity made research African Musical Tradition and Foundation would allow me as well as how I could classical music, and on the weekends I feel like a natural part of the creative of Modern Jazz courses. Students get the Yosvany Terry, Harlem, New York City, December 18, 2013. use my instrument. What jazz offered me continued to learn Cuban popular music process as I grew up, and is critical to opportunity to learn the chants, melodies was complete ownership of what I was at home, as well as the traditions that were my work today. and rhythmic patterns from the African going to write and play. I wrote my first part of the African lineage of my family. Those questions made me curious For a composer and improviser there the context of band members interacting Diaspora and the social context in which jazz composition when I was fifteen; I Afro-Cuban and Afro-Haitian musical about my Afro roots. Like Bartok are a lot of communalities within the and interplaying with each other utilizing these musical traditions were created and was very proud of it and hoped that my traditions are rich on both sides of my and Kodaly before me who collected creative process, and it is hard to become various musical themes or ideas. preserved. In the Foundation of Modern future would be in that musical genre. I family. I started going to Lukumi and Hungarian folksongs and used them an artist with both a unique voice in your Jazz course students learn the language continued to study both jazz and Cuban Haitian vodou ceremonies when I was in their compositions, I draw from genre as well as a distinctive sound on MY PROJECTS ARE DRIVEN and vocabulary of the jazz canon within the popular music and was greatly influenced a child. At these religious ceremonies, I Afro-Cuban heritage, jazz and classical your instrument. The art of improvisation BY A FOCUS. social and historical context of the United by saxophonists John Coltrane and Wayne would learn chants and rhythmic patterns, music in my compositions. There are demands that you work daily in an Much of my current research is States. I hope to inspire my students to Shorter as well as by the popular Cuban as well as how to play several traditional many cultural references in my music organized and methodical way. stimulated by a new project and therefore dig deeper into cultural traditions and gain group Irakere with their multi-genre instruments. This was something I in both obvious and subtle ways, in the The preparation for improvisation has the goal of informing specific a more complete understanding of how styles of playing. When I graduated with couldn’t talk to my friends at school instrumentation, melodies, rhythms, requires rigorous training, as you need compositions, CD or a unique performance. culture and history are reflected in music. my Master’s from Havana’s National about, because at the time there was a harmonies, chants and the use of to study the language, vocabulary and My “New Throned King” project is the When I came to this country I met and School for the Arts (ENA) at nineteen, stigma associated with African cultural specific composition techniques. I see styles of those who preceded you in any result of my ongoing research on the Arará toured with the saxophonist Steve Coleman, I began touring and playing with the traditions. composition as an independent art form genre in order to achieve mastery of your tradition, and is a good example of how whose musical trajectory inspired me to famous “nueva trova” singer and composer I am conscious of being Afro-Cuban, within music, which requires focused instrument as well as the theoretical and I marry African and jazz traditions and continue to look back into my own culture Silvio Rodriguez. because in Cuba it’s difficult to escape study in order to learn both the acoustic acoustic foundations of music. Only then contemporary aesthetics. and rethink spirituality in the context of I formed my first jazz group, Columna that fact. Racism is present in the general principles behind the music as well as the can you start getting ready to make your “Okónkolo,” a project with the Afro-Cuban music and American jazz as B, in the 90s and began playing in the culture, but since my parents never spoke composition process within the western own musical contributions and craft your Bohemian Trio, is a unique opportunity I teach, play and make my contribution clubs in Havana. In 1993 a board about race in a divisive way at home, and classical musical tradition and the jazz personal sound and style. The goal is to to grow and expand on my classical music to the current musical conversation. member of the Stanford Jazz Workshop given that schools in Cuba are racially canon. I believe this is where the legacy train our mind and senses to quickly training through the chamber music heard my group and made it possible for mixed, that never got in the way of of creative musicians resides, and it is react in any given musical circumstance format. The trio’s repertoire focuses on Yosvany Terry is a senior lecturer on me to travel to Stanford University in 1995 learning music. also where we reflect and explore the or situation. Improvisation is a form of composers from the Americas—North and music at Harvard and director of the to play and teach in the United States. Most Cuban people don’t see music in boundaries of music. composition that happens in real time in South—to reflect the multitude of musical Harvard Jazz Band.

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Negra/Anger

By ÁLVARO RESTREPO

NINA SIMONE ONCE SAID THAT HER LIFE HAD BEEN A CONSTANT STRUGGLE BETWEEN BLACKS AND Álvaro Restrepo is a Colom- whites...and that she had finally found her balance between the black and white keys of bian dancer, choreographer her piano. This is the core message of my piece NEGRA/ANGER, for 32 dancers, dedicated and teacher. He is the found- to Dr. Nina Simone and to the great poet and statesman from Martinique, Aimé Césaire... er/director of EL COLEGIO Both these great artists struggled through their art and throughout their lives to convey DEL CUERPO in Cartagena a message for human dignity, against any form of exclusion or discrimination. NEGRA/ The dance group El Colegio del de Indias, Colombia. Restrepo ANGER was born as a corporeal poem to denounce racism in one of the most racist cities in Cuerpo performs Álvaro Restrepo’s is also a frequent interna- piece NEGRA/Anger dedicated to Nina the world: Cartagena de Indias in present-day Colombia, main port of entrance of African tional guest teacher and Simone and Aime Césaire in Bogotá slaves during the brutal Spanish colonial era in Latin America. The genocide of indigenous and Cali, Colombia. lecturer in universities and people and of the kidnapped Africans brought as beasts to the Americas is a wound that cultural institutions as well continues to bleed. When we see what is still happening in the world, in the United States as a columnist for various (white supremacy in the Trump era) and in other corners of our planet, we realize that the Colombian newspapers and human race has still not understood that cultural, ethnic, political, racial, religious, sexual, international magazines. biological diversity is the main patrimony and wealth of our species.

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and established Palenque. As Colombian La Candela Viva anthropologist Nina S. de Friedemann asserted in one of the first cultural stud- Igniting Musical Connections in ies of Palenque, Ma Ngombe: guerreros y ganaderos in Palenque (1979), the name Palenque de San Basilio, Colombia Benkos Bioho has come to symbolize the spirit of rebellion. By REBECCA KENNEDY DE LORENZINI Due to its maroon community heritage, Palenque has traditionally been portrayed in terms of its relative isolation and insu- THE DRUM BEAT IS THE PULSE OF PALENQUE DE SAN BASILIO; larity. Its separation from mainstream it is central to birth, death, marriage and other cele- Colombian culture and preservation of brations. In this Colombian town, drumming is about long-held traditions are celebrated locally, communion and connection: with the ancestors, spirit- nationally, and more recently, internation- energies, dancers and singers. Rafael Cassiani Cassiani, ally. UNESCO named the town a site of one of the town’s most legendary musicians, affirms this Intangible Cultural Heritage of Human- strong connection. He is in the patio of his home, sitting ity in 2010. Yet Palenqueros have long atop his marímbula, a rectangular box instrument with contributed to Colombian society more metal keys that he explains came to Palenque from Cuba. broadly; music—as well as sports (it is the Smiling, he eagerly awaits guests to whom he will explain birthplace of three world champion box- the significance of music in his life and the living history ers)—has been an essential conduit of con- that he embodies. nection. In the following three examples, I am one such guest, part of a tourist group of profes- Palenque’s musical engagement in a wider, sors and scholars of Latin America who are taking an African diasporic community is visible. I organized tour of Palenque (also called San Basilio de follow the lead of historian Kim Butler, Palenque), said to be the oldest surviving free community who claims that the unique relationships established by runaway slaves in the Americas. It was forged between members of the African founded in the early 17th century by enslaved peoples diaspora and their communities, includ- who fled from Cartagena de Indias, one of the largest ing across generations, are a fundamental slave entrepots in Spanish America. Our tour, like many aspect of the diasporic experience and pro- tours here, is organized with the close cooperation of Top, Totó la momposina cess. The first is an example of outsiders Middle photo, Kombilesa Mi, community members. One of them met us in Cartagena, coming in, the last two represent moments Bottom, Sexteto Tabalá Album sharing the history of Palenque with us en route to the of Palenqueros reaching out, bringing cover. town. By the time we arrived, we had learned of the social their music to wider national and inter- structures, local agriculture, religion, the Bantú-derived national audiences. Palenquero language and the importance of musical Ha llegado el habanero, Ha llegado el heritage. palenquero a rich musical tradition that We stepped down from our tour bus into the central —from “Chí Chí Maní,” Totó la mom- has been relatively untouched, plaza of the town, dominated by a tall statue of Ben- posina untainted, and more “African” kos Bioho, the runaway slave warrior who founded the The Sexteto Tabalá celebrated ninety than other musical styles. Yet community. The statue is a reminder of the long his- years of creating music this year. Mem- the Palenque Sextetos were the tory of black resistance in Colombia and the liberation bers have come and gone from the group, result of intercultural collabo- achieved by Bioho. His power and strength are evident but Rafael Cassiani has been one of the ration. in his posture and expression, rising out of the column most consistent across the decades. He Cuban sugar workers ar- that lifts the statue into the air far above human height. joined the group as a child in the 1930s. rived from the island in the first His hands, the right lifting beyond his body, show where When he spoke to our tour group about decade of the 20th century to chains were around the wrists. Bioho, known as Domin- the Sexteto’s history, he repeatedly em- work in the Central Colombia met Palenqueros who worked in the mill. go in the Americas, was said to be an African king who phasized how influential Cuban culture Sugar Mill, located in Sincerín on the Their proximity fostered a cultural ex- came from the Bioho region of what is today Guinea- has been to the group. This is surprising, Canal del Dique near Mahates. Some of change that resulted in Palenque’s adop- Bissau. He fled Spanish colonial slavery with his family, given that Palenque is understood to have these workers settled in Palenque; others tion of Cuban son, a musical style based Benkos Bioho statue in the central square of Palenque de San Basilio, Colombia.

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in African-derived rhythms and the use back to Cuba, performing in La Habana Márquez in 1982. In that moment, Batata group claims that the new music is helping of the marímbula; the instrument upon and Santiago de Cuba, where Cassiani was III’s Caribbean coastal music rhythms rep- to keep the younger children of Palenque which Rafael Cassiani was sitting when questioned about the use of the marím- resented his nation on the international interested in the traditional language and I visited his home. Palenqueros added bula and the history of the original Sexteto stage. His legacy continues to draw out- heritage. instruments to the Cuban son, result- Habanero. Cassiani generously shares his side attention to his native Palenque. Children are a focal point of the “Pun- ing in the identifiable Sexteto sound of historical memory of Cuban and Colom- to” music video which celebrates Palenque the timba, claves, guacharaca, maracas, bian diasporic connections. KOMBILESA MI AND RAP identity in terms of “musicalidad, ances- tumbadora and bongo. The group incor- FOLCLÓRICO PALENQUERO (RFP) tralidad, lucha y libertad.” As local support porated elements of other coastal musical BATATA TOCA TU TAMBOR In conversation with the older genera- grows for the group, so does national and traditions such as bullerenge, porro and from “Tu Tambor,” Totó la Momposina tions who offer invaluable leadership and international attention. They have record- the funerary music of the Bantú religion Totó la Momposina begins one of her musical knowledge, the next generation of ed their songs in the Casa de la Cultura in of Palenque, the lumbalú. most celebrated songs with the crisp, Palenquero musicians has found its own Palenque that was rehabilitated with the By 1930, Cassiani’s uncle, Martín confident command: “Entra la tambora.” voice through incorporating rap and hip support of the Colombian Minister of Cul- “Hombrón” Cassiani, had created El Sex- A beat begins, but not to her liking: “No hop elements learned from the internet ture, Mariana Garcés Córdoba, in 2015. teto Habanero inspired by El Sexteto señor.” A second attempt, and, “Eso, así and musicians in Venezuela. Kombilesa With these first recordings, their mu- Nacional de Cuba that immigrated to the e’.” “Palma!” Drums, the conduit of spiri- Mi is one such group that formed in 2011 sic has gained the attention of Palenque region around 1920. The first members tual and physical energy in Afro-Colom- and coined its own musical genre: rap Records in Bogotá, improving access to of El Sexteto Habanero also included two bian culture, begin “La Candela Viva,” and folklórico palenquero (RFP). Their name wider audiences. The group was recently other uncles of Rafael Cassiani, Federico Totó’s rich, powerful and lofty vocals bring is Palenquero for “my friends” and their included in a project led by Carlos Vives Cassiani Cáceres and Pedro Cañata, who in the melody. The song, originally record- songs are sung in both Palenquero and to promote ethnic and racial diversity in worked at Central Colombia. Eustiquio ed on Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records Spanish. Their catchy, playful and reflec- Colombia. For this effort, Grammy-award- Arrieta was also an original member of in 1991, has recently been re-released on tive music is based in traditional styles winning Vives was named an “Ambassador the group, along with Pantaleón Salgado, a the album “Tambolero” (2015). Afro-Co- with new takes on the foundational con- of Inclusion” by USAID. Increasing inter- relative of Batata, one of Colombia’s most lombian musical styles of lumbalú, ma- cept of freedom established by Benkos national acclaim will undoubtedly grow revered sacred drummers. The sugar mill pale, and bullerengue, are all included on Bioho. Group member Andris Padilla Ju- for the group. closed in 1952, and eventually Cassiani’s the album: they have survived and shifted lio (Afro Neto) stated to Vice, “el hip hop For his part, Rafael Cassiani has wel- relatives moved to other locations on the across the centuries, and are intimately como tal es un movimiento de resistencia, comed the new musical styles as he wel- comed our group of scholars into his home. coast. Cassiani carried on their legacy, knit into the cultural fabric of Colom- de lucha,” describing hip hop as a resis- He affectionately shares his talent, memo- changing the group’s name to El Sexteto bia’s Atlantic coast. Palenque symbolizes tance movement. It seems a natural fit in ries, and intergenerational wisdom that Tabalá in 1980 after a friend suggested that culture, and the album is a homage Palenque. he has accumulated across the years. The that the name “Tabalá” (meaning “war to Batata III, one of the most celebrated “Ma Kuagro,” one of the group’s most female voice of Kombilesa Mi, Keila Re- drums”) was more fitting than the honor- drummers from the town. popular and well-received songs, is bright, gina Miranda Pérez (KRMP), was trained ific “Habanero.” Paulino Salgado Valdez, Batata III, was cheerful, and full of pride. It explicitly cel- by Cassiani, and the group recorded a ver- El Sexteto Tabalá played locally until born in 1927 to Manuel Salgado Batata II ebrates reaching out to the world and back sion of the iconic “Esta tierra no es mía” 1992 when it left the country for the first and Luz María Valdez La Luz—part of toward the traditions of Palenque. It ends with El Sexteto Tabalá. According to Guill- time to play in Washington, DC. Four a long lineage of drummers who play el with the call: “Oye Oliver!/para todo’ lo’ ermo Camacho’s El Espectador article of years later, Lucas Silva, a Colombian who pechiche, a tall drum used in the funerary kuagro’ de Palenque y del mundo/duro!/ July 2017, Cassiani tells the members of had spent some time in France, recorded music of Palenque. In 1954, dancer Delia pura identidad/patrimonio/diaspora af- Kombilesa Mi, “No hay que dejar de soñar the group on his Palenque Records label Zapata Olivella convinced Batata to come ricana/escucha Benko!...Pura tradición!” to Bogotá to play these lumbalus in the Oliver likely refers to Oliver Keen, an Eng- y persistir en lo que se cree.” These dreams with Radio Francia. Notable songs such capital city and at 20 years of age he trav- lish collaborator with the group. Kuagros and beliefs resonate with Palenque’s past, as “El Toche y La Cotorra” and “Esta tierra eled to other cities in Colombia including are socialization groups in Palenque, but present, and future; inextricably tied to no es mía” were included in the record- Medellín. On his travels he met Totó la the lyrics extend that tradition “to the those who have collaborated along the way. ings that led to international recognition. Momposina and played with her on her world” and invoke the African diaspora Alfonso Múnera, the Colombian Ambas- extensive national and international tours. more broadly. The song ends with a call Rebecca Kennedy de Lorenzini is a sador to Jamaica, brought the group to He wrote some of her most famous songs, for all of those who would live by the rebel- Lecturer on History & Literature at Kingston; subsequent invitations included “La Verdolaga,” “La Ceiba,” and “La Can- lious spirit of freedom to “listen to Benko.” Harvard University. She is a cultural Panama and Ecuador. The group has since dela Viva.” He accompanied her to play in While some community members have historian who specializes in the African traveled to the United States, England, Stockholm at the Nobel Prize Ceremony criticized the use of hip-hop as an un- diaspora in the Americas. See scholar- Spain, Denmark, Argentina and Canada. of Colombian author Gabriel García welcome foreign cultural expression, the harvard.edu/kennedylorenzini In 2011, the group brought their music

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Multi-Faith Lives of Brazilian Congadeiros and Umbandistas Dissertation Advice from an Old Black Slave Spirit By GENEVIEVE E. V. DEMPSEY

I STOOD OUTSIDE OF THE SMALL CHAPEL, of the rosary.” Soon the song came to an pointing my video camera through the end, signaling the devotees’ preparedness grates of the window. Inside, the devotees for the spiritual journey to begin. of the religious group Moçambique The singing and drumming were Thirteenth of May of Our Lady of the directed toward the altar. To an outsider, Rosary drummed and sang to beseech the statues of Catholic saints, caboclos divine protection from Our Lady of the (indigenous Brazilians), pretos velhos (old Rosary and black saints. The enchantment black slaves), boiadeiros (cowboys), and that they wove with their singing marujos or marinheiros (sailors) that vied constituted the ceremonial preparations for space on the altar might look like an for a festival of Congado, a syncretic Afro- aesthetics of hodgepodge. But to devotees, Brazilian ritual of popular Catholicism. the cascading layers of figures arranged on While the camera captured the sounds the altar signaled reconciliation between that emanated from the chapel, I briefly Opposite page, Black and white saints different sacred traditions originating from turned my gaze toward the adjacent adorn the altar. Above: Renata da Silva with African diaspora religions and Roman image of Our Lady of the Rosary. hills, observing the urban patchwork of Catholicism. It is not that worshipers of precariously built, low-income housing so African-derived religions did not suffer characteristic of Belo Horizonte, the capital particular song that requested intercession erasure, oppression, and exploitation at the of Minas Gerais, and other megacities of from Our Lady of the Rosary to prepare hands of Portuguese Catholic authorities, Brazil. their minds and bodies for the spiritual but that the encounter between different Dona Isabel Cassimiro das Dores forces that they would encounter religious traditions compelled worshipers Gasparino, the group’s leader and throughout the festival. Using the rhythmic to be resourceful and reconciliatory in their Congado queen—a royal title used to pattern known as serra abaixo, the drums forging of a New World tradition. indicate hierarchy among these musicians (tambores) played a slow-tempo call-and- Soon after the Congado festival, Dona (Congadeiros) since the 17th century in response exchange, while captain Ricardo Isabel, both a Congado queen and a mãe- Brazil—had granted me permission to Cassimiro das Dores Gasparino, a day de-santo (mother-of-divinity) in Umbanda, film the ritual preparations in the chapel as laborer in his mid-forties and son of Dona invited me to a session at the chapel, a part of my dissertation fieldwork. Worried Isabel, sang, “I ask for permission from structure that functions dually as a place that my recording might interrupt the my mother, the woman of the rosary.” The of popular Catholicism and Umbanda. In ceremony, I tried to make my ethnographic other Congadeiros answered verbatim, fact, while the chapel serves as a place of presence, despite a hardly surreptitious stretching each word across a simple worship for popular Catholic rituals on the video camera, camera, and notebook, melody as several members continued weekends, it is re-purposed in Umbanda as incognito as possible. Yet soon after to drum. Ricardo Cassimiro then placed sessões or giras (healing and consultation I started to document the ritual, senior his hand in the water vessel on the altar ceremonies) on Monday, Wednesday, and member of the group Sebastião Corrêa and proceeded to wash the sacred batons, Friday evenings. The chapel, moreover, is Braga led me into the chapel, motioning symbols of leadership and sacrality, referred to as the terreiro (temple) during for me to stand on a couch by the back with the sacred water. The Congadeiros Umbanda. Umbanda, a syncretic Brazilian wall. Despite my concerns about alighting continued to play the drums, in addition to religion focused on spirit possession, blends upon the furniture, I quickly realized the the patangome, a shaker whose swooshing African diaspora religions with Roman new vantage point provided a fine sight sound derives from the movement of black Catholicism, Amerindian shamanism, and line for filming. seeds within welded automobile hubcaps, Spiritism, a spiritualistic philosophy begun The Congadeiros began the morning as they intermittently sang, “I ask for by a French educator known as Allan Kardec rituals that August day in 2014 with a permission from my mother, the woman who postulated that immortal spirits take

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on human form in various incarnations to the ambiguity within which Catholic statue of Saint George, which is also In both Umbanda and Congado, She offered to stay and translate the writing process as I strove to intertwine my achieve moral and intellectual edification. and Umbanda statues signify speaks to Ogum. practitioners see music as a mystical language of the old slave spirit into modern observations with worshipers’ performative Umbandistas engage in spirit possession the creative ways in which practitioners conduit that enables them to perform Portuguese. During the transatlantic slave voices. to call immortal deities (orixás) and spirits have made their religious cosmologies AG: You speak of Saint George and a kind of spiritual work that brings trade, close to six million Africans were Strikingly, what seemed prima facie from the astral plane into their bodies for converge over the centuries. What is Ogum. This is what happens. Here prosperity to the body and mind. Just as forcibly brought to Brazil. Although the like straightforward dissertation advice healing and spiritual guidance. Although more, throughout my fieldwork, I came we have both a house of Congado and Congadeiros use sacred song and prayer law of 7 November 1831 abolished the from Father Joaquim was really his clarion Umbanda did not coalesce among to understand that while Umbanda and a house of Umbanda. There is this to ask for blessings from Our Lady of the maritime slave trade and freed the African call for the decolonization of dissertation disenfranchised Afro-Brazilian slave Congado are embodied simultaneously, mixture. There is this reality. But in Rosary, these same practitioners during who were illegally imported to Brazil, the writing. Indeed, Father Joaquim’s advice descendants as a de facto religion until they are expressed serially. In other words, Congado, we don’t say that Saint George Umbanda sessions use songs (pontos), slave trade continued unabated both across favored the exercise of agency by devotees. the 1920s in Rio de Janeiro, it is generally devotees carry out religiously pluralistic is Ogum. We say Saint George. There dance, and prayer to call spirits of Caboclos the Middle Passage and within Brazil until In reflecting upon this, I realized just how accepted that devotees began practicing traditions, but implement individual is separation. When it is a festival of (Indigenous Brazilians), Pretos Velhos (Old Princess Isabel abolished slavery in Brazil much a dispossessed historical figure, Umbanda, it isn’t Saint George, it’s Black Slaves), Crianças/Erês (Children), by dictum in 1888. Slaves primarily came representing in bodily form Brazil’s Ogum. Each thing in its own place. Baianos (People from the Bahia State), from vast expanses of the west coast of negation of Afro-Brazilians’ humanity There is separation. One doesn’t mix Boiadeiros (cowboys), Marujos or Africa, primarily being drawn from Bantu and humanness during slavery, could still one thing with another. Marinheiros (Sailors), and Exús and cultural areas of West Central Africa serve as a preeminent symbol of what it Pombas-Giras (male and female entities (present-day Angola, the Democratic looks like to work toward negating the GD: But, for example, why have a loosely associated with the devil) from Republic of the Congo, and Gabon) and inequalities of Afro-Brazilians in the here separation if a saint is the two things? celestial heights to inhabit their bodies and the Yoruba, Ewe, and Fon cultural areas of and now. Hence, this old slave spirit, rather instantiate healing and resolve problems. West Africa (present-day Guinea, Nigeria, than being the antithesis of modernity, AG: But here is the question. When Mediums (médiuns) and initiates (filhos- Togo, and Benin (Dahomey)). Given the became the mobilizer of it. it is praise in honor of the rosary, it is de-santo, literally children-of-saint) desire diversity of peoples who were trafficked My encounter with Father Joaquim praise in honor of the rosary. When to be possessed by the spirits of these in the Luso-Brazilian slave trade, it is informs my larger thinking about how it is something from Umbanda, it is archetypal figures because in coming difficult to speak of a homogenous African practitioners see Congado and Umbanda Umbanda. It is not the same time. to serve as guias (guides), they aid and population in Brazil. Nonetheless, one as individual cogs that form a unified wheel Coffee is coffee, milk is milk. Combine counsel devotees in fixing dilemmas and can speak of the many convergences that rotating toward redemption. Although the two, it is café com leite. It is neither appeasing orixás. marked enslaved Africans’ experiences in an agenda of racial empowerment is not café nor milk, it is coffee with milk— The first time that I attended an Brazil: dispossession, hunger and violence. always explicit in Congado and Umbanda, café com leite. This is why there is a Umbanda ceremony, I observed one The encounter with Father Joaquim many communities work toward socio- separation. (Antônio Cassimiro das devotee become possessed by a spirit. made me realize that this figure was not spiritual justice by making legible their Dores Gasparino 2014) Suddenly, his body convulsed. Growing a wild extremity, but rather a purposeful performances as healing, devotion, and hunched, he hobbled about as if crippled archetype who embodied the history of a social commentary. In the end, the advice With a simple metaphor of coffee with by senility. He beckoned for someone to disenfranchised people whose resilience from Father Joaquim was not merely about milk, Antônio illuminated how Afro- retrieve a cane that stood in the corner was as sacrosanct as their religious solving an ephemeral, personal problem. Congado group member sing and play drums and shakers to celebrate their devotion to Our Brazilian worshipers often lead religiously of the chapel, all the while grunting and practices. Father Joaquim was one of many For myself and others who are willing to Lady of the Rosary. pluralistic lives, finding harmony in sputtering. With labored movements, he old slave spirits who returned perpetually listen, the guidance from an old black praising Catholic saints on one day of the made his way over to a small, white bench. in human form to teach followers about slave spirit was meant to render audible Umbanda in an inchoate form in Brazil as rituals on different days of the week, in week and worshiping African orixás and Dona Isabel brought me to sit face-to- the struggle, both past and present, against devotees’ present-day struggles to create early as the 19th century. addition to attributing different meanings incorporating spirits on another day. He face with the possessed medium so that those who worked and continue to work to lasting racial equality in a longstanding Broadly speaking, Catholicism was not to them. Thus, while worshipers cognitively explained how the individual religious I might consult him on any matters of invalidate their humanity. history of alterity. only the official religion of Brazil from the and corporeally embody distinct religions components troped as coffee and milk consternation. Broadly speaking, spirits in At the time that I conducted fieldwork, time the Portuguese colonized Brazil in at the same time, rituals must be expressed must run separately for musico-religious Umbanda serve less as oracular mediums I was formulating a dissertation about Genevieve E. V. Dempsey is the 2017- 1500 until 1889 when the establishment in distinctly temporal and symbolic ways. pluralism to work. Each component works who tell the future and more as counselors the music of devotee’s struggle for social 18 Mark Claster Mamolen Fellow at of the republic rendered church and The following exchange with Antônio individually to fulfill the overarching goal offering advice on personal obstacles. As justice via African-and European- Harvard’s Hutchins Center for African state formally separated, but Portuguese Cassimiro das Dores Gasparino, a of encouraging supernatural deities to I sat in front of him, his eyes remained derived sacred ritual in wider contexts of and African American Research. An eth- authorities prohibited African and African security guard in his late forties and intervene in their everyday lives. Indeed, closed. He only moved to puff on a pipe. racism and exclusion. When it came to nomusicologist and musician, Dempsey diaspora religions in toto. Yet, Africans another of Dona Isabel’s sons, helped me they believe each to contribute uniquely And then, he spoke, breaking the profound turning the participant-observation and specializes in the sacred musics of Brazil. and Afrodescendant peoples (slave, to understand that while both religions toward building matrices of social, silence between us. Despite being fluent interviews of fieldwork into a dissertation, Her ethnographic and archival field- free, and freed) creatively maneuvered coalesce to form a sacred totality in economic and sacred support in the face in Portuguese, I could hardly understand the process proved daunting. So, I asked work among communities that practice around these proscriptions by associating their lives, it is a collective whole that is of societal exclusion and affliction. Hence, a word. Father Joaquim, “How do I make sense African-and European-derived syncretic Catholic saints with African deities. For separately articulated. We were talking in religious boundary separation and crossing Dona Isabel whispered to me that the of the fieldwork and then turn it into a traditions of Congado, Candomblé, and example, Ogum, the deity of iron and war the chapel when I motioned toward the diversify and enrich devotees’ toolkit as medium embodied the preto velho Father dissertation?” Resolute, he answered, Umbanda articulate with broader inter- in Umbanda became synonymous with the altar: they pursue self-empowerment, social Joaquim, so his Portuguese was that of “Let the devotees speak.” This counsel disciplinary conversations about ritual, Catholic symbol of Saint George. Hence, GD: There, on the altar, you have a justice, and healing in the material world. pre-emancipation Brazil (1500-1888). became a guiding force in the dissertation race, class, gender, and sexuality.

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In the Footsteps of La Rebambaramba

Afro-Latino Dance, Identity and Cultural Diplomacy By BELÉN VEGA PICHACO

TRACING THE JOURNEY OF AMADEO ROLDÁN’S died suddenly. Work had just been started Nations in Paris to find out more about this Afro-Cuban ballet La Rebambaramba to adapt the score for the stage. Both the annual festival. Practically forgotten today, (1928) I arrived in Paris. Yes, in Paris, breakup and the death could be considered this gathering had a great importance France... both the author of the original unfortunate “accidents” that greatly from its foundation in 1957 until the libretto, the Cuban writer and musicologist delayed the production. mid-1960s, because of the high degree Alejo Carpentier, and the—also Cuban— In 1933, Cuban playwright Luis of international participation. Theater, choreographer Ramiro Guerra insisted in A. Baralt failed in an attempt to lyric and dance companies from all over recalling the ballet’s 1961 staging at the collaborate with Roldán himself on a the world attended the yearly festival that Théâtre des Nations (Theater of Nations) stage performance because of the chaos took place there. International artistic in Paris. in the aftermath of the fall of Gerardo companies competed there in a kind of However, it was not the geographical Machado’s dictatorship in Cuba. Finally, “Performing Arts’ Olympics”—as the Afro-Cuban ballet—composed for Afro- amateur movement (movimiento daily life of blacks in the country.” Were distance—the almost 5,000 miles from the choreographic starting point of the press baptized it—during the Cold War. Cuban percussion instruments (güiro, de aficionados) promoted by Castro’s all Cubans black? In the light of the 1961 Havana to Paris— that was unusual. Paris, ballet—the dancing of conga and lucumi Think, for a moment, about the Theater marímbula, chequeré, quijada, etc.). regime contributed to accentuate this show, one might conclude that was the the mecca of the international artistic troupes (comparsas)—could hardly have of Nations as we do the sports Olympics, The folkloric dances, all of African popular imprint. Not surprising the case. And that Cuban people could even avant-garde in the first half of the 20th been carried out before 1959: mixing black in which each country presents its best descent, were introduced by Cuban headline of L’Humanité newspaper be considered as African people, given the century, had long ago welcomed the music dancers with the white ballerinas of the athletes not only to get the most Gold National Theater director, Isabel declared: “The voice of an entire people.” press release from the Theater of Nations of Afro-Cubanist composers Amadeo elitist Pro-Arte Musical Society would medals (unequivocal display of power), Monal (by the way, a Harvard graduate, However, the French Communist in which it linked the “most authentic Roldán and Alejandro García Caturla, have been a scandal. but also to show off their national «values» according to the French press), as what newspaper contradicted itself (and folklore” of the Caribbean island with with the help of Carpentier, a resident of In the late 1950s, the choreographer such as strength, resistance and control— “the Cuban people dance in their daily Monal’s statement) when it explained that that of other African countries (Niger, the French capital from 1928 to 1939. The Alberto Alonso, one of the three founders attributes that in this political context took life.” Their performance by a group of these folkloric dances, “rumba, columbia Madagascar and South Africa) attending orchestral version of La Rebambaramba— of the Cuban National Ballet (together on a metaphorical meaning. Analyzing the popular dancers trained as part of the and guaguancó, lead to the heart of the the Festival. without choreography—had been with his brother Fernando and his sister- presence of La Rebambaramba—as well performed at the Straram Concerts in in-law Alicia), prepared a show for as the other works presented by Cuba in Paris (1931) with a great success. Cuban television. From the aesthetics 1961 and 1964—at the Theater of Nations, The striking feature was not the and staging points of view, that kind of may perhaps bring us closer to an answer. geographical but the temporal remoteness. performance is unsatisfactory. For one For its first appearance at the Theater More than three decades had passed from thing, video montage imposes its own of Nations, Cuba chose a show that the creation of the score to its staging narrative rules and also the viewer’s alternated three pieces of modern dance (Roldán, who died in 1939, was never vision is limited to the camera’s “eye.” by Ramiro Guerra (Suite Yoruba, La able to see it). I wondered why had it However, the media and social impact Rebambaramba and Rítmicas) with not been danced before. And why was of that television performance of La folkloric dances. Despite the apparent lack the Afro-Cuban ballet recovered in the Rebambaramba—possibly greater than of cohesion of the spectacle, one element early years of the Cuban Revolution? The any other in a Cuban theater, especially gave it unity: the recurrence of the theme answer to the first question was offered by before 1959—should not be underrated. of Cuba’s African heritage. Guerra’s Carpentier himself in Trayectoria de una Can we then make a link between the choreographies turned to the Afro- partitura (The Trajectory of a Score) in recovery of La Rebambaramba and Cuban pantheon (the gods or orishas of which he explained La Rebambaramba’s the Revolution ideology by taking into Yoruba santeria) in Suite Yoruba and to an “full-of-accidents-history.” The breakup account this television performance episode of colonial life when African slaves of an interested U.S. dance company during Batista’s dictatorship? To try to grouped in comparsas enjoyed “freedom” spearheaded by Ruth St. Denis and Ted answer this question, I invite you to join to perform their songs and dances on Shawn, whose romantic relationship also me on my journey in the footsteps of La the eve of Three Kings Day (January fell apart, delayed a possible performance. Rebambaramba. 6) in La Rebambaramba. In the third Also the businessman Sergei Diaghilev, Roldán, Carpentier, Guerra... they all choreography, Guerra recovered another soul of the Ballets Russes, and enthusiastic led me, last fall, to the archives that hold of Amadeo Roldán’s most emblematic about the production of the Cuban show, the historical papers of the Theater of works—along with the aforementioned The Cuban National Theater performs folkloric dances in Paris.

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The coincidence of Cuban participation in the Theater of Nations, Black Aesthetics and Afro-Latinx Hip Hop in April 1961, with the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba delayed the “I’m an African” By SUJATHA FERNANDES arrival of part of the dance company and reduced its performance to only one of the five scheduled days. However, it was THE U.S. EMCEES FROM THE GROUP DEAD PREZ build antennas from wire coat hangers and powerful anti-imperialist propaganda, rapped, “I’m an African, I’m an African,” in dangle his radio out the window, “crazy as the French press commented on this front of a crowd of thousands at the 1999 to get the 99.” On episodes of the music- «unexpected consequence» for culture, Cuban hip hop festival. The amphitheatre dance television program Soul Train and was looking forward to the arrival resounded with the thundering response on television from Miami, Alexey saw of the missing Cuban dancers. It also Opposite news of the Cuban audience chanting back the b-boying for the first time. He copied the strengthened the diplomatic ties with the clipping cap- words. It was Pan-Africanism in motion. steps and then showed them to the kids U.S.S.R. as Theater Company Vakhtangov tion here goes about the 5 The politics didn’t always translate, in the neighborhood. Alexey remembered from Moscow publicly proclaimed the pices of art however. Unaware of the implications of the gatherings in the El Quijote park. Kids solidarity and support of the Soviet people that are here what he was about to do, rapper M-1 pulled would form a circle, and in the center the to their Cuban counterparts. After its out a dollar bill on stage, and began to burn b-boys would polish the concrete with their Paris show, Guerra’s Modern Dance it with a cigarette lighter, an act considered back spins and windmills, while others Company continued its route towards Magia and Alexey MC’s from the Cuban illegal and a defacement of property in the group “Obsesion,” Regla, Havana. 2006. broke into a beatbox or rhymed. the Eastern Bloc area: the German United States. “Because of this dollar, the Julio Cardenas, known as El Hip Democratic Republic, Poland and, of children in my country are dying for crack, Hop Kid, was an emcee from the Alamar course, the Soviet Union. us to place in a broader context Ramiro or for drugs, or for bling bling.” housing projects, just outside of Havana. In 1964, Cuba returned to the Theater Guerra’s recovery of La Rebambaramba The audience became furious. How Growing up in the Julio was raised by his mother in the of Nations, but—excluding modern and other works with music by Roldán could he be burning a precious dollar bill? neighboring sector of Guanabacoa. As a dance on this occasion—it featured the (Mulato after Tres pequeños poemas, let us recall Fidel’s speech at a later ‘80s, the Cuban rapper “Oye, no, gimme that dollar, I can buy kid, he would come rushing home from newly founded Conjunto Folklórico 1926; the anti-imperialist ballet El date (Guinea, 1976) where, in listing some bread, or some french fries,” people Alexey from the rap duo school to watch the b-boys “retandose”— Nacional (National Folkloric Ensemble) milagro de Anaquillé, 1929/1931 and the reasons for his help to the Angolan in the audience cried out. Then he began battling—and “tirando cartones”—laying which presented a program of congo and the aforementioned Rítmicas, 1930) people, he identified Cuba as a “Latin Obsesión was attracted to burn a ten dollar bill. “Nooooo! Stop!,” out the cardboard strip—on the back patio yoruba dances. The ensemble group once in the early years of the Revolution. As African people.” screamed the audience. “What is that crazy by the raw energy and of his building. They watched bootleg again conveniently omitted the Hispanic Fidel Castro tried to bring dance closer But did not the aforementioned dance guy doing? I could feed my whole family for copies of the hip hop filmsBeat Street, Fast or European roots of Cuba’s folklore (a to the “Cuban people” by making them performances at the Theater of Nations soul of the hip hop music a month with that.” One member of the U.S. Forward, Breakin’ and copied the moves. chauvinist French critic denounced the the creators—regardless of their race— constitute a more powerful diplomatic delegation, Raquel Rivera, was translating, he heard on 99 Jams Julio moved to Alamar in the 1980s at the absence of the contradanza without saying of export-quality professional shows, tool than words, by embodying the explaining to the baffled audience that in age of fifteen, where he became caught up a single word about the punto cubano or Guerra followed anti-racist policies in “Latin-African” identity while disguising FM, broadcasting from the United States black people are dying in the hip hop movement that was taking zapateo, among other music and dance his company, such as the hiring of “10 it, at the same time, as a simple because of the dollar bill. “But here in ninety miles away in the black and working class community by genres connected to Spanish colonialism). White, 10 Black and 10 Mulatto dancers,” choreographic spectacle? Cuba,” shouted one person, half-seriously, storm. He would go to the moños, or block The 1964 Cuban participation had also an a quota that paradoxically emphasized Miami. “people are dying of hunger.” parties where people rapped and djayed. important propaganda factor: the picture segregation. Belén Vega Pichaco, a Fall 2017 Incidents like these lead me to wonder: Julio went on to technical college to do of Ernesto Che Guevara linking arms with Undoubtedly, one of the readings that both through the commodification of hip Afro-Latin American Research Fellow Can hip hop—a subculture that includes a degree in civil construction, graduating at one of the black dancers and the director could be extracted from the emphasis on hop culture and what the dance scholar at the W.E. B. Dubois Research Insti- rapping, d-jaying, beat-making, and the height of the economic crisis of Cuba’s of the company, made headlines in French Afro-Cuban roots during the early years Halifu Osumare calls an Africanist aesthetic tute at Harvard’s Hutchins Center, is a graffiti writing and a dance form known as “special period.” There were no jobs so he newspapers, so the performance of the of the Revolution would lead, precisely, that includes complex rhythmic timing, DRCLAS Graduate Student Associate. b-boying—forge political alliances between went to work with his grandfather in the National Folkloric Ensemble and the to an image of racial integration that is rhetorical strategies, and multiple layers of She is a Juan de la Cierva Post-doctoral Afro-Latinx and Afrodescendant people nearby fishery for some cash to help out his political task of Che Guevara in Algeria (a not exempt from deep contradictions. meaning. Researcher (MINECO, Spain) in Musi- across the world? Is there such a thing as a mother and to get the local authorities off meeting with Ahmed Ben Bella) became However, bearing in mind Castro’s Many emcees had their start as b-boys cology at the University of Oviedo and a global hip hop generation and could it act his back. The local police had a tendency to connected in this indirect way. Indeed, foreign policy and the “internationalist” or b-girls, as the dancers in hip hop culture member of its Research Group MUDAN- politically? harass youth, especially black youth, who following the Paris performance, the work in Africa, we cannot ignore the are called. Growing up in the ‘80s, the ZES (Music, Dance, and Cultural were not working full time. Eventually he company undertook a tour that concluded equally strong anti-colonialist message Cuban rapper Alexey from the rap duo Studies). She received her Ph.D. from the HOW HIP HOP WENT GLOBAL found a job as a bridge operator, raising precisely in that African country. launched by the representation offered by Obsesión was attracted by the raw energy University of La Rioja with a thesis on Hip hop is the contemporary expression and lowering the bridge that connected In short, the self-representation of the Cuban National Folkloric Ensemble and soul of the hip hop music he heard on “The Construction of the ‘New Music’ in of African-based dance and music that Alamar and Cojimar, to allow the ships to Cuba in the Theater of Nations as an in 1964, first in Paris and then in Algeria 99 Jams FM, broadcasting from ninety Cuba (1927-1946): from Afrocubanism empowers local youth and subverts pass through. The job was a no brainer. At Afro-Cuban people (if not African) allows (until 1962 a French colony). Likewise, to Neoclassicism.” dominant orders. Hip hop became global miles away in Miami. As a kid he would

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used instrumentation to evoke the era American rappers spoke a language of Because of the U.S. embargo against Cuba, Cuban of slavery. In their song “Mambí,” the black militancy that resonated with Cuban gentle strumming of a berimbau, a string youth. It spoke to their experiences of racial rappers lacked samplers, mixers and albums. But instrument associated with Afro-Brazilian discrimination in the special period. Young like their Bronx counterparts who developed the capoeira, and water sounds produced by the Cubans of African ancestry proudly referred traditional palo de agua give the sense of to themselves as black. Cuban emcee Sekuo sound system from abandoned car radios and being near a river or stream, which evokes Umoja from Anónimo Consejo told me, made turntable mixers from microphone mixers, the rural roots of slaves. “We had the same vision as rappers such as Paris, who was one of the first to come global hip hoppers adapted materials from their THE LATINX-AMERICAN-CUBAN to Cuba. His music drew my attention, local environment. CONNECTION because here is something from the barrio, Julio and Alexey, like other Cubans of something black. Of blacks, and made the hip hop generation, had little or no principally by blacks, which in a short time sheltered existence. It was the boredom memory of the early years of the revolution. became something very much our own, of low-paying, menial jobs and truncated They’d heard stories from their parents related to our lives here in Cuba.” The U.S. opportunities. And hip hop wasn’t just about the literacy campaign that mobilized rapper Common organized a meeting with a distraction from the void. It was a way one and a quarter million Cubans, or local rappers in which they exchanged ideas of recreating a sense of community and about the desegregation of whites-only and stories. The transnational Black August Yadira, opposite page. Dayanna, above and Zekou below. finding spaces of pleasure in the face of spaces during the 1960s. As the younger Hip Hop network brought equipment and isolation and the regimentation of life. By generation, they had benefited from the records for the Cuban rappers. of racism. packaged for the consumption of western the mid-1980s, the elements of graffiti and extension of education, housing, and health The Song “Tengo” (I Have) by the group It was not always the rap lyrics that audiences. b-boying were in decline. Rap emerged as care to black families. But they came of age Hermanos de Causa presents the resurgence created a sense of affinity between The Latinx-American-Cuban connection the central means by which hip hop culture during the crisis of the post-Soviet period, of racism in the contemporary period in U.S. black and Afro-Latinx youth. The was somewhat tenuous when subjected was packaged for global consumption. At as the revolutionary years gave way to times striking contrast to the post-revolutionary Venezuelan gangsta rappers Guerrilla Seca to the very real differences of language, this time, rap movements also began to of austerity, and racism was visible once euphoria of Afro-Cubans, who saw in the and Vagos y Maleantes were influenced by culture and history. The black militancy 7 a.m., Julio would raise the bridge and by develop in various countries. Young people again. Cuban revolution the possibilities of an end U.S. rappers like Tupac, Nas and Ludacris. of the U.S. rappers was not comparable to early afternoon when all the boats had gone rhymed on street corners, using their voices In a society where it was taboo to to racial discrimination. Borrowing the title They couldn’t understand the English the racial consciousness of Cuban rappers. through, he would sit back with his friends to make a background beat, known as a talk about race publicly, racism was the and format of a 1964 poem by celebrated lyrics, but they said that there was a certain Black Cuban identity—always expressed exchanging news about who had the latest human beat box. As more serious rap crews elephant in the room that everyone knew “flow,” a feeling associated with the music within the boundaries of an anti-colonial rap magazine from the States, and who began to develop, they realized that they existed, yet everyone pretended wasn’t that spoke to them. We can see this echoed nationalism—was not equivalent to U.S. had heard this song from the rap groups needed digital beats, which often required there. Fidel Castro had attempted to in the song “Boca del Lobo” (Mouth of blackness, shaped through the fiery battles Pharcyde or EMPD. expensive equipment. create a color-blind society, where equality the Wolf) by Vagos y Maleantes. Coming of abolition, desegregation, and civil rights. In ’96, Julio formed the group Raperos Because of the U.S. embargo against between blacks and whites would make from the poor barrios of Caracas, they felt Cubans didn’t have a civil rights movement Crazy de Alamar (RCA) along with Carlito Cuba, Cuban rappers lacked samplers, racial identifications obsolete. But while that the bleakness and despondency of the that brought a discussion of race out into “Melito,” a carpenter, and his friend Yoan. mixers and albums. But like their Bronx re-drawing the geography of Cuba’s racial music echoed the deteriorated social fabric the open. The black-white dichotomy of They started out just to amuse themselves, counterparts who developed the sound landscape, the state simultaneously closed of their lives. American race relations did not exist in without ambitions of being serious system from abandoned car radios and down Afro-Cuban clubs and the black press. But while global hip hoppers found Cuba. While in America, even “one drop” of artists. “That moment we were living made turntable mixers from microphone As racism became public once again during strong connections to U.S. hip hop, black blood categorized a person as black, was so critical, so boring,” related Julio. mixers, global hip hoppers adapted the special period—it had never really gone attempts to come together in global Cubans had a much broader spectrum “Everything was closed off and censured. materials from their local environment. away—black people were left without the alliances revealed the fractures that existed. of racial classifications—from the darker We, the youth, were doing hip hop just to do Cuba’s first hip hop DJ Ariel Fernández means to talk about it. When called on their The pain of racism may have been the skinned prietos, morenos, and negros to something, looking for a way of having fun.” improvised a set of turntables with old- racism, officials trotted out the same tired Afro-Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén, where the bridge that connected the U.S. rappers with the mixed race pardos and mulatos. The The rap scholar Tricia Rose identified school portable cassette player Walkmans line—en Cuba, no hay racismo (in Cuba, poet lists the changes that the revolution those in the diaspora. But that racism took militant stance of the American rappers this need to break the cycle of boredom and as the decks, simulating a mixer by using there is no racism). But black youth were has brought for blacks, Hermanos de different forms in each context, as the Black appealed to the Cubans, particularly alienation as one of the factors that underlay volume controls. Producers drew on a harassed by police and asked for ID. They Causa instead describe the situation for August hip hop collective encountered with its language of racial justice. But the the rise of hip hop in its birthplace, the rich heritage of Afro-Cuban music and had a harder time getting jobs in tourism young Afro-Cubans in the contemporary during their trip to Cuba. Some local categories of U.S. racial politics could not be Bronx. While Cuba presented quite specific Afro-diasporic instruments to make than their white peers. post-Soviet period: “I have a dark and rappers were bitter about the various rap superimposed onto a culture where racial conditions of economic crisis combined their beats. They recreated the rhythmic It was into this juncture that hip hop discriminated race/ I have a work day that collaborations done between visiting U.S. identity was not so clear-cut. with political restrictions, this existential pulse of hip hop with instruments like culture appeared and took root. While the demands and gives nothing.” Through hip rappers and Cuban rappers which tended to void wasn’t something peculiar to Cuba. Hip the melodic Batá drums. In the heavily black nationalism espoused by an earlier hop, Cuban rappers were reintroducing a make money for the U.S. artists but not the IS IT GLOBAL? hop was a way out of the boredom. It wasn’t Afro-Cuban-influenced eastern provinces, generation of visiting black radicals like lexicon of race and racism that had been Cubans. Cuban rappers were getting tired In 2001, Julio Cardenas left Cuba and the same boredom that kids in the suburbs Madera Limpia rapped live with an entire Marcus Garvey or Stokely Carmichael abandoned for many years because the of the one way stream of outsiders treating moved to New York City. He experienced experienced, wanting reprieve from their ensemble of Cuban instruments. Obsesión never had much appeal in Cuba, African- revolution had supposedly resolved issues their local scenes as exotic cultures to be what many rappers after him were

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to encounter: without professional Sujatha Fernandes is a professor of qualifications or credentials, without family political economy and sociology at the Compañeros En Salud: Mental Health Services in the states, he was forced to abandon University of Sydney. She is the author his music and bus tables like many other of several books, including Cuba Rep- and Gender Equality By MERCEDES AGUERREBERE GÓMEZ URQUIZA migrants in the city. Eventually he moved resent!, Who Can Stop The Drums? into the area of hip hop theatre, and with and Close to the Edge: In Search of the a grant from an arts foundation he wrote Global Hip Hop Generation. Her lat- I HAVE LIVED IN NON-INDIGENOUS suicide among men? Questions against women. The results and acted in a play called “Representa!” est book is Curated Stories: The Uses rural Chiapas in southern like these saturated my brain will inform the ability of mental with the Chicano poet Paul Flores. The and Misuses of Storytelling. She tweets at Mexico since 2013, working while I was applying for the health services provided by play explores the developing relationship @SujathaTF and her website is: www. with Compañeros En Salud Harvard Masters of Medical CES and other Partners In between them in the distinct locales of sujathafernandes.com (CES)—a Harvard affiliated Sciences in Global Health Health sites, to deliver gender- Havana and New York City. Paul is finishing non-profit organization Delivery. sensitive mental health services up college and using his school loans to that partnered with the Shortly after arriving in and prevent and address fund a trip to Cuba. He wants to see the Mexico’s Ministry of Health Boston, I decided to focus intimate-partner violence, country where his grandmother was born to guarantee people’s right to my thesis on violence against non-partner sexual abuse, and and reconnect to his Cuban roots. The instance, biological differences health care in Chiapas’ Sierra women and mental health alcohol use disorder. actors stand side by side, Paul in his college in the stress response, in levels Madre region. in CES’ catchment area. The Although the project is dorm planning the trip, and Julio riding a of serotonin and its receptors in Soon after starting its work project has not been easy ongoing, I am confident bus in Cuba, both of them speaking aloud the brain—a neurotransmitter in the region in 2011, CES staff for me as a physician and an that CES can address these their thoughts. Paul wants to see the Cuban closely related to depression— realized that many patients idealist. Medicine is quite abuses and their mental hip hop festival. Julio wants to perform in and effects of estrogen and came to the clinics because of straightforward compared health consequences, to work the hip hop festival. Paul wants to dance progestin—hormones found in mental health problems such with anthropology, sociology, on several fronts: assure the salsa and drink Cuban rum. Julio wants higher concentrations among as depression and anxiety. To feminism and politics: mental health program is to go to the Palacio de la Salsa and dance females (Parry and Haynes bring mental health care to disciplines I had not deeply equipped to respond to cases with a beautiful woman. The play explores 2000; Kuehner 2016). Still, marginalized communities, explored until now. There is of trauma in boys, girls, how Paul, a minority in his own country, other authors point to recent CES launched the mental no magic bullet to prevent women and men, and to cases has access to certain privileges in Havana evidence that shows the gender health program in 2014— or address violence against of alcohol use disorder; engage that are not available to marginalized youth gap in mood disorders stem which I helped design and for women. with the community leaders such as Julio. Walking in the city, Julio is from gender role traditionality which I served as coordinator Still, violence against to provide healthy spaces for policed and his movements restricted by (Seedat et al. 2009) and higher from 2014 to 2016. women is strongly associated youth recreation, socialization the authorities. Paul’s discomfort comes exposure to adversity among After treating hundreds with mental illness (Howard, and reflection on gender, from the perception of him as a rich tourist, females, such as sexual abuse, of women with depression Feder, and Agnew-Davis 2013), development, and health; a positionality he is not used to occupying. and intimate-partner violence I became aware of the with high alcohol consumption and guarantee that CES The Latinx-American-Cuban connection (Kuehner 2016; Heim et al. psychological consequences by the male partner also health programs—including seemed to have a better chance of being 2000). of gender inequality. The associated with women’s community health workers, realized when Cubans and Latinxs could Since many women and narratives women told me experience of abuse (Abramsky mental health, maternal live in each other’s spaces and acknowledge girls have only the consultation about their illness were plagued et al. 2011; Heise 2011). In health, and referrals—address their differences. Even if the global hip hop space to talk safely about their with stories of violence by an addition, while conducting the gender inequality in the day- ‘hood was more a fantasy than actuality, experiences, how could mental intimate partner (including field work, I have learned that to-day practice. experiences like those of Paul and Julio health services in primary sexual violence) (IPV), sexual care be leveraged as spaces of traumatic experiences since seem to suggest that the solidarity hip Mercedes Aguerrebere, M.D., abuse by a someone who is not reflection on gender inequality? childhood are highly prevalent hoppers were looking for could be found previously served as Men- a partner (SA), or isolation due How could Compañeros En among men who suffer from in the diaspora. The story of the global tal Health Coordinator for to gender norms that hampers Salud adequately equip health alcohol use disorder. spread of hip hop is itself one of movement. Partners In Health Mexico personal freedom and restrict service providers to adequately My research project aims A movement of ideas, a movement of (Compañeros En Salud), women’s activities to the address acts of violence? What at measuring the scope of commodities, a movement of people. Hip where she built a model for household. role could CES community violence—both IPV and SA— hop is a force defined by rupture and flow. If integrating mental health Women are twice as health workers—more than in one of the communities there is anything that marks this moment, services in rural primary likely as men to suffer from a hundred women—play in where CES operates, and it is as much the motion and mobility that care clinics. She is currently a depression (Kuehner 2016). promoting women’s human to understand social norms bring us together, as it is the boundaries student at Harvard Medical Some biological differences rights? How do gender norms and structures that support and borders that divide us. School pursuing a Master’s between men and women could and roles affect psychological excessive alcohol use among degree in Medical Sciences on Raperos explain this phenomenon. For distress, alcohol abuse and men, and support violence Global Health Delivery.

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reading. Social Policy in Cuba: Across the Great Divides First, we learn that in ways analogous to broader shifts The Harvard-linked authors who sit outside A REVIEW By CHRIS TILLY across Latin America and the world, Cuba has shifted Cuba face a different set of from universal subsidies and services toward more incentives and constraints, and it shows. This is Social Policies and since the Soviet Union and services, some touch on targeted programs—while maintaining universalist especially true in Domínguez’s Decentralization in Cuba: collapsed and discontinued both—and some avoid the ideals about access to health care, education, and introduction, which Change in the Context of its economic support of issue altogether—but taken offers a blunt, though not 21st-Century Latin America, Cuba. That inequality is as a whole the essays make economic opportunity. unsympathetic, assessment edited by Jorge I. Domínguez, most starkly visible to natives this point repeatedly and of Cuba’s serious social and María del Carmen Zabala and visitors alike in the effectively. These observations out in contemporary Cuban voice and participation. My In the Cuban academy, there economic problems, and Argüelles, Mayra Espina Prieto, disjunction between the dollar are particularly salient in society: access to remittances, “glass half-full” image at the are limits to the extent of of the achievements and and Lorena G. Barberia (David and peso economies. The a Cuban context in which for example, or access to outset of this review is based acceptable criticism of the shortcomings of the country’s Rockefeller Center Series second is the gap in power resources have become both better health care via social on these two rich chapters. Cuban government and its evolving mix of social policies. on Latin American Studies, and opportunities between more limited and more connections or economic Zabala’s essay on local policies—Fidel Castro’s dictum Barberia takes the same road Harvard University, 2017, 272 Havana and the rest of the unequally distributed since bribes. participation and a chapter of “within the Revolution, as Fundora and Espina, citing pages) country. A third divide, 1990. A third lesson: there has The economics of the on nonfarm cooperatives everything; against the research that exposes the found in Cuba as in most been significant movement Havana/hinterlands divide by Reynaldo Jiménez and Revolution, nothing” mixed impacts (ameliorating From my snapshot views countries, is the distance away from centralized, top- is, disappointingly, under- Niurka Padrón also touch remains in force, though the poverty, but intensifying of Cuba in five visits over between the Cuban state and down policy implementation. reported in the book, but the on the state-citizen divide. definition of what is “within” inequality) of the current system of remittances in the years, two eye-opening its people embodied in top- environmental policy, This glass is definitely half-full, politics of that divide, and the Like Fundora and Espina, has expanded somewhat. Cuba. Artiz’s chapter provides moments stand out. In 1980, down policies and limited remittances) and processes but that marks an important related state-citizenry divide, Zabala tells us how policy The Cuban authors have interesting data on Latin after visiting one workplace opportunities for bottom-up of participation and advance from the Cuba I first come in for close examination. is implemented on the dealt with these limitations American public opinion after another where union and input. Collaboration between decentralization, as well as saw four decades ago. The two strongest chapters ground, in this case, through in different ways. Fundora regarding social policy, but management representatives Cuban and U.S. researchers framing these in-depth looks The book’s editors and in the volume, papers on community development and Espina have written misses the opportunity to use explained how no conflict entails two other divides. One with an overview and two authors gamely take on the policy decentralization projects. However, Zabala chapters full of critique, but this analysis to think through existed between labor and is simply differing perspectives chapters on social policy in five great divides—in ways that by Geydis Elena Fundora primarily explores what the critique comes via the Cuban social policy in light of management under socialism, across the two countries. A the broader Latin American are distributed unevenly across and Mayra Espina, offer dimensions of inequality get voices of informants and of Latin American experiences. I stumbled on a heated U.S.-Cuban analysis must context. the ten chapters. Growing clear-eyed assessments of recognized and addressed other researchers who have Are Cuba’s social policies open-air labor-management also contend with the sharply Viewing the book as a inequality by class, perhaps the promise and risks of within these projects; she is evaluated specific programs. adequate to overcome negotiation in Santiago that polarized views of Cuba’s whole, what do we learn Cuba’s most consequential decentralization, and the silent on the relationship of Zabala, as noted above, Cuba’s great divides? The was rapidly degenerating into government and its policies about Cuban social policy? social shift in its last three barriers to local initiative these NGO-based projects largely avoids mention of the evidence from this book says a shouting match. In 2003, within each country and more First, we learn that in ways decades, and continuing that remain in place. The and processes with the state. state. Jiménez and Padrón not yet, but there is some co-leading a participatory broadly in the world. analogous to broader shifts inequality by gender and race, two chapters offer two very Jiménez and Padrón’s paper (on cooperatives), Echevarría room for optimism in Cuba’s community workshop in across Latin America and take center stage in María different vantage points, both falls short in a more basic way: and Tejuca (on education), continuing commitment Havana, I was startled to hear Social Policies and the world, Cuba has shifted del Carmen Zabala’s chapter valuable: Fundora reports on their analysis is limited to and Marta Rosa Muñoz (on to egalitarian ideals and its a government representative Decentralization in Cuba is from universal subsidies and on participatory community the views regarding various description of a series of laws environmental policy) thread continuing process of policy identify the biggest obstacle the latest in a series of services toward more targeted development projects and aspects of participation and statistics on cooperatives. the needle by giving statistical experimentation. For me, at to community development DRCLAS books from an programs—while maintaining the papers on education expressed by key informants The U.S.-Cuban dynamic summaries of outcomes and least, that is indeed a glass as “the bureaucracy.” Both ongoing research project on universalist ideals about access and employment (Dayma from government, the plays out in interesting ways lists of laws and policies, but half full. moments speak to the social and economic change to health care, education Echevarría and Mayra Tejuca), academy and communities; in this volume. Cubans with little or no evaluation continuing inequalities of in that country. The authors and economic opportunity. health care (Susset Fuentes), the core of Espina’s chapter authored the bulk of the book, how policies are linked to power and resources in make a strong case that the Second, the authors point and remittances (Lorena is a review of seven concrete seven out of ten chapters. But outcomes, nor assessment of Chris Tilly, professor of socialist Cuba. policy terrain has shifted out the ways in which formal Barbería). The findings are decentralization initiatives, in Harvard- and DRCLAS-linked the strengths and weaknesses Urban Planning at UCLA, In fact, I would suggest significantly in recent years, universalist policies can fall most detailed on gender, a set of mini-case studies of scholars wrote the three of the policies (though studies bad jobs and how to a Cuban-U.S. volume on making this new addition short at the implementation thinnest on race, given Cuba’s policy. Each chapter is packed chapters that are positioned Echevarría and Tejuca chapter make them better, and the social policy in Cuba like not just an update but an level in the context of limited omission of race from official with concrete discussion of to frame the book: Jorge do offer a bit more). As a role of social movements in this one must engage at exploration of new policy and unequally distributed statistical surveys, but form steps forward and continuing Domínguez’s introduction, result, though these three economic change. Though not least five great divides. The processes. The chapters resources. Some chapters a fascinating composite limitations and barriers in and closing chapters by chapters are useful resources a Cuba scholar, he has visited first is the rapidly growing spotlight individual sectors address disparities in picture. Perhaps most breaking down these two Lorena Barberia and Soledad on the contours of policy and Cuba in 1979, 1980, 1994, income inequality in that (enterprise development, outcomes, some underscore interesting are the convoluted potent gaps and moving Artiz that place Cuba in the key outcomes, I found them and most recently twice in country, which has exploded education, health care, disparities in access to benefits ways in which class plays toward broad channels of wider Latin American mosaic. arid and ultimately frustrating 2003.

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cated to Siqueiros’ billboard humanidad en la tierra y further the mechanism of ad- Delgado’s readings. Paz’s re- Consumption as Resistance murals from the 1950s, Del- hacia el cosmos (1964–1971), vertising, by being more witty, lationship to technology and gado astutely teases out the was placed in a luxury hotel more seductive, and more modernity, Delgado argues, in the Age of Late Capitalism A REVIEW By EDUARDO LEDESMA tension between the Mexican frequented by North Amer- materialistic than the original is linked to the massive painter’s commitment to left- ican tourists, so that “com- advertisement ever was, by infrastructure projects taking ist causes and the very com- mercial enterprise trumped showing more than what the place in Mexico in the 1950s mercial enterprise that the subversion” (81). Neverthe- advertisement was ready to and 60s, much like Brazilian Delirious Consumption: of consumption, typically the possibility of resistance to murals represented. The case less, Delgado makes an excel- show, revealing a less ideal, Concrete poetry was aligned Aesthetics and Consumer presented as individualistic it has to include the individ- of Siqueiros is particularly lent case as to why Siqueiros’ more physical level of reality with Brazilian development- Capitalismin Mexico and Brazil by and banal. For the author, ual responses of citizens who interesting because his earlier work is worth examining, behind the advertised prod- alism and the construction of Sergio Delgado Moya (University however, “Consumption is are not mere passive subjects works reflected his Marxist especially in our time, as we uct” (108). The radical force Brasilia. of Texas Press, 2017) power: it is coercion and of the forces of consumption, ideology, but later he created experience a reality “decisive- of Concrete poetry, therefore, In his final chapter control, but it is also, some- but rather active consumers: murals for the hotel and ly more wrought by consump- lies on its surface, on its way Delgado examines the Sergio Delgado’s brilliant times, resistance. At times, “Understanding neoliberal- tourist industry. Throughout tion and consumer culture of arranging typography and work of several Brazilian book, Delirious Consumption, inasmuch as it mediates our ism […] entails an expansion his career, however, Sique- than the reality Siqueiros had making the material elements neoconcretist artists, most performs a truly radical feat inner lives and the world that of what we understand to iros insistently engaged with to contend with” (82). of words visible, its capacity importantly Lygia Clark’s of locating anti-capitalist re- makes us, consumption may be the logics of both con- techniques and tools of ad- In his second chapter, to convey meaning beyond its object art. Associated with sistance precisely in the heart serve as a road to freedom; it sumption and neoliberalism, vertising. Delgado elucidates Delgado turns to the fascinat- verbal signification, so that both neoconcretism and the of the beast, in consumer cul- may even work like a promise a repositioning that takes Siqueiros’ investment in new ing case of Brazilian Concrete “concrete poetry puts forth Tropicàlia movement, Clark’s ture and the culture industry. of happiness” (3). Treading seriously the modes of oper- technologies and mass media, poetry. The Concrete poets of a challenge to seldom-ac- main contribution was the He does so by examining the where other noteworthy Latin ation of subjects traditionally including his innovative use the Noigandres group—Har- knowledged hierarchies bichos (animals), a group of work of notable Mexican and against commodification, American critics of consumer conceived to be complete- of materials such as acrylic oldo and Augusto de Campos of language operating in interactive hinged sculptures Brazilian writers and artists alienation, and the politics of culture such as Néstor García ly under the coercion of paint or concrete, and his re- and Décio Pignatari—had late capitalism, hierarchies made of folding metal plates from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, domination and inequality Canclini, George Yúdice institutionalized structures course to industrial processes. close ties to advertising, whereby the nonverbal, non- that required the partici- a period of “consumer frenzy” that define consumer cap- and Graciela Montaldo have of power [but are not]” (26). Reinforcing Delgado’s thesis mass culture and consumer linear, ‘irrational’ aspects of pation of the spectator. For when Latin America was italism” (2-3). Delgado tells placed their theoretical pen- Consumers are not to be seen about the subversive potential capitalism. Several of them language, its vocal and visual Clark, process and partici- becoming increasingly urban us that the works he studies dants, Delgado stakes out his as the zombie-like victims of of consumption, the chapter worked in advertising firms, dimensions, are deemed pation and “the physical and industrialized, and the “model an approach keenly own claim for the centrality capitalist exploitation. investigates the ways in which and often it is difficult to experientially enriching but production of her work” (172) middle classes were on the attuned to imitation as an of consumption in the cul- But what makes Delgado’s Siqueiros’ murals estab- distinguish where a poem ultimately inconsequen- were key elements of the rise. Through close readings incisive, at times subversive, tural history of the Americas, book a “deliriously” enjoyable lished links between art and begins and an advert ends. At tial” (104). What Delgado aesthetic experience, as Del- of murals by David Alfaro response to capitalist modes positing an aesthetics of read in addition to being advertising, expressing “their first glance the close alliance foregrounds in this genre gado observes. But Delgado Siqueiros, poetry by the of signification” (3). As he consumption as instrumental a scholarly tour de force, shared need to arrive at forms with advertising can prompt is its power to appropriate also critiques Clark’s intent Brazilian concrete poets and deftly unfolds his argument, for the identity formation of is how its author anchors appropriate for addressing the question: is the viewer or consumer culture, to imitate to industrially mass-produce by Octavio Paz, and analysis the author shows that it is contemporary transnation- his argument on specific mass publics” (69). Delgado reader made into a passive elements of mass media such the bichos, stating that, had of the object art of Brazilian by imitating, mimicking al subjects and emerging examples, on close readings analyzes, for example, several consumer by works that look as neon signs, advertising she done so, “some of the neoconcretists such as Lygia and replicating the very forms of national and global of poems, paintings, objects of Siqueiros’ murals in Ciu- like ads? Delgado’s nuanced logos, newspaper ads, in or- most intriguing aspects of Clark, Delgado analyzes the processes and strategies of citizenship. We are who we and performances, as well dad Universitaria (Mexico interpretation, however, finds der to challenge our habitual these works—participation, ways in which these artists marketing, advertising and are, in part, because of our as a thoroughly fleshed out City), concluding that for the another valence in this highly forms of perception. Poetry relationality, an insistent used tools from advertising mass communication that purchases. We are defined by historical contextualization Mexican muralist, “the forms visual poetry. In his reading becomes anti-advertisement, sense of free play—would and consumer culture to chal- these innovative artists cast a our consumption—and that is for both of the countries he of commercial propaganda of Pignatari’s acclaimed 1957 using the tools of consumer have gained in substance, but lenge capitalist structures, potentially subversive light on not necessarily a bad thing. studies, Brazil and Mexico [are] a fresh source of formal poem “beba coca cola” (a capitalism to undermine it. only at the risk of trivializ- paradoxically fighting capital- the process of modernization Indeed, what Delgado (the two largest economies in innovation that could be work that imitates a Coke ad The book then elegantly ation” (163). This desire for ism through consumption. and development in Latin achieves is to reframe the Latin America). He examines adapted for the purposes of but equates the American transitions from Brazilian mass production might signal The territory Delgado America and disrupt the de- question of consumer culture works by some of the best- political agitation” (71). The soft-drink with excrement), concretism to Octavio Paz’s Clark’s work as sliding toward is negotiating is tricky and politizing effects of commod- to allow for the agency of known avant-gardists of the author, however, is not naïve Delgado insists that “if ad- experimental poetry from the depoliticization. Delgado, fraught with potential dan- ity fetishim. artists and consumers alike. post-War World II period. to the turn Siqueiros took in vertising works by effectively, 1960s, more specifically to however, reframes Clark’s art ger, but he skillfully works So what Delirious Con- Although his focus is on an Delirious Consumption his later works, as he fully economically, and seductively his poems Blanco (1967) and as partaking of a “language of through the paradox, offering sumption is attempting to do earlier period, his arguments explores “how each of them embraced commercialism conveying information about Discos Visuales (1968). Paz micropolitics” that is centered a nuanced and thoughtful an- is to bring attention and re- have direct bearing on the arrived at forms of aesthet- to the detriment of his more how the world works and how was profoundly influenced by on the domestic materials alysis of the ambiguous pos- dress a gap in scholarly work, contemporary neoliberal ic production drawn tight nuanced earlier artworks. we should inhabit it, anti- or technology, advertising and and everyday spaces where ition(s) taken by these artists. one that has been neglected crisis. Delgado asserts that a between high modernism and Unlike his earlier, publicly counter-advertisements like mass culture, writing several she generates her work. This For him, they represent “an or automatically ignored: more accurate assessment of consumer culture” (27). displayed pieces, Siqueiros’ ‘beba coca cola’ work not theoretical essays on these political valence of Clark’s art assured but adjustable stance namely, the positive potential the neoliberal moment and In the first chapter, dedi- last mural, La marcha de la by resisting but by pushing subjects which also inform “has to do with the way our

78 ReVista WINTER 2018 REVISTA.DRCLAS.HARVARD.EDU ReVista 79 BOOK TALK BOOK TALK

consciousness of objects, of heart of consumer culture. be made about this otherwise Eduardo Ledesma is Assis- this narrative a history of our own Like other Central American for the crime of international As Berguido aptly illustrates subjects, and of the rela- Delirious Consumption excellent book, is that it tant Professor of Spanish at realities. We can, through this countries, Panama lacks a solid corruption, as it is known in Italy. in his compelling and well- tionships that hold between therefore provocatively sug- often fails to make the neces- the University of Illinois at recounting, look the monster di- system of justice that guarantees Moreover, because Berguido is written narrative, it is necessary subjects and objects chan- gests the potential to find, at sary connections between the Urbana-Champaign. A special- rectly in the eyes. The agreements the impartiality of the courts. The both a lawyer and investigative to find mechanisms to break ges by means of the kind of the center of capitalism, its neoliberal moment we are ist in Latin American literary signed between the Panamanian case of Finmeccanica, like others journalist, he managed to carry the vicious circle of those Latin attention Clark cultivates: means of interruption. For living today and the period and cultural studies, he holds a government and Finmeccanica in which powerful government out successfully the complex dip- American rulers protected by “an attention to our everyday this reason, this book is also it examines. While Delgado’s Ph.D. in Romance Languages and its affiliates represent, ac- officials are under investigation, lomatic negotiations that voided unwritten Mafia pact of impuni- routines and to materials a courageous gesture at a argument, I believe, still is and Literatures from Harvard cording to Berguido, “a modern demonstrates that where the the contracts with Finmeccanica ty” in which new presidents end that sustain these routines” time when, within academic valid for the present, the University. He is the author version of greediness without system of justice is weak and is and obligated the Italian firms up covering for the previous one (178). circles, a proposition in favor latest turn to savage capital- of Radical Poetry: Aesthetics, limits or shame.” The negotiation used to protect the corrupt, inter- to recognize the surcharges and so that the next will do the same. Thus, although consum- of consumer culture can be ism raises questions about Politics, Technology, and the for luxurious helicopters; the way national judicial cooperation is reimburse the amount to Panama. Berguido’s book ought to be er capitalism provides the seen as problematic. Del- the contestatory potential of Ibero-American Avant-Gardes, in which government officials or- needed to investigate in an objec- This process of resolving a prob- required reading for those who background for the work of gado’s book challenges such consumption. Of course, this 1900-2015 (SUNY 2016) and ganize to coopt the state; and the tive and impartial manner. Ber- lem through diplomatic negotia- recognize that corruption is one the artists Delgado exam- dogmatic perspectives while analysis of consumption and has published numerous jour- political appointments that permit guido’s narrative demonstrates tions marked the beginning of of the greatest obstacles to the de- ines, he makes a cogent case advocating for the revolu- culture in the neoliberal age nal articles about avant-garde the justice system to become an the difference between an inde- a new era in the commercial velopment of countries. It should for how they represent the tionary potential of doubt, could provide the raw mate- literature, film and accomplice of corruption are all pendent system of justice like that relations between the two na- also be required reading for those modes of contestation and nuance and ambiguity. Per- rial for Professor Delgado’s new media. situations to which we are ac- of Italy, capable of investigating tions, one in which the goal is to honest officials who are willing to resistance within the very haps one criticism that could next book. customed. its country’s top authorities, and develop projects in accordance work for the good of their country With rare exception, cor- that of Panama, used to cloaking with the law and the spirit of and for those of us who push for ruption has been a constant in its officials with impunity. transparency. reforms in the justice systems in the history of Latin American The author relates how the When President Varela the hope that someday the courts countries,with justice systems Panamanian judicial system dur- disclosed the results of the ne- will have the tools to punish those Fighting Corruption through Diplomacy often as accomplices to the loot- ing Martinelli’s government was gotiations, he stressed it was a who abuse power. ing of state coffers. Spineless used to block the investigation. commercial agreement that did A BOOK REVIEW By CLAUDIA ESCOBAR judges have not been capable The Attorney General himself not impede the criminal prosecu- Claudia Escobar is a former of putting a brake on the abuse asked that the case be closed for tion of those responsible. Many magistrate of the Court of of power by the government of lack of evidence. Meanwhile, in Panamanians demonstrated Appeals of Guatemala and the day. Because of this, it is Italy, the ongoing investigation unconditional support of these a respected legal scholar. She Anatomía de una Trampa by novel—is also the testimony of the mold. It was plunder. There easy to identify with the frustra- produced mounting evidence efforts, since the case exemplified became the lead whistleblower Fernando Berguido (Penguin a citizen fighting a battle against was not a single public works tion Berguido expresses, “To about the corruption surrounding that with political will and honest in a case of grand corruption Random House Grupo Editorial corruption. The author shares his project without the shadow of confirm, with concrete facts, the contracts with Panama. At officials, it is the country and its that revealed illegal interfer- México, 2017) experience as Panama’s ambas- corruption.” the great plunder of my country the same time, the investigation inhabitants who reap the benefits. ence in Guatemala’s judiciary sador to Italy, sent by current When Martinelli took of- was very painful. Even harder was going nowhere in Panama Anatomía de una trampa by high-ranking political While campaigning, many President Juan Carlos Varela to fice, he sought out Italian Prime was to know, with the very poor with the government defend- is a thorough documentation of officials including the country’s politicians in Latin America use unravel the judicial wrongs which Minister and media tycoon Silvio system of Panamanian justice, ing the legality of the contracts, how some rulers enrich them- vice-president and the former the rhetoric of dignity and recti- arose from the shady business Berlusconi to seek business with eternal pimp to impunity, prob- while concealing information selves through government busi- president of Congress. She was tude to sway voters. However, in dealings of the Martinelli govern- Italian firms. Panama made the ably the embezzlement would on grounds of national security. ness, but it is also a tale about the the 2015–2016 Scholar at Risk power, they often forget electoral ment with several Italian firms. largest direct purchase in its his- have remained a simple anecdote. In Italy, the prosecutors, legal effectiveness of diplomacy when Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute promises, abusing their position Berguido declares that when tory from Finmeccanica, avoiding Without punishment.” This ap- experts, judges and officials in handled with expertise. for Advanced Study. During for their own benefit and that of Martinelli ended his mandate the legality of a bidding process. propiation of funds during Mar- the Bureau of Financial Oversight The way in which the annul- 2016 -2017 she was a fellow at their close circle. Ricardo Marti- in 2014, cases of corruption The transactions included radars, tinelli’s administration was very demonstrated with irrefutable evi- ment of the contracts was negoti- the National Endowment for nelli was no exception. The suc- were sprouting like mushrooms: helicopters, boats and digital similar to that which took place dence the shady role of officials, ated with the resulting return of Democracy (NED) in Wash- cessful businessman was elected “Corruption was drowning the maps. The author calls this deal in Guatemala, my country, dur- intermediaries and contractors in the surcharges can serve as an in- ington DC, examining the president of Panama in 2009, country. It was not the first cor- “literally a dance of millions of ing the government of Otto Pérez the deals with Panama. “Without spiration to other Latin American impact of international insti- with a platform of honesty and journalist and former Harvard rupt government. Unfortunately, dollars,” in which million-dollar Molina. There the former presi- mincing words, the Italian pros- countries still under the shadow tutions on the fight against cor- personal integrity: “I am a rich Nieman Fellow Fernando Ber- we have had four administrations, commissions were destined to a dent has faced multiple judicial ecutor was directly pointing the of multimillion bribes paid by the ruption in Guatemala. She is man, and I have no need to rob,” guido relates, with a wealth of democratically elected, in which business—an intermediary—by processes on corruption charges finger at Presidente Martinelli for Odebrecht firm to public officials. now affiliated with Georgetown he declared. But his actions were details, one of the greatest scan- the cheating was coordinated the name of Agafia, whose pur- since 2015, although up until bribery.” It is not enough to initiate crimi- University as a Centennial a far cry from his words, and dals of international corruption from the presidential office. But pose was to enrich the president, now with impunity because of Due to Berguido’s diligent nal proceedings against those Fellow in the Walsh School of when he reached the presidency, involving Presidente Martinelli: in the previous governments, to his family and business partners. the legal artifices of his lawyers and timely efforts as ambassador, responsible for these illegal deals; Foreign Services. She can be he dedicated himself to multiply- a case known as Finmeccanica. some degree, an effort was made Those of us who have lived and because of the obstacles the the Republic of Panama was it is also necessary to require that reached at ing his already great fortune. The story—a blend of journal- to guard appearances and to show in countries where corruption is judicial system set up precisely to legally recognized as an affected the company return the over- claudiaescobarm@alumni. In Anatomía de una Trampa, istic investigation and historical certain restraint. Martinelli broke a habitual practice recognize in protect the corrupt. party within the judicial process priced surcharges to the state. harvard.edu

80 ReVista WINTER 2018 REVISTA.DRCLAS.HARVARD.EDU ReVista 81 BOOK TALK BOOK TALK

Cuba or Nicaragua can attest all (Junk) Food for Thought One of them, Ven conmigo (Come With Me), set amidst a too readily. I wonder if Erlick would be as sanguine if the A REVIEW By GLENN GARVIN rural literacy campaign, in which the various characters Trump administration stuck an practiced reading, writing and ripping of bodices with anti-abortion story line into The Young and the Restless. equal enthusiasm, was so successful that when a note at Ultimately, I suspect, the Telenovelas in Pan-Latino and the two forms share some communal entertainment—and the end of one episode provided an address in Mexico unpredictability of audience Context by June Carolyn characteristics, particularly mutual experience—that often reactions will make the Erlick (New York and Oxford: their emphasis on hyperemotive took place at a neighborhood City where literacy materials could be picked up, telenovelas an unsatisfactory Routledge, 2018). romances and melodramatic bar or a gathering at a friend’s 25,000 potential students gridlocked the capital streets tool for propagandists. Among story lines. But there are also house. the most amusing—and, When I was running a significant differences. And as scripts, writers and until well after midnight. possibly, most chilling—tales newspaper bureau in Nicaragua, The telenovelas air in prime producers jumped back and forth related in the book is that of the I once went to look for my time with the broadest possible across borders, Erlick writes, 2006 Colombian narconovela housekeeper to ask where we audience, and they have a fixed telenovelas were “creating a ordered the producers of Mala incomprehensibly subtitled first a small businesswoman and Sin tetas, no hay paraiso kept something or other. She endpoint: The ugly-duckling kind of informal globalization hierba (Bad weed), one of the Bulgarian sitcoms, and whatever ultimately a wildly successful (Without tits, there’s no heaven). wasn’t there, but her TV was heroine turns into a swan (or, in long before the term was first narconovelas, to give it a else they could get for free from fashion designer. That triggered Its protagonist is a young woman on. And on the screen were some of the newer narconovelas, popularized.” new ending—one that was not Havana and Moscow. so many sewing machine sales all who becomes a hooker in order three topless women with fangs, a bullet-riddled corpse) and the Globalization, of course, happy for the drug bosses, lest But Marxist regimes over Latin America that Singer to realize her dream, surgically dangling upside down from show is finished, period, usually spreads not just goods and it make narcotrafficking too are surely not the only ones presented a gold one to the actress enhanced breasts. From there a ceiling. I turned around to in six months or less). U.S. services, but ideas as well. inviting. who have profited from who played María. it’s on to narcotrafficking, find my housekeeper curiously soaps, by contrast, go on as long Erlick is quite persuasive in her The less democratic the the diversionary aspects of The Peruvian sewing machine orgiastic violence and eventually watching me watching the wandering Latin America before as they draw viewer eyeballs -- contention that the popularity of country, the more elements telenovelas. When the boss of epidemic seems to have been killing. It shouldn’t require a screen. “What is that?” I asked. joining the staff of Harvard’s a mind-boggling 57 years in the telenovelas has combined with of a telenovela are potentially Mexico’s Televisa network, a spontaneous eruption. But in spoiler alert here to reveal that “Telenovela,” she replied, as if Rockefeller Center for Latin case of CBS’ Guiding Light. their mobility to create a quietly subversive. In Nicaragua, under Emilio Azcarraga, was asked to 1975, Mexico’s Televisa launched the eventual conclusion of Sin that explained everything. American Studies, clearly adores Erlick tracks telenovelas subversive force in socially the Marxist Sandinista rule, the explain the wild popularity of a series of telenovelas, written tetas would meet with Belisario I’ve often wondered about telenovelas and understands back to their gritty origin, on the conservative Latin Ameria. broadcast of (an undoubtedly his Cinderella story Los ricos and produced in conjunction Betancur’s approval. the name of that telenovela—the both their significance and their floors of Cuban cigar factories, Taboo topics from birth pirated) 1982 Mexican remake tambien lloran (The Rich Also with government agencies, that The popular reaction, Latin American counterpart to triviality. Her book is fully in where bosses hired lectores— control to homosexuality, from of the granddaddy of all Cry), he all but called it the were deliberate attempts at social however, would not. The moral U.S. soap operas—and where the spirit of Latin American readers—to perch on tall stools, infidelity to rape, in many telenovelas, El derecho de nacer opiate of the masses. engineering. One of them, Ven that many South American it was made. June Carolyn sociologist Lorenzo Vilches, reading newspapers and books to countries surfaced publicly for (The right to be born), became a “Mexico is a country of a conmigo (Come With Me), set women drew from the show was Erlick’s fascinating book who once wrote: “It is true that the workers to keep their tedious the first time in telenovelas like rallying point for the opposition, very screwed over humble class, amidst a rural literacy campaign, that big breasts are better. Breast- Telenovelas In Pan-Latino a telenovela is a carrousel of tasks of cutting and wrapping Mexico’s cheating-husband which saw it as a celebration who are never to stop being in which the various characters enhancement surgery became Context (yes, I am aware of the melodramatic clichés. But it is from driving them mad. By the Senda prohibida (Forbidden of “pretty clothes and pretty screwed over,” he said. “It’s an practiced reading, writing and a popular gift for teenagers incompatibility of that title with also true that, as Umberto Eco 1940s, the lectores had spread Path), or Argentina’s Botineras landscapes” at a time when the obligation of television to bring ripping of bodices with equal for their quinceañeras, 15th- the word “fascinating;” clearly would say, two clichés produce onto radio, where the voracious (Soccer Wives), whose various Sandinistas were preaching entertainment to those people enthusiasm, was so successful birthday coming out parties. the marketing department at laughter, but a hundred are appetite for content soon led couplings included a pair of gay the creation of a New Man and take them away from their that when a note at the end of In Argentina, nightclubs drew Routledge needs to be slapped moving.” to the production of scripted soccer players who kissed one who wouldn’t be distracted by sad reality and difficult future.” one episode provided an address big crowds with the raffle of around a bit) did not provide me (Time for full disclosure: dramas with voice actors—the another on screen and made it baubles and bangles. You don’t need to have quite in Mexico City where literacy implants. A (female) legislator in with the answer. But practically Erlick and I met in the 1980s radionovela, which blasted clear they did more intimate To be fair, Sandinistas liked such a Nietzschean worldview materials could be picked Venezuela proposed a program everything else about this while we were both covering the across Latin America faster than stuff off-screen. El derecho too, supposedly to acknowledge that telenovelas, up, 25,000 potential students of state aid for underprivileged weirdly beloved television civil war in Nicaragua and have any bullet. One São Paulo radio Except in a couple of because of the discipline and like all popular art, act in part as gridlocked the capital streets until girls who wanted bigger breasts. genre—every gay kiss, remained friends. But as any was airing 22 of them a day. instances, Erlick does not dedication of its doctor-hero a distraction from the drudgery well after midnight. Telenovelas almost always narcotrafficker slut, philandering number of people who’ve eaten The introduction of argue that the telenovelas by and the staff of the hospital of daily life. Erlick recounts this in have happy endings, but it’s not boss, and secretly-exiled-to- dinner with us over the years television only intensified the themselves create significant in which much of the story As Erlick notes, telenovela approving language. But that always clear for whom. the-peasantry oligarch kid, plus will testify, we are fully capable process. Because TV sets were change; more often, she says, unfolded. Though I’ve always viewers don’t merely watch begs a question: At what point the social implications of each of yelling at one another when imported and heavily taxed, quoting a Chilean study, they suspected its popularity had the shows; they sometimes live does advocacy—particularly Glenn Garvin spent decades one—is included in a book that’s she’s wrong about something.) they weren’t widely present have “a multiplying effect more to do with the excruciating them out. In 1969, a Peruvian state-aided advocacy—turn into covering Latin America as Simplemente both academic and entertaining. Which reminds me that in Latin American homes for and solidify these changes.” boredom of the state television telenovela called propaganda? Even something a newspaper correspondent, María Erlick, who got to know I’m not quite right in calling two or three decades after But governments keep an eye network, which specialized told the story of a poor as innocent sounding as a and another dozen as the telenovelas during the years she telenovelas soap operas. It’s a their introduction. That turned on them. In 1982, Colombian in grimly Stakonovite peasant girl who learns to sew literacy campaign can easily turn Miami Herald’s television spent as a newspaper reporter comparison that’s often made, viewing telenovelas into a president Belisario Betancur Soviet documentaries, on a machine and turns into sinister, as citizens of Marxist critic.

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Matos Series Inaugurated

On October 3, 2017, the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and the Moses Mesoamerican Archive inaugurated the Eduardo Matos Moctezuma Lecture Series in Mexico City. A Harvard delegation traveled to Mexico City to take part in this historic event that included a behind-the-scenes tour by Eduardo Matos himself of Templo Mayor, one of the main Aztec temples at their capital of Tenochtitlan. Pictured here, Brian Farrell, Faculty Director of DRCLAS (left), listens as David Carrasco, Neil L. Rudenstine Professor of the Study of Latin America at Harvard (center), shares anecdotes with the Harvard deans and senior ALARI: Building a New Field of Afro-Latin American Studies officials about his many decades of friendship and fruitful collaboration with Matos, the most famous archaeologist in Mexico who is renowned Housed at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University, for his excavation of Templo Mayor (right). the Afro-Latin Research Institute is the first research institution in the United States devoted to The night of Matos’ lecture at the Museo Nacional de Antropología, the history and culture of peoples of African descent in Latin America and the Caribbean. Over 95 Professor Carrasco was especially enthusiastic to present a gift to Matos: percent of the Africans forcibly imported into the Americas went to Latin America and the Carib- an original copy of a painting by Mexican-American, Los Angeles-based bean, almost two-thirds of them to the Spanish and Portuguese colonies. Many Hispanics in the artist George Yepes, commissioned to create the visual symbol for the lecture series. The painting by Yepes, titled “El Caballero Águila,” is United States are also of African descent. Cultural forms and community practices associated with a monumental work, measuring five by four feet. The composition is Africa are conspicuous across the region - indeed, the very existence of Latin America would be defined by the Mexican flag overlaid with a portrait of Matos excavat- unthinkable without them. During the last few decades, Afro-Latin Americans have created numer- ing Templo Mayor just below the Mexican coat of arms, which is derived from an Aztec legend. DRCLAS would like to thank José Antonio Alonso ous civic, cultural and community organizations to demand recognition, equality and resources, for his generous support and David Carrasco for his leadership in the prompting legislative action and the implementation of scholarship on the Afro-Latin American establishment of the Eduardo Matos Moctezuma Lecture Series. experience and provide a forum where scholars, intellectuals, activists and policy makers engage in exchanges and debates. To learn more about our mission and activities, follow us on Facebook and Twitter:@harvardalari and visit our website ALARI.FAS.HARVARD.EDU

84 ReVista WINTER 2018 PHOTOS BY JULIA GRACE COHN. NON-PROFIT ORG U.S. POSTAGE PAID BOSTON, MA PERMIT NO. 1636 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA 02138

CONTRIBUTORS

75 Mercedes Aguerrebere, M.D., is a student at Harvard Medical School Miami Herald’s television critic. 41 Lowell Gudmundson (Mount Holyoke pursuing a Master’s degree in Medical Sciences on Global Health College) is the co-editor of Blacks and Blackness in Central America.

Delivery. 21 Omar H. Ali is Professor of Global and Comparative African 60 Rebecca Kennedy de Lorenzini is a Lecturer on History & Literature

Diaspora History at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. at Harvard University. 12 Agustín Lao-Montes is an Associate Professor

38 George Reid Andrews is Distinguished Professor of History at of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. 78 Eduardo the University of Pittsburgh. 34 Cristian Alejandro Báez Lazcano, Ledesma is Assistant Professor of Spanish at the University of Illinois an Azapeño Afrodescendant Chilean, is the founder of the NGO at Urbana-Champaign. 46 Tianna S. Paschel is assistant professor of Lumbanga.10 Sidney Chalhoub is Professor of History and of African African American Studies at the University of California-Berkeley. and African American Studies at Harvard University. 24 Antonio Copete 58 Álvaro Restrepo, a Colombian dancer, choreographer and teacher, is is a postdoctoral researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for the founder/director of El Colegio del Cuerpo in Cartagena. 30 Nicholas

Astrophysics. 2 Alejandro de la Fuente is the director of the Afro-Latin T Rinehart is a doctoral candidate in English at Harvard University.

American Research Institute at the Hutchins Center for African & African 28 Matthew Leslie Santana is Ph.D. candidate in ethnomusicology at

American Research. 64 Genevieve E. V. Dempsey is the 2017-18 Mark Harvard University. 44 Enrique Aureng Silva is a Mexican architect Claster Mamolen Fellow at Harvard’s Hutchins Center for African and working towards a Master of Design Studies in Critical Conservation at

African American Research. 80 Claudia Escobar, a former magistrate the Harvard Graduate School of Design. 51 Ned Sublette is the author of the Court of Appeals of Guatemala, was the 2015–2016 Scholar at of four books including Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Risk Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.71 Sujatha Mambo. 26 Miari Taina Stephens is a Ph.D. student in African & African

Fernandes is a professor of political economy and sociology at the American studies at Harvard University. 56 Yosvany Terry is a senior

University of Sydney. 18 Elizabeth Ferry is Professor of Anthropology at lecturer on music at Harvard and director of the Harvard Jazz Band.

Brandeis University and co-author of the 2017 book La Batea. 76 Chris Tilly is professor of Urban Planning at UCLA 68 Belén Vega

18 Stephen Ferry is co-author of La Batea and a winner of the 2017 Pichaco, a Fall 2017 Afro-Latin American Research Fellow at the W.E.

Best of ReVista photo contest. 16 Cristina García Navas is a Ph.D. B. Dubois Research Institute at Harvard’s Hutchins Center, is a DRCLAS Candidate in Latin American Literatures and Cultures at the Department Graduate Student Associate. of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. 82 Glenn FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHERS: Steve Cagan, Yoel Díaz Vasquez, Stephen Garvin, a veteran Latin American newspaper correspondent, is the Ferry, Jonathan Moller and Víctor Ruiz Caballero