CULTURAL CONNECTIONS
Events & Activities
This space is to showcase events, activities and resources that educate, celebrate and commemorate the diverse Afro-Latino experiences in our global communities.
1. United Nation-International Decade for People of African Descent 2015-2024
2. Afro-Colombian Day May 21
More Events
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JANUARY 24- UNESCO World Day for African and Afro Descendant Culture
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MAY 10- Day of Afro-Venezuelans
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MAY 31- Panama-National Black Heritage Day
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JUNE 4th- Afro-Peruvian Culture Day
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JUNE 19th- Afro-Mexican Dia de los Negros
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August 29- People’s Day of the Salvadoran Afro-descendant
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AUGUST 31- Day of the Black Person and Afro-Costa Rican Culture
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SEPTEMBER 23- Afro-Bolivian Day
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OCTOBER 2nd - National Afro-Ecuadorian People’s Day
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NOVEMBER 8- Afro-Argentine Day
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DECEMBER 3rd- National Day of Candombe, Afro-Uruguayan Culture
Melanie-Luisa Marte
“Afro-Latina”
During the 1970s, the term Latina was invented
to describe a woman of Latin American ancestry
living in Latin America or the United States.
Merriam-Webster, however, does not consider
the term “Afro-Latina” a word.
To them,
America’s most trusted dictionary,
Latin American people of African ancestry do not exist.
It is merely hearsay,
a term attributed to those who have felt the noose,
but have only loosely been hung by the tree.
Or maybe she is the tree,
the way her roots always got their foot on the necks of all cultures.
Thank a Black woman for always giving you something to be micro-aggressive about.
Latina, an adjective that behooves to be seen.
Afro-Latina, a myth, a folktale,
a thing she becomes after the search party leaves,
like she hadn’t been standing there all along,
clearing the forest while you grind her bones to fertilize the soil.
This isn’t a metaphor for Black girl magic or anger,
this is me, no longer flat-ironing my fro to fit within the margins of a term
dependent on my proximity to whiteness.
I am not Black and Latina, I am a Black Latina.
I am anomaly–
I am anomaly stranger’s whisper about in disbelief,
confident my tongue don’t conjugate like theirs.
I am creating my own narrative before they write me out the wrong story.
Contort my surviving into their savior, build me a shrine to die on.
And haven’t we always been damaged goods?
Sold at a bargain price.
Carbon copy us into ash.
Snap their fingers and blow us into dust.
Her silhouette, the standard.
Her Afro, a wig they take on and off.
Her melanin, packaged and sold at leisure.
Her culture, a billion-dollar commodity.
Meringue, Bachata, Salsa, Rumba, Tango, Samba,
name a beat her hips ain’t formed and twerked into baile,
into ritmo,
into música.
When Celia says, La negra tiene tumba’o
she’s speaking for millions of Afro-Latinas who go missing
in history books, in movies, in television,
in conversations about their own identities.
In real life, in real life, Afro-Latinas, Black women, poor women,
marginalized women are dying,
are targets,
and those who love her culture won’t attend her funeral,
will not speak of her life.
Instead, tape up her house, ready to thrift and shop her culture away.
Buy up heirlooms and call them spicy,
bloody red with passion.
Do you see it?
How easily Black girl becomes wallpaper to the building of her own identity.
A mime always in front of her to edifice a movement.
My culture is not your cash crop.
My mother’s country is not your paradise.
My bilingual tongue is not your inquisition to crusade over.
Dicen que soy Latina…
Until I start talking about colorism,
until I check them on erasure,
until I choose to speak on my own behalf,
until I remind them my Afro comes before Latina.
Resources
The leading voices in Afro-descendants discourse
Asociación Cultural Yoruba de Cuba - EcuRed
- http://www.afrolatinoforum.org/
International Decade for People of African Descent 2015-2024
- https://www.un.org/en/observances/decade-people-african-descent
Minority Rights:
Henry Louis Gates Jr.- Blacks in Latin America
- https://www.pbs.org/wnet/black-in-latin-america/about/
Henry Louis Gates Jr. - Blacks in Latin America- Mexico and Peru
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uol3pPmdVE
Henry Louis Gates Jr. - Blacks in Latin America- Cuba
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7p30a4auyA
Henry Louis Gates Jr. - Blacks in Latin America- Brazil
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh7c46U5hhY
Henry Louis Gates Jr. - Blacks in Latin America- Haiti and Dominican Republic
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DD4A9UET5TI
Afro-Latino Forum
http://www.afrolatinoforum.org/