Black in Latin America

by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Overview

The third installment of Gates’s documentary trilogy on the Black Experience, following America Behind the Color Line and Wonders of the African World.
 
Selected as a 2012 Outstanding Title by AAUP University Press Books for Public and Secondary School Libraries
 
12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World during the Middle Passage. While just over 11.0 million survived the arduous journey, only about 450,000 of them arrived in the United States. The rest—over ten and a half million—were taken to the Caribbean and Latin America. This astonishing fact changes our entire picture of the history of slavery in the Western hemisphere, and of its lasting cultural impact. These millions of Africans created new and vibrant cultures, magnificently compelling syntheses of various African, English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish influences.
 
Despite their great numbers, the cultural and social worlds that they created remain largely unknown to most Americans, except for certain popular, cross-over musical forms. So Henry Louis Gates, Jr. set out on a quest to discover how Latin Americans of African descent live now, and how the countries acknowledge—or deny—their African past; how the fact of race and African ancestry play themselves out in the multicultural worlds of the Caribbean and Latin America. Starting with the slave experience and extending to the present, Gates unveils the history of the African presence in six Latin American countries—Brazil, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico, and Peru—through art, music, cuisine, dance, politics, and religion, but also the very palpable presence of anti-black racism that has sometimes sought to keep the black cultural presence from view.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814732991
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	11/21/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	274
Sales rank:	75,873
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is the author of twelve books, including several award-winning works of literary criticism as well as the memoir Colored People; The Future of the Race, co-authored with Cornel West; Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man; and Tradition and the Black Atlantic. Gates has hosted ten PBS television specials, including Looking for Lincoln and the two part series, African American Lives, upon which his book In Search of Our Roots was based. He is winner of the 2009 Ralph Lowell Award for Outstanding Contributions to Public Television and the 2010 NAACP Image Award for Non-Fiction.

Table of Contents

1  Brazil: “May Exú Give Me the Power of Speech”2  Mexico: “h e Black Grandma in the Closet”3  Peru: “h e Blood of the Incas, the Blood of the Mandingas”4  h e Dominican Republic: “Black behind the Ears”5  Haiti: “From My Ashes I Rise; God Is My Cause and My Sword”6  Cuba: h e Next Cuban Revolution

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Gates expands his focus on the black experience in Latin America...While Gates’ tour reveals a burgeoning brown (mixed-race) pride, it also reveals lingering valuation of lighter skin." -Booklist,

"Black in Latin America would be an interesting companion to any guidebook for the Caribbean and Latin America,as it reveals not just a hidden history but also an evolving sense of identity." -Associated Press,

“An amazing travelogue that swiftly transports the reader from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries through the racial histories of Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., brilliantly describes the formation of these New World societies as they evolved from colonialism and slavery into complex national communities with rich and vibrant Creole cultures. This is an essential book that helps us understand the similarities and differences between post-slavery societies in the Americas today.” -Frank Moya Pons,author of History of the Caribbean: Plantations, Trade, and War in the Atlantic World

“A fascinating and engaging journey through past and present, this book offers us a rich portrait of the complexities of race as it is lived in contemporary Latin America. Gates is the perfect guide, sharing his insights, emotions and surprises with eloquence and candor.”-Laurent Dubois,Duke University, and author of Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution

“Henry Louis Gates, Jr., leads us on a country-by-country tour exploring the recesses of blackness in well-known and lesser-known regions of Latin America, surprising us at every turn with his findings. Through the pages of the book, we embark upon a process of historical discovery, learning as Gates does from his informants and sources. Accessible, witty, insightful, and informative, both for its regional coverage and its comparative analysis, this book will be welcomed by scholars and laypersons alike.”-Ben Vinson III,Johns Hopkins University

Editorial Reviews

Of the 11 million enslaved Africans who survived the Middle Passage between 1502 and 1866, 450,000 were brought to the U.S., and the rest—more than 10.5 million—were sent to the Caribbean and Latin America. Harvard professor Gates (How 12 Extraordinary People Discovered Their Pasts) continues to plumb the roots of the descendants of Africans in the New World, and in this companion volume to his PBS special of the same name, he tells the stories of Africans shipped to Brazil, Mexico, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Cuba. It's a rare history that reads like a travelogue: Gates records his visits to the countries, his pleasure in a cool evening in Mexico, his investigations into the issues of the cultural encounters between the indigenous, colonizing, and enslaved populations —the hybrid forms of song and dance, the virulent racism and brutality—with a personal touch. He takes the contemporary pulse of each country, lists its racial categorizations, and interviews common folk and celebrated activists and historians alike. His chapter in Haiti is especially wrenching and inspiring; in the aftermath of the devastating 2010 earthquake, Gates discovers in Port au Prince both the worst living conditions he has ever seen and the only "bold, public recognition of a nation's black founding fathers." (July)

Publishers Weekly

"Henry Louis Gates, Jr., leads us on a country-by-country tour exploring the recesses of blackness in well-known and lesser-known regions of Latin America, surprising us at every turn with his findings. Through the pages of the book, we embark upon a process of historical discovery, learning as Gates does from his informants and sources. Accessible, witty, insightful, and informative, both for its regional coverage and its comparative analysis, this book will be welcomed by scholars and laypersons alike."

Ben Vinson III

"Gates expands his focus on the black experience in Latin America...While Gates tour reveals a burgeoning brown (mixed-race) pride, it also reveals lingering valuation of lighter skin"

Booklist

"In approaching this vast topic, Gates displays disarming modesty and enthusiasm; his tone is that of a letter from a perceptive friend who can't wait to share what he's learned."

The New Yorker

"Black in Latin America provides a different in-depth survey of the African migration to the New World."

The Midwest Book Review

"An amazing travelogue that swiftly transports the reader from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries through the racial histories of Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., brilliantly describes the formation of these New World societies as they evolved from colonialism and slavery into complex national communities with rich and vibrant Creole cultures. This is an essential book that helps us understand the similarities and differences between post-slavery societies in the Americas today."

Frank Moya Pons

"Black in Latin America would be an interesting companion to any guidebook for the Caribbean and Latin America, as it reveals not just a hidden history but also an evolving sense of identity."

Associated Press

"Black in Latin America is a lively and intelligent introduction to the complex history and reality of race in Latin America. Readers accompany Gates as he travels across the region interviewing scholars, activists, cultural figures, and ordinary people who share their insights and experiencesoften surprising, at times painfulof how creolization, discrimination, and anti-racism have evolved historically and are lived in the present"

Ada Ferrer

"Gates doesn't linger in the past. Through music, cuisine, art, dance, politics, religion and language, he finds living links to Africa...would be an interesting companion to any guidebook for the Caribbean and Latin America."

Jennifer Kay

"An entertaining alternative to the chronologically framed textbook, [Gates's] approach has its advantages."

Journal of American History - Micol Seigel

"A fascinating and engaging journey through past and present, this book offers us a rich portrait of the complexities of race as it is lived in contemporary Latin America. Gates is the perfect guide, sharing his insights, emotions and surprises with eloquence and candor."

Laurent Dubois

"Gates expands his focus on the black experience in Latin America...While Gates’ tour reveals a burgeoning brown (mixed-race) pride, it also reveals lingering valuation of lighter skin." -Booklist,

"Black in Latin America would be an interesting companion to any guidebook for the Caribbean and Latin America,as it reveals not just a hidden history but also an evolving sense of identity." -Associated Press,

“An amazing travelogue that swiftly transports the reader from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries through the racial histories of Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., brilliantly describes the formation of these New World societies as they evolved from colonialism and slavery into complex national communities with rich and vibrant Creole cultures. This is an essential book that helps us understand the similarities and differences between post-slavery societies in the Americas today.” -Frank Moya Pons,author of History of the Caribbean: Plantations, Trade, and War in the Atlantic World

“A fascinating and engaging journey through past and present, this book offers us a rich portrait of the complexities of race as it is lived in contemporary Latin America. Gates is the perfect guide, sharing his insights, emotions and surprises with eloquence and candor.”-Laurent Dubois,Duke University, and author of Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution

“Henry Louis Gates, Jr., leads us on a country-by-country tour exploring the recesses of blackness in well-known and lesser-known regions of Latin America, surprising us at every turn with his findings. Through the pages of the book, we embark upon a process of historical discovery, learning as Gates does from his informants and sources. Accessible, witty, insightful, and informative, both for its regional coverage and its comparative analysis, this book will be welcomed by scholars and laypersons alike.”-Ben Vinson III,Johns Hopkins University

From the Publisher