Black in Latin America: The Other African Americans |
Mexico's Hidden Black History
Welcome to the Mexico that you don't know. The slaveship express made stops all over the Americas—including the Estados Unidos Mexicanos.
Mexico's Hidden Black History, Part Two
There are traces of Mother Africa all along Mexico's Pacific Coast. You just have to know where to look.
Race in Cuba: The Politics of Power and Hypocrisy
When it comes to race, Cuba is far from a utopia. As part of The Root's series exploring the island's color complex, one of Cuba's esteemed social scientists writes about the aftermath of an open letter decrying racism there.
Race in Cuba: The Eternal 'Black Problem'
When it comes to race, Cuba is far from the utopia that black intellectuals like to think it is. As part of The Root's series exploring the island's color complex, Cuba's best-known novelist weighs in.
'Black in Latin America': The Other African Americans
Less than 5 percent of the 11.5 million Africans wrenched into slavery ended up in the United States. That is one reason Editor-in-Chief Henry Louis Gates Jr. decided to explore the lives and cultures of blacks from Brazil to Haiti, from Peru to Mexico, in his new PBS television series.
The "Black in Latin America" Series on PBS
Click here or on the large image at the top of the page to see video clips from the series now.
The series will air over four weeks on Tuesdays, April 19 and 26 and May 3 and 10, 2011, at 8 p.m. (ET) on PBS stations. Check your local listings for time and channel. Here are PBS's descriptions of the series.
Episode 1: Haiti & the Dominican Republic: An Island Divided
In Haiti, The Root Editor-in-Chief Henry Louis Gates Jr. tells the story of the birth of the first-ever black republic, and finds out how the slaves' hard-fought liberation over Napoleon Bonaparte's French Empire became a double-edged sword. In the Dominican Republic, Gates explores how race has been socially constructed in a society whose people reflect centuries of intermarriage, and how the country's troubled history with Haiti informs notions about racial classification.
Episode 2: Cuba: The Next RevolutionIn Cuba, Gates finds out how the culture, religion, politics and music of this island are inextricably linked to the huge amount of slave labor imported to produce its enormously profitable 19th-century sugar industry, and how race and racism have fared since Fidel Castro's communist revolution in 1959.
Episode 3: Brazil: A Racial Paradise?In Brazil, Gates delves behind the facade of Carnival to discover how this "rainbow nation" is waking up to its legacy as the world's largest slave economy.
Episode 4: Mexico & Peru: The Black Grandma in the ClosetIn Mexico and Peru, Gates explores the almost unknown history of the significant numbers of black people -- the two countries together received far more slaves than did the United States -- brought to these countries as early as the 16th and 17th centuries, and the worlds of culture that their descendants have created in Vera Cruz on the Gulf of Mexico, the Costa Chica region on the Pacific, and in and around Lima, Peru.
