Black in Latin America | |
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Written by | Henry Louis Gates Jr. |
Directed by | Ricardo Pollack Diene Petterle Ilana Trachtman |
Presented by | Henry Louis Gates Jr. |
Country of origin | United States |
No. of episodes | 4 |
Production | |
Executive producers | Henry Louis Gates Jr. Jonathan Hewes William R. Grant |
Producer | Ricardo Pollack |
Production companies | Inkwell Films Wall to Wall Productions THIRTEEN |
Release | |
Original network | PBS |
Original release | 19 April 2011 – May 10, 2011 |
Black in Latin America is a documentary television series that aired on PBS on April 19, 2011, in the United States. [1] [2] The series is based on the 2011 book Black in Latin America by Henry Louis Gates Jr., who produced the four-episode series. Both the documentary and book explore the historical roots and influence of Afro-Latin Americans. The book's chapters and the documentary's episodes each focus on individual Latin American countries whose African heritage is often overlooked. [1] Each nation has varying perceptions of race and color, but all had policies in order to lighten the overall skin color of their population. [3] For example, in 1933 Mexico restricted the immigration of blacks into the country, [4] and 4 million white European immigrants were welcomed to Brazil between 1884 and 1939. [3]
Gates' purpose behind creating the documentary was to make African-American history and present-day experiences better known within the context of Latin America. [5] One fact highlighted by Gates was that Barack Obama was not the first black president of a multi-racial nation, but rather Vicente Guerrero, Mexico's president from April to December in 1829, was the first. [5]
Episode | Title | Original air date [1] |
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1 | "Haiti & the Dominican Republic: An Island Divided" | April 19, 2011 |
Gates discusses the Dominican Republic's social construction of race and Haiti's history of slave liberation and the formation of a black republic. One thing Gates noticed was that while people from the U.S. would consider some Dominicans as "black," they identified as "indio" and instead viewed Haitians as "negroes." [3] While Haiti did not have as many racial categories as other countries, it still dealt with problems between black and mulatto people. [6] | ||
2 | "Cuba: The Next Revolution" | April 26, 2011 |
Gates connects the history of slave labor with Cuba's music and culture, and also explores how the Communist revolution has affected racism in Cuba. Specifically, Gates wondered whether the health and education benefits given to all Cubans helped deal with racism in the nation. [6] | ||
3 | "Brazil: A Racial Paradise?" | May 3, 2011 |
Gates focuses on Brazil's Carnival and the country's history "as the world's largest slave economy." With 136 categories of blackness, [6] Brazil is given the title of the "rainbow nation" in the episode's summary. Two reasons Gates chose Brazil to include in his documentary was that it is the largest country of Latin America, and it is Portuguese, in contrast with the majority of Hispanic Latin American nations. [5] | ||
4 | "Mexico & Peru: The Black Grandma in the Closet" | May 10, 2011 |
Gates discusses the history of black slaves brought to Mexico and Peru during the 1500s-1600s, in addition to the culture that is now lived by their descendants.The census in Mexico and Peru do not have a category for race, and some activists want to bring this category back because without it, many people ignore the racism existing in their nations. [3] |
There have been several critiques of Gates' work on Haiti and the Dominican Republic, including essentialist depictions and misunderstanding of popular cultural forms.
John Maddox and Michael Steinkampf of the University of Alabama wrote in a 2015 Afro-Hispanic Review article that Gates leaves out a lot of information in the second episode, "Cuba: The Next Revolution". The authors suggest that due to the strong control of media[ clarification needed ], the documentary did not provide sufficient information about racism in Cuba [ clarification needed ]. Gates's book Black in Latin America provides more information on the subject. [7]
Kenneth Lauren Burns is an American filmmaker known for his documentary films and television series, many of which chronicle American history and culture. His work is often produced in association with WETA-TV and/or the National Endowment for the Humanities and distributed by PBS.
White is a racialized classification of people and a skin color specifier, generally used for people of European ancestry, although the definition can vary depending on context, nationality, and point of view.
Afro–Latin Americans or Black Latin Americans are Latin Americans of full or mainly sub-Saharan African ancestry.
Afro-Cubans or Black Cubans are Cubans of sub-Saharan African ancestry. The term Afro-Cuban can also refer to historical or cultural elements in Cuba thought to emanate from this community and the combining of native African and other cultural elements found in Cuban society such as race, religion, music, language, the arts and class culture.
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African American Lives is a PBS television miniseries hosted by historian Henry Louis Gates Jr., focusing on African American genealogical research. The family histories of prominent people of African American descent are explored using traditional genealogic techniques as well as genetic analysis.
In the United States, a white Hispanic or Latino is an individual who is of full or partial Hispanic or Latino descent, the largest group being white Mexican Americans. Although not differentiated in the U.S. Census definition, White Latino Americans may also be defined to include only those who identify as white and either originate from or have descent from countries in Latin America that speak Romance languages such as Brazil, Haiti, and French Guiana.
The legal and social strictures that define White Americans, and distinguish them from persons who are not considered white by the government and society, have varied throughout the history of the United States.
Black Hispanic and Latino Americans, also called Afro-Hispanics, Afro-Latinos or Black Hispanics, or Black Latinos are classified by the United States Census Bureau, Office of Management and Budget, and other U.S. government agencies as Black people living in the United States with ancestry in Spain or Latin America and/or who speak Spanish, and/or Portuguese as their first language.
The Partido Independiente de Color (PIC) was a Cuban political party composed almost entirely of African former slaves - composed of Afro-Cubans. It was founded in 1908 by African veterans of the Cuban War of Independence. In 1912, the PIC led a revolt in the eastern province of Oriente. The revolt was crushed and the party disbanded. It is believed Esteban Montejo, subject of Miguel Barnets "Biografía de un cimarrón," was a member of this party, or had close associates who were.
Racism in Cuba refers to racial discrimination in Cuba. In Cuba, dark skinned Afro-Cubans are the only group on the island referred to as black while lighter skinned, mixed race, Afro-Cuban mulattos are often not characterized as fully black or fully white. Race conceptions in Cuba are unique because of its long history of racial mixing and appeals to a "raceless" society. The Cuban census reports that 65% of the population is white while foreign figures report an estimate of the number of whites at anywhere from 40 to 45 percent. This is likely due to the self-identifying mulattos who are sometimes designated officially as white. A common myth in Cuba is that every Cuban has at least some African ancestry, influenced by historical mestizaje nationalism. Given the high number of immigrants from Europe in the 20th century, this is far from true. Several pivotal events have impacted race relations on the island. Using the historic race-blind nationalism first established around the time of independence, Cuba has navigated the abolition of slavery, the suppression of black clubs and political parties, the revolution and its aftermath, and the special period.
Afro-Mexicans, also known as Black Mexicans, are Mexicans who have heritage from sub-Saharan Africa and identify as such. As a single population, Afro-Mexicans include individuals descended from both free and enslaved Africans who arrived to Mexico during the colonial era, as well as post-independence migrants. The latter include Afro-descended people from neighboring English, French, and Spanish-speaking countries of the Caribbean and Central America, descendants of enslaved Africans who escaped to Mexico from the Deep South during Slavery in the United States, and to a lesser extent recent migrants directly from Africa. Today, there are localized communities in Mexico with significant although not predominant African ancestry. These are mostly concentrated in specific communities, including the populations of the Oaxaca, Huetamo, Lázaro Cárdenas, Guerrero, and Veracruz states.
Blanqueamiento in Spanish, or branqueamento in Portuguese, is a social, political, and economic practice used in many post-colonial countries in the Americas and Oceania to "improve the race" towards a supposed ideal of whiteness. The term blanqueamiento is rooted in Latin America and is used more or less synonymously with racial whitening. However, blanqueamiento can be considered in both the symbolic and biological sense. Symbolically, blanqueamiento represents an ideology that emerged from legacies of European colonialism, described by Anibal Quijano's theory of coloniality of power, which caters to white dominance in social hierarchies. Biologically, blanqueamiento is the process of whitening by marrying a lighter-skinned individual to produce lighter-skinned offspring.
Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is a documentary television series hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr. that premiered on March 25, 2012, on PBS. In each episode, celebrities are presented with a "book of life" that is compiled with information researched by professional genealogists that allows them to view their ancestral histories, learn about familial connections and discover secrets about their lineage.
Hispanic and Latino Floridians are residents of the state of Florida who are of Hispanic or Latino ancestry. As of the 2020 US Census, Latinos of any race were 26.2% of the state's population. Latinos in Florida accounted for 5.3 million of the US Latino population. At around 28.5% of the population as of 2017, Cubans are the largest Latino group in Florida. Puerto Ricans are one of the fastest growing Latino groups in Florida, with one out of every five Latinos in the state being of Puerto Rican origin. Cubans and Puerto Ricans together make up almost half of Florida's Latino population. Other sizable Latino groups include South Americans (17.9%), Mexicans (13.5%), Central Americans (10.7%), and Dominicans (4.8%); all other Latinos make up 3.6% in total.
The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross is a six-part documentary miniseries written and presented by Henry Louis Gates Jr. It aired for the first time on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the fall of 2013, beginning with episode 1, "The Black Atlantic (1500–1800)", on October 22, 8–9 p.m. ET on PBS, and every consecutive Tuesday through to episode 6, "A More Perfect Union (1968–2013)", on November 26. The companion book to the series, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, was co-authored by Gates and historian Donald Yacovone. The two-DVD set of the series was released in January 2014.
Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is a trustee of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. He rediscovered the earliest known African-American novels, long forgotten, and has published extensively on the recognition of African-American literature as part of the Western canon.
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