Chanda's Tumblrsaurus

youlikemealready:

lati-negros:

An Afro-Latin American is a Latin American person who is, at least in part, of African heritage or lineage.

African slaves were oriignally brought to America because of the rapidly decreasing numbers of Native American laborers available for work on the plantations. They…

This submission is no good. And not just because it passes along, uncritically, racial categories and assimilationist claptrap about Black culture in Southern Cone and Central American countries. But also because it GROSSLY under-represents the percentage of Latinos of African descent living in South-American-Countries-Besides-Brazil in favor of re-producing the pernicious (nationalist) myth that the majority of negros lived and continue to live mostly on the islands in the Caribbean Sea.

I mean, if you think only 10% of Venezolanos are of African ancestry, well, then I think we should spend more time there.

If you’d like more ~proofs we can look at The Historical Sources that enumerate the hundreds of thousands of enslaved African people imported to the territory from the 16th through 19th centuries and helped establish (among many, many other things about wonderful, wonderful Venezuela) a demographic profile that since at least the 1790s conservatively described the population as 75% of African decent.

That Is To Say, Friends: do not let Skip Gates get you confused about Black-ness in Latin America & The Caribbean!!

George Reid Andrews wrote a far better primer on the subject and I suggest, if you’re interested, you read that instead.