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Afro-Latinos: Shaping the American story

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Roberto Clemente at bat for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1967. Photo: Jim Hansen. Prints and Photographs Division.

This is a guest post by María Peña, a public relations strategist in the Library’s Office of Communications.

No discussion around Black History Month would be complete without exploring the significant contributions of Afro-Latinos to American culture and society. The Library provides a rich sampling of some of these icons who have enriched the national mosaic.

Latinos can be of any race, and according to the Pew Research Center, about 25 percent of Hispanics in the U.S. self-identify as Afro-Latinos. As members of the African diaspora, they have faced discrimination for being black and alienation because of their language and accent.

Orlando Cepeda, the Hall-of-Fame first baseman from Puerto Rico, summed it up this way after a brilliant 17-year career in Major League Baseball from 1958 to 1974: “We had two strikes against us: One for being black, and another for being Latino.”

Spanish-speaking Africans were present in North America before the arrival of English settlers and Afro-Latinos came to be an integral part of American history. Their stories and struggles interweaved with those of Africans enslaved by English settlers and added to the nation’s cultural tapestry. Still, because white society seldom sought to understand or differentiate differences between Blacks, Afro-Latinos have often been underreported in the news media or are barely mentioned in history textbooks.

“Afro-Latinos have had a long history and strong presence in U.S history since the mid-16th century and very few Americans are aware of the term ‘Afro-Latinos,’ ” said Carlos Olave, head of the Hispanic Reading Room.

Nevertheless, as D.C. AfroLatino Caucus founder Manuel Méndez points out, the world would not be the same without prominent Afro-Cuban musicians like Mario Bauza. And no one can forget Johnny Pacheco, the Dominican-American music legend who co-founded Fania Records in the 1960s and helped create the genre of music known today as salsa. When he died on Feb. 15, the world lost an icon. There was also the  heroic efforts of Dominican-born Esteban Hotesse, a Tuskegee Airman during World War II, to integrate the military.

Here are just a few more of the names who have changed American history, many of whom you can find in the Library’s collections.

— Puerto Rican historian Arturo Alfonso Schomburg was a key intellectual figure in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and spent his life championing Black history and literature.  His collection of books, documents and artifacts from and about Black history from around the world helped establish the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem in 1926, within the New York Public Library.

Before Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color line with the Dodgers in 1947, several Afro-Cuban players had made inroads decades earlier for people of color in the nation’s pastime, including Estevan Enrique Bellán, Rafael Almeida and Armando Marsans. During the ensuing decades, Roberto Clemente, Orlando Cepeda, Minnie Miñoso and the Alou brothers (Felipe, Manny and Jesus) were among the sport’s most important Afro-Latino players, setting the stage for future generations to become some of the brightest stars in the game. In 2020,10.7 percent of MLB’s entire roster was from the Dominican Republic alone.

Machito, performing in 1947. Photo: William P. Gottlieb. Prints and Photographs Division.

The arts and entertainment world of the early to mid-20th century was flavored with the rhythms of Afro-Latino mega stars like Sammy Davis Jr. (his mother, Elvera Sanchez, was of Afro-Cuban descent), Celia Cruz, Machito (Frank Grillo) and Negrura Peruana. Machito fused traditional Cuban dance rhythms with big-band arrangements to dominate the post-war Latin music scene during the Golden Age of Latin Music; the Library has a huge trove of his papers. Cruz, also known as the “Queen of Salsa”, won numerous awards throughout her 60-year career, with sold-out performances where her battle cry “¡Azúcar!” (“Sugar!”) alluded to African slaves working in sugar cane plantations in her native Cuba.

As in baseball, these Afro-Latino artists founded a platform so broad that is taken for granted today;  Mariah Carey, Rosario Dawson, Esperanza Spalding and Zoe Saldana and just a few names to drop.

In literature, Afro-Latino authors have added their voices to the national dialogue for years, with their works attracting an international following. The list includes Junot Díaz, (“Drown,” “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”) born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey; Brazilian author Paulo Lins (“City of God,” adapted to film in 2002); Dominican-American author Elizabeth Acevedo (“The Poet X,” winner of the National Book Award For Young People); Veronica Chambers, the Panamanian-American journalist and author; and Puerto Rican authors Mayra Santos Febres and Dahlma Llanos Figueroa.

–In science, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has talked about his Afro-Latino heritage as the son of a Puerto Rican mother and an African-American father and has written about his experiences with racial profiling. Growing up in the Bronx, deGrasse Tyson developed a passion for astronomy after a visit to the sky theater at the Hayden Planetarium at the age of nine. He became the fifth director of the New York City-based planetarium in 1996, and he continues to promote science literacy and to popularize science through lectures, seminars, and national book tours.

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Comments (8)

  1. Lumping Black Americans in with Latino immigrants need to stop. These people have their own culture in the Caribbean, that is nothing like Black culture, stop forcing this narrative.

  2. Both black and latinos need to learn to love each other fr fr tho.

  3. i agree w izzy vega tbh, clay isn’t even talking abt the same thing.. bro ?

  4. Hi I really loved this book.I read it to my kids and they really understanded.I gave this to my class and they said it is really good.Its good for showing someone what an afro latino is.This shows me that afro latinos are individuals of Latin America or of Latin American descent who are also of African ancestry.

  5. what is clay frl talkin about cmon mane I really loved this passage read it to my step mother she loved it because she a afro latina and somehow I’m not like grah

  6. I agree with everything, the other comments said

  7. Clay brothers like u need to stop taking credibility out tribe of Socalled blacks
    Where in the article … The author is doing what’s you claiming… So are u saying Sammy davis jr wasn’t Afro-Latino? That Roberto Clemente didn’t exist…. What about Alfonso schomborg… Was real? Did you know that the African American flag the red black and green
    Was created by a Jamaican of Spanish descent
    a Afro-Caribbean Latino name Marcus garvey?
    Did you even know that hip-hop and the black panther party was created by Afro-Caribbeans
    Did u you know that Malcom x was Afro-Caribbean from his mother side of the family

    Point is….
    You African American
    Didn’t do it alone

    The AfroLatinos , and Afro-Caribbean
    Help shape. African American History
    In a big major way

    Let me put it like this
    If it was for a Afro-Latino
    From Puerto Rico it wouldn’t
    Be a black History library

    If it wasn’t for a Afro-Caribbean Creole
    With Spanish blood from Jamaica

    You wouldn’t of had black nationalism
    Hell you wouldn’t have a Black National Flag

    So stop trying
    To divide the tribes

    In case u didn’t know
    We are all Afro-Americans

    Because both the The Caribbean, and Latins
    Came from the Americas…. So we all Americans

    Just different tribes

    And I’m Afro-Latino of Cimarron Palenquero descent (look it up) from Panama 🇵🇦
    And of Afro-Caribbean Maroon
    descent From Jamaica 🇯🇲
    My father’s side , and African American
    Gallah & Atlantic Creole Creole
    On my mother’s side …

    So u not gonna win
    this argument

    I represent all the Black tribes
    In the Americas, and I’m an Israelite
    So my historical knowledge is deep

    So let’s unite the tribes
    And appreciate what
    Each tribe did for Black America

    Thats North America
    Latin America, and
    The Caribbean ….

    Shalom

  8. nice article or blog, i dunno. still nice! im using it as a resource for a project

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