In a story posted on the Reuters/AlterNet website, Marie-Hélène Verney writes about the dangers of life in Chocó for Afro-Colombians displaced due to the ongoing civil war in their nation.

"Logging is dangerous work," she writes about one family, "but there are few other employment opportunities for displaced men and boys in Rio Sucio and its environs. 'Once you are out in the jungle, it's hard to know what can happen,' noted Jose Alexander. Irregular armed groups fight for control of the territory and its rich natural resources.

"Only last October, six young men were macheted to death and four injured during an attack on a logging camp. All were displaced people who accepted the seasonal work because it provided them with desperately needed income....

"Colombians call the forest the lungs of the world, but it is rapidly dwindling. Every year, hundreds of thousands of hectares of primary forest are cleared off, legally or illegally. And while a few people make fortunes from the timber harvest, Chocó is also the poorest region in Colombia and one of the most badly hit by armed conflict and forced displacement."

NEW VIDEO:  "Africa in Mexico: Memory & Modernity"

Check out the new video "Africa in Mexico: Memory & Modernity" by North Carolina Central University Spanish Professor Marco Polo Hernández Cuevas. The video was filmed by NCCU students Antonio W. Caldwell and Edward J. Banks. Descriptions of the video, in English and Spanish, are below.

English: Reconstructs the involuntary planetary dispersion of African populations, with their millenarian cultural capitals, between the 15th and 19th centuries; and analyzes the Africanization of the places of arrival through their ethnic contributions. 

Español: Reconstruye la dispersión planetaria involuntaria de poblaciones africanas, con sus capitales culturales milenarios, entre los siglos XV y XIX; y analiza la africanización, mediante sus aportaciones étnicas, de los lugares de llegada.

"I'm always on the lookout for what I call stealth racists - those people who have that subliminal instinct to marry whiter and have lighter kids."

So says Washington, DC-based activist Roland Roebuck, an Afro Puerto Rican who recently caused a firestorm of controversy with the publication of his article "Hispanos, Racismo y Obama/Hispanics, Racism and Obama."

"As a student of race relations among Hispanics, I'm not at all surprised at the massive lack of support for the candidacy of Barack Obama among Hispanics," he wrote: "In western and southern states, where Hispanics are numerous, most are giving their support to the little white woman, Hillary Clinton. I totally understand the reason for this. The germ of racism has completely contaminated Hispanics. It's at such a level that, as a group, they would not tolerate the possibility of an African American sitting in the White House."

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