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Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Inés Acosta writes about the struggle to regain stolen housing among Uruguay's
Black community: " 'One of the biggest
challenges we face is the difficulty of providing our families with decent housing,'
[Alicia García of Mundo Afro, an Afro-Uruguayan organisation founded in 1988] told IPS. "To
tackle this problem, a group of women joined together to promote the creation of housing cooperatives, with the support of
Mundo Afro, in the southern Montevideo neighbourhoods where the Afro-descendent population was historically concentrated:
Barrio Sur, Palermo and Cordón. "These neighbourhoods were originally
settled by immigrant labourers and freed slaves who rented lodgings in 'conventillos' or tenement housing, in which entire
families shared a single room. "The conventillos were the birthplace of
Afro-Uruguayan culture and
particularly candombe, a percussion-based musical genre with African roots
that has
become quintessentially Uruguayan. "In the 1970s, however, the rising property
values in this central area of the city spurred the forced eviction of many Black families to make room for growing urban
development - a gentrification process that was further stepped up during the 1973-1985 military dictatorship.
" 'As far as we are concerned, what happened during those years was an act of genocide
and outright racism. Many of the houses in the neighbourhoods where we lived had been built many years before. The de facto
government at the time issued an announcement that repairs would be made to run-down houses if the occupants reported the
poor conditions of the places where they were living,' recalled García, who was 12 years old at the time.
" 'People went to file reports so that their houses would be repaired,
but it
was all a trick: the military government gathered up all these
reports and used them to condemn the houses as uninhabitable,
and then
started evicting the occupants based on these grounds. It was all a
terrible deception,' she added."
12:30 am est
Perú apologizes for racism, discrimination
By Karen Juanita Carrillo
In Perú, the administration of President Alan García Pérez
has published an apology and a request for Afro Perúvians to accept a “historical pardon” from the government,
for years of discrimination and second class citizenship.
Published in the Saturday, November 28, 2009 edition
of the official government newspaper, El Perúano, the legal notice states that the government wanted to express a “pardon
to the Afro Perúvian community for the history of abuses, exclusions and acts of discrimination that have been committed
against them.”
The statement also noted that the “offenses” – or acts of discrimination
– against Afro Perúvians may have begun in the 16th century but have remained unrelenting “to the present
time”, continuing to present “a barrier to the social, economic, labor and educational development” of Perú’s
Blacks. read more
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Visit www.afropresencia.com to find listings and links to areas where you can find out
about upcoming events, as well as links to articles, photos and videos on Life in the Black Americas.
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The Sound of My Footsteps: Narratives of Migratory Jamaican immigrants
Interviews with over 30 Jamaican immigrants on their
pre-migratory perceptions of New York and England Click
here to view and purchase the book.
The Afro-Latin@ Reader:
History and Culture in the United States
 The Afro-Latin@ Reader focuses attention on a large, vibrant, yet oddly invisible community
in the United States: people of African descent from Latin America and the Caribbean. The presence of Afro-Latin@s
in the United States (and throughout the Americas) belies the notion that Blacks and Latin@s are two distinct categories
or cultures. Afro-Latin@s are uniquely situated to bridge the widening social divide between Latin@s and African
Americans. At the same time, their experiences reveal pervasive racism among Latin@s and ethnocentrism among African
Americans. Offering insight into Afro-Latin@ life and new ways to understand culture, ethnicity, nation, identity,
and antiracist politics, The Afro-Latin@ Reader presents a kaleidoscopic view of Black Latin@s in the United
States. It addresses history, music, gender, class, and media representations in more than sixty selections, including
scholarly essays, memoirs, newspaper and magazine articles, poetry, short stories, and interviews. Click here to view and purchase the book.
African American History Day by Day: A Reference Guide to Events by Karen Juanita Carrillo The proof
of any group's importance to history is in the detail, a fact made plain by this informative book's day-by-day documentation
of the impact of African Americans on life in the United States. One of the easiest ways to grasp any aspect of history
is to look at it as a continuum. African American History Day by Day: A Reference Guide to Events provides just
such an opportunity. Click here to view and purchase the book.
The
View from Chocó: The Afro-Colombian past, their lives in the present, and their hopes for the future by Karen Juanita Carrillo The View from Chocó: The Afro-Colombian past, their lives in the
present, and their hopes for the future is an introduction to the lives of Blacks in Colombia. Afro-Colombians
live in a resource-rich yet remote region of Colombia. They only recently won recognition as one of that nation's
distinct ethnic groups. But Colombia's on-going civil war has led many Afro-Colombians to reach even farther than
their nation's borders for recognition: many have made their way to the United States as refugees and as political
activists working for peace in their homeland. The View from Chocó introduces the lives and struggles of a too-long neglected community of Colombian Blacks. Click here to view and purchase the book.
Raise Your Brown Black Fist is a collection of essays
written by Kevin Alberto Sabio during his time as a Contributing Writer  for an online magazine.
The book combines his two article series, "Black
vs Brown" and "Black Thoughts: A Political Ideological Perspective
for Afrolatinos" into one volume, plus three other miscellaneous entries. The book
is currently available through his publisher, AuthorHouse. Click
the logo above to view and purchase the book.
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