You say you look more black than Hispanic. Suppose I told you that there are way more blacks who are Hispanic than there are those who are non-Hispanic. An overwhelming number of Africans went to Puerto Rico, Cuba, Mexico, and all the way down to Argentina.

Afro Latinos
http://ahorasecreto.blogspot.com/2011/04/afro-latinos.html

I grew up in Saint Thomas Virgin Islands with both of my parents. My mother was Puerto Rican from Loiza and my father was a Cuban Virgin Islander from St. Thomas. My grandfather lived in Guantanamo and we'd visit him every year.He was an Ifa priest. Through him and my great-great grandfather, my siblings and I learned that our family come from Benin. Yoruba brought to Cuba. Through his religion and mine as well, I easily identify with the Diaspora. I'm a lot of things but however you put it Afro-Latin@ encompasses everything that makes up me.

Soon after the birth of my second child in 2007, I began to reflect on what cultural contributions I wanted to make in the lives of my children. I am from Puerto Rico - Vieques, of a African and Italian-Native American parents. I currently live in southern California. The luck of the genetic draw gave me more African features (beautiful brown skin, kinky hair, full lips). My children are Dutch-Peruvian (my husband) and Puerto Rican. They, through the luck of the genetic draw, came out light but with my African features. Seeing them made me reconsider identity and what it means to be Puerto Rican. I am an Afro-Latina, and my children will make sense of their world partly through my experiences. Knowing who I am may help them learn who they are when they begin asking those questions.

Born to a Puerto Rican father and a white American mother in Madrid, Spain. Adopted at 2 weeks old by Black people from New Orleans, LA. From the time of first consciousness the first faces I identified with and who love me were my AA parents from New Orleans. Was raised in Spain with a clear understanding of what African American culture and history was and where it came from. Developed my African-American consciousness reading golden legacy comic books as a child a learning about what it meant to be black. Black was black. Went to Dillard University, came across "mestizo" Hondurans but didn't identify with them because they did not identify with black. Later on in life I moved to Washington, DC to get a PhD in History of the African Diaspora in Latin America. Joined an Afro-Latino student group called cimarron with students who identified with their African roots. It was there that I finally found latinos who were black. It was there that I finally could identify myself not only as African-American, but also Afro-Latino!!!!

Though I was born in the U.S., my family originates from Latin America. My grandmother, born in Cuba, and my grandfather, a Garifuna from Honduras, met in Panama and started a family. Ever since I was little, I marveled at the stories my grandmother shared about how she and her family were the first black family to travel by ship from Cuba to Panama; that her husband worked tirelessly as a security guard in the Panama Canal, garnering enough money to send his wife and children to America, the land of opportunity; how my grandmother worked two jobs to put her six children through high school and college. She spoke with pride and dignity, and told me “never forget where you come from, Leland, never forget.” However, with the passing of the years-and of the generations- the language and the culture of my grandmother are all but lost.
Until two years ago, I did not know much about Panamanian culture. Sure, I recalled my mother teaching me the numbers and colors in Spanish, the salsa music filling our house on Sunday mornings, and my grandma and aunts hurriedly switching to Spanish when my cousin and I entered the room. But in my childhood, Spanish was an esoteric language, used only when the adults discussed an issue not meant for young ears. Therefore, the Panamanian language and culture were at once familiar and exotic to me. But then I found the opportunity to travel to Panama on a volunteer trip, where I taught little children English in the bucolic interior for seven weeks. There, I discovered more than just palm trees, mangoes, and polleras; I found my identity. To set foot in the land of my ancestors, to tread where they had treaded, to see the land I heard so much about as a child, truly changed my life.
The most striking feature about Panama is the incredibly diverse population it harbors. In the advent of the Trans-Isthmian Railroad and then the Panama Canal, scores of laborers from all over the Caribbean, North America, India and China flocked to the isthmus in search of work. When these projects were completed, many stayed on and made a life for themselves in Panama. However, when the U.S. established the infamous Canal Zone, blacks and whites were segregated into the Silver and Gold Rolls, named as such for the salary rules imposed by the U.S. government in which blacks were paid in silver and whites in gold. My grandparents vividly remember being forbidden to enter Gold restaurants, bathrooms, and post-offices. Just as in the U.S., this segregation system polarized the races in Panama and led to racial conflict throughout Panamanian history. Today, this legacy remains in the gross income inequality between whites and blacks in Panama, the most affluent areas in Panama City looking white while the more destitute Colon looking black. Studying this history and seeing the present with my own eyes has sparked a hunger to learn more about the black struggle in Latin America, and the global black struggle as a whole.

Wow, veryyyyyy interesting. I'm a Gari myself, and I have never heard that perspective.

I grew up in the DC metropolitan. My parents came here from Puerto Rico. I began to study the hisrory of Africans in Puerto Rico when I was in high school and really embraced all the powerful things I learned about people like Arturo Schomburg and Roberto Clemente. However, the most powerful thing was learning about my family. How my maternal grandparents had to choose carefully where they spent their time during their courting days because of the differences of their skin. Is there racism in PR and the latino community? YES! Have people in my family overcome those obstacles? ABSOLUTELY! Let's continue the dialogue!

As an African-American influenced by Latinos at an early age in New York City to learn Spanish and fall in love with Latino music, I'll never forget the words of my late Mexican-American friend Yolanda, who said to me, “Bill, if you are going to speak Spanish, you need to learn the culture.” Well, that piece of advice confused me because of the various cultures/countries in Latin America.

I decided to take the easy way out by exploring the Latino cultures where Africans had an influence on the music, such as son-montuno (Cuba), bachata (Dominican Republic), Tambor (Venezuela), etc. I then started taking vacations to selected Latin-American countries to explore the black experience. For example, in Colombia, I visited a landmark black village where their ancestors won their freedom from the Spanish more than 200 years before the rest of Colombia and other South American countries did.

I've been blogging for two years about my explorations into Afro-Latino culture. The blog is called African American-Latino World www.ahorasecreto.blogspot.com