by Melissa M. Valle

El Festival Internacional de Cine de Cartagena de Indias (FICCI) has just ended here in Cartagena, Colombia. It was an incredible opportunity to enjoy some cinematic gems from around the world (PELO MALO from Venezuela is excellent! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxOZtOyNkTQ). I recently watched La Grande Belleza, an Italian film that deservedly garnered a number of awards last year (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJfvX6zPAuQ). Truly a thought-provoking, visually beautiful work of art. But oftentimes what’s most captivating about a film is the audience’s response to it. There was one scene where a Mother Teresa- saint like character was supposed to be visiting Rome. Religious figures from around the world gathered to greet her and the camera cuts to a white nun staring at a man whom we are supposed to assume is African. Well, the (primarily Afro-descendant youth) audience I was surrounded by just found that hilarious. But not more hilarious than when the larger group of Africans was taking a photo with “the saint.” That’s when the audience really had a good, hard laugh. Nothing like images of Africans wearing what people believe is the “traditional” dress to add comic relief to any program.

There is another quite strategic use of representations of African people: to invoke fear. I watched the movie Default - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8B_kvqmAmo  as part of the film festival as well and within moments of watching it I began to cringe. It starts with fictitious news coverage of Somali “pirates” and the reporter says something to the effect of questioning “the making of the modern African criminal.” What, pray tell, is that? We’re talking about the second largest continent in the world (NOT A COUNTRY!). Replace any other continent with Africa and it would sound ludicrous to most. Yet these kinds of statements are made regularly and go uninterrogated.

I have been collecting data for my dissertation in Cartagena for the last seven months (10 months over the course of the last 2.5 years). What has become patently clear is that, like most of the world, there is a very limited understanding of Africa here in Cartagena. Thanks to a history or colonialism, slavery and the media (both national and international), Africa is viewed as being nothing more than a place of primitivity and violence. I watched four different independence parades in Cartagena in November with “Africanness” represented repeatedly by animal prints and spears (see below). When asked why the participants were dressed as they were, the director of one group told me, “to represent the African fantasy.” Oh your fantasy of Africa you must mean.

I’ve watched blackface performances, replete with red lips, “cooning” faces, exaggerated clown-like bodily movements, the whole nine yards. And when I asked one performer (see below) why he was making such faces his response was that they represent “African violence.” Again, what, pray tell, is that?!? At a minimum if they were talking about African warriors and attempting to bring some dignity to a painful history of struggle, that would be one thing. But these crude representations are nothing but mockery and a perpetuation of dangerous stereotypes, no matter how many ways you attempt to slice it. 

So here we are watching an entire film about the African criminal and the white victim. Yes, they made pitiful attempts to make it more critical, but at the end of the day the damage was done and you simply had the violent Africans (in spite of trying to give one character cause and depth), the Black woman servant, and the white victims of the African violence. In that auditorium I could almost feel as the idea of the African as a violent criminal got solidified in the minds of the audience. In La Grande Belleza the principle character, Jep, during an interview with an artist asks her to explain something and she says “I’m an artist. I don’t have to explain jack shit.” This license to create without consciousness or criticism is highly polemic. But images, particularly through cinema, have a way of entering the psyche and the consciousness of people. Representation matters. So how do we work to deconstruct and alter this African fantasy and move beyond “Africanness” as something to be feared or mocked (and can’t forget the third part of the misrepresentation trifecta, sexualized)?

On September 23, 2013, the Constitutional Court in the Dominican Republic issued a ruling that effectively targeted and revoked the citizenship of descendants of Haitians born in the Dominican Republic since 1929, rendering them stateless. Following the decision, there have been deaths and hundreds of expulsions. The future of those remaining in the country is uncertain.

The Dominican Constitution recognizes, in principle, that ”all persons born in the territory of the Dominican Republic” are Dominican citizens but the September  2013 ruling denies this constitutional birthright on the grounds that children of undocumented Haitians are ”in transit.“ The term “in transit” normally applies only to tourists or visiting diplomats in the country for 10 days or less.

The exclusion of Haitian-Dominicans is steeped in xenophobia, racial animus, and anti-Haitianism, long-standing themes in Dominican history. Haitians and Haitian-Dominicans have historically been marginalized in the Dominican Republic, often facing violence and deportation without right of appeal or legal recourse. Haitian children born in the Dominican Republic are routinely denied Dominican birth certificates. Consequently, Haitians and Haitian-Dominicans have little to no access to fair housing, education, health care and other basic social services.

In acts of brazen hypocrisy, Dominican employers heavily recruit the labor of Haitian migrant workers, and Haitian-Dominicans have been integral to the sugar, manufacturing, and tourism industries despite being stigmatized and routinely expelled from a country they have resided in for generations. Simply put, this ruling is a violation of human rights. There are a range of standards and provisions under international law for Haitians and Haitian-Dominicans that are even more critical now that the international community is striving to bring justice to the forefront.  We demand a stop to the deportation of Dominicans of Haitian descent and the immediate reversal of this unfair and inhumane law.

Take action by signing these petitions:

"Fierce" may be an overused word these days, but I think it's appropriate here. I am inspired by this photograph from the Vidal Collection. I found it very interesting that the subject is generally attired in the current fashion of the 1890s given Puerto Rico's state of social and political unrest at the time combined with the seeming lack of access to fashion media by today's standards.

The original image appeared in the 1899, 2-volume history, Our Islands and Their People as Seen with Camera and Pencil.  One year prior to the publication of this large text in 1898, the United States invaded Puerto Rico during the Spanish American War. The black and white photograph features a young woman of African descent in Puerto Rico--sometime around the end of the 19th century. She is standing in front of a weathered building covered with theater advertisements. A street scene unfolds to the right. Locals wander and wonder about the photographic scene or moment taking place. A young barefoot boy stares curiously at the model. The subject's body stands squared to the photographer, her arms hang to her side and face in profile.

The caption beneath the photograph reads, "A Colored Belle of Puerto Rico: The mixture of African with Spanish blood is not found in all of the people of this island. The higher classes of white people hold themselves as strictly in their own society as in any other country. This attractive colored girl is of the higher type of that race." The caption for this photograph is a reminder of the struggle to contextualize images of people of color by colonial spectators. For example, the reference to the young woman as a "type" was a popular early 19th-century term used by early anthropologists for people of color as pseudo-scientific specimens.

While conducting research on this photograph I was excited to discover thea ctual street location is the corner of Calle Cristo and Calle San Sebastián in San Juan. I also located a scholar who amazingly lived just a few doors down from where this photograph was taken!  Miriam Jiménez Román, co-editor of The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States, told  me, "I lived just doors away from this spot, on Cristo, in the mid-1970s and my parents' home town is called San Sebastián. But, beyond my sentimental attachment to the photo there is what she represents: not "simply" a Puerto Rican, but [a] CARIBBEAN woman. I suspect she is from Martinique or Guadeloupe or at least influenced by the French islands in her choice of headwear, the madras headscarf, a style that is still part of their traditional dress."  

The French islands of the Caribbean were famous for their elaborate madras headscarves which were inspired by madrassi rumals worn by Indian indentured servants.  Madrassi rumal literally means "kerchief from Madras" which refers to the city of Madras in India where the fabric originated. These international style connections were carried through networks of global exchange such commercial business, printed magazines, illustrated newspapers, popular culture, immigrant labor, and the exploitation of people of African and Indian decent during colonialism. For example, the subject's style of dress with leg-of-mutton sleeves, petticoat with ruffled hem, narrow paneled apron, and Indian inspired madras headscarf is a testimony to her improvisational panache, as well as, the rich mix of cultural influences in the Caribbean.  

I wanted to investigate fashion trends during La Belle Époque (1895-1914) and discovered in the Ladies Clothing section of the Warshaw Collection of Business Americana in the museum's Archives Center. Both models in the Fashion Plate sport the same stiffened leg-of-mutton sleeves that swell to exaggerated proportions, and are balanced out by a flared skirt from the narrowed waist.

The model in the Vidal photograph has consciously combined the most current style of dress with the adornment of Caribbean influences referencing Indian and African origins. Through a brief study of her self-fashioning we can learn so many things about the complexities of social exchanges, global economies, ethnicity, literature, and history. From the artistry of her stance to her multicultural couture--the subject in the photograph is a nineteenth century fierce fashionista.      

Tashima Thomas is a board member of the afrolatin@ forum and the Goldman Sachs Multicultural Afrolatino Junior Fellow at the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian. She is a Ph.D. Candidate in Art History at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Series Editors: Juan Flores, Miriam Jiménez Román and Natasha Gordon-Chipembere

This book series aims to gather scholarly and creative writing on the African diasporic experience in Latin America, the Caribbean and the United States. The editors welcome book-length manuscripts addressing all aspects of Afro-Latin@ life and cultural expression throughout the hemisphere, with a strong focus on U.S. Latin@s of African descent. We will also consider relevant work on the transnational Brazilian and Haitian experience.

We will be considering manuscripts in any and all humanities and social science disciplines, as well as a wide range of interdisciplinary approaches. The peer-reviewed series will also include fictional and poetic work, though the emphasis will be on critical historical and sociological analysis on a broad range of topics, including religion, history, literature, theory, biography, and scholarship in sociology, politics, and economics. We especially welcome works on issues of class, gender and sexuality, in addition to studies of the transnational Afro-Latin@ experience. Publications will be in English, but we will also consider work in Spanish (subject to author’s securing of resources for translation into English).

The series editors would also be pleased to consider proposals for books. If you have an idea for a relevant book project, we invite you to submit a proposal which includes your name, title, institutional affiliation (if applicable), and mailing address, as well as a 3-4 page prospectus, table of contents, and if possible at least one sample chapter.

Please send all enquiries to the editors at: afrolatinodiasporas@gmail.com