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Five Afro-Latinx Activists

While American media might make it seem like the Afro-Latinx identity has only existed since debates over Cardi B's race, we've always been here, we've always been speaking about our blackness, we've always been the ones forced to defend our latinidad at the hands of white and mestizo latinx. While American and Latino media will homogenize the "latin" ethnicity with light-skin white and mestizo latinx, we've been the ones on the ground underrepresented and erased. Here are Afro-Latinx who have led movements and combated injustices that you already know about.


  1. Susana Baca - Beyond being one of the most prominent Afro-Peruvian figures and a two time Latin Grammy Award winner, Susana Baca uses her platform to advocate for the justice of the 2.5 million Afro-Peruanx in Peru. Baca had served as Peru’s Minister of Culture and Arts. Her album Afrodiaspora is a poetic composition of the struggles of afro latinidad.
 
source: ANDINA (2012). Cantante peruana Susana Baca nacio un 24 de mayo. [image]


  1. The Young Lords - out of Spanish Harlem rose the Young Lord’s defiance and outrage against the systemic discrimination for Puerto Ricans and against the colonialism the United States holds Puerto Rico at mercy to. They were a group composed of mostly Afro Latinos and advocated on education of the Diaspora and the intersections of being Black in America. They modeled themselves after the Black Panther party, being a radical, leftist group. They are most famous for picking up the trash in their neighborhoods and dumping them in wealthy, white neighborhoods as a protest for the lack of investment in their neighborhoods.  
 
source: tumblr.com


  1. Daymé Arocena - Adorning herself in white garments, Arocena denies the colonialist practices of Christianity and invokes the traditions of the Yoruba people who were sent to the Caribbean during the Atlantic Slave Trade. She is an Afro-Cuban jazz singer who has been accredited to being a cross between “Celia Cruz and Aretha Franklin” by National Public Radio’s host Felix Contreras.

source: tumblr.com


  1. W.E.B. Dubois - Despite being washed as African American, Dubois family immigrated to the U.S. from Haiti. His prolific work in the Pan-African Diaspora and his endless contributions to the fight for Black liberation grant him as one of the most influential Afro-Latinos in United States history. He is also one of the founders of the NAACP.
source: biography.com


  1. Maria Emilia Duran - This Afro-Venezuelan takes a stand against the racist right wing opposition in Venezuela that, with the aid of the U.S., seeks to destabilize the leftist power in the country. When asked about the opposition protest in Venezuela with TeleSUR, Duran says “It’s a white, bourgeois, classist, racist and sexist elite that has no patriotism,” and that “They want a Venezuela where only they exist, not Black, Indigenous and poor people.” While American media show the Venezuelan opposition and paint it as the will of the country, they are ignoring and dismissing Afro-Latinx Chavistas like Duran.
source: twitter.com/TeleSURenglish

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