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Happy Black History Month
As Afro descendants it's important to acknowledge and celebrate everyone from the diaspora who has made significant contributions to the world as we know it.
In honor of Black History Month, Es Mi Cultura shines a light on four prominent Afro-Latinos who impacted or changed the course of history.
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"Francisca da Silva de Oliveira, better known as Chica da Silva (or spelled Xica da Silva), was a Brazilian woman born into slavery, who went on to gain her freedom and become a powerful and well-known member of Brazilian society.
Silva was born between the years 1731 and 1735 (exact year is unknown) to a slave mother, Maria da Costa, and a white man, Antonio Caetano. Her mother was a slave in Domingues da Costa, but Silva was born in the village of Milho Verde. Silva’s baptism was celebrated around 1734 by Reverend Mateus de Sa Cavalcanti.
Living in Tejuco before 1749, Silva was enslaved to Portuguese physician, Manuel Pires Sardinha. Silva served as a domestic slave to Sardinha and bore two children to her owner as a result of her enslavement.
Jose da Silva de Oliveira became Silva’s next master and was later forced to sell Silva to Jose Fernandes de Oliveira, a diamond mine owner. Silva began a romantic relationship with Fernandes de Oliveira. Through this romantic relationship, Silva was able to gain her freedom when Oliveira decided to change her status to freedwoman.
From her relationship with Oliveira, Silva assumed the nickname “Girl in charge.” This was due to her newly-gained immense wealth that came with being in a relationship with a diamond contractor. She soon moved into a castle-like house that had many luxuries, including a private chapel, and it was the only house in the area with a fully-equipped theater.
Silva and Oliveira had thirteen children together. In 1770 Oliveira was required to return to Portugal. He decided to take his sons with him, and Silva stayed in Tejuco to raise their daughters, where she dedicated most of her time to their education. Her children went on to enjoy successes in their lives, including a nomination as the chief judge’s immediate heir and a rank of colonel in the cavalry of Minas Gerais. Silva was able to retain her status after her white partner left, despite her being a person of color.
Silva’s life has been highly romanticized in popular culture. Her life became the subject of a movie, telenovela, and songs. The telenovela, originally shown in Brazil, has been successful in many countries throughout the world. The person who depicts her in the telenovela, Tais Araujo, is the first and only black Brazilian to star as the protagonist of a telenovela.
Silva passed away in 1796. She was granted the privilege only known to wealthy whites of being buried at the Church of Sao Francisco de Assis. Records indicate her name was associated with the status of freedwoman."
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"Nicomedes Santa Cruz was, without a doubt, the most important black intellectual in twentieth-century Peru, and one of the most important in Latin America. Yet, his life, work, and legacy remain relatively unknown, except within academic circles and among Afro-Peruvian organizations.
Between the late 1950s and 1992, the year of his death, he was a restless and passionate cultural entrepreneur, folklorist, poet, and playwright. He was in fact one of the most active intellectuals in Peru: he published about ten books in various genres, essays, short stories, and especially poetry (some of them with several reprints of up to 10,000 copies), hundreds of pieces in newspapers and magazines, and dozens of academic articles on different aspects of black history, culture, religion, poetry, oral traditions, music, and religion. He also recorded a dozen albums that sold thousands of copies, directed radio and TV programs, represented Peru in various international festivals, participated in numerous international conferences, and offered poetry readings in festivals and solidarity events in numerous countries.
Santa Cruz also wrote and directed plays and participated in the staging of theater and music performances. His audience and intellectual connections were not limited to Peru. He became acquainted with intellectuals in the Americas and around the world and conducted research and published works on black music and cultural traditions in other parts of the Americas such as Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Panama.
But even more remarkable is the fact that Nicomedes Santa Cruz was a self-taught intellectual who never went to college and only completed elementary school. He was born in 1925 in a modest family that valued and practiced hard work and intellectual effort, but also preserved and cherished popular and Afro-Peruvian traditions. His father, also called Nicomedes, was a playwright of some success who had lived in the United States between 1881 and 1908, where he was trained as an electrician and mechanic, learned several languages, and nurtured a strong interest and taste for literature and music.
Nicomedes was born in La Victoria, a working-class district with a reputation of being one of the “blackest” areas of Lima, but the family later moved to Lince, a more socially and racially mixed district, when his father was hired to work as a mechanic in a rural estate, and then to Breña, another multi-racial, popular district of Lima. Being from a large family (Nicomedes was the ninth of ten children) and living with the relatively modest income generated by his father forced the young Nicomedes to seek a job as soon as he finished elementary school at the age of 11. He became an apprentice with a locksmith and later worked for many years as a blacksmith. While working for other patrons he started to write poetry during his idle time. He eventually opened his own shop in 1953 but closed it a few years later when he decided to spend most of his time recovering, recreating, and disseminating black and popular cultural traditions. He always referred to his working-class background with great appreciation and would continue to practice the trade from time to time in the midst of his usually busy schedule.
When Nicomedes was growing up as a talented and intellectually curious young man, Lima was still a patriarchal, seigniorial city, not particularly welcoming for blacks. Slavery had been abolished almost a century before, but blacks were still considered second-class citizens, their traditions and culture treated as inferior when not primitive, and the opportunities for their social, economic, and intellectual advancement were quite limited. But there was a vibrant tradition of black music, poetry, folklore, and jaranas (parties) that had existed since colonial times but was now gradually imposing itself on official and mestizo society and would eventually gain increasing recognition.
Three major themes informed the work of Nicomedes Santa Cruz from the mid-1950s through the early 1990s: a celebration of the importance and value of black culture, history, and traditions; the need to fight against racism and discrimination; and his commitment to social justice and anti-imperialism. He was the first black intellectual to merge in his work and efforts an agenda for social justice with a deep preoccupation to fight against black people’s invisibility and oppression.
The struggle against racism would remain at the center of his political and intellectual preoccupations for the rest of his life. According to his account, he first became aware of racism when he fell in love with a girl and wanted to marry her, but his family did not agree: “My family did not accept my marriage with her, for the usual reasons [alleging that] ‘we have to improve the race.’” Later, he also realized that black historical figures were being silenced or did not appear in the standard historical and literary accounts. Blacks were in fact invisible. “All of this, stated Nicomedes in an interview, generated hatred in me against these silences, and later I became conscious of the task I had to fulfill, which may be accomplished using poetry as denunciation.”
He wrote indeed many poems that denounced racism. In an early piece entitled “De ser como soy” (“Of being like I am,” 1949), he wrote: “I’m pleased to be what I am / it is an ignorant who criticizes / that my color is black / that doesn’t hurt anybody (…) to be born of any color / that doesn’t hurt anybody.” In another poem, “Oiga usté, señor dotor” (“Listen, Mr. Doctor,” 1961), he wrote: “Listen, Mister / I don’t forgive you the insult / we poor people of my color / know of dignity / and live with honor.” And in “Fue mucho el tejemaneje” (“Too much manipulation,” 1965), he satirized a congress of (predictably conservative and white) historians that gathered to discuss mestizaje (racial and cultural miscegenation) in Peru: “In the country of complexes / and discrimination / a big meeting was organized / to study the pelt (...) because in this bad crucible / that who has one eighth of whiteness / shows off the belly like a turkey / and looks over the shoulder / at the black with amazement / and at the cholo with scorn.” Several articles written by Nicomedes in newspapers and magazines over the years addressed racism as well.
Not surprisingly, Santa Cruz was also the victim of negative and even racist attacks, especially after 1975, when the nationalist military government of Velasco Alvarado, with which he had collaborated, was toppled by a more conservative military regime and Santa Cruz began to lose influence in cultural circles. An intellectual who had worked so hard to eliminate racism, social injustice, and cultural divisiveness in Peru, ended up filled with pessimism and a sense of defeat.
In late 1980 Nicomedes decided to leave Peru and settle in Spain, his wife’s mother country. There, he finished one of his most important works, La décima en el Perú, a superb study and anthology of the genre that was published in Lima in 1982. (A décima is a ten-line stanza of Spanish origin that became very popular in Spanish America. It is still practiced in countries such as Puerto Rico, Peru, and Colombia, where it has become a genre associated with popular poets and troubadours.) That same year he began to direct, with great success, a cultural program for the Spanish international public radio station. In 1988 he was diagnosed with lung cancer and underwent surgery, with seemingly good results. He resumed his work on the radio and became involved in many activities related to the Quincentennial commemoration of Columbus’s arrival in America. On February 5, 1992, Nicomedes Santa Cruz died at the age of 66.
The most important black intellectual in twentieth-century Peru died away from home. His work and legacy, despite some important recent efforts, remain unknown for most Peruvians. A man of commitment and courage, of immense talent and creativity, of sincere dedication to the cause of black emancipation and social justice, Nicomedes Santa Cruz deserves to be recognized as one of the most accomplished poets and intellectuals in twentieth-century Peru, someone who devoted his life to the cause of human dignity for all, regardless of skin color."
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"Born on June 26, 1808 in the city of Santiago de Cuba, Mariana Grajales Cuello is best known for the role she played in her country’s struggle for independence against Spain. Referred to as the “Mother of Cuba,” Cuello’s promotion of national pride and patriotic sacrifice helped rally her people in a military campaign that would ultimately end Spanish rule in her country.
A mixed-race (Spanish and African) daughter of Dominican parents, Cuello was raised in the eastern region of Cuba known for its racial fluidity and concentration of middle-class Afro-Cubans. As her parents were landowners, Mariana grew up in an environment that allowed her to become astute in business affairs. During her youth, she was exposed to notions of liberalism and became deeply religious; these two facets of her belief system would eventually be incorporated into her own children’s lives.
Married to Venezuelan Marcos Maceo in 1851, Mariana and her husband subsequently lived at La Delicia, in Majaguabo, San Luis. Here, Mariana gave birth to nine children, adding to the four that she had from a previous marriage. She and Marcos shared with their children stories and histories of the earlier successful independence movements by other Latin American and Caribbean nations against Spain. She and her husband also trained them in the arts of self-defense. Two of her sons, Jose and Antonio, later became generals in Cuba’s Liberation Army.
Two days after the start of war of independence against the Spanish in 1868, Cuban rebels arrived at the Maceo/Cuello home and asked for support in the fight against the Spanish. Both Marcos and Mariana agreed. She established and ran a hospital for wounded soldiers. Occasionally she even attended some of her own children who were fighting with the rebel forces. Often with subordinates, Mariana followed closely behind rebel troops, providing not only material but also emotional support. Stories of her commitment toward the effort against the Spanish despite the loss of her husband and some of her sons in battle made her a renowned figure during the independence campaign. She was seen as a model for other Cuban women, risking everything for the sake of the country.
Having lost all family property and with death warrants issued on her surviving sons, Mariana went into exile in Jamaica in 1878 where she continued her work toward Cuban independence by forming patriotic associations among exiled Cubans. Mariana Grajales Cuello never returned to her homeland. She died in Kingston, Jamaica at the age of 85.
In 1957, Grajales was given the title “Mother of Cuba” by Havana mayor Justo Luis Pozo del Puerto, in acknowledgement and appreciation for her patriotism and work toward liberating her country."
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"Afro-Ecadorian Jaime Hurtado González (1937-1999) Politician, Activist, Social Justice champion, Jaime Hurtado González was the first black man to run for president of the Republic of Ecuador.
Known as the the voice of the people González was a strong advocate of the disenfranchised groups of color within Ecuador. As an elected congressman in 1999 he was running for President with a strong chance of winning. Sadly, Jaime Hurtado González was assassinated near the country’s Supreme Court Building.
A member of the organization of Popular Unity, Jaime Hurtado, was brutally gunned down with other activists, Pablo Tapia and Wellington Borja, in an act of state sanctioned terrorism by the reactionary forces led by the government presided over by Jamil Mahuad.
It was February 17th 1999, in broad daylight, a few meters away from the the Supreme Court building of Ecuador and just a block away from the House of the Parliament; an armed militia fired at the activists using 9mm weapons issued only to state security.
Despite the fact that the place where these men were assassinated was under constant surveillance by the police, and a few steps away stands the security service for the Supreme Court, nothing was done to capture the murderers who managed to get away through traffic.
Jaime Hurtado Gonzalez was a national Deputy and the chairman of the Parliamentary block of the DPM. As a young man, he quickly rose up to become the leader of the struggle of the people, a relentless fighter for a new motherland ruled by working class people. He was assassinated along with his friend, Pablo Tapia, associate Deputy for the DPM and a cousin, Wellington Borja, also member of the DPM.
The crime was part of a plot on the part of the government to frighten anti-government protesters. In what seemed to be a series of crimes against the people of Ecuador, when that government took office; four peasants who claimed land in the town of Salite were assassinated; the government carried out mass arrests of student protesters; security forces broke into the headquarters of the DPM in the El Triunfo and arrested several leaders and members of that organization; plus protesting teachers are threatened to be fired.
Several community leaders of progressive organizations and workers unions were threatened and then subsequently attacked by Government officials. The assassination was carried out at the same time when 120,000 teachers were on strike. And not even the millions the Government spent in publicity plus their threats of massive lay-offs, were able to stop the teachers from striking.
The Prime Minister, Vladimiro Alvarez gave up the post of Minister of Education unable to face the demands of the protesting teachers. And for everybody, workers, peasants, teachers and students, housewives, rank and file christians, leftist democrats, Jaime Hurtado was an example of tireless struggle for the rights of the people.
Quoted from the organizations newspaper as part of Hurtado’s eulogy, “Our organizations are rooted in the people and our people do not get scared. They will not be able to scare us. On the contrary we raise today the banners of revolutionary change with more enthusiasm, and we are ready more than ever to face and defeat the enemies of the people. No matter how many crimes the Government commits, the ideals of Jaime, Pablo and Wellington will find support throughout the country, in the hearts of the peoples of Ecuador and flourish in the Popular Power, for which we will always struggle hand in hand with the oppressed.”
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Beyond Celia: 10 Underrated Afro-Latinas in Music You Should Know
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"This list features women whose talent is not only undeniable, but defiant in a society that seeks to erase blackness. Some of the women had their sexuality, femininity, or powerful political statements used as weapons against them, and yet they have broken barriers and become pioneers in their own way, some beyond the realm of music.
Ruth Fernández and Toto Bissainthe’s voices are hauntingly beautiful; Elza Soares and Xiomara Fortuna collide genres together to create compelling new musical formations, while others like Susana Baca, Petita Palma Piñeiros, and Inés Granja have become educators or political activists. Ultimately, black women continue to represent the essence of so much of the cultural markers of Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as the fight for human rights and visibility. The women on this list are icons who play an important role in the deliberate elevation of blackness while captivating us with their extensive catalogs." ~ Amanda Alcantara
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Containing the work of more than 40 poets equally divided between men and women who self-identify as Afro-Latino, ¡Manteca! is the first poetry anthology to highlight writings by Latinos of African descent. The themes covered are as diverse as the authors themselves. Many pieces rail against a system that institutionalizes poverty and racism. Others remember parents and grandparents who immigrated to the United States in search of a better life, only to learn that the American Dream is a nightmare for someone with dark skin and nappy hair. But in spite of the darkness, faith remains. Anthony Morales' grandmother, like so many others, was "hardwired to hold on to hope." There are love poems to family and lovers. And music salsa, merengue, jazz permeates this collection.
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Visit Es Mi Cultura's Accessory store on Esty. You can purchase tote bags and order custom flag earrings!
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Es Mi Cultura is published every first Monday of the month by Tamika Burgess. Tamika is a Afro-Panameña, California based Writer. Learn more about her by visiting TamikaBurgess.com
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