Miriam Jiménez Román Quotes

In Latin America there is this general concept that because we are all racially mixed, somewhere back in everybody’s family tree there is an African or Indian then we are incapable of being racist because that would be being racist against ourselves. Since most of these countries became independent that has become the guiding line that we are all mixed and because we are all mixed we cannot be racist.

In the process of putting the book together, we discovered a whole series of people who were identified as being African-American because they appeared—Black. There was no real attention to their [Latino] ethnicity even if they spoke Spanish; they served as bridges. Afro-Latinos function in two worlds: African [Black] and Latino.

Whether we look at race as a fixed notion or culturally constructed concept it is very real. Race itself is an invention, a creation. Many people feel race is something that’s fixed, rigid and doesn’t have variances. By looking at Afro-Latinos, you kind of get a better sense of how fluid race has been. People have constructed it in different ways depending on conditions and circumstances.

The way ideology is constructed in Latin America –if you claim Blackness or talk about race, it’s because you have some kind of complex; you just can’t seem to deal with the world the way it is. It’s a good way of silencing any kind of protest against discrimination because people think you’re saying because you have a problem, it’s your personal problem not collective discrimination.

Afro-Latinos serve as bridges. The most obvious example would be Arturo Alfonso Schomburg. The Schomburg Center for Black Culture [Harlem, New York, USA] is probably the premiere institution for any type of serious scholarship and research on Africans and their descendants. Schomburg was a Black Puerto Rican who came to the United States from Puerto Rico in 1891 at 17. He became an integral part of the Black community – African American and Caribbean; most definitely he served as a bridge. Most of his writings were about Black Latinos, whether in Spain, the Caribbean or South America.

struggling for racial equality [in Latin America] is far behind the United States.

We keep denying the importance of race because white people are becoming the minority.

("Are there any countries working to acknowledge the historical and cultural impact of their African roots?") Every single country in Latin America and the Caribbean is doing that, including places you would never imagine like Chile and Uruguay and Paraguay, all have Black advocacy organizations. The only exception is El Salvador. And I think we can contribute some of the reluctance to organizing to El Salvador’s civil war. The political instability works against organizing.

This kind of book should have been around when I was a kid because blackness was equated with being African-American. This limited view left me concerned about my blackness because I grew up as a Black Puerto Rican and I’m very conscious how race and ethnicity have both impacted my life.

we’re not in a post racial state. Race is still a very important part of how all of us – globally – live our lives. African-Americans and Latinos need to get together, create change that will benefit not just Latinos and African-Americans but all people of color.