My interest in the study of African descendents in the Americas began with a conversation I had with a young professor of Spanish.  We conversed about a movie he had just shown in his class entitled “Las Cartas de Alou,” which explores the experiences of an African immigrant in Spain during the 1990’s.  Our conversation developed to the perception of blacks outside of the United States, the treatment of blacks in other countries and institutionalized international racism. Before this conversation, I had never given any thought to the existence of black people who spoke Spanish.  After this conversation, I was definitely interested and inspired to study Spanish.

I have recently received an Arts and Humanities degree in Spanish from the University of Alabama in Birmingham (UAB).  To enhance my Spanish speaking skills and begin my cultural exploration of Latin America, I went on a study abroad excursion sponsored by my university to Mexico (Summer 2001).  My next cultural exchange was in Costa Rica (2002), followed by a semester CIEE program in Santo Domingo in 2003.  After completing the CIEE semester, I was so impressed by my internship, Fundación Melassa, I returned to the Dominican Republic for 3months to work with them.  As part of both of my Santo Domingo experiences, I did two investigations, one entitled, “The Social Function of Dance, Instruments and Hand Games in Mata de los Indios and the other, “From the other Side.” All three of these study abroad experiences allowed me to see different aspects of African Americans in Latin American countries and has prepared me to further my studies of African Americans in Latin America.

My study abroad experience in Guadalajara, Mexico introduced me to the color hierarchy in Latin America.  In the Mexican family I stayed with, the father of the family thought that indigenous people were lazy and did not want to be educated.  He went on to say that they preferred to beg on the street than to work.  He never thought about how colonization and other barriers may have created the indigenous situation.  As part of the program, I did an investigation entitled, ”Unequal access to Higher Education,” based on several personal interviews with Mexican citizens, personal observance and information read in Good Neighbors by John C. Condon.  Aside from discussing the direct relationship between education and financial success, the investigation also explores how the ancestors of a particular racial group influence the societal position of their descendents.  For example, all of the teachers and administrators at my school in Mexico were mostly of whiter skin and all of the cleaning staff consisted of brown skinned persons with indigenous features.   In Mexico City, there were lots of brown skinned women and children panhandling on the street.  I did not see one family of whiter or European looking people begging on the street.  I found out that many of these people speak little Spanish and still communicate in their indigenous language.  These indigenous persons are the sons and daughters of the indigenous Mexico and not the descendants of the Spanish conquistadors.  The social and economic hierarchy from colonization still exists in Mexico.

The color hierarchy not only exists in Mexico but also in Dominican Republic.  The darkest people are usually the cobradors for buses, choffers and street vendors of some kind.  In the offices there are usually light skin Dominicans.  Ninety-five percent of the people who go the Acropolis, an expensive mall, are light skinned Dominicans.  Mothers hope that their babies are born with “good hair (straight hair),” that their sons and daughters will marry a lighter person to “better the race,” and many people have a negative opinion of women with natural hair.  I have natural hair and one day while riding the bus a woman asked me, ”Don’t you want to be beautiful?”  I told her that I think I am.  Economically, people associate white people with being well off.  When I would walk down the street with my two white friends, the shoe shine boys never solicited me for spare change.  They would always run to the white girls, extending their little hands to asking for a peso.  Politically, I never saw a dark skinned political president on a campaign.  They were all white by American standards in a country that is over 85% black by American standards. In Mexico, the brown skinned indigenous people were on the bottom of the social and economic hierarchy. In the Dominican Republic, it was the darker skinned black people.

During my travels I found that people categorized black people different in every country.  After my Mexican study abroad experience, I was motivated to continue my education the following summer in Costa Rica. This black population came to Limón, Costa Rica, as a group of turtle fisherman and farmers in 1824.  As a result, everyone in Costa Rica thought that I was from Limón.  In Mexico, people thought that my blackness was a result of being out in the sun too long, wanted to touch my hair or thought that my parents or me were African.  In the Dominican Republic, most commonly people thought that I was Dominican, Haitian, a Dominican born in New York, one or both of my parents were Cuban or of Latino descent..  In all three places, no one ever thought I was American.  In the DR, when I told people that I was American, some of them told me that I could not be American because I was not white.  My family did not know that Dominicans were principally black either.  They were surprised to see in the pictures that Dominicans looked like black like Black Americans.  People all over the world are ignorant of the history of Black people.  It seems that the knowledge of black history on an international scale is lacking. I will study the history of the development in Latin America to inform not only American students but also international students in their country about this missing piece of history.

Though Costa Rica and Mexico were invaluable study abroad experiences, I received most of my Afro-Latino exposure in the Dominican Republic as part of a CIEE program in Santo Domingo.  As part of the program, every student had to participate in an internship.  My internship was with Fundación Melassa, whose goals are to develop educational projects, which explore and document different cultures in Latin American communities in order to promote economic growth, social justice and political democracy in Latin America.  Fundación Melassa is also committed to adopting a global vision of providing an alternative to existing methods of global integration.  As part of the internship, I participated in Fundación Melassa where I taught an English Class to Spanish Speaking 5th graders at La Escuela Básica de Mata de los Indios (Elementary School of Mata de los Indios).  I also did an investigation called the Social Functions of Dance, Instruments, and Hand Games of Mata de los Indios.

Though the social functions of dance and instruments were important, I was particularly interested in the hand games of the girls in Mata de los Indios.  As a child in Alabama, we played the same sort of games and the words had a strong social significance.  There was one song in particular that talked about segregation, pride in being black, women’s expectations of men in relationships, and marriage.  I wondered if the songs of the children in Mata de los Indios had the same type of cultural and social significance.  I set up interviews with several groups of kids to tape record their songs.  I found that they discussed role of women, expectations of men, the importance of a boyfriend, typical Dominican food and other social and cultural aspects of their society.  I concluded that hand games are a part of oral tradition that exists in both Alabama and the Dominican Republic.  I would like to continue projects of this kind at UC Berkeley and I am presently working on that project today.

When I graduated from school, there was no job in Birmingham that interested me.  I was offered a job as a social worker, refused it, and moved to the Dominican Republic to work with Foundation Melassa.  I was so impressed by the goals of the program, I decided to become more directly involved.  It was also an opportunity to improve my Spanish and get video footage of the kids to further my previous research project.  During my time with Foundation Melassa, I helped create a library for the children at the school, participated in a presentation to instruct the teachers how to use the library system and a creativity workshop with 12-18 year old girls from the community.  I also did my own personal project “From the Other Side,” where I interviewed women who are not native Dominicans and analyzed their ideas on how race influenced their experience in Santo Domingo.

I am not only interested in studying African American studies from an international perspective but also making steps to change the negative self image that colonization has left with so many black children. When I was 16, I was a swim coach for the city of Birmingham.  We’d practiced all summer and it was time for the kids to participate in a swim competition.  A couple of the kids swam so well that summer that the following summer they were chosen to swim in a other competitions.  These competitions included children who were not part of the neighborhood and more often than not their competitors were from middle to upper class white families.  At the first swim competition against white children, one of the boys looks at me and says that he can not swim in this event.  I asked him why he could not swim.  He said that there was no way he could win.  I was even more baffled by this statement and I asked him what did he mean?  We have been practicing there is no reason that you cant win.  He said, ”I can’t win against no white boy.”  I remember feeling hurt and surprised by this statement. The education I receive at UC Berkeley I will allow me to participate or initiate community programs that inspire children to know their history and the struggles of people like them.

I hope to continue my creativity and investigative spirit at UC Berkeley under the guidance of Percy C. Hintzen and Charles P. Henry.  I was particularly interested in the Book, Problematizing Blackness:  Self–Ethnographies by Black Immigrants to the United States.  This book interests me because many Black American students from the States were surprised that the Dominicans were not proud of being black.  In addition, I met a black Peruvian girl, whose family immigrated to the states, where her father hated being lumped with Black Americans.  It was during this trip that I realized that Black Americans and Black Latino immigrants do not always identify with one another.  To appease my economic interests, the recent work of Charles P. Henry, Foreign Policy and the Black (Inter)national Interest caught my attention.  The distribution of wealth is related to race and country of origin.  This is another residual affect of colonization.  I have seen the disparity first hand my travels and feel he could help guide my research in that area.  Though the majority of my projects have cultural and social in nature, I am interested in how race influences the international economy.  Without economic change there can be no social equality.

My unique blend personal experiences and academic history have shaped me into an ideal candidate for the graduate African American studies program at UC Berkeley.  Studying Spanish and Latin American culture has allowed me to see outside of local and national boundaries, the long arm of racism still grabs and chocks the throats of other colored people. Many African American Studies programs only focus on Africans from Africa and African descendents in the States.  The graduate program at UC Berkeley allows me to combine my interest of African American studies with my interest of indigenous peoples and Afro-Latinos in Latin America. Also, this program allows me to compare African American struggles in the US to Jewish struggles, Puerto Rican struggles and those of other ethnic groups inside and outside of the US.  After my experiences in Latin America, it is clear that African American Studies in Latin America merits further research.  My immediate goals are to attend UC Berkeley, where I will research how colonization has created social and economic problems for African descendants living in Latin America and what steps society can take to undo the negative residual affects of colonization.  My professional goal is to become a professor and further my knowledge of the diversity of African American experiences through research and enlighten others about them.