As we continue to celebrate Black History Month, we want to highlight the intersection between the Black and Latinx communities. Afro-Latinos have contributed a significant amount to Latin-American and American culture. From the Queen of Salsa, Celia Cruz, to renowned author, Miriam Jiménez Román, Black Latinos continuously shape and impact society and culture in the United States and abroad.
According to the Pew research center, a quarter of Hispanics living in the U.S. identify as Afro-Latino. In the past decades, we have seen an increase in self-identification and conversations surrounding the Afro-Latino community. Colorism is prevalent in the United States and Latin America, but slowly as a society, we’ve begun to recognize Afro-Latinos as significant members and contributors of the Latino culture.
We have seen a significant increase in Afro-Latino actors and celebrities speaking up about their experiences being both part of the Black and Latinx communities throughout the nation. The increase in representation and amplification of Afro-Latine voices fight the erasure faced by many Black Latinos in the past.
In our very own state, we have seen the incredible successes reached by Black Latinos such as Veronica Murray and Esperanza Spalding.
Below we highlight both local and national Afro-Latinx trailblazers and their stories.
Ilia Calderón is a Colombian journalist working as the news anchor for Univision's national evening newscast. In Colombia, she became the first Afro-Latina to host a national news program. She later moved to the United States and has worked with broadcast companies such as Telemundo and Univision. In 2017 Calderón became the first Afro-Latina to anchor a central news desk in the U.S. That same year she drew headlines for her interview of Christopher Barker, an imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan on the hate group’s property. She won two Emmys for this interview. She is a role model and advocates for the Black members of the Latino community who regularly face discrimination. Calderón’s book, My Time to Speak: Reclaiming Ancestry and Confronting Race, covers her Black and Latino experience in America and Colombia. In an interview with NBC, she says, “One day when more Afro-Latinos reach positions, it hopefully won’t make headlines. It will be the norm. It has to be the norm.
