Category: Caribbean/Latin America

  • American Race and Charismatic License: Finding Martín de Porres in Obama Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal Volume 97, Number 3, 2014 pages 376-384 DOI: 10.1353/sij.2014.0018 Chris Garces, Assistant Professor of Anthropology Cornell University, Ithaca, New York Problematizing the saintly reputation of seventeenth-century Dominican servant Martín de Porres, this article explores a little-known, late medieval Spanish form…

  • Blacks and Blackness in Central America: Between race and place ed. by Lowell Gudmundson and Justin Wolfe, and: Labor and Love in Guatemala: The eve of independence by Catherine Komisaruk (review) Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History Volume 15, Number 2, Summer 2014 DOI: 10.1353/cch.2014.0025 Julia A. Gibbings, Assistant Professor of History University Of Manitoba,…

  • The racist face of Brazil’s miscegenation Black Women of Brazil: The site dedicated to Brazilian women of African descent 2013-05-22 Jarid Arraes Cariri, Ceará, Brasil The issue of miscegenation in Brazil is often oversimplified and romanticized. It is not uncommon to hear that Brazil is a mestiço (mixed race) and plural country and, consequently, all…

  • On the Mexican Mestizo Latin American Research Review Volume 14, Number 3 (1979) pages 153-168 John K. Chance, Professor of Anthropology Arizona State Univerisity No one with even a passing acquaintance with the literature on Mexican society, not to mention the rest of Spanish America, can fail to be impressed by the frequent use of…

  • Mexico boasts a staggering genetic diversity, study shows Los Angeles Times 2014-06-12 Geoffrey Mohan SHARELINES ▼ DNA offers a nuanced answer to what it means to be Mexican ▼ Ancient genetic signal survived conquest in Mexico ▼ Latino and Hispanic labels don’t do justice to Mexico’s genome Writers, artists and historians have long pondered what…

  • Implications of Genetic Diversity in Mexico Biopolitical Times Center for Genetics and Society 2014-06-25 Pete Shanks The category Latino is a valid cultural artifact, and often self-identified. But it’s not really a race in any modern sense of the term, and the genetic evidence surely shows that it is far too broad a grouping to…

  • Neymar and the Disappearing Donkey Africa is a Country 2014-06-17 Achal Prabhala Bangalore, India By the time you read this, it’s possible that every single person on the planet will know who Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior is… …You could come to any number of conclusions from Neymar’s remarkable transformation. For instance, you could conclude…

  • Black Identity and Racism Collide in Brazil The Root 2014-06-17 Dion Rabouin The country’s complex history with race gains the spotlight as the World Cup attempts to address the recent wave of racist attacks against black players. Before teams representing their countries from around the world arrived in Brazil, the country’s president, Dilma Rousseff, took…

  • Japanese Brazilians celebrate mixed heritage Al Jazeera 2014-06-17 Jillian Kestler-D’Amour, Online Producer Sao Paulo, Brazil – The room was a mixture of Brazilian green and yellow and Japanese red and white, as more than 200 members of the city’s large Japanese community turned out to watch the country of their ancestors take on Cote d’Ivoire…

  • People from Mexico show stunning amount of genetic diversity Science 2014-06-12 Lizzie Wade, Latin America Correspondent Imagine if people from Kansas and California were as genetically distinct from each other as someone from Germany is from someone from Japan. That’s the kind of remarkable genetic variation that scientists have now found within Mexico, thanks to…