{"id":57877,"date":"2019-04-05T20:41:23","date_gmt":"2019-04-05T20:41:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=57877"},"modified":"2019-04-05T20:41:23","modified_gmt":"2019-04-05T20:41:23","slug":"these-photos-celebrate-the-beauty-of-panamas-afro-latinx-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=57877","title":{"rendered":"These Photos Celebrate the Beauty of Panama’s Afro-Latinx Community"},"content":{"rendered":"

These Photos Celebrate the Beauty of Panama’s Afro-Latinx Community<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Vice<\/a>
\n2019-03-27<\/p>\n

Andr\u00e9-Naquian Wheeler<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nKayla Reefer<\/small><\/a><\/p>\n

Photographer Kayla Reefer’s<\/a> new series, “Identidad,” explores her family’s roots in Panama<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Black people are everywhere, my mother once told me. I was sharing my anxieties about studying abroad in Europe<\/a>, of sticking out like a sore thumb. In my head, blackness was something that began and ended in America. My history classes only ever talked about the slaves stolen and taken to the Deep South<\/a>. But my mother was right. The African diaspora<\/a> reaches far and wide: the Afro-Caribbean communities of London<\/a>, Black Canadians, Afro-Brazilians<\/a>, and on and on. The problem is how rarely the wide, far-reaching spectrum of blackness is taught, shown, celebrated, and acknowledged.<\/p>\n

Photographer Kayla Reefer<\/a> grapples with the ramifications of this everyday. She is Afro-Latina<\/a>, the daughter of Panamanian immigrants. Growing up in California<\/a>, Reefer talks about feeling the need to prove her heritage and identity to her black and Latinx<\/a> friends. To show them she is not simply one or the other, but an amalgamation of histories. \u201cEventually, I learned to embrace both worlds,\u201d she says. \u201cBecause they\u2019re both me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sadly, not all Panamanians take ownership of their Afro roots, Reefer says. She once saw a Panama census stating only 9 percent of the country was Afro-Latinx. The small statistic does not match up to Reefer\u2019s reality, the people she sees riding the bus during her visits to the Central-American<\/a> country, of her family and friends. \u201cThat statistic is absolutely not true,\u201d she argues, anger in her voice. \u201cIt just feeds into the lack of awareness and knowledge of what an Afro-Latinx person is. There\u2019s this erasure happening.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photographer Kayla Reefer’s new series, “Identidad,” explores her family’s roots in Panama.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,21,459,14646,8],"tags":[29686,29685,10289,147,22209],"class_list":["post-57877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-latincarib","category-history","category-latino","category-media-archive","tag-andre-naquian-wheeler","tag-kayla-reefer","tag-panama","tag-photography","tag-vice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57877"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57878,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57877\/revisions\/57878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}