Para El Gran Caribe y Para Africa

At Amherst's 10th Annual "Voices for the Voiceless", a night of amazing poetry, one of the artists told the audience that to truly understand our past and present one need only to look at the thousand or so islands that are scattered throughout the Caribbean Sea. The Middle Passage, exportation of bondsmen and women into North and South America, slave rebellions, revolution, colonialization, imperialism, liberation, syncretic cultures blending Africa, Europe, Asia and indigenous elements to create something new. This all happened on the islands of the Caribbean. We mixed with East Indian and Chinese laborers, we were maroons in Jamaica and sang to Yemaya and Ochun in Cuba. We kept Africa but we made a new thing. Salsa isn't just what Hector LaVoe was singing, its our cultural mix.

So to all of my Latino/a homies don't try to deny the Africa that is so evident in your face and in your songs and in our food, culture and history. And to the black Americans who had any doubt, yes, Negros can be Latinos as well.

...I was yearning for the eternal sunrises and sunsets of the Caribbean in the bitter New England cold. Yet, Celia's voice always warms me back up.