2 Gilroy, Paul, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993)Google Scholar. Although Gilroy is largely credited with popularizing the “Black Atlantic” as a concept, its roots extend to the work and teachings of Robert Farris Thompson and Peter Linebaugh. See Okpewho, Isidore, introduction to African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities , ed. Okpewho, Isidore, Davies, Carole Boyce, Mazrai, Ali A. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), p. xxii Google Scholar; and Edwards, Brent Hayes, “The Uses of Diaspora,” Social Text 19:1 (2001), p. 62 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Some interesting articles on the relationship between black history and the African Diaspora include Manning, Patrick, “Africa and the African Diaspora: New Directions of Study,” Journal of African History 44:3 (2003), pp. 487–506 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Patterson, Tiffany Ruby and Kelley, Robin D. G., “Unfinished Migrations: Reflections on the African Diaspora and the Making of the Modern World,” African Studies Review 43:1 (2000), pp. 11–45 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hine, Darlene Clark and McLeod, Jacqueline eds., Crossing Boundaries: Comparative History of Black People in Diaspora (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

3 Edwards, , “Uses of Diaspora,” p. 45–73 Google Scholar; Shepperson, George, “Pan-Africanism and ‘pan-Africanism’: Some Historical Notes,” Phylon 23:4 (1962), pp. 346–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also informative on the origins of African Diasporic Discourse is von Eschen, Penny, Race against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

4 A good article showing the range of works written on the black Diaspora, particularly in response to the Black Atlantic paradigm, is Zeleza, Raul Tiyambe, “Rewriting the African Diaspora: Beyond the Black Atlantic,” African Affairs 104:414 (2005), pp. 35–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 A concise and useful synopsis of the trajectory of Black Studies is Heywood, Linda M., introduction to Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora ed. Heywood, Linda M. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 2–8 Google Scholar.

6 Some representative, notable titles include Bennett, Herman L., Africans in Colonial Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity and Afro-Creole Consciousness, 1570-1640 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Butler, Kim D., Freedoms Given, Freedoms Won: Afro-Brazilians in Post-Abolition São Paulo and Salvador (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Diaz, María Elena, The Virgin, the King, and the Royal Slaves of El Cobre: Negotiating Freedom in Colonial Cuba, 1670-1780 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Helg, Aline, Liberty and Equality in Caribbean Colombia, 1770-1835 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Fuente, Alejandro de la, A Nation For All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Restall, Matthew, ed., Beyond Black and Red: African-Native Relations in Colonial Latin America (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Vinson, Ben III and King, Stewart R., “Introducing the ‘New’ African Diasporic Military History in Latin America,” special issue, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 5:2 (2004)Google Scholar; Sweet, James H., Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441-1770 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Herrera, Robinson A., Natives, Europeans, and Africans in Sixteenth-Century Santiago de Guatemala (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Andrews, George Reid, Afro-Latin America, 1800-2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Falola, Toyin and Childs, Matt D., eds., The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World (Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Walker, Daniel E., No More, No More: Slavery and Cultural Resistance in Havana and New Orleans (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Queija, Berta Ares and Stella, Alessandro, eds., Negros, mulatos, zambaigos: derroteros africanos en los mundos ibéricos (Seville: EEHA/CSIC, 2000)Google Scholar; Cáceres, Rina, Negros, mulatos, esclavos y libertos en la Costa Rica del siglo XVII (Mexico City: Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia, 2000)Google Scholar; Chaves, María Eugenìa, María Chiquinquirá Díaz: Una esclava del siglo XVIII: acerca de las identidades de amo y esclavo en el puerto colonial de Guayaquil (Guayaquil: Archivo Histórico del Guayas, 1998)Google Scholar; and Aguirre, Carlos, Agentes de su propia libertad: Los esclavos de Lima y la desintegración de la esclavitud: 1821-1854 (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Fondo Editorial, 1993)Google Scholar; Castro, Marcel Velázquez, Las mascaras de la representación: El sujeto esclavista y las rutas del racismo en el Perú (Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de Son Marcos y Banco Central de Reserva del Perú, 2005)Google Scholar.

7 This despite the fact that according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the population figures for indigenous peoples are currently lower than those of those of African-descent. The ECLAC records 33-40 million indigenous people in Latin America (8 per cent), as opposed to 150 million individuals of African descent (30 percent). This Afro-Latino population is mainly concentrated in Brazil, Central America, and the northern coast of South America. See Hooker, Juliet, “Indigenous Inclusion/Black Exclusion: Race, Ethnicity and Multicultural Citizenship in Latin America,” Journal of Latin American Studies (JLAS) 37:2 (2005), p. 287 Google Scholar.

8 Even in places like the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Venezuela, and Cuba, the discussion of blacks in national discourses of mestizajelmulataje have been difficult and complex, but important literature has been rectifying the situation. See Fuente, De la, A Nation for All Google Scholar; Howard, David, Coloring the Nation: Race and Ethnicity in the Dominican Republic (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner, 2001)Google Scholar; Sheriff, Robin E., Dreaming Equality: Color, Race, and Racism in Urban Brazil (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Wright, Winthrop R., Café con Leche: Race, Class, and National Image in Venezuela (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Sagas, Ernesto, Race and Politics in the Dominican Republic (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2001)Google Scholar. For Colombia see Wade, Peter, Blackness and Race Mixture: The Dynamics of Race Mixture in Colombia (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993)Google Scholar. An interesting re-assessment of mestizaje and its impact on national differentiation can be found in Wade, , “Rethinking Mestizaje: Ideology and Lived Experience,” JLAS 37:2 (2005), pp. 239–57Google Scholar. Good discussion of black influences on nineteenth-century state formation and national identity processes (particularly in Cuba and the Dominican Republic) can be found in Naro, Nancy Priscilla, ed., Blacks, Coloureds and National Identity in Nineteenth-Century Latin America (London: London Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London, 2003)Google Scholar.

9 Certain influential ideologies linked to racial mixture and nationalism (particularly racial democracy) have also dictated the research agenda, as is explained later in this article.

10 An example of such inquiry can be found in Bennett’s, Herman “The Subject in the Plot: National Boundaries in the History of the Black Atlantic,” African Studies Review 43:1 (2000), pp. 101–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In examining the case of Luisa de Abrego, an Afro-Mexican bigamist who faced the Inquisition in the 1570s, he argues persuasively that African Diaspora scholarship promises to make blacks into distinct subjects of inquiry that are freed from the “nationalist chokehold that renders their narratives invisible.” At the same time, he argues that whereas Spaniards, mestizos, and even natives have been given a firm place in the historiography of “nation” and “colony” in Latin America, he argues that blacks have not. He asserts that Africans, negros, and mulattos have been routinely read as having their “race, ethnicity, and legal status [trump over]... any and all national sentiments.” While I believe that many aspects of Bennett’s argument are true, I argue in this article that the mechanisms for black inclusion into the colonial world and the emerging nation states were greater—but with equally isolating outcomes for black history and consciousness in Latin America.

11 Koser, Khalíd, “New African Diasporas, an Introduction,” in New African Diasporas, ed. Koser, Khalid (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 5 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Edwards, , “Uses of Diaspora,” pp. 46–55 Google Scholar.

13 It should be noted that the strategies used to launch Black Studies in the U.S. were also important to the formulation of Latino Studies.

14 Okpewho, , introduction, pp. xv–xvi Google Scholar.

15 Diawara, Manthia, “Black Studies, Cultural Studies, Performative Acts,” Afterimage 20:3 (1992), p. 476 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Stevens, Maurice, Troubling Beginnings: Trans(per)forming African American History and Identity (New York: Routledge, 2003), pp. 16–23 Google Scholar.

16 Chrisman, Laura, Griffin, Farah Jasmine, and Zuberi, Tukufu, “Introduction to ‘Transcending Traditions’: Special Issue of the Black Scholar,” The Black Scholar 30:3-4 (2001), pp. 2–3 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Note that the efforts of organizations such as the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD) and UNESCO’s Slave Route Project have been instrumental in helping bridge the differences between Africanists and African Diaspora scholars.

17 Zeleza, , “Rewriting the African Diaspora,” pp. 35–68 Google Scholar; and Larson, Pier M., “African Diasporas and the Atlantic,” in The Atlantic and Global History ed. Cañizares-Esguerra, Jorge and Seeman, Eric (New York: Prentice Hall, 2006 (forthcoming)Google Scholar.

18 Hooker, “Indigenous Inclusion/Black Exclusion.” In Brazil, the impact of North American discourses upon Afro-Brazilian identity politics has also been a topic of international debate. A quick entry into the debate can be obtained by reading French, John D., “Translation, Diasporic Dialogue, and the Errors of Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant,” Nepantla: Views from South 4:2 (2003), pp. 375–89Google Scholar; Hanchard, Michael George, “Racism, Eroticism, and the Paradoxes of a U.S. Black Researcher in Brazil,” in Racing Research, Researching Race: Methodological Dilemmas in Critical Race Studies, ed. Twine, France Widdance and Warren, Jonathan W. (New York: New York University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; and Bourdieu, Pierre and Wacquant, Loïc, “On the Cunning of Imperialist Reason,” Theory, Culture, and Society 16:1 (1999): pp. 41–58 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Sheila Walker has brought together a number of essays written by black Latin American activists. See Walker, Sheila S., ed., African Roots/American Cultures: Africa in the Creation of the Americas (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001)Google Scholar. Organizations such as the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Afroamérica XXI, and the Inter-American Dialogue’s Inter-Agency Consultation on Race have been instrumental in providing a public forum for the voices of black Latin American activists. For example, see Inter-American Dialogue, Inter-American Development Bank, and the World Bank, “Race and Poverty: Interagency Consultation on Afro-Latin Americans,” LCR Sustainable Development Working Paper Number 9 (Washington, D.C., November, 2000)Google Scholar. Note that regular information on African descendants in Latin America is maintained at the Inter-American Dialogue’s Inter-Agency Consultation on Race web site at http://www.thedialogue.org/iac/eng/index.html. Note as well that Afroamérica XXI maintains a web site at http://www.afroamerica21.org/.

20 Afro-Latin Americans face an additional obstacle towards impacting Diaspora research since not only must they carve space for their voices to be heard within the Diaspora field, but they must also fight for validity amongst the intellectual circles of their respective nations.

21 Zeleza, , “Rewriting the African Diaspora,” p. 39 Google Scholar.

22 Carter, Donald, preface to New African Diasporas, p. x.Google Scholar

23 Gomez, Michael A., Reversing Sail: A History of the African Diaspora (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 2 Google Scholar

24 Butler, Kim D., “Defining Diaspora, Refining a Discourse.” Diaspora 10:2 (2001), pp. 189–219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 Palmer, Colin A., “Defining and Studying the Modern African Diaspora,” American Historical Association Perspectives 36:6 (1998), pp. 1, 22-25Google Scholar.

26 In The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Du Bois writes: “After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness, an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” Du Bois, W.E.B., The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Bartleby.com, 1999), p. 3 Google Scholar. See also Fanon, Erantz, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 1982)Google Scholar; and Gilroy, , Black Atlantic.Google Scholar

27 It is important to keep in mind that while working on Latin America does position scholars to be able to creatively engage the double-consciousness model, one should also note that heavy emphasis on class analysis within the political/cultural ideologies of the Latin America tradition has historically worked to obscure understandings of black consciousness. In other words, the race vs. class debate has encouraged a particular reading of black history (after slavery) as operating within a class framework that eradicated the need to employ multiple forms of racial consciousness to maneuver within structures of discrimination and prejudice. Since the race line was softer, as has been proverbially argued, then the need to employ any levels of racial consciousness were concomitantly muted.

28 For a few examples, see Herrera, , Natives, Europeans, and Africans; Cáceres, Negros, mulatos, esclavos Google Scholar; Lane, Kris, Quito 1599: City and Colony in Transition (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Chaves, , María Chiquinquirá Díaz Google Scholar; Brockington, Lolita Gutíerrez, “The African Diaspora in the Eastern Andes: Adaption, Agency, and Fugitive Action, 1573-1677,” The Americas (TAM) 57:2 (2000), pp. 207–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lokken, Paul, “Marriage as Slave Emancipation in Seventeenth-Century Rural Guatemala,” TAM, 58:2 (2001), pp. 175–200 Google ScholarPubMed; Lohse, Kent Russell, “Africans and their Descendants in Colonial Costa Rica, 1600-1750,” (PhD. diss., University of Texas at Austin, 2005)Google Scholar; and Bryant, Sherwin K., “Enslaved Rebels, Fugitives, and Litigants: The Resistance Continuum in Colonial Quito,” Colonial Latin American Review 13:1 (2004), pp. 7–46.Google Scholar

29 Some interesting work on Afro-Caribbean influences on social and identity-formation processes in Central America include Gordon, Edmund T., Disparate Diasporas: Identity and Politics in an African Nicaraguan Community (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Mata, Laura Muñoz, “De la raza de color: esclavos para Yucatán,” in Pardos, mulatos y libertos. Sexto encuentro de afromexicanistas, ed. Chavez-Hita, Adriana Naveda (Jalapa, Veracruz: Universidad Veracruzana, 2001), pp. 217–30Google Scholar; and Opie, Frederick Douglas, “Foreign Workers, Debt Peonage, and Frontier Culture in Lowland Guatemala, 1884-1900,” Transforming Anthropology 12:1/2 (2004), pp. 40–50 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Work on African-American influences in Mexico includes Home, Gerald, Black and Brown: African-Americans and the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1920 (New York: New York University Press, 2004)Google Scholar, Vinson, Ben III, Flight: The Story of Virgil Richardson, a Tuskegee Airman in Mexico (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Jacoby, Karl, “Between North and South: The Alternative Borderlands of William H. Ellis and the African American, Colony of 1895,” in Continental Crossroads: Remapping U.S.-Mexico Borderlands History ed. Truett, Samuell and Young, Elliott (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; and Schwartz, Rosalie, Across the Rio to Freedom: U.S. Negroes in Mexico (El Paso: University of Texas at El Paso Press, 1974)Google Scholar. For information on African soldiers in 19th century Mexico see Hill, Richard L. and Hogg, Peter C., A Black Corps d’Elite: An Egyptian Sudanese Conscript Battalion with the French Army in Mexico, 1863-1867, and its Survivors in Subsequent African History (East Lansing: Michigan State Univ. Press, 1995)Google Scholar. Work on interactions between Afro-Cubans and African-Americans can be found in Guridy, Frank A., “From Solidarity to Cross-Fertilization: Afro-Cuban/African American Interaction During the 1930s and 1940s,” Radical History Review, 87 (2003), pp. 19–48 Google Scholar.

30 Toro, Alfonso, “Influencia de la raza negra en la formación del pueblo mexicano,” Ethnos. Revista para la vulgarización de estudios antropológicos sobre México y Centroamérica 1:8-12 (1920-21), pp. 215–18Google Scholar; Freyre, Gilberto, Casa grande y senzala (Rio de Janeiro: José Olimpo, 1933)Google Scholar; Ortiz, Fernando, Hampa afrocubana, Los negros brujos (apuntes para un estudio de etnología criminal) (Madrid: Editorial América, 1917)Google Scholar. For a contextualization of Gil Fortul's theories, see Wright, , Café con Leche.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Note that other thinkers could have been included here as well. My decision to include Alfonso Toro (instead of José Vasconcelos) for Mexico stems from the fact that upon close reading, Vasconcelos was not as preoccupied with the black presence in mestizaje as were other contemporary Mexican thinkers, such as Toro.

31 Tannenbaum, Frank, Slave and Citizen: The Negro in the Americas (New York: Vintage Books, 1946)Google Scholar.

32 Bertrán, Gonzalo Aguirre, La población negra de Mexico, 1519-1810 (Mexico City: Ediciones Fuente Cultural, 1946)Google Scholar; Saignes, Miguel Acosta, Vida de los esclavos negros en Venezuela (Caracas: Hespérides, 1967)Google Scholar; and Barnet, Miguel, Biografía de un cimarrón (Havana: Instituto de Ethnología y Folklore, 1966)Google Scholar.

33 Herskovits, Melville Jean, The Myth of the Negro Past (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1941)Google Scholar.

34 Bowser, Frederick P., “The African in Colonial Spanish America: Reflections on Research Achievements and Priorities,” Latin American Research Review (LARR) 7:1 (1972), pp. 77–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 Restall, Black and Red offers a good model for these interactions.

36 For some interesting (but by no means exhaustive) discussions on the crafting of African ethnicities in Africa and the New World, and various perspectives on the debate as to how to “best” identify “Africans” in the Americas see Chambers, Douglas B., “Ethnicity in the Diaspora: The Slave-Trade and the Creation of African ‘Nations” in the Americas,” Slavery & Abolition, 22:3 (2001), pp. 25–39 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hall, Gwendolyn Mildo, Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas: Restoring the Links (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sweet, , Recreating Africa Google Scholar; Gomez, , Exchanging our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Mann, Kristin, “Shifting Paradigms in the Study of the African Diaspora and of Atlantic History and Culture,” Slavery & Abolition 22:1 (2001), pp. 3–20 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bennett, , Africans in Colonial Mexico Google Scholar; Bryant, , “Slavery and the Context of Ethnogenesis: Africans, Afro-Creoles, and the Realities of Bondage in the Kingdom of Quito, 1600-1800” (Ph.D. diss., The Ohio State University, 2005)Google Scholar; Falola, and Childs, , The Yoruba Diaspora Google Scholar; and Nishida, Mieko, Slavery and Identity: Ethnicity, Gender, and Race in Salvador, Brazil, 1808-1888 (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

37 Scholars like Hanchard, Michael in Orpheus and Power: The Movimento Negro of Rio de laniero and São Paulo Brazil, 1945-1988 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, signal that in some instances, black consciousness movements, such as Brazilian “Black Soul” and the Movimento Negro Unificado of the 1970s, made cultural associations with the broader Black Diaspora (such as wearing an afro or dressing in “African” styles) but did not engage in grassroots political outreach.

38 Of course, the famous mulatto escape hatch theory is important here—articulated by Degler, Carl, Neither Black Nor White: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil and the United States (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986 [1971])Google Scholar. The ways in which blackness have been appropriated into the cultural mainstream image of some nations has been impressive, as documented by Moore, Robin, Nationalizing Blackness: Afro-Cubanismo and Artistic Revolution in Havana, 1920-1940 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997)Google Scholar. Forms of black inclusion into Cuba’s political network (especially the Communist Party) are nicely traced in Alejandro de la Fuente, A Nation for All.

39 Winthrop Wright’s examination of Venezuela in Café con Leche, demonstrates the pattern. Meanwhile, Trujillo’s harsh, anti-Haitian policies sought to eradicate this black population from the Dominican Republic; see Fiehrer, Thomas, “Political Violence in the Periphery: The Haitian Massacre of 1937,” Race and Class 32:2 (1990), pp. 1–20.Google Scholar In Mexico, José Vasconcelos’s classic statement on mestizaje, La Raza Cósmica, articulated notions of how blacks posed a hindrance to progress given that they were bearers of immorality and sensuality. See Vasconcelos, José, La raza cósmica: misión de la raza iberoamericana (Barceolona: Agencia Mundial de Librería, 1958), p. 19 Google Scholar. Mexico during the late 19th and early 20th centuries also wrestled with immigration policies that sought to invite blacks into the nation and those that strove to bar their entry.

40 Bowser, , The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 1524-1650 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974)Google Scholar; Hiinefeldt, Christine, Paying the Price of Freedom: Family and Labor Among Lima’s Slaves, 1800-1854 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Blanchard, Peter, Slavery and Abolition in Early Republican Peru (Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources, 1992)Google Scholar; Lane, , Quito Google Scholar; Chaves, , María Chiquinquirá Díaz Google Scholar; Aguirre, , Agentes de su propia libertad Google Scholar; and Townsend, Camilla, “Half My Body Free, the Other Half Enslaved: The Politics of the Slaves of Guayaquil at the End of the Colonial Era,” Colonial Latin American Review 7:1 (1998), pp. 105–12.Google Scholar