BAR Book Forum editor Roberto Sirvent discusses AfroLatinidad and spirituality with Guesnerth Josué Perea.
Roberto Sirvent: Can you please share a little bit about your background, including how you became involved in community organizing?
Guesnerth Josué Perea: Thank you so much for this time, Roberto. the Black Agenda Report is an important resource for our continued fight for justice, anti-racism and Black liberation.
Yes, you know the interesting thing is I didn't start considering myself a community organizer or an activist until recently. I always just saw working towards affirming Blackness and ensuring that we fought for justice as just something everyone should do. I started working on issues regarding race and racism in college, I was a student at the City College of New York and while taking a Latin American History course, I noticed how the contributions of Black Latin Americans was not mentioned, so I decided then to write my history thesis on AfroColombians, Blackness and La Gran Colombia, the brief nation-state that resulted after the revolution led by Bolivar in south America (it included Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, Panama, Ecuador and of course Colombia). It was after that I started to work on issues regarding AfroColombianidad when a friend talked to me about starting an educational group called AfroColombia NY that sought to educate and inform on the AfroColombian presence in the Colombian cultural identity. We worked hard for 3-5 years doing workshops throughout the tri-state area on AfroColombianidad, and while doing the projects with AfroColombia NY, I was introduced to Miriam Jimenez Roman and Juan Flores and the afrolatin@ forum. It was there that I started working more intentionally on advocating for justice for Black and Brown people and learned a lot about centering Blackness and anti-racism efforts and really that’s when I feel I started to be part of the AfroLatine activist community. I realized that fighting for justice, demanding that Blackness be centered is activism and just recently started to own that and see that the work we do is important.
How do you see the mission of the afrolatin@ forum connecting to larger struggles around Black liberation?
Well, this is something we always think about at the forum. We always have a transnational understanding and influence of Blackness in mind, one that isn't rooted in just one expression of Blackness but that understands the nuances of all of the different ways in which Blackness is expressed throughout the world. For us, centering Blackness within Latinidad, advocating for the visibility and rights for Black Latines is important and paramount to a holistic understanding of Blackness. We want to move away from a myopic understanding of Blackness that minimizes some members of the Diaspora and ensure that we are affirming and advocating for Black liberation for all Black people, whether born in the US, or anywhere in the world. We believe that by engaging in dialogues that give us a holistic understanding of the Black Diaspora only makes our struggles for Black Liberation that much more connected to one another and allows us to see that our collective struggles could use all of us.
You’ve done a lot of research on Afro-Colombianidad. Why do you think anti-Blackness is such an under-studied concept in Latin America?
Well, that’s because the Latin American idea or the Latino concept in the US is connected to white privilege and white supremacy. Let me explain. The concept of Latin America, meaning a region that is unified by a language that has a specific cultural meaning has always been tied to the idea of whiteness being the better option. The caste system that was in place in Latin America plays such a huge role in the nation-state making that people of color, especially darker skinned people, are always towards the bottom of the caste system and therefore of the social structure. Similarly, in the US the Latino concept, which is a reductive term to try to capture all of the nuances of people from Latin America, really points to the false idea that all Latinos are part of a homogenous racial group.
So, in order to talk about anti-Blackness we have to first talk about this history and understand that white supremacy, white privilege was always true in Latin America. That when the revolutions in the Americas happened they didn't upend racism, they simply changed its form; the same racial and social structures remained mostly in place. We also have to admit that even those folks who led revolutions were anti-Black, which no one in Latin America wants to do. We glorify Bolivar and Santander and Marti, but we don't talk about how they led to the downfall of el Almirante Padilla (in Colombia) and Maceo (in Cuba), for example. We don't talk about how Haiti was key to the liberation of the Americas but how the “fear of a Black planet” (to quote Public Enemy) really led to discrediting and killing Haitians who helped with those efforts.
In the US we don't like to discuss the fact that Latinidad has for many years tried to pull more towards Whiteness and away from Blackness and how that is done within families, social groups, schools etc. We are oftentimes not ready to face the fact that we might be anti-Black ourselves and that therefore creates a reason to not explore it. We also don't realize just how much of Latinidad is Black, how much of Latin American history and culture is influenced by Africanity and when we do discover that, people get bothered and we start to negate it, doubling down on anti-black sentiments.
So anti-Blackness is a big problem, but the more we unearth the more that we realize how insidious it is and it becomes hard for scholars and others who study Latin America and Latinidad to willingly recognize that.
Your faith-based organizing centers on anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism. Why are these political commitments so important to your religious work?
Oh, so important! Christianity has become so capitalist and so imperialist that it is no wonder why many people pull away from Christianity (also due to many other issues that we won't have time to get into) but capitalism is not the default way of the world working. We have been tricked into thinking that there is only one way to do so and it is so ubiquitous that we think that it is the only way to go. But we have to begin to create efforts and endeavors that are anti-capitalist, that don't make everything a financial transaction and that understand that faith and spirituality should be devoid of that “reality.” When spirituality and faith become enmeshed with capitalism it trivializes it for me. That’s why I am glad to be part of communities and endeavors that aren't like that and so when I wanted to start working on AfroLatinidad and Spirituality it was really the only way to go about it, because we shouldn't be in spaces that only value Blackness as long as it means green. My mentor, Miriam Jimenez Roman, who was anti-capitalist herself, always told me to be careful of folks who want to turn Black into green, and I have met many people like that and I don't want to be someone like that.
You’re currently working on a documentary entitled, “Faith in Blackness: An Exploration of AfroLatine Spirituality.” Can you please share more about this project?
Oh, we are in the midst of editing the documentary and we have wonderful stories to share. The idea of the project literally came to me and my friends who I am working on it with, Charles Reynoso and Michael Lopez, while we were playing pool. We were discussing an article I wrote and Charles, who is a filmmaker, started to talk about the idea of sharing oral stories of Black Latines and spirituality: What makes Black Latine faith unique? Is there something that Black Latines have to say to white representations of faith? How does their understanding of their own Blackness play a role in their spirituality? So we sought to capture those stories and seek them from people who have different religion/spiritual identifications, and what we are noticing is that there are patterns and ideas that come natural to AfroLatines when it comes to spirituality of any tradition. Ideas of communal liberation as part of their practice, ideas of challenging power structures, ideas of re-envisioning the tradition – all of these are part of all of the stories we have done so far. And so the documentary, which we hope to have finished by the end of February and start showing in March, will focus on how faith/spirituality shapes folks who identify as AfroLatine and how the Blackness of those folks, especially in the anti-Black Latino space, has played a role in their redefining of their faith/spiritual practice that moves it from individual to communal.
Which writers, artists, or other people in your community have most influenced you?
So many people… I take inspiration from all over the African Diaspora, truly, and the stories of Black people all over the world fighting for justice, representation, peace inspire me to keep going. I mentioned the great Miriam Jimenez Roman and Juan Flores, who were like intellectual parents to me. They influenced me in ways that I am just now fully understanding. Frantz Fanon is a huge influence in my thinking of the Diaspora and Blackness overall. But there are so many people, throughout history: the story of St. Martin de Porres, whose experience is symbolic of an AfroLatino experience; Mary Elizabeth Lange, a Black Latina nun who did great work in antebellum Baltimore; Candelario Obeso and Jorge Artel, AfroColombian writers whose works are important when talking about Blackness; Jean Michel-Basquiat, Wilson Borja and Harmonia Rosales, whose AfroLatinidades play a role in their art; musically, Nitty Scott, ChocQuibTown, Grupo Niche, my friend Kwami Coleman, folks whose Black-Latinidad plays a role in their music and how they understand the world. And other friends, Jose Humphreys and Yvette Modestin, and so many people, who are doing that work now, writing, expounding, talking about Blackness and why it needs to be affirmed in Latinidad.
How can BAR readers support your work?
Well, join the forum’s listserv for all of our events. We have some dope events coming up and are currently working on updating our resources page so it is accessible and gives folks info they need. Sharing the documentary and following us on IG, Facebook, Twitter helps so more folks are made aware of what we are doing and how we are working to center Blackness. Also, link us with other folks who may be doing similar work. Building coalitions is an important part of our work and we want to be a part of those endeavors.
www.afrolatinoforum.org
@afrolatinoforum on IG and Twitter
www.afrolatinetheology.com
@afrolatinetheolgy on IG
Guesnerth Josué Perea is Executive Director of the afrolatin@ forum and co-curator of the AfroLatine Theology Project. His research on AfroLatinidad has been part of various publications including Let Spirit Speak: Cultural Journeys through the African Diaspora and the Revista de Estudios Colombianos.
Roberto Sirvent is editor of the Black Agenda Report Book Forum.