In BLACK IN LATIN AMERICA, Professor Gates’ journey discovers, behind a shared legacy of colonialism and slavery, vivid stories and people marked by African roots. He introduces viewers to the faces and voices of the descendants of the Africans in six Latin American countries, who created these worlds. He shows the similarities and distinctions between these cultures and how their New World manifestations are rooted in, but distinct from, their African antecedents.
Professor Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, Jr. (pictured) and the Merengue singers in the Dominican RepublicHaiti & The Dominican Republic: An Island Divided In the Dominican Republic Professor Gates explores how race has been socially constructed in a society whose people reflect centuries of inter-marriage, and how the country's troubled history with Haiti informs notions about racial classification. In Haiti, Professor Gates tells the story of the birth of the first-ever black republic, and finds out how the slaves's hard fought liberation over Napoleon Bonaparte's French Empire became a double-edged sword.
A quest he began 12 years ago with WONDERS OF THE AFRICAN WORLD comes full circle in BLACK IN LATIN AMERICA, an effort to discover how Africa and Europe combined to create the vibrant cultures of Latin America, with a rich legacy of thoughtful, articulate subjects whose stories are astonishingly moving and irresistibly compelling.
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