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Caribbean Matters: Afro-Latinos and Hispanic American Heritage Month [1]
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Date: 2025-09-20
Caribbean Matters is a weekly series from Daily Kos. Hope you’ll join us here every Saturday. If you are unfamiliar with the region, check out Caribbean Matters: Getting to know the countries of the Caribbean.
Sept. 15 marked the start of National Hispanic American Heritage Month here in the U.S, which ends on Oct. 15:
The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum join in paying tribute to the generations of Hispanic Americans who have positively influenced and enriched our nation and society.
I’ve posted about it here in the past and have paid specific attention to the push for more inclusion of Afro-Latinos, primarily Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and Cubans, whose cultures have in the past been underrepresented due to racism. In “Caribbean Matters: Honoring Afro-Latinos during Hispanic Heritage Month,” I wrote:
We have communities here with people born or descended from Caribbean island nations where Spanish is the official language such as Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. There are also people from the Caribbean basin countries on the coasts of South America and Central America from regions of Mexico, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, Honduras, Colombia, and Venezuela. Additionally, there are Spanish speakers here from Aruba, Curacao, Belize, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Trinidad and Tobago. Each one of these groups has members who are Black of all or partial African descent. The U.S. celebrates Black History Month and National Caribbean Heritage Month, and folks who fit into all three of these categories, including Hispanic, often fall through the cracks of all of them. Race, ethnicity, and nationality here in the U.S are often conflated or confused. Plus, the subject of racism within the Latino community is still a topic that many people don’t want to discuss or deny that it exists at all.
Dominican Afro-Latino Manny Zapata wrote in “Highlighting the Afro in Afro-Latinidad”:
Latinos are a multiracial ethnic group, but the experiences of Afro-Latinos, who make up 12% of the U.S. Latino adult population, often differ from those of other Latinos, on account of their race, skin tone, and other factors, including the enduring legacy of slavery and racism in the U.S. and Latin America. For many Latinos, the politics of race, and the impact this has on their lives, is still highly controversial. Latinidad widely promotes the concept of mestizaje or “mixing the races” in hopes of securing better outcomes, while downplaying racial differences and treating Latinos as a monolith. Many fair-skinned Latinos sidestep questions about race or embrace Whiteness, out of a belief that it will lead to greater social mobility and access to education, civil rights, health care, etc. The Afro-Latino identity, however, is complicated by transnational anti-Blackness, which is pervasive in this country and in many Latin American countries, where Black communities are regularly disenfranchised. Afro-Latinos often face disproportionate levels of discrimination and hardship, based on their skin color, yet they tend to be overlooked or excluded from nationally representative samples of Latinos or research and data collection that favors certain Latino groups over others.
Why am I bringing this up? The targeting of Latinos by the current racist administration in charge of the U.S. is spreading both fear and cancellation of festivities this month.
x Annual Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations make adjustments in current political climate
Organizers across the country, from Massachusetts and North Carolina to California and Washington state, have postponed or canceled heritage month festivals altogether.
apnews.com/article/hisp...
[image or embed] — Denise Oliver-Velez (@deniseoliver-velez.bsky.social) September 15, 2025 at 6:22 AM
Fernanda Figueroa wrote this AP story: Annual Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations make adjustments in current political climate Each year during Hispanic Heritage Month, huge celebrations can be expected across the U.S. to showcase the diversity and culture of Hispanic people. This year, the Trump administration’s immigration crackdowns, a federally led English-only initiative and an anti-diversity, equity and inclusion push have changed the national climate in which these celebrations occur. Organizers across the country, from Massachusetts and North Carolina to California and Washington state, have postponed or canceled heritage month festivals altogether. [...] Masked ICE agents carrying out President Donald Trump’s policies via workplace raids at farms, manufacturing plants and elsewhere — which has included detaining legal residents — led some to fear large gatherings would become additional targets for raids. Another obstacle heritage celebrations face is the perception that they’d violate bans on DEI programming — something Trump has discouraged across federal agencies. Some companies and universities have followed suit. We are already aware of the depredations being levied against African Americans by the anti-DEI agenda emanating from the White House, and now we have the recent ruling by the supremacist-controlled Supreme Court. Lauren Gambino wrote for The Guardian:
US supreme court ‘effectively legalized racial profiling’, immigration experts warn
Immigration advocates warned that the supreme court has “effectively legalized racial profiling”, granting federal agents the power to stop people in Los Angeles simply for speaking Spanish or appearing Latino – and opening the door, they say, to a broader unraveling of civil rights protections nationwide. In a 6–3 decision on Monday, the court’s conservative majority lifted restrictions on “roving” immigration patrols across the LA area after a lower court found that federal agents were indiscriminately targeting people on the basis of race, language, employment or location. The high court’s ruling alarmed civil liberties advocates and rattled immigrant communities in a county where one in three residents is foreign-born, and where the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement has already seen armed and masked federal agents detain residents, including US citizens, near bus stops, construction sites, churches, and other public spaces with little explanation or due process.
Frankly, we need to be aware that Afro-Latinos face double jeopardy—they are targets of both external government and internal community racism.
This week, I was just looking at a clip of Nick Fuentes (who has Mexican heritage ) spewing anti-Blackness. This double targeting stems from the unique intersections of race and ethnicity for Afro-Latinos, a duality that challenges the monolithic view of both the Black and Latino communities.
x YouTube Video
In Puerto Rico, residents who “look Dominican” are targeted by ICE, a subject I covered in “ Caribbean Matters: Racist ICE raids target Dominicans in Puerto Rico .”
x Important to keep lifting our voices during a fraught #HispanicHeritageMonth
[image or embed] — Tanya Kateri Hernandez (@professortkh.bsky.social) September 15, 2025 at 7:48 AM Give a listen to her 5-minute summary of her work. Give a listen to her 5-minute summary of her work.
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