Colonialism & Slavery in The Film “Black in Latin America” By Professor Henry Louis Gates

Henry Louis Gates Jr. travels to Mexico and Peru to explore the African influence on Latin America. He investigates the shared legacy of colonialism and slavery in a region that is essential ten times as many slaves as the United States and kept them in bondage far longer. Gates analyze that the individuals of African descent have had a huge influence on the history and culture of Latin America and the Caribbean, despite sometimes being forgotten or neglected.

Professor Henry Louis Gates film “Black in Latin America” could not have come at a more accurate time.

2011 was stated by the United Nations to be the International year for individuals of African descent. It was greeting news in Haiti where generations have celebrated their African ancestry. In part 1 of the documentary, Professor Gates observe the lives of African descendants in Haiti and in the Dominican Republic. He recounts the history of the island eventually from a Dominican approach. He introduces island as “Hispaniola” known as Christopher Columbus and not as the island of Haiti as it was entitled by its first community.

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The Dominicans prefer the term “Hispaniola” known as the Spanish island so that they can point to themselves as being of Spanish conception.

Professor Gates’ film is significant because it presents an important discussion that is at the root of the island’s division into two countries with different racial identities. The film itself is revolutionary in its perspective on the history of the two countries, but it misses dominant historical characteristics that would have buttressed it further.

The people of Haiti are the descendants of Africans taken to the Americas between 1502 and 1866 when the world’s global force originate their workforce from the buying, selling, and kidnapping of individuals. Haiti was the initial modern nation to eliminate slavery and to assert the sanctity of human life. So successful was Haiti’s Bwa Kayiman Revolt of 1791, that it ignited a 13-year war which ultimately led to the withdrawal of all European slave trading ability from the island.

Spain was the first European nation obligate to discard the island. It ceded its part of the island (present-day the Dominican Republic) to France in 1795 in the Treaty of Basel. The Spaniards were in such a way to leave the war-torn island that they may have mistakenly left the remains of Christopher Columbus in an old Cathedral in Santo Domingo. The British left in 1798 after a useless attempt to attain control of the island. The French were the final to leave in November 1803, after they conquer the Battle of Vertierres. Leaders of the Revolution demonstrate the island’s independence from European domination on January 1st, 1804.

Haiti’s history is an incredible David and Goliath tale of an island nation led by individuals of African descent endeavor to survive in a world lead by European powers bent on subjugating them. Isolated, demonized and crushed by extortion and embargoes, the new Haitian state was never actually given an anticipation to thrive by the nations that it defeated. Gates investigates how race has been socially developed in a general public whose individuals reflect a very long time of between marriage, and how the country’s troubled history with Haiti educates thoughts about the racial order.

In Haiti, Professor Gates recounts the narrative of the introduction of the main ever dark republic and discovers how the slaves' hard battled freedom over Napoleon Bonaparte's French Empire became a double-edged sword. Gates explores the tortured separate between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, two different sides of the island once called Hispaniola. The Dominican culture is Spanish, and succeeding governments there have despised and brutalized the African blacks who control Haiti. The first episode is excellent for explaining how racial classifications are social establishments, as meanings of blackness shift across the two countries.

The island's history of race relations also depicts how, as Edward portrays, the race is constructed in reference to a racial and national "other," as Dominicans have historically known themselves as not Haitian and not black. Lastly, the video chronicles how Haiti became the primary black republic and the pivotal role that religion played in the slaves' fight for liberation.

Ultimately, ever since winning independence, different countries and the United States, have implicate policies that have made it near difficult for Haitians to produce a robust economy and political infrastructure, evidenced today by the poverty and political corruption that plague the country, but which is always challenged by Haitians' rich and aggregate belief system and artistic culture.

Citation:

1. “‘Black in Latin America’ Haiti and Dominican Republic: An Island Divided (TV Episode 2011).” IMDb, IMDb.com.
2. “Review of Part 1 of PBS' ‘Black in Latin America’ – Haiti/Dominican Republic.” Mr. D's Neighborhood, 20 Apr. 2011.
3. “Review of Part 3 of PBS' ‘Black in Latin America’ – Brazil.” Mr. D's Neighborhood, 4 May 2011.