Foundations of Despotism

Foundations of Despotism
Author: Richard Lee Turits
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2003
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780804751056

This book explores the history of the Dominican Republic as it evolved from the first European colony in the Americas into a modern nation under the rule of Rafael Trujillo. It investigates the social foundations of Trujillo’s exceptionally enduring and brutal dictatorship (1930-1961) and, more broadly, the way power is sustained in such non-democratic regimes. The author reveals how the seemingly unilateral imposition of power by Trujillo in fact depended on the regime’s mediation of profound social and economic transformations, especially through agrarian policies that assisted the nation’s large independent peasantry. By promoting an alternative modernity that sustained peasants’ free access to land during a period of economic growth, the regime secured peasant support as well as backing from certain elite sectors. This book thus elucidates for the first time the hidden foundations of the Trujillo regime.

Crítica de la razón negra

Crítica de la razón negra
Author: Achille Mbembe
Publisher: NED Ediciones
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2016-03
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 8494236458

Tres momentos marcan la biografía de este vertiginoso ensamblaje. El primero es el despojo llevado a cabo durante la trata atlántico entre los siglos XV y XIX, cuando hombres y mujeres originarios de África son transformados en hombres-objetos, hombres-mercancías y hombres-monedas de cambio. Prisioneros en el calabozo de las apariencias, a partir de ese instante pasan a pertenecer a otros. Víctimas de un trato hostil, pierden su nombre y su lengua; continúan siendo sujetos activos, pese a que su vida y su trabajo pertenecen a aquellos con quienes están condenados a vivir sin poder entablar relaciones humanas. El segundo momento corresponde al nacimiento de la escritura y comienza hacia finales del siglo XVIII cuando, a través de sus propias huellas, los Negros, estos seres-cooptados-por-otros, comienzan a articular un lenguaje propio y son capaces de reivindicarse como sujetos plenos en el mundo viviente. Marcado por innumerables revueltas de esclavos y la independencia de Haití en 1804, los combates por la abolición de la trata, las descolonizaciones africanas y las luchas por los derechos civiles en los Estados Unidos, este período se completa con el desmantelamiento del apartheid durante los años finales del siglo XX. El tercer momento, a comienzos del siglo XXI, es el de la expansión planetaria de los mercados, la privatización del mundo bajo la égida del neoliberalismo y la imbricación creciente entre la economía financiera, el complejo post-imperial y las tecnologías electrónicas y digitales. Por primera vez en la historia de la humanidad, la palabra Negro no remite solamente a la condición que se les impuso a las personas de origen africano durante el primer capitalismo (depredaciones de distinta índole, desposesión de todo poder de autodeterminación y, sobre todo, del futuro y del tiempo, esas dos matrices de lo posible). Es esta nueva característica fungible, esta solubilidad, su institucionalización en tanto que nueva norma de existencia y su propagación al resto del planeta, lo que llamamos el devenir-negro del mundo.

A Companion to US Latino Literatures

A Companion to US Latino Literatures
Author: Carlota Caulfield
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2007
Genre: American literature
ISBN: 9781855661394

A panorama of literature by Latinos, whether born or resident in the United States.

The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Volume XII

The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Volume XII
Author: Marcus Garvey
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 656
Release: 2014-09-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822376180

Volume XII of the Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers covers a period of twelve months, from the opening of the UNIA's historic first international convention in New York, in August 1920, to Marcus Garvey's return to the United States in July 1921 after an extended tour of Cuba, Jamaica, Panama, Costa Rica, and Belize. In many ways the 1920 convention marked the high-point of the Garvey movement in the United States, while Garvey's tour of the Caribbean, in the winter and spring of 1921, registered the greatest outpouring of popular support for the UNIA in its history. The period covered in the present volume was the moment of the movement's political apotheosis, as well as the moment when the finances of Garvey's Black Star Line went into free fall. Volume XII highlights the centrality of the Caribbean people not only to the convention, but also to the movement. The reports to the convention discussed the range of social and economic conditions obtaining in the Caribbean, particularly their impact on racial conditions. The quality of the discussions and debates were impressive. Contained in these reports are some of the earliest and most clearly enunciated statements in defense of social and political freedom in the Caribbean. These documents form an underappreciated and still underutilized record of the political awakening of Caribbean people of African descent.

A History of Afro-Hispanic Language

A History of Afro-Hispanic Language
Author: John M. Lipski
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2005-03-10
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1107320372

The African slave trade, beginning in the fifteenth century, brought African languages into contact with Spanish and Portuguese, resulting in the Africans' gradual acquisition of these languages. In this 2004 book, John Lipski describes the major forms of Afro-Hispanic language found in the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America over the last 500 years. As well as discussing pronunciation, morphology and syntax, he separates legitimate forms of Afro-Hispanic expression from those that result from racist stereotyping, to assess how contact with the African diaspora has had a permanent impact on contemporary Spanish. A principal issue is the possibility that Spanish, in contact with speakers of African languages, may have creolized and restructured - in the Caribbean and perhaps elsewhere - permanently affecting regional and social varieties of Spanish today. The book is accompanied by the largest known anthology of primary Afro-Hispanic texts from Iberia, Latin America, and former Afro-Hispanic contacts in Africa and Asia.

From Chains to Bonds

From Chains to Bonds
Author: Doudou Diène
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 500
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781571812667

A collection of 38 papers from the Ouidah Conference held in September 1994 in Ouidah, Benin as the launching conference for UNESCO's international Slave Route Project.

Afro-Cuban Voices

Afro-Cuban Voices
Author: Pedro Pérez Sarduy
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2020-03-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813065550

From the forewords: "At a time when Cuba is undergoing immense economic and social changes, race becomes a kind of cultural litmus test for the national identity. . . . This anthology illustrates fully that it is possible to be both revolutionary and black in Cuba."—Manning Marable, Columbia University "The authors of Afro-Cuban Voices, also key actors in the new, unfolding dialogue about race in Cuba, make a seminal contribution through a forthright critique of ‘racial blind spots’ in official history and present-day racial discrimination."—James Early, director of cultural studies and communication, Smithsonian Institution From the series editor: "A courageous attempt to deal head-on with the issue of race in Cuba today. . . . Pérez Sarduy and Stubbs [seek to] put a human face on this debate, and do so well. The book will be received with relief by some and with frustration by others. Controversial it will undoubtedly be, since—as with most things Cuban—strong emotions are a given assumption. It will be an admirable beginning for the series and, it is hoped, will spark a much-needed debate in the United States on many aspects of the ‘Cuban question.’ It is about time."—John M. Kirk Based on the vivid firsthand testimony of prominent Afro-Cubans who live in Cuba, this book of interviews looks at ways that race affects daily life on the island. While celebrating their racial and national identity, the collected voices express an urgent need to end the silences and distortions of history in both pre- and postrevolutionary Cuba. The 14 people interviewed—of different generations and from different geographic areas of Cuba—come from the arts, the media, industry, academia, and medicine. They include a doctor who calls for joint U.S.-Cuban studies on high blood pressure and a craftsman who makes the batá drums used in Yoruba worship ceremonies. All responded to four controversial questions: What is it like to be black in Cuba? How has the revolution made a difference? To what extent is that difference true today? What can be done? Exposing the contradictions of both racial stereotyping and cultural assimilation, their eloquent answers make the case that the issue of race in Cuba, no matter how hard to define, will not be ignored. A volume in the series Contemporary Cuba, edited by John M. Kirk

Dutch and Portuguese in Western Africa

Dutch and Portuguese in Western Africa
Author: Filipa Ribeiro da Silva
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 412
Release: 2011-07-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004206906

More than fifty years have passed since Charles Boxer wrote his major works on the Dutch-Portuguese rivalries in the Atlantic and attributed the successful takeover of North-eastern Brazil, Angola, São Tomé and the Gold Coast forts by the WIC to the superior naval power of the Dutch.This book reexamines the systems of settlement and trade of these States and their subjects in Western Africa and the Atlantic, offering a fresh insight on discussions about the success and failure of Dutch and Portuguese States, Companies and Merchants in the seventeenth-century-Atlantic.

Cuban Literature in the Age of Black Insurrection

Cuban Literature in the Age of Black Insurrection
Author: Matthew Pettway
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2019-12-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1496825004

Juan Francisco Manzano and Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés (Plácido) were perhaps the most important and innovative Cuban writers of African descent during the Spanish colonial era. Both nineteenth-century authors used Catholicism as a symbolic language for African-inspired spirituality. Likewise, Plácido and Manzano subverted the popular imagery of neoclassicism and Romanticism in order to envision black freedom in the tradition of the Haitian Revolution. Plácido and Manzano envisioned emancipation through the lens of African spirituality, a transformative moment in the history of Cuban letters. Matthew Pettway examines how the portrayal of African ideas of spirit and cosmos in otherwise conventional texts recur throughout early Cuban literature and became the basis for Manzano and Plácido’s antislavery philosophy. The portrayal of African-Atlantic religious ideas spurned the elite rationale that literature ought to be a barometer of highbrow cultural progress. Cuban debates about freedom and selfhood were never the exclusive domain of the white Creole elite. Pettway’s emphasis on African-inspired spirituality as a source of knowledge and a means to sacred authority for black Cuban writers deepens our understanding of Manzano and Plácido not as mere imitators but as aesthetic and political pioneers. As Pettway suggests, black Latin American authors did not abandon their African religious heritage to assimilate wholesale to the Catholic Church. By recognizing the wisdom of African ancestors, they procured power in the struggle for black liberation.

Speaking Truth To Power

Speaking Truth To Power
Author: Manning Marable
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 399
Release: 2018-03-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0429976852

Through public appearances, radio and television interviews, and his many articles and books, Manning Marable has become one of America's most prominent commentators on race relations and African-American politics. Speaking Truth to Power brings together for the first time Marable's major writings on black politics, peace, and social justice.The book traces the changing role of race within the American political system since the Civil Rights Movement. It also charts the author's striking evolution of political ideas, moving toward a political analysis of multicultural democracy, social justice, and egalitarian pluralism.