In its third year, the Afro-Latino Festival pulsed with vibrant, melodic sounds that can be found throughout Latin America and mapped back to "the mother land." Beyond food, language and history, there's no better way to trace culture ties than with music.
The Afro-Latino Festival moved from borough-to-borough in its third year, showcasing impressive demonstrations, stellar music performances, collective culture, African roots, and the colorful manifestation of the diverse Latino community.
To better acquaint Chicago with the importance of her mixed roots and Afro-Latino heritage, blogger Raquel Dailey-Parham opened an Afro-Latino eatery, Maracas, which exemplifies the Afro-Latino presence in Chicago.
In a conversation about blackness and being Panamanian, Anthony Palanco's grandmother spoke about her mother, who had fair skin, and her father's dark skin and features that's traditionally associated with blackness.
Panamanian Anthony Palanco author of Verses from the Diaspora: A Poetic Tale of the African Diaspora sat down with Latin Post and spoke about his mixed Panamanian roots, his upbringing in the United States of as a Spanish-speaking Latino with a dark complexion, and Panama's gaParze when it comes to skin politics.
The application of melanin-concentrated chemical creams that strips away color, and otherwise whitens, lightens, brightens or bleaches skin is a emerging process that's often marketed to remove blemishes or abnormally high pigmentation such as birthmarks and moles, but historically and continuously, these creams are used for the overall whitening of dark skin tones in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, South America, and even in the United States. The desire to eradicate "unflattering" parts of one's lineage begins with altering one's skin color for many dark-skinned men and women.
