Pelo Bueno y Pelo Malo (Good Hair & Bad Hair)

Sulma Arzu-Brown

Author of the book:  ¡Pelo Malo No Existe!

 (Bad Hair Does Not Exist!)

Throughout the African diaspora you will find varying degrees of self hate and internalized racism. On the African continent, the sale of bleaching cream to lighten one's skin is at an all-time high. Here in the U.S., I grew up at a time when it was highly fashionable for black men to straighten their to imitate those of white men through what was known as a “process” or a “doo.”

In those days, we referred to ourselves as “colored” or “negro.” I remember as a child when I got angry with people, I would insult them by calling them a black African making reference to Hollywood's stereotypical view of African people being portrayed as spear-chucking savages. Those were fighting words.

In Latin America, calling many blacks such names may not start a fight, but they will certainly be offended to the point of absolute denial of their skin color and African heritage. An Afro-Peruvian woman once told me that I was not black, but “moreno (colored).

One thing that black Americans and black Latinos have in common is the use of the term, “good hair“ or in Spanish, “pelo bueno.” After the black American consciousness movement during the 1960s, I am always astonished to hear black Americans refer to hair on black people resembling those of white people as good hair. Afro-Latinos go further than that by making reference to “pelo malo” or bad (kinky) hair.

Sulma Arzu-Brown is a proud black Latina of Garifuna heritage, a descendant of Africans who escaped slavery from the British, and assimilated with an indigenous community in Honduras, Central America. Mrs. Arzu-Brown, a graduate of Lehman College of the City University of New York City, and Director of Operations with the city's Hispanic Chamber of Commerce grew tired of hearing people criticize her daughter’s hair, and published a book entitled ¡Pelo Malo No Existe! (Bad Hair Does Not Exist!); a bilingual picture book that sends the message that every woman’s hair is beautiful. 

In an interview with NBC News she pointed out emphatically that the term ‘bad hair’ or ‘pelo malo’ is divisive to both community and family and can contribute to low self-esteem. She refers to her book as a tool of cultural solidarity. 

Traveling for Culture or “Sex?”

I met Luisa, a voluptuous, chocolate skinned sistah who lived across the street from where I was staying in the El Vedado District of Havana, Cuba. She was all smiles and full of excitement when I approached her and her two children. My motive? Certainly not for sex like so many Canadians, Europeans, and more and more Americans are doing these days. 

And why was Luisa so friendly? In hopes I would relieve her of her economic hardships, and most importantly, bring her back to the U.S. She made several attempts to get me to do so.

Today with the aid of the Internet, many men are taking advantage of the poverty women suffer in third-world countries. These are women who could care less about a man's looks or gut size. They only want what's in his pants (wallet)!

Upon my return from Cuba, I met Cuban-Americans who resented me for taking the trip because they assumed I was only there to “get some.” A local Afro-Cuban percussionist and friend, Jesus Diaz, whom I knew for many years on the Oakland/San Francisco salsa music circuit, asked me sarcastically, “did you have a 'good time?” 

He was relieved to learn that I was attending the University of Havana to work on my Spanish, getting acclimated to Afro-Cuban culture by mixing with community members, and reading up on the famed Afro-Cuban writer/poet Nicolás Guillén, a friend of the African-American writer/poet Langston Hughes.

In my younger years, as a sailor in the U.S. Navy, I was just as guilty with impoverished women when my ship docked in third-world Asian countries. Truly, I was one ugly-ass American—and horny!

Today, with my level of maturity, understanding, and compassion, I behave differently with the knowledge that these women are doing what they have to do to avoid going hungry, and would make reasonable efforts to help relieve them of economic hardships without expecting anything in return.

This is exactly what I do in my Latin American travels, especially in Black Latin America where my primary purpose is to immerse myself in the Spanish language and the Blacktino (Black Latino) lifestyle and culture. 

In exchange for such a tremendous personal growth experience, I was generous in buying dinners and staple items for families, and buying ice cream and other goodies and gifts for children. I still came out ahead financially because I avoided the fancy hotels and tourist traps by staying in the barrio (the hood), and only hanging out with local people.

In Cartagena, Colombia, for example, I saw an elderly black women selling homemade cookies in the public square; I walked by, gave her a cheerful smile, and dropped a few dollars in Colombian currency on her table, and kept stepping. She followed me trying to give me some cookies, but I was not at all interested. All I wanted was to help a struggling sister out, which is what I explained to Jesus Diaz when I told him about Luisa in Cuba.

Down in El Carmen, Perú, three hours south of the nations capital Lima, I had the perfect opportunity to score sexually. A young, hot, sexy Afro-Peruvian dancer appeared seriously interested in me as she had trouble taking her eyes off me in her grandmother's home where I had happened to be staying. 

I passed up the opportunity for three reasons: 1) she was young enough to be my daughter, 2) I'm leery of woman who want me for no other reason than my being a gringo with a perceived pocket full of money when she can find local man for real love, and 3) I am a culture vulture, not a booty bandit.

If sex is all I need, I can save myself the airfare and head to a local brothel in my own community. And if I should hook up with a woman for a long-term relationship, I would prefer it to be for real love right here in the USA. I am not against being with a woman from a foreign country, I just prefer to meet her legally on American soil.

The Black Mexican Agenda

Afro-Mexican musicians in Cuajinicuilapa, Guerrero. Cuajinicuilapa has one of the biggest black population in Mexico.

Afro-Mexicans have been “erased from history,” says the activist Abel Barrera Hernandez.

Abel Barrera Hernandez will be given a national award recognizing his human rights work with the organization Mexico Negro (Black Mexico), the first organization in Mexico dedicated to fighting for equal rights and recognition of the country's African descendants. The award was announced by Mexico's La Jornada Monday.

Barrera Hernandez's human rights work started in 1993 when he helped found the Center for Human Rights in Tlachinollan in the southern state of Guerrero — a state that has seen a spike in violence in the recent years, including the disappearances of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa teacher training college.

Three years after founding the human rights center, the organization turned its fight to promoting equality and the recognition of people of African descent, changing its name to Mexico Negro (Black Mexico). 

This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address: 
 "http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Black-Rights-Activist-in-Mexico-Wins-Award-20160222-0029.html". If you intend to use it, please cite the source and provide a link to the original article. www.teleSURtv.net/english

Afro-Mexicans have been “erased from history,” says the activist Abel Barrera Hernandez.

Abel Barrera Hernandez will be given a national award recognizing his human rights work with the organization Mexico Negro (Black Mexico), the first organization in Mexico dedicated to fighting for equal rights and recognition of the country's African descendants. The award was announced by Mexico's La Jornada Monday.

Barrera Hernandez's human rights work started in 1993 when he helped found the Center for Human Rights in Tlachinollan in the southern state of Guerrero — a state that has seen a spike in violence in the recent years, including the disappearances of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa teacher training college.

Three years after founding the human rights center, the organization turned its fight to promoting equality and the recognition of people of African descent, changing its name to Mexico Negro (Black Mexico). 

This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address: 
 "http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Black-Rights-Activist-in-Mexico-Wins-Award-20160222-0029.html". If you intend to use it, please cite the source and provide a link to the original article. www.teleSURtv.net/english

Afro-Mexicans have been “erased from history,” says the activist Abel Barrera Hernandez.

Abel Barrera Hernandez will be given a national award recognizing his human rights work with the organization Mexico Negro (Black Mexico), the first organization in Mexico dedicated to fighting for equal rights and recognition of the country's African descendants. The award was announced by Mexico's La Jornada Monday.

Barrera Hernandez's human rights work started in 1993 when he helped found the Center for Human Rights in Tlachinollan in the southern state of Guerrero — a state that has seen a spike in violence in the recent years, including the disappearances of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa teacher training college.

Three years after founding the human rights center, the organization turned its fight to promoting equality and the recognition of people of African descent, changing its name to Mexico Negro (Black Mexico). 

This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address: 
 "http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Black-Rights-Activist-in-Mexico-Wins-Award-20160222-0029.html". If you intend to use it, please cite the source and provide a link to the original article. www.teleSURtv.net/english

I lived and worked around Mexican Americans for many years, and only met a few who knew anything about the racial diversity of their own heritage. To so many of them, a black person speaking Spanish is considered humorous and freaky. They know nothing of the black folks who are more “Mexican” than they are; meaning they were born and raised in Mexico, and know only the Spanish language and Mexican culture versus living in the U.S. as bi-cultural.

Recently, as a preliminary count before the 2020 national census, the Mexican government, for the first time ever, recognized its 1.38 million citizens of African descent in a national survey. In 2020, “Black" will debut as an official racial category.

A major force behind the government's recognition was a black activist group known as México Negro, founded in 1997 by Sergio Peñaloza Pérez, a school teacher of African descent working unceasingly to increase the visibility of Afro-Mexican culture.

Cuajinicuilapa, on Mexico's west coast, is one of the major black communities of Mexico located in the La Costa Chica region in the southwestern states of Guerrero and Oaxaca where the Afro-Mexican population is concentrated.

Mexico's post-revolutionary government made a conscious effort to create a national mixed-race identity that melded Hispanic, indigenous, and African ethnicities. Article 2 of Mexico's 1917 Constitution recognized its "multicultural composition," and today, over 60% of Mexicans identify as mestizos. 

One of México Negro's strategies going forward is to ally the black rights movement with indigenous rights, which are generally more widely recognized. In 2013, leaders from 26 indigenous communities released a statement pushing for constitutional reform that addressed the rights of both indigenous people and Afro-Mexicans.

In 2016, México Negro's most important outreach effort will work on having elementary and high schools include material on Africans and people of African descent in school curriculum. On the university level, there will be a professorship launched at the Benito Juarez Autonomous University of Oaxaca to study Afro-Mexican women.

In addition to increased visibility in textbooks, a documentary filmmaker in Mexico City plans on increasing black representation in film and media. Citing the handful of famous black Mexicans who are few and far between on the national stage. Darkness has a negative connotation, and Afro-Mexican youth have no icons. It seems like their only options are to immigrate or be delinquents.

Improve the Race?

If I met a woman of a different race, and it turned out to be a true love connection such as with this happy black and mestizo Peruvian family (above), I'm in! But hell if I pass up a fine black woman like the former Miss Ecuador, Monica Chalá (below), for the sole purpose of having babies of mixed race, and do what many Afro Latinos say, “improve the race.”

Growing up in the U.S., I falsely believed that internalized racism was strictly limited to black Americans as we have our issues with good hair vs. kinky hair, light-skinned vs. dark-skinned, and as the old saying goes, “the white man's ice is always colder.”

As I meet people and explore cultures other than my own, I am learning that internalized racism is alive and well wherever there are people of color. Even on the African continent, the sale of bleaching cream to lighten one's skin is at an all-time high. I once read a story where a a black American man who joined the Peace Corps, I forget which African country he was serving; however, he noticed woman approaching his white male comrades, not for love and marriage, but solely to have white babies.

Black Latin America is big on finding a mate who is either of much lighter complexion or preferably white. In Spanish, it's called “mejorar la raza (improving the race)” or “blanquemiento (whitening).” 

When I was in Havana, Cuba, a group of us Americans were walking down the street to a cultural event, and suddenly three or four black Cuban men rushed out on the porch with faces glowing and looking starry-eyed at the white women in my group. I wanted to shout, “damn brothers, haven't you seen white women before? 

At a party just outside of Havana where we Americans, mostly white, were being entertained. I asked a black Cuban woman to dance, and she quickly looked across the room seeking the approval of a man leaning against the wall. He shook his head indicating, hell no! That was her older brother who wanted his sister to snag a white American male.

If my parents told me, “improve the race; I don't want any black grandbabies,” like so many black Latin-American parents do, I would ask, “you had black babies, what's the problem, now; you have issues with black people all of a sudden? Of course, my parents had much better sense than that.

It is not that I am against interracial marriage or relationships. Even the Black Muslim minister Louis Farrakahn stated on national television, “When you are in love, you are in love.” My own father and his second wife of Italian ancestry were truly in love. If I met a woman of a different race, and there is a true love connection, I'm in! But no fricken way will I bypass a beautiful black woman for the sole purpose of finding someone to help whiten my bloodline.

In my travels through Black Latin America, I met black women with mulatto children and all seemed content with the father long gone from the scene. What was the point? 

And while I was admiring the black women in the countries I was visiting, it was the non-black women who were admiring me. There were a couple of single black women with mulatto children who took an interest in me, and I had to ask myself, is this a real attraction or do they just want what's in my pants (a U.S. Passport)?

People of Chile, South America Celebrate Their African Roots

Oro Negro (Black Gold), an Afro-Descendants Foundation in Chile, operates in the city of Arica carrying out cultural courses and workshops, and working to solve social problems of Chile's African descendants.


It was a black Peruvian woman I met in her nation's capital of Lima who enlightened me to the black history in Northern Chile's city of Arica, not far south from the Peruvian border. And today, although I have not yet visited Arica, I have friends there with whom I correspond through social media, and who will show me the ropes when I finally arrive for a visit.

The city of Arica, Chile was founded in 1541 and was part of Perú in 1880 when it was taken by Chilean forces during the War of the Pacific. At the beginning of the Colonial era, Perú was one of the frequent destinations for blacks that had settled at the coast to work in rural and domestic occupations. Most of the blacks that came to this area had roots from the regions of the Congo and Angola.

The black majority made itself felt since the beginning of 1620, when a free black man was elected as mayor of Arica. The response came six months later when an order by Peru's viceroy declared this elections void.

The Chilean national dance, the cueca, had black elements originating from the Afro-Peruvian zamacueca dance. It has been also documented that 13% of the Spanish explorers that came to Chile long before the slave trade were black.

A specific group of blacks in Chilean history were members of the 8th Regiment of The Liberation Army that fought the Spaniards for Chilean independence. This Army was organized in Argentinian territory. Black slaves were desired because of their fighting ability, and of course, were freed thereafter. Naturally, they were exposed to higher risks during the battle. 

 Although today, as a result of centuries of interracial marriage, the visible black population has been dissolved, but the people of Arica, Chile work daily to promote and celebrate their African history, traditions, and culture.

Peruvian Slave Plantation Turns Tourist Attraction

This former Afro-Peruvian slave plantation is now a tourist attraction in Perú's District of El Carmen, dubbed as the hub of black Peruvian culture.

 

 
By 1635, as a result of the slave trade, Perú had a black majority, which started to decline around the year of 1700 due to interracial relationships and marriages with the Spanish and indigenous populations.

During the 1540s slave revolts occurred and were immediately put down. One of the successful slave revolts was on a sugar plantation in Southern Peru called Hacienda San José; built in 1868 in Perú's District of El Carmen, and lasted until a rebellion of more than 300 African slaves took place in 1879 . 

On Sundays, there a dinner buffet (S70) accompanied by Afro-Peruvian dancing. A spectacularly ruined cotton factory, dating from 1913, sits next door. 
 

The plantation owner was hacked down like sugar cane by machete wielding slave rebels on the principal stair entrance. Descendants of these slaves still populate the District of El Carmen where my goddaughter lives and where I visit every chance I get.

Today, this plantation (or hacienda) has been converted into a tourist attraction where people spend the night. Guided tours are in Spanish packed with 300 years’ black history. They serve an extraordinary Sunday lunch buffet featuring full range comida criolla (Peruvian soul food), and an Afro-Peruvian music and dance performances.

 

I am second from the left hanging out at 

a party in Perú's District of El Carmen.

The Hacienda San Jose is essentially a huge house that withstood two huge earthquakes, one in 1974 and the other in 2007. It is surrounded by luscious green gardens, a beautiful pool, an old cotton mill, and dusty cobbled streets.

Cuban Celebration of Martin Luther King

Centro Memorial Martin Luther King, Jr. in Havana, Cuba

During my visit to Havana, Cuba years back, I was pleasantly surprised to learn about the MLK Center in the city's Mariano District. During the civil rights movement on which Martin Luther King, Jr., was at center focus, Cuban church leaders, especially those who led congregations with members of African descent, were inspired as the desire for justice, equality and reconciliation was sweeping the world.

In 1984, under the leadership of the Rev. Raul Suarez, the Cuban Council of Churches invited delegations of leaders from African American churches and Historic Peace Churches to visit Cuban denominations. This delegation was successful in opening up dialogue between church and state. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who led one of the delegations, arranged for a meeting with President Fidel Castro who determined that these church leaders support the social goals of the Cuban Revolution, but on moral grounds, and promised to work for new religious freedoms and opportunities for the churches of Cuba.

Members try to contribute to community development and, which dares to transform itself and the world and which reaffirms love, compassion, respect for diversity, justice, gender equality and the integrity of all human beings. It has helped people in low-income areas to build housing. The center also has helped to build bridges between people in Cuba and the United States, whose governments broke off relations more than 50 years ago.