Afro Caribbeans

And that showed in the ways that cultures overlapped and blended in art.

Like Wilfredo Lam's work incorporates influences not only from Cuba, where he was born, but also the Afro-Caribbean culture he experienced there, as well as in his travels in Europe.

Here are two of his paintings that are similar in composition, with figures among stalks of sugarcane representing thousands of Cuban laborers who worked on sugar plantations.

But this later work is made up of even more abstract lines and shapes, as Lahm blended his style with elements he liked from European abstraction.

And, you know, he's like, I honestly think Bukele is studying him.

But you look at Trujillo and he's actually the ideal model for like the Afro-Caribbean, Latin American states of like, you need a guy who's kind of basically a national socialist type who will be pro-business enough to keep the money flowing so that they don't go completely broke, but isn't going to completely let the society be destroyed.

Because you can see the border of the Dominican Republic and Haiti from space because there's no trees in Haiti.

Trujillo let the logging companies log.

And while some stigma certainly remains from centuries of bad PR, many magical communities are reclaiming their identities.

For example, Brujeria has roots in indigenous practices that were punished and demonized and driven into hiding by colonizers in the Catholic Church, leading to centuries of stigmatization throughout Latin America and the Afro-Caribbean, but today's brujas are working to reclaim their image by talking publicly about how their practices help them find balance and a feeling of connection to their ancestors.

It's important to remember that these categories are created.

They're created by us.

I don't mind when culture moves and changes.

But since James Bond, they did this horrific, like, carnival of the day of the dead where people paint their faces and walk around and God bless them that they're having fun and I'm very supportive of you having fun but I invite people to really experience the day of the dead which is nothing to do with carnival carnival was an Afro-Caribbean kind of experience And it's beautiful in its own right.

But day of the day, it's a ritual and it's quiet.

And you would go to the graveyards and there was no parades and people and drums and stuff.

Don't kill me.

So the Afro-Caribbean aisles, those products that we're buying, the seasonings, everything.

Yeah.

It's not Black people that are making it.

You know what I'm saying? When the Black Panthers was established and the Young Lords modeled their movement after the Black Panthers.

And the Young Lords is not just necessarily a Puerto Rican version of the Black Panthers because the Young Lords also had Black American brothers down with them and Afro-Caribbean brothers down with them.

So it wasn't just a Puerto Rican thing, but that was a big unity thing.

brothers in the struggle, striving for the revolution.

You know what I'm saying? And that definitely was something that we can say was a unified force between the Black American brothers and the Puerto Rican brothers, especially in New York City.

Then when you take it a few years later and you look at the street organizations, the Black Spades, the Ghetto Brothers, the Savage Skulls, the Savage Nomads, the Zulu Nation, the Decepticons, the Low Lives, Lost Boys, all these prominent street organizations in New York City.

started with Puerto Ricans, Black American brothers, Afro-Caribbean brothers, and Puerto Rican brothers.

You know what I'm saying? Whether light skin, dark skin, for anybody, doesn't even matter.

And what I find when I look at 1826, when this country is celebrating its 50 years, is that minstrel street is just starting.

And of course, that's coming from Afro-Caribbean and Afri- African American musical traditions.

And Black music was very present in social life.

The, the fiddlers at dances and all of that music was really making itself heard and felt throughout the culture.