Our Shared Heritage

<> on February 1, 2014 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

by Nancy Rene

We have all these months, Black History Month, and Hispanic Heritage Month, but in many, many ways, we celebrate a shared heritage.

We know that the heritage of African Americans in the United States began with the Slave Trade in 1619, but what we don’t know or were never taught is the fact that about half the slave ships headed to Central and South America.

Many of us who can trace our heritage to Cuba, Haiti, or Belize, know this quite well. But here are some statistics that I hope you find interesting.

This is from Wikipedia: Afro–Latin Americans or black Latin Americans, are Latin Americans of full or mainly African ancestry. These are their populations in Central and South America:

Dominican Republic: 1,029,535

Mexico: 1,386,556

Colombia: 4,671,160

Puerto Rico: 461,998

Brazil: 14,517,961

Haiti: 8,583,759

Argentina: 149,493

Think of your own friends and family, we can all hold Hispanic Heritage Month close to our hearts.

Ernesto Comodo - Administrator