Fam,
During Latine Heritage Month, we honor the Black Latines in the United States and globally who have shaped our freedom movements — a beautiful and diverse legacy that teaches us the power we have when we bring our whole selves into the work.
We are too often told that Black and Latine identities are at odds or cannot coexist, when in reality, we are critical voices in our Black freedom movements. We are asked to hold false binaries, when it is our negritud y cultura that have made us who we are. We are told we have no history, when the history of Black Latine people is rich, vibrant, and ongoing.
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Puerto Rico Regional Report BNC 2020 from The Movement for Black Lives on Vimeo.
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Despite this historic erasure, Black Latines have always been and continue to be leaders, activists, and revolutionaries within Black liberation movements in the U.S. and throughout the world. On the first day of Latine Heritage Month, we spotlight a few of the many powerful Black Latine changemakers from our global movement’s history:
- Arturo Schomburg was a Puerto Rican historian, writer, and activist. An important figure in the Harlem Renaissance, he collected research and materials that would come to form the basis of the Schomburg Center for Research on Black Culture.
- Mamá Tingó was a Dominican farmer and activist who worked to defend the land rights of rural farmworkers in Hato Viejo, Dominican Republic. She won the rights of more than 300 families to own their lands before she was assassinated.
- Marielle Franco was a Brazilian politician, feminist, and activist for LGBTQ+ liberation and human rights. An outspoken critic of police brutality and extrajudicial killings, her term as a city councillor in Rio de Janeiro was cut short when she was assassinated.
However, Black Latine contributions to the Black liberation movement are not only relegated to our past. Throughout the ecosystem of the Movement for Black Lives, Black Latine folks are working daily to materially change the lives and circumstances of Black and Latine people for the better. The diversity of our movement is a source of power, and our power is great.
So, this Latine Heritage month, we will honor the Black Latine comrades who came before, and lift up those in our vast and beautiful ecosystem who are fighting for our freedoms today.
With Black love,
Movement for Black Lives
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