AfroLatino.com Looks
to Cultivate Pride

by Karen Juanita Carrillo
SeeingBlack.com Roving Critic

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There is no money involved—and by that, Albert Price, co-creator along with the Panamanian-born Dr. Sonia Ford of the Afrolatino Connection (La Conexion Afrolatina) means, he's making no profit from his efforts.

He's laying money out to create the essays, for the updating of the news bulletins and for the maintenance of the forums at the AfroLatino.com website. But that's okay, this is work that has to be done: it's from the heart, Price says—it's necessary. "The thing is the result," he affirms.

Price, who emigrated from Venezuela some 15 years ago, has spent most of his time in the United States on the West Coast. He has his own business, Lancy Communications which specializes in teaching students how to become licensed cooks; hosts "Arma del Barrio," which broadcasts Latin music every other Sunday on Los Angeles' radio station KXLU 88.9 FM; and has—in general—always had enough to do. But some two and a half years ago, he came to the conclusion that he needed to do more.

"I remember when I was in high school in my country, the only thing the teacher used to talk about when it came to Black people was slavery." Price says he knew there was an urgent need for a web site dedicated to bringing the near 100 million Latinos of African descent real information about who they are: "Coming from Venezuela, I know our situation in our countries. We consider ourselves inferior—not because we are, but because we don't have information. So seeing that situation, you can't expect people to be proud of something they don't know about.

"You have Afro-Latinos who feel so ashamed of themselves, and how can you blame them: they were never told how valuable they are as Black people. But when you actually realize how much Black people have contributed to the world, it's amazing!"

AfroLatino.com welcomes visitors with a declaration: "The Afrolatino Connection sends a welcome from the United States to all of our Afro-Latin American brothers and sisters.

"This website is designed with the idea of uniting our people, wherever they may be, and with the purpose of giving much needed information about the successes of people of African descent. Black people have achieved many things throughout the world, but our successes have not been given their due in the wider public, or even—oftentimes—amongst us ourselves.

"AfroLatino.com's greatest responsibility is to bring you information about the often unheralded Black inventors, discoverers, creators, and the Black gifted and talented. We want this information to help stimulate today's generation and future generations of Afro-Latinos so that they learn to have pride in their past and begin to realize their own enormous potential."

Essays posted at AfroLatino.com have featured profiles of Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, the first physician to perform open heart surgery; the crusading anti-lynching journalist Ida B. Wells; civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.; chemist Lloyd August Hall; founder of the city of Chicago, Jean Baptiste DuSable and author, Alexandre Dumas. There is also information about the Africans described in books like Graham Irving's The Africans in Early America, Dr. Ivan Van Sertima's They Came Before Columbus, and Michael Bradley's Down Voyage, The Black African Discovery of America, who came to the Americas years before Christopher Columbus.

"We'd love to receive information about other Blacks—particularly Afro-Latinos—who have made significant contributions to world history," Price says about AfroLatino.com. "We don't have enough information about Afro-Latinos who have done major things in life. I have been asking people to help, to contribute articles that we can post on the web site—they can even submit them in English and I'll translate them. But we haven't gotten many people to contribute yet."

Most of AfroLatino.com is in Spanish, although there are a few postings to the bulletin board in English. Spanish is used so that the site can pull in Afro-Latinos who have not yet mastered English, but need to master some of the information about people of African descent—which has, so far, been primarily published in English.

The majority of Latin America's Blacks currently have no access to computers or the Internet, Price asserts. "Most of our people there are too poor. They cannot afford computers.

"But I bet you," he says, "As time passes, they are going to get hooked to it. The will find out so much information from the Internet, it's going to change all of Latin America—you'll see."

-- May 17, 2001

For more information about The Afrolatino Connection, see the website at http://www.AfroLatino.com, write to them care of P.O. Box 247, Hollywood, CA 90028 USA; or send an e-mail to afrolatino@africamail.com.

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