Have Afro-Argentines stopped being vanishing blacks, as Ebony Magazine called them back in 1973? Ebony editor Era Bell Thompson wrote, “What I found was not a viable, but a vanishing black people: relatively few in numbers, relatively free of racial discrimination and relatively content. Summarized by one gentleman, if there were more of us, perhaps it would be different."

But thirty-eight years later the attidute has changed. Descendants of slaves are starting to assert their identity. The Global post called it  'The reawakening of Afro-Argentine culture'. But that’s not easy in South America's whitest country. But restfull attidute has changes. Now, for the first time in a century and a half, Argentine descendants of African slaves are organizing and going public to assert their identity

“We've been exiled from the collective memory of Argentina,” said Juan Suaque, a seventh-generation descendant of Argentine slaves, in the Global post. “It's as if you pass someone in the street and you have to explain your whole life, what and who you are.”

At the beginning of the 1800s, black slaves were 30 percent of the population of Buenos Aires, and an absolute majority in some other provinces. The first president of Argentina had African ancestry, and so did the composer of the first tango. Even the word “tango,” like many other words common in the Argentine vocabulary, has an African root; so do many beloved foods, including the national vices of the asado barbecue and dulce de leche.

Below are some links and videos of the Afro-Argentines since they are part of the Black Diaspora, the history of Latin America and of course part of the history of Spain:

The must-read blog - AfroAmericanas
Organisation - Misibamba-Comunidad Afroargentina de Buenos Aires
Organisation - Disapora Africa de la Argentina

Source: AfroEurope.com

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Olympic legend Michael Johnson says a ‘superior athletic gene’ in the descendants of West African slaves means black American and Caribbean sprinters will command the sport at the London Games.

The Olympic gold medallist and BBC commentator said: ‘Over the last few years, athletes of Afro- Caribbean and Afro-American descent have dominated athletics finals.

‘It’s a fact that hasn’t been discussed openly before. It’s a taboo subject in the States but it is what it is. Why shouldn’t we discuss it?’

Some scientists believe a combination of selective breeding by slave owners and appalling conditions meant that only the strongest slaves endured, creating a group predisposed to record-breaking athletic performance.
African slaves underwent a rigorous selection process and only the fittest were transported on ships.

Interestingly, the toughest journey was to Jamaica, the last stop on the slave trail. Taboo: Usain Bolt was born in Trelawny Parish, Jamaica, where British Olympic boss Lord Coe's plantation-owning ancestor George Hyde Park had 297 slaves. During one voyage in 1732, a staggering 96 per cent of slaves lost their lives – 170 boarded the ship and only six got off.

Jamaican geneticist Dr Rachael Irving said: ‘There was not much oxygen on slave ships so they had to use whatever they had to survive.’

Photo: Yohan Blake

Dr Herb Elliott, doctor to the Jamaican Olympic team, added: ‘Only the most aggressive and fiercest slaves ended up in Jamaica.’

Source: Afro-Europe

Read full story at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

As official sponsors and co-partner, AfricAvenir attended the 1^st edition of the Luxor African Film Festival, held in Egypt from 21 to 28 February 21.

AfricAvenir is proud to be associated to this festival. We take our hats off to the organizers of this first edition of the festival and we wish the festival all the best of luck for future editions.  The festival successfully made its mark in the African Film Festival circus and can be congratulated for its overall achievements. The mission of the festival was a clear Pan-African one, and this was, without doubt, achieved. The Pan-African vision was omnipresent.

After being separated from the rest of the continent for decades, Egypt opened itself up to the rest of the continent and welcomed films from more than 25 African countries. Most filmmakers from the participating countries attended. Furthermore festival directors and programmers of Durban International Film Festival (South Africa), New York African Film Festival (USA), Festival Cine Africano Tarifa (Spain), International Images Film Festival for Women (Zimbabwe), Abu Dhabi Film Festival (United Arabic Emirates), Trois-Continentes Festival Nantes (France), International Mediterranean Film Festival for Short and Documentaries (Libya), Festival du Cinema Africain de Khouribga (Morocco), and African Perspectives (Namibia) honoured the festival and hence welcoming Luxor African Film Festival amongst its midst.

Egypt’s desire to reunite with Africa was expressed throughout the festival. Observing the attendance and the wide range of participating filmmakers, festival directors, programmers, and the composition of the jury, one can only say, that aim was achieved. Underlining this was the presence of the Minister of Culture, Mr. Shakir’ Abd Il-Hameed, the Governor of Luxor, Dr. Ezzat Sa’d, and nine African Ambassadors accredited to Egypt, who travelled from Cairo to attend the opening ceremony at the Luxor Temple.

The festival paid tribute to the Egyptian director Daoud Abdel-Sayed and Ethiopian director Haile Gerima, who both attended the festival and both received lifetime awards.

In the words of Haile Gerima, who received his lifetime achievement award at the closing ceremony held on Tuesday, 28 February, the festival fulfilled the dream of Egyptian president Gamal Abd al-Nasser to unite Egypt with the rest of the continent. Gerima had been waiting for this opening a lifetime and finally is seeing it being achieved. The festival certainly plays a pivotal role in this pan-African vision of Egypt newly found political energy.

At the closing ceremony, attended by the Governour of Luxor, the following winners were announced:

For long feature and long documentary films:

-      Best Film: “Soul Boy” (2010, Kenya/Germany), directed by Hawa Essuman, awarded with the Greater Nile Award and the Golden Mask of Tutankhamun and a cash prize of 10.000,- USD

-      Special Jury Award: “Our Beloved Sudan” (2011, Sudan), directed by Taghreed El Sanhouri, awarded with the  Silver Mask of Tutankhamnun and a cash prize of 8.000,- USD

-      Best Artistic Contribution: “Born on the 25^th of January” (2011, Egypt), directed by Ahmed Rashwan, awarded with the Bronze Mask of Tutankhamnun and a cash prize of 5.000,- USD

The jury for this category consisted of Abdelrahamane Sissako (Mauretania), Hend Sabri (Tunisia), and Mohamed Khan (Egypt).

 In the category short fiction and short documentary the awards went to the following:

-      Greater Nile Award for Best Short Film: “Short Life” (2010, Morocco), directed by Adil El Fadili, awarded with the Golden Mask of Tutankhamnun and a cash prize of 5.000,- USD

-      Jury Prize for Best Short Film: “The Cry of the Dove” (2010, Niger/France), directed by Sani Elhadji Magori, awarded with the Silver Mask of Tutankhamnun and a cash prize of 4.000,- USD

-      Prize for Best Artistic Contribution: “The Bottom of the Pit” (2011, Tunisia), directed by Moez Ben Hassen, awarded with the Bronze Mask of Tutankhamnun and a cash prize of 3.000,- USD

-      Special prizes for first short film went jointly to: “Living Skin” (2010, Egypt), directed by Fawzi Saleh, and to “The Cassava Metaphor” (2011, Cameroon), directed by Lionel Meta, which both were awarded a cash prize of 2000,- USD

The jury for the short film/documentary category consisted of Fanta Regina Nacro (Burkina Faso), Mustafa Al-Mesnaoui (Morocco), and Mama Keïta (Senegal).

Photo: Ethiopian Director Haile Gerima who received Lifetime Achievement Award

“Juju Factory” provides an adroit analysis of issues of immigration and integration.  The film brilliantly questions ideas of “authentic” representations of “Africaness,” introducing a complex cinematic language that shows how contemporary African film not only is diverse in its tendencies but also relates in diverse ways to different (trans-)national traditions and schools of thought.

Directed by Congolese filmmaker Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda, the film was the big event during the 2007 Fespaco - the Pan African Film Festival of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, where it had its world premiere. It has received four awards for best film in Austria (Innsbruck International Film Festival), in Tanzania (Zanzibar International Film Festival), in Kenya (Kenya International Film Festival) and in France (African Film Festival at Apt). Furthermore the film received also the Best Actress Award (Carole Karemera as Béatrice) in Italy (Festival Cinema Africano, Bari).

Noble Links

In December 2010, Mario Vargas Llosa, famous writer from Peru, received the Nobel Prize for Literature.  Only a month earlier, in November 2010, Vargas Llosa presented his newest book “El sueno del celta” to a Spanish speaking audience. It has been a bestseller in Spain and was the most popular title at the XXIV Feria Internacional del Libro de Guadalajara. The book is a novelization of the life of Anglo-Irish diplomat-turned-Irish nationalist Sir Roger Casement (1864-1916). Sir Roger Casement became world famous for his exposure to and his first-hand accounts of the systematic tortures inflicted on the people of Congo by European commercial and colonial concerns at the time of King Leopold II of Belgium.

The book entitled “The dream of the Celt” is scheduled to appear in English in early 2012. Once the book will be available in English, it will again put Congo and its colonisation on the centre of debates around the world. I am saying this, since I do believe that Vargas Llosa’s Nobel Prize and the ever-controversial Casement could prove irresistible, especially to an English speaking audience. It also could once again show that colonisation, exploitation, and capitalism can go pretty well hand in hand. Something, the globalising Occupy Wallstreet Movement might put onto its agenda sooner or later too.

The novel naturally and purposefully invites comparison with Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”. But it also could and should draw attention on a film made a few years earlier, “Juju Factory”.

What is the film about and why does it relate to “The Dream of the Celt”?

The people of Congo suffered under Belgian rule tremendously, beyond imagination. And as well as Casement, director Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda is tortured by this reality. But, other than Casement, Bakupa-Kanyinda suffers additionally and rightfully too from the projections on Black people and his acute awareness of the state of Africa.

The film, as Oliver Barlet put it, is a “meditation in accordance with Balafu Bakupa-Kanyinda's now well-identified obsessions and style: Africa's relation to power and creation”.

Deliberately fictional the film touches styles of documentary reporting in order to catch the echoes of the inhabitants talking about their neighborhood: "To each street its own people", one of them says. The film does its best to break the globalizing image of a mythical Africa.

 “Juju Factory” invites us to read a dense net of references and allusions, names and phantoms, memories and nightmares. With the help of the protagonist, the writer Congo Kongo, the filmmaker leads us through Matonge, the only European city area to have an African name, a district in the south of Brussels, renamed after a commercial district in Kinshasa.

With a repo man threatening to take away all his belongings, people back home in Congo Kongo depending on him to send money, and a need to express his own feelings about exil and about his roots, Congo Kongo agrees to write a book – supposedly a “travel guide” spiced up with ethnic exotic ingredients to introduce Matonge Village to white Europeans, promising a commercial success – for an allegedly African publishing house. So begins the conflict between Congo Kongo and Joseph Désiré, his dictatorial publisher, and African insisting to be Belgian, who goes so far as to ask the statue of king Leopold for advice for how to deal with this uppity writer.

Inspired by the vision of complex and tormented souls that he meets at all crossings in Matonge, and since Matonge started in the tombs of the colonial expositions of the museum of Tervuren, Kongo conceives of the idea of writing a book that follows the paths of Congolese history and its many ghosts. Delving away too deep for his editor’s comfort, since he doesn’t write a tourist guide as requested but a narrative of different African stories from a migration background, Kongo Congo must try to keep his head above disaster and finish his book. Hints appear that the book Congo Kongo is writing is in fact the film we are watching. And as Joseph Désiré becomes increasingly rigid and demanding, insisting on a prettified advertisement about ethnic color in Belgium’s capital, Congo Kongo becomes increasingly haunted by thoughts of Patrice Lumumba and the history of European theft and pillage of the African continent.

Congo Kongo’s journey evokes images that need to be read. The face of Patrice Lumumba cross-fades beneath the surface; it appears alongside the rhymes of young rappers; it looks back from the wall of the writer's apartment, framed like a precious souvenir inspiring poetic and thoughtful writing. Then the montage switches to an extract from the documentary by Thomas Giefer “Mord im Kolonialstil”. We see Gerard Soete; the man who finished off the conglomerate’s dirty work. He laughs while holding two teeth in his hands, two teeth dislodged from Patrice Lumumba’s head. Finally, these transfers of remembrance lead to the whispered question: What have we made of ourselves?

"As long as the lion won't be able to tell, all hunting tales will be to the glory of the hunter" the film tells us, encouraging, yes, demanding from Africans, to start taking charge of one's own history, and to do so while believing in the human being, before one has become another Joseph Désiré, Congo Kongo’s publisher.

In the end, Congo Kongo writes a story from his soul about injustice, racism, and colonialism in the modern world. Despite the lure of money, bill collectors, and pressure from his editor, he manages to stay the course and complete his novel. Kongo, his community, and the cinema audience might discover how it is possible to stand upright with the terrible colonial past of Europe, Africa, and the world. "You are a man because the other is", Kongo writes in his notebook. 

The tokoloshe we are looking for, is in our fellow man, hiding in the then and now. It’s for us to see.

 Awards:

 - Best film Tyrol Awards, Innsbruck International Film Festival, Austria 2007

- Golden Dhow Award Best film, Zanzibar International Film Festival 2007

- Best film, Kenya International Film Festival 2007

- Best film, Festival de Cinema Africain d’Apt, France 2007

- Best Actress (Carole Karemera), Festival Cinema Africano, Italy

 Press:

“Avec “Juju Factory” Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinde offre un diamant du Congo aux cinéphiles du Continent.” (www.lefaso.net - Burkina Faso)

“The wealth of ideas, the humour, a deliberately crazy camera and tight interwoven editing, voluntarist dialogue and roaming at night… Juju Factory is a factory for manifestos, a Soleil Ô-type cry in which Le Damier would have spawn its offspring. Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda seems to be looking for the life-saving juju, this talisman supposed to protect us from monsters and which must be hiding somewhere out there, in the culture reread in the light of the present. It's for the tortured artists to take action, in the colorlessness of their interior exile, listening to their exile as immigrants or victims of exclusion. It's that crazy Balufu's pleasure to put us on track with this rich, diverse, operatic, scathing and torn film.” (Oliver Barlet, AfriCultures)

« A humourous and super-clever social commentary on ... exile and migration? Belgian colonialism? Racism in Europe? The psychology of the colonized? Of the decolonized? Of the comprador bourgeoisie? ... I think all these things.” (www.sketchythoughts.blogspot.com- USA)

“This film carries a heavy load of diasporic desires and above all fears. ... The concrete Belgian past which the film brings into view harks back to 1897 when 250 Congolese men and women were shipped to Belgium to feature in the colonial section of the Universal exhibition, but the film also recalls the murder of Lumumba. Psychologically and conceptually, the filmmaker displaces the diasporic ‘double consciousness’ and explores the multiplexity of attitudes and identifications of Congolese and Africans which he explicitly defines as ‘in exile’ in Belgium.” (Karel Arnaut – University Ghent, Mediating Matonge: Relocations of Belgian postcoloniality)

About the writer: Hans-Christian Mahnke works with Africavenir International, where he is chairperson of the Namibia division. With a Masters degree in Political Science, he is a founding member of Africavenir. In 2008 AfricAvenir was awarded the “Toussaint L’Ouverture“ medal, an annual prize given by the Executive Board of the UNESCO for individuals and organizations for their outstanding fight against racism, intolerance, and economic exploitation. For more information, visit www.Africavenir.org.

Author and writer Garrison Keillor gives an excellent review in the New York Time of 'My Song' a new book by and about Harry Belafonte:

Here is a gorgeous account of the large life of a Harlem boy, son of a Jamaican cleaning lady, Melvine Love, and a ship’s cook, Harold Bellan­fanti, who endured the grind of poverty under the watchful eye of his proud mother and waited for his chances, prepared to be lucky, and made himself into the international calypso star and popular folk singer, huge in Las Vegas, also Europe, and a mainstay of the civil rights movement of the ’60s, a confidant of Dr. King’s, who lived for years in a U-shaped 21-room apartment on West End Avenue, but never forgot what he ran so hard to escape from, the four or five families squeezed into a few rooms, the smell of Caribbean food cooking, the shared bathroom, his father drunk, yelling, blood on his hands, beating his mother, and “a terrible claustrophobic closet of fear.”

His mother found refuge in the Catholic Church. The Holy Roller preachers of her native Jamaica were “too niggerish” for her. She loved the marble majesty of Catholicism and sent the boy off to parochial school to suffer at the hands of the nuns and took him to Mass every Sunday, dressed in a blue suit, and afterward to the Apollo Theater to hear Cab Calloway or Count Basie or Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald. “As suffocating and interminable as Mass seemed, I could endure it if I knew that a few short hours later I’d be in the real cathedral of spirituality . . . the Apollo.”. .

Discouraged by the grind, his mother took 9-year-old Harry and his younger brother, Dennis, back to Jamaica in 1936. Harry loved his white Jamaican grandmother, Jane, who lived in a wood-frame house on stilts on a hillside near Ocho Rios (“For the rest of my life, I would feel an unusual sense of ease in moving between races and classes — an ease that would help me as an entertainer, later as an activist,” which “traces to the fact that Jane, who was as white and blue-eyed as a person can be, so enveloped me with love”), but his mother delivered him to a British-style boarding school as he begged her to change her mind.

“I watched the taxi roll off, and the school gates close behind it. Finally I ran at the gate, devastated, and put my face through the bars, howling with grief and fear. . . . I wept and wept. I couldn’t eat that night; I didn’t take a proper meal for days. Then one morning I woke up and found myself completely self-reliant. My mother had abandoned me; nothing could change that fact. I would never again look to my mother for love. I was now a world of one.

Through Oct. 2, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Brentwood is presenting "A Revolutionary Project: Cuba from Walker Evans to Now." It's a photographic exploration of Cuba and its people at three critical periods: before, during and after the country's momentous 1959 revolution.

Cuba. Just the name of the Caribbean island nation evokes mystery, mistrust and curiosity in the mind of the average American. Though it's a small country compared to the United States, there's a lot of history that runs between the two nations, from the explosion of the U.S.S. Maine in 1898 to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 to the detention of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay today. Cuba, its people and culture have also been popularized by writers Ernest Hemmingway and José Martí; musicians Ry Cooder, Compay Segundo and Celia Cruz; and artist Wifredo Lam, along with many others.

EARLY EVANS IN CUBA

The first section concentrates exclusively on the photographic work of Walker Evans, who was in Cuba on assignment in 1933. Publisher J.B. Lippincott asked him to take pictures of Cuba to accompany a book, "The Crime of Cuba," by radical journalist Carleton Beals.

Without the fervor of Beals' specific political agenda, Evans captured the people of Havana going about their daily lives. He shot men, women, children – a plethora of working-class folks, and dozens down and out and on the streets. He happened to be there during a time of foment – the waning days of Cuban president Gerardo Machado. It was in Cuba that Evans experimented with different cameras, angles, lenses, as well as close-up and wide compositions.

NEW YORK -The American jazz pianist and composer Randy Weston once remarked to Culturekiosque's late jazz editor Mike Zwerin, "What I like about Africa is its variety. Africa does not start south of the Sahara. There is as much African spirit in Ghana as in Morocco." Having concertized and collaborated for over 50 years with North African musicians from Morocco to Egypt and deep into the Sudan, the six-foot-seven-inch tall  NEA Jazz Master's contribution has not gone unnoticed. Last month, His Majesty King Mohammed VI of Morroco (b. 1963) honored Randy Weston for his lifelong engagement with Morocco and deep commitment to bringing Morocco’s Gnaoua music tradition to the attention of the Western world. The event took place in New York during the French Institute Alliance Française’s World Nomads Morocco Festival.

Randy Weston (b. 1926, Brooklyn, New York) was introduced to the world of the Gnaoua in the 1960s by Maâlem (master player) Abdellah El-Gourd who represents the Tangiers Gnaoua tradition. Born in 1947 in the Kasbah of Tangier, the Morrocan maestro transformed his traditional medina in Tangiers into a museum / institute for the instruction, practice, and promotion of Gnaoua culture. Mr. El-Gourd and Mr. Weston have collaborated together in concert presentations throughout the world including at an unprecedented concert at the Canterbury Cathedral in England.

Today the piers are gone and the navy station is in a faded part of the Concord Weapons Station in the east bay of the San Francisco Bay. However, what took place that night is unforgettable... 

It was a Monday night in July, 1944 when at the Port Chicago, Naval Weapons Center in Concord, CA, 48 miles east of San Francisco, two ships were tied up to a newly constructed pier; The Quinault Victory was ready for its maiden load, and the EA Bryan had returned for the second trip of its two year old life. The Second World War was raging, and the Navy was segregated, having only recently opened up jobs other than kitchen help to blacks and only four months before it would commission its first thirteen black officers.  There were a half million African Americans in the navy, however all but very few were enlisted men.  The ships were to head to the South Pacific where the munitions would be transferred to war ships.