Today I returned from the grocery store with milk, eggs, and a chip on my shoulder. When handing my ID to the young lady at the register she gasped and asked me if I was Mexican. I stared at her for a moment and then realizing what she had meant, I said “No. My father is Latin but not Mexican.” Thinking that this should have been enough self-disclosing, I retrieved my license from her and awaited my receipt. “Oh,” she continued, “I just thought because you had a Mexican name that you were Mexican. I’m Mexican.” Goody. I took my things and stomped out the door.

At first, I couldn’t figure out what had burned me so. The last two decades of my life have been spent in Southern California where there is a large influx of immigrants from Mexico. Some of my dearest friends hail from there, even a few ex-lovers. Feeling positive that I held nothing against Mexicans, and knowing that being mistaken for one surely shouldn’t have hurt my feelings, I thought further.

Being biracial, I suspected that there was some deep-seated pain lurking about that I had always been told I should be suffering from. But I never could figure out what that was all about. And besides, she’d acknowledged this, considering the main thing about me that looks biracial is my big hair. And even it was angry.

After arriving home, I found a message from my brother on my answering machine. He lives in a Puerto Rican section of Chicago with his wife and kids. I stopped the message in the middle of his contented description of a “P.R” festival and blinked. So that’s what pissed me off? That was it? I was royally peeved because she didn’t know that Afro-Latin is not just a dance craze? Yep.

There has long been little acknowledgement of the African descendants of Latin America; even less, of their contributions. Congas, a few parades, and those pesky escaping Haitians are all anyone outside of New York and Miami know of us. Even after meeting immigrants from countries such as Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Brazil, I’ve found that no one wants to mention Africa, much less slavery. From these acquaintances, I have learned that many young Puerto Rican and Cuban men cut their hair short so as not to let the true grain of it show too much. Some Dominicans, rather than tout their often-obvious African ancestry, will say they are descendants of very dark indigenous Indians. Very dark, indeed. Brazilian girlfriends of mine have cornered me in bathrooms pleading desperately for help in taming their hair. Yet, upon mentioning Black hair care products, the sneer I received was life threatening. Ai! Brazil is the second largest African nation in the world! But I digress.

African descendents are found throughout the world, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean, even stretching into Mexico. Yet like the U.S., much of the inexorable influence of enslaved and indentured Africans on Latin America still goes unrecognized. While African culture affected the areas of religion, language, art, and music, the educated few have decided that Afro-Latinos are simply colonized minorities with little to do except kill chickens and pray. The rest of the world thinks we live in either the U.S. or Africa and if found any place else, we’re simply meandering tourists or, of course, musicians.

I should have known better than to become angry over something so readily obvious and unfortunately universal. But I know, too, that just like the "Red-boned" and "High-Yellow" complexes Ante-bellum America, if Afro-Latin people will not acknowledge their Black identity, why would anyone else?

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