About Us

Mission Statement

One in four Latin Americans has African ancestry. And yet, there is a general deficit of knowledge regarding the presence and prevalence of blackness throughout the Americas. This is more than a simple matter of obscurity. It is a problem of erasure, invisibility and dislocation. Afrolatinizamos collects and creates educational resources to explore the depth and breadth of Afrolatine histories, cultures and identities.

History of Afrolatinizamos

In 2023, the California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB) Anthropology Museum opened an exhibition titled Afróntalo in partnership with representatives of four Afromexican communities and twenty-one Afrolatine Californians. As part of the lead up to this exhibition, in May 2022, the Museum hosted an educational symposium in partnership with San Bernardino High School and San Bernardino City Unified School District Multilingual Programs. Through this symposium the need became clear for more educational resources that highlight and center Afrodescendant populations in the Americas. Through generous funding from the CSUSB Ethnic Studies Department, Afrolatinizamos began as a small cohort of teachers working together in a learning community under the direction of ïxkári estelle (they/he), an educator and project manager with research specialties at the intersection of hemispheric Black Studies, Latine Studies, Queer Studies, and Performance Studies. The group produced more than twenty unique lesson plans. These, along with other resources, have been curated and compiled here to benefit any educator looking to learn and include Afrolatinidad in their teaching. Our flagship Loteria Afrolatina game, researched and designed by CSUSB students, can be accessed free by completing the online registration form (verified educators only).

This project was inspired and influenced by the US Department of Education’s 2021 Fulbright Hays Seminar Abroad Program “Exploring African Heritage in Mexico” organized by Comisión México-Estados Unidos para el Intercambio Educativo y Cultural (COMEXUS) and the National Endowment for the Humanities 2022 Summer Institute “Transnational Dialogues in Afro-Latin American and Afro-Latinx Studies” organized by the University of Pittsburgh.

Afróntalo was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services [GSM-251848-OMS-22] and with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities [HFAP22-129]. Visit www.imls.gov and www.calhum.org. Additional financial sponsors for the development and installation of Afróntalo included: the CSUSB Office of Student Research, the CSUSB Office of Community Engagement, the CSUSB Department of Ethnic Studies, the CSUSB Department of Anthropology, and the US Embassy in Mexico’s Understanding African Heritage in Mexico through Exchanges Fund. Additional support was provided by the CSUSB Professors Across Borders program, the CSUSB Office of the Provost, CSUSB’s College of Extended and Global Education, the CSUSB College of Social and Behavioral Sciences Office of the Dean, the Garcia Center for the Arts, Raiz de la Ceiba, CSUSB’s Black History Month Programming Committee, The Nature Conservancy Ventura Regional Office, and Inland Empire Resource Conservation District (IERCD).