"Latino Studies," with Kaysha Corinealdi

I spoke with Kaysha Corinealdi, author of the new book Panama in Black: Afro-Caribbean World Making in the Twentieth Century. She’s brilliant. The book, and our conversation about it, is sure to expand your thinking about latinidad. One challenging question Kaysha asks is, why would Afro-Caribbean people in the United States choose to identify as Latino, when Latinos have not always seen them as equals?

Panama in Black is the history of Spanish-speaking Afro-Caribbeans who had lived in Panama for centuries—many of them brought as enslaved people—and the later arrival of Anglophone Afro-Caribbeans who built the Panama Canal in the early twentieth century. The Panamanian government articulated ideas about Iberian and Hispanic national identity and crafted policies that excluded Afro-Caribbeans from belonging, sometimes literally denationalizing them (as the Dominican Republic has tried to do with Haitians more recently). Many thousands migrated from Panama to New York in the mid-twentieth century to build lives in the United States, even as they maintained connections to Panama and the Black diaspora throughout the Americas.

What does all of it say about Latino history and identity in the past and present? You’ll have to find out, but I assure you it’s more complicated than you think.

Here’s our conversation:

Thanks for listening, and more soon! I’m super close to hiring a podcast producer to work on this and other projects for Public Books, an online magazine of arts and ideas that I edit. The sound quality will improve dramatically!