Africa Mia (review)

Abstract

Africa Mia Shana M. Higgins In the past ten years or so, the comparative study of blackness and racial ideologies in the Américas has become an area of intensified analysis and scholarship. Afro-Latina/o as a concept is fraught with ambiguity. For some the term refers to "the cultural experience of Spanish-speaking black people in what has become the territory of the United States" (Appiah, 2005); for others, the term includes those identified as or who self-identify as black in Latin America and the Caribbean; and still others understand the term to describe the connection between Latina/o and African American communities in the United States, particularly in relation to Cuban Americans and Puerto Ricans on the East Coast. Moreover, others question the very use of the term Afro-Latina/o since the racially democratic ideology of mixed ancestry (mestizo, mestizaje) deployed by many Latin American and Hispanophone Caribbean nations constrains the ability to claim a specific black or African-centered identity. These foundational narratives deploying the discourse of a people formed of "three roots" (European/Spanish, Indigenous, and African, generally hierarchically organized in this order of importance) leads to the elision of the experiential significance of being coded as black or African. The documentary film Africa Mia (Africa Mine) offers testament to the lived conditions of those whose existence has been colored by the visibility of their African-descent. Directed and produced by Bernardo Morillo, Africa Mia joins a growing number of endeavors to make visible the lives of black Latin Americans. This film centers on a group of Afro-Ecuadorian women who have migrated from the village of La Concepcion in Northern Ecuador to the city of Quito; some sent as young girls to work for prosperous families in Quito, others traveling with their own children to seek better employment. A shared experience of racially motivated discrimination draws a disparate group of women together. "120 million persons of African descent live in Latin America today," the narrator informs us at the opening of the film. She continues to provide a useful and brief history of the slave trade in the area of Ecuador and Latin America. The descendants of African slaves are found living primarily on the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts and in the Caribbean; the case of La Concepcion, Ecuador is an exception. Located in the interior of Ecuador, along the northeastern Andes, this isolated village appears to be predominantly of African descent. Unfortunately, the film fails to provide more evidence of Afro-Ecuadorians than those he films and interviews from La Concepcion. It would have profited the film to include a broader context. However, demographic information documenting the Afro-Ecuadorian population may not be available. The film is made up of interviews of the women who form the [End Page 79] organization Africa Mia, narration that ties the interviews together, and footage of the women and their children building homes for themselves. We learn that the women were refused the right to purchase land in the city of Quito due to racial discrimination. Making their plight public, the women found someone willing to sell them land. The women consciously decide not to allow men to help them build their homes to prove that women can take care of themselves. Thus, their agency counters sexist and racial discriminatory practices. The film also documents the ways in which these women make their living; some through the operation of a restaurant, others through dance performances, one woman is a faith healer, and others through domestic work. All in all, as viewers, we are heartened by the success of this group of black, Ecuadorian Latinas taking care of themselves and each other. Philadelphia-based filmmaker Morillo shot the original footage in the late 1990s, returning in 2002 to find the Africa Mia compound complete. This film ends with footage of the "first screening" of the film to the women who participated. This film is a compelling story that would appeal to those with interests in Latin America, women's and gender issues, and race and ethnicity. The film includes both English and Spanish narration; the English includes subtitles (at times misspelled and missing altogether). As mentioned...