Los Angeles – Juanita Palacios-Sims, founder and president of the International Society of Black Latinos (ISBL), is also co-chair of Stop the Hate in Los Angeles. She works both to focus on unity and combat negativity.
Invisibility is part of the challenge they face, not being Latino or Black enough in America, according to Palacios-Sims, of Cuban and Colombian descent. “It was like, we’re here in the center, and now it’s like we’re the bridge between the two,” she stated.
When she started ISBL 14 years ago, even Afro Latinas did not want to identify as such, she recalled. She desired to create ISBL to embrace the diaspora and bring awareness of their particular culture.
Proudly, she says that since inception, her organization has brought awareness of the Afro Latino, through educating and uniting communities about their existence and imprint on society as Latinos.
It hosts discussions at schools and businesses, especially junior high school, high schools and universities, about how Afro Latinos came to be, their arrival through the enslavement of African people, and being dropped off in Brazil, Cuba, Colombia, the U.S. and Mexico, she mentioned.
In addition, ISBL teaches Black and Latino youth, to diffuse hate and so-called gang fights violence on street levels, which once spilled heavily into schools, said Palacios-Sims.
Once, she and another ISBL member, a psychotherapist, teamed several youth into groups and dialogued about what each disliked most about the other. Both cited a litany of derogatory, stereotypical names, and from there were able to grasp an understanding of how the others felt.
Such first steps provide gateways to education about commonalities rather than differences, according to Palacios-Sims. For example, Mexico was one of the only countries historically that allowed enslaved people to marry Indigenous — Mestizos, to marry Mexicans, she noted.