Professor Garofalo presented his latest publication, Afro Latino Voices, on Wednesday, February 24, at the Charles Chu Room in Shain Library.
This collaborative book combines a series of documents and case studies on the Afro-Latino Diaspora during the time of the Atlantic Slave Trade, giving a voice to the people who were of African descent with Portuguese, Spanish and indigenous cultural influence.
The trilingual book, published in Spanish, Portuguese and English, proved difficult to be considered seriously in publishing houses, with Professor Garofalo discussing the difficulty he encountered. However, eventually a publishing house took interest in the project and the book is now on shelves.
Professor Garofalo hopes that, by incorporating a trilingual book into college curriculums, more members of college faculty in the United States and in the world will be able to use this text in a variety of courses across disciplines.
“This is a mediation of voices through text,” Garofalo said. “The documents and case studies in the book exhibit that the Afro-Latino people had a voice before the 1800s.”
Professor Garofalo touched on the process of compiling documents from various archives, saying that “most documents used in the case studies for the book are not publishable sources, [as] many are judicial or administrative documents and biographies.”
The book educates more about the maroon communities on the Pacific Coast of South America to try and show that there were literate and organized slaves who came from the Afro-Iberian culture.
Professor Garofalo concluded by stating, “as a historian, I believe we need to stitch together [the history] of Spain and Portugal [across] the Atlantic.”
Afro Latino Voices proves to be an innovative collaborative publication that will revolutionize the classroom curriculum and open the door to an intercultural approach to history at colleges and universities.
