12
REGIS
Kathleen Dooher
Lucia Ortiz
celebrates the
African influence
on Latin America
Growing up in Colombia, Spanish professor Lucia Ortiz
was completely unaware of the “invisible” population
who contributed so much to her country’s lush identity and
culture. Then she discovered Changó, the Biggest Badass.
The historical novel by Afro-Colombian author Manuel
Zapata Olivella, published in 1983 and widely considered to
be a masterpiece, tells the story of the African diaspora in
the Americas over a period of five centuries, from the slave
trade in western Africa through the civil rights movement
in the United States, with special attention to its impact on
By Kim Asch
SPRING 11
Latin America.
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Ortiz was at Boston University, working on her dissertation about Colombian history as seen through late 20th-century literature, when she first read the 500-page
epic. She learned about her country’s age-old mistreatment of Afro-Colombians, the
blacks whose ancestors were brought as slaves in the 1700s to work the mines or in
the sugarcane fields. And she realized just how much of her country’s customs, foods,
and traditions are influenced by African, as well as indigenous and Spanish, cultures.
“The author concludes that all Latin Americans are a ‘hybrid’ being, part indigenous, part Spanish, part African,” says Ortiz. “I was just fascinated by it. It was not
anything I learned in school.”
Because so much of African culture has melded with Colombian culture, the pervading view is that Colombia is integrated and discrimination does not exist, Ortiz
explains. In fact, she says, Afro-descendents of Colombian society have been “made
invisible.” For example, Cumbia music, now considered representative of the country, started as a courtship dance among the slave population living along eastern
Colombia’s Caribbean coast. The distinctive African drumbeats later mixed with
strains of Spanish guitar and the melodic pipes of indigenous pre-Colombians and
became a truly multicultural art form. “People think, ‘We dance Cumbia. We’re not
racist,’ ” Ortiz says. “But it’s not true; you see racism at all levels. The degrees of skin
pigmentation were always very important, and are still very important.”
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REGIS TODAY
Rural Afro-Colombian communities along the
Pacific and Caribbean coasts continue to face “pervasive, systemic discrimination” despite sweeping
legislation adopted in 1993 aimed at protecting their
territorial rights, according to a report issued by the
Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice at the
University of Texas at Austin School of Law.
Ortiz was determined to shine a light on this important, if uncomfortable, aspect of her country’s identity—through novels, poetry, and oral history. She
included a chapter on Changó in her first book, and
then assembled and edited a collection of scholarly
articles about little-known works of Afro-Colombian
literature that was published in Spanish in 2007 with
her lengthy introduction. It was an academic success,
but the kind of expensive tome that might reach only
highly educated audiences. Ortiz remembers marveling with her collaborators: “Here we are writing about
people who aren’t privileged and who face so many
issues every day, yet other people can’t learn about
them because the books are so expensive. What are
we doing writing only to each other?”
Her latest book, due out this summer, is both a
commiseration and a celebration of the challenges
and triumphs experienced by women of African
descent from all over Latin America. Daughters of
the Muntu: Critical Biographies of Afro-Descendent
Women from Latin America, coedited by Ortiz and
Maria M. Jaramillo, comprises 34 articles and essays
and will be published in Spanish by a commercial
house in Bogotá. The English translation is expected
soon after.
far away as possible,” she says. Many peers choosing
to study abroad settled on the more familiar Miami
area, but Ortiz was drawn to upstate New York
because she thought its proximity to Canada might
offer the chance to explore yet another country. To
her delight, she discovered a richly diverse international community right on campus and befriended
Saudis and Africans and Europeans. “They came
with their costumes and their traditions, and we all
shared the challenge of trying to communicate and
adapt to a new culture together.”
While studying for a bachelor’s degree in international relations, she learned to view political and
social systems with a critical eye. She also began
examining her own culture through Spanish literature courses and gaining new insights about her
country’s multicultural identity. She was loath to
return to Colombia following graduation in 1984
because, she says, “I knew I wouldn’t have the independence, or the freedom I was able to gain, to pursue the future I could have here.” So she stayed on
at Syracuse and earned a master’s degree in Spanish
language, literature, and culture before moving on to
the PhD program at Boston University. “Sometimes
it was hard to be away from home, to be alone,” she
says. “But I took every opportunity that came along.”
At Regis, Ortiz is the adviser for the Latin
American Student Association and serves as “a role
model of a successful immigrant, which is extremely
important” for the College’s vibrant community of
first-generation Americans, says Spanish department colleague Mary-Anne Vetterling. She lists her
“You see racism at all levels. The degrees of skin pigmentation
were always very important, and are still very important.”
“With this book, we were able to get closer to
the people,” says Ortiz, who traveled to Colombia,
Mexico, and Puerto Rico to conduct her research.
“Through the process of gathering their stories, I
learned so much about the impact of these women
on Latin American culture.”
Ortiz counts herself lucky to have been raised
by forward-thinking Colombian parents who wanted
their two daughters to go far in their education.
At 18, she lobbied them to send her to the United
States to study English; she was supposed to be
gone only one year, but instead enrolled at Syracuse
University and never returned to her native country
for longer than a visit.
“I grew up in a very small town, with all the issues
you face as a young woman in a small, conservative, Catholic town. I was eager to leave, to get as
good friend’s accomplishments: Ortiz is a full professor, having received that title at a fairly young age
in her career, and serves as department chair; she
has become an American citizen; she’s received the
prestigious Virginia Kaneb Faculty Scholars Grant
not just once, but three times, to support expenses
associated with researching her books.
Known for her intellectual rigor and the high standards she sets for both herself and her students, Ortiz
can often be overheard around the Spanish department assessing, with certain zeal, the montonón de
trabajo, or huge mountain of work, awaiting her.
Ortiz’s work on the forefront of the emerging
field of Afro-Colombian literature, and the still
narrower field of Afro-Latina literature, is well
recognized, and she was even invited to a reception
with Colombia’s president.
Black Singer
Could Not Overcome
Virginia Murature, an aspiring
Argentine singer and actress, had
high hopes. But she also had a disadvantage few other artists did in
Buenos Aires in the 1980s and 1990s,
according to an essay by Adriana
Genta in Lucia Ortiz’s upcoming
book, Daughters of the Muntu: Critical
Biographies of Afro-Descendent
Women from Latin America.
There are few
images of Virginia
Murature, who
killed herself in
1990. This is a
shot of her as
a child, in her
Communion dress.
Murature was black. She supported
herself by day working as an administrative assistant, but after hours, she
practiced her craft, rehearsed her lines,
and won parts—often minor—in
stage works. Most of the theatrical
presentations crafted or produced in
Argentina had few opportunities for
black performers.
Perseverance paid off for Murature, and
she rejoiced when she told friends she was
finally able to quit her day job and devote
herself entirely to the theater she so loved.
The emancipation was short-lived. She
struggled to win parts.
Adriana Genta recounts how she lost contact
with Murature, but when, in the early 1990s, a
theatrical group prepared to put on a production about the struggle among black Argentine
slaves to win their freedom, she immediatley
thought of Murature.
Genta tracked down an aunt and inquired
about Murature’s whereabouts. “Virginia?” the
aunt asked. “Virginia gave up hope.”
Murature in 1990 had thrown herself beneath
the wheels of a train and had been killed
instantly. She’d tired of waiting for the ideal role
for a black actress—or, for that matter, of directors who insisted on casting her only in the role
of a black actress.
The play went on. Women, black and white,
Argentine, Uruguayan, and Chilean, worked at
the script and the production and made a triumphant debut in April 1995. The subject of the
production, the labor of women united despite
their differences of race and nationality, was
a constant reminder of the open wounds that
Murature’s heartbreak and demise had left.
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SPRING 11
“Lucia is one of the primary movers and
shakers in the study of Afro-Hispanic women
on a lot of fronts. She’s just very active in making
things happen,” says Jonathan Tittler, a professor
of Hispanic studies at Rutgers University whose
English translation of Changó, the Biggest Badass
was published last year. “It’s a very small field of
study, and she’s carrying the banner.”
But Vetterling observes, “She’s very modest
and very serious. She’s not one of these people
seeking fame through her work. She wants the
publicity to be appropriate so that it helps the
Afro-Colombians, as well as the Afro-Hispanics,
whom she’s studying in order to make their
lives better.”
Ortiz says she hopes that her upcoming book
circulates widely among a general audience and
raises awareness about the triumphs and challenges
of so many Latino women of African descent.
Among the compelling stories is a piece by
the well-known Afro–Puerto Rican writer Mayra
Santos-Febres about Ruth Fernández, a Puerto
Rican singer and media celebrity during the first
half of the 20th century. She was one of the first
women to sing in an all-male band and the first
Afro–Puerto Rican to appear on TV. She came from
a poor home in a region of mostly black Puerto
Ricans, which at the time was extremely segregated, yet she refused to enter clubs and hotels
through the back or kitchen door and entered
through their main door with her head held high.
A first-person essay by Epsy Campbell Barr,
who lived in the region of Limón in Costa Rica
relegated to Afro–Costa Ricans, describes how
the extreme poverty and lack of basic resources
that people were forced to endure prompted her to
become an activist and politician and make a run
for the presidency of Costa Rica.
“This represented a huge challenge since in Costa
Rica most people look up to whites and people of
Spanish descent and reject Afros and the idea that
they are part of their country and their culture,”
Ortiz explains.
Most of the writings deal with women of the
20th century, but a few give Afro-descendent women
from colonial times their due, including Dominican
poet Salome Urena, whose sons became prominent
intellectuals but whose own work never made it into
the anthologies. Perhaps that will someday change.
“It’s been a wonderful journey,” Ortiz says of this
latest project, and of her own life thus far.
She’s also inclined to agree with one of her favorite writers, Colombia’s own Nobel laureate Gabriel
García Márquez, who once said, “Justice … limps
along, but it gets there all the same.”