FUNGLODE / GFDD Launch the Publication “African Presence in the Caribbean, the Antilles and the United States”

Fundación Global Democracia y Desarrollo (FUNGLODE) and its sister organization in the United States, Global Foundation for Democracy and Development (GFDD), launched the book "African Presence in the Caribbean, the Antilles and the United States," on Wednesday, February 20th.

This publication compiles the views of 16 national and international specialists, who participated during the international conference "African
Presence in the Caribbean, the Antilles and the United States," which was held by FUNGLODE / GFDD, July 18 – 20, 2011.

According to sociologist and historian Franklin Franco, the most significant aspect of the forum was to confirm the existing similarities between the different cultural traits that are reflected in the nations of the Antilles. "This conference also represented a contribution to the strengthening of national consciousness, an extremely
valuable element in this era of globalized knowledge," he added.

The Director of the GFDD office in New York, Yamile Eusebio, offered the welcoming remarks and noted that, the set of articles contained in the book cover a wide range of topics spanning five centuries of history. The authors put into context and analyze the overall impact of the transformation and of the transatlantic slave trade; the processes of acculturation and transculturation; the systems of color,
race and class; the Black civic activism and its political culture; and the emergence of a Black literary aesthetics.

Via video, Delia Blanco explained that the core value of this work is the scientific dialectic it offers due to the number of elements that are put into play. In the book Blanco discusses the topic "Leopold Sedar Senghor: the poetry of Africanness."

The colorful event was energized with an artistic presentation by Geo
Ripley, a Dominican artist who participated who has framed his conceptual as the core of pictorial work that attempts to integrate the magic and symbolic elements of the African, pre-Columbian, Antillean, and Latin-American cultures.

The launching of this book seeks to elevate the discourse on the historical jouney of people of African descent throughout the continent, and to promote understanding of how this journey continues to shape modern society.

This publication brings together the views of Dominican writers Celsa Albert Batista, Lipe Collado, Franklin J. Franco, José Guerrero, Rafael Jarvis Luis, Mateo Morrison, Odalis G. Pérez, Geo Ripley, José Luis Sáez, Avelino Stanley and Darío Solano, and of international authors Delia Blanco, Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, Jean Ghasmann Bissainthe, Melina Pappademos and Roger Toumson.

FUNGLODE’s headquarters was the venue for the launching of this book, which is part
of the publication series Studies and Reflections. This series includes research projects, articles and speeches that address critical issues of the contemporary world, from the national, regional and global perspectives.

The Publication is currently available for sale in Spanish and will soon be obtainable in English.