September 21. 2011
% Minority & Small Business Week
Living Testimony to Enduring Struggle
continued
fron tpage 18
Ollanta Humala's government in
July, and says she's determined to
end the discrimination that has long
made second-class citizens, not
just of blacks, but also of Peru’s
indigenous people.
Baca has been Peru's de facto
am bassador to the rest of the world
for more than two decades, a m u­
sical anthropologist and a chan-
teuse who seduces audiences with
her velvet voice and barefoot
dancing.
popular Cabinet m inister, with a
62 percent approval rating.
To be sure, en d earm en t is
Baca's style, and she's already
begun em ploying it to try to boost
the $30 million annual budget of a
m inistry that is ju st eight months
old. She's a slight woman careful
not ju st with her words but also
her enunciation.
" I am the beggar minister" is how
she put it to Peru's finance minister,
Baca was quoted by a Lima newspa­
per as saying. "I don't even have
leather for my tambourine."
dan cin g at band c o n ce rts on
Chorrillos' promenade.
Most of the region's 155 million
descendants of African slaves are
jobless or eke out a living by work­
ing in the informal sector, according
to organizers of the first U.N.-spon­
sored Summit of Afro-Descendants
held in Honduras last month.
The estimated 100,000 African
slaves brought to Peru toiled in sugar
plantations and silver mines, with
some becoming urban artisans. At
one point, they and their descen­
dants were more than 40 percent of
Lima's population.
Blacks now amount to less than
a tenth of Peru's 29 million people.
Yet socially, they've barely ad­
vanced in the 157 years since eman­
cipation.
They "have always lived in mis­
ery because they never had access
to property," said prominent Afro-
Peruvian academic Jose Campos, a
dean at the National Education
University from which both he and
Baca graduated.
Page 21
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The Jewish
New Year
Celebration
Friday, September 30th at 7pm
Join us for a night of
FRIDAY,
Peru's Culture M inister and singer Susana Baca dances during
benefit concert. Baca, 67, is living testimony to Afro-Peruvians'
enduring struggle, and she is determined to end the discrimina
tion that made second-class citizens, not ju s t o f blacks, but als
o f Peru's indigenous population.
I am the sym bol of inclusion,"
said Baca in her Lima home. "I
don't hate the people who segre-
gated us, who punished us, who
hurt us. I just don t want anyone
else in our country to go through
what I did."
Baca is known among world
music fans for her soulful, inven­
tively phrased interpretations of
centuries-old rhythm s, lyrics and
dances. Her earthiness distances
her from Peru's widely discredited
political class.
A recent Ipsos A poyo poll
showed Baca to be Peru's most
Baca grew up in Lim a's seasi
Chorrillos neighborhood but 1
clan hails from Canete, where bla
field workers today earn little me
than $5 a day picking cotton a
corn.
Thanks to the perseverance of
Baca's mother, who raised three
children cooking and washing
clothes for Lima’s wealthy, she's
among the estimated 2 percent of
Afro-Peruvians with a post-second-
ary education.
The lot of Latin America's blacks
has improved little since Baca, as a
girl of five or six, earned her first tips
OCTOBER 7 th
1
AT 7 pm
■
WE WILL BE RECEIVING OUR FIRST FRUITS OFFERING
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14TH AT 7PM
New Song Com m unity Center
Corner of NE M IK Blvd and Russell Street
Doors open at 6pm for every service.
For directions or more information, call 503-488-5481
or log on to w w w .m f h m p o r t la n d .c o m