Don’t Look Away: Anti-Blackness Runs Deep Across Latin America, Not Just the DR

Godfrey’s comedy bit on VladTV — where he impersonates a Dominican man denying his Blackness with the line “I no Black, I Dominican” — has long sparked laughter for its exaggerated realism. It’s a moment that mirrors deeply embedded social dynamics, yet also contributes to a skewed narrative. While humor can serve as a reflection of society’s truths, it can also reinforce outdated or incomplete perceptions — especially when it targets a group already burdened with stereotypes.

Godfrey’s skit unintentionally undermines the tireless efforts of Proud Black Dominicans who are reclaiming and celebrating their Blackness while pushing the culture forward. These individuals challenge the colonial and racist legacies that have attempted to erase Black identity from the Dominican national consciousness. They’re artists, academics, activists, and everyday people disrupting anti-Black narratives and redefining Dominican identity with pride and complexity. But when media fixates solely on the trope of Dominican denial, it flattens that progress and vilifies an entire people, obscuring the broader context of Latin America’s relationship with Blackness.

Dictator Rafael Trujillo, who ruled the Dominican Republic with an iron fist from 1930 to 1961, institutionalized anti-Blackness as a tool of nationalist control and racial terror. Trujillo, himself of partial Haitian descent, orchestrated a campaign to “whiten” the Dominican Republic by promoting European immigration, altering official records to erase African features, and enforcing cultural policies that discouraged African-derived customs, languages, and religions. His most horrific act was the 1937 Parsley Massacre (El Corte), where Dominican soldiers, under his orders, brutally murdered an estimated 12,000 to 35,000 Haitians and dark-skinned Dominicans along the border—many of whom had lived in the country for generations. This state-sponsored genocide was rooted in Trujillo’s desire to sever the Dominican identity from anything associated with Blackness or Haitians, reinforcing a false binary between the two nations that continues to have devastating effects today.

Trujillo’s crimes are unforgivable, especially given the erasure and violence he inflicted upon people of African descent in a region where Blackness should be celebrated in its foundational. It is bitterly ironic considering that Haiti—the world’s first Black republic—played a critical role in the global fight for Black liberation. Haiti’s revolution not only secured its independence from French colonial rule but also sent shockwaves through the Atlantic world, inspiring enslaved and free Black people across the Americas to envision freedom and resist oppression. The contributions of Haitians to the fight against slavery and colonialism deserve reverence, not violence. Trujillo’s genocidal policies stand in direct opposition to this legacy and reflect a deeply rooted anti-Black ideology that has harmed generations across Hispaniola and beyond.

The Atlantic slave trade brought more enslaved Africans to Latin America than to the United States—a historical fact that is often overlooked. Of the estimated 12.5 million Africans forcibly transported across the Atlantic, more than 90% were taken to Latin America and the Caribbean, with Brazil alone receiving over 4 million, compared to about 388,000 brought directly to North America. The Spanish and Portuguese crowns, alongside European monarchies such as those of Britain, France, and the Netherlands, orchestrated and profited immensely from the trade. Through papal decrees and colonial treaties, these monarchies legitimized the extraction of African labor and the brutal economic system it sustained, using enslaved people to build the wealth of empires via sugar plantations, mining operations, and infrastructure.

Chattel slavery in Latin America was marked by extreme violence, dehumanization, and exploitation. Enslaved Africans endured grueling labor under punishing heat, faced sexual violence, and were often worked to death. Though some Latin American nations allowed for practices like coartación (self-purchase) and manumission, these were the exception, not the rule, and did little to mitigate the brutality of slavery. Abolition movements in Latin America unfolded differently than in the United States. While the U.S. formally abolished slavery in 1865 following a civil war, many Latin American countries ended slavery through gradual, often incomplete reforms. Haiti, in 1804, was the first to abolish slavery through revolution, becoming a symbol of Black liberation. Other nations like Mexico (1829), Uruguay (1842), and Brazil (1888—the last in the Americas) followed. However, post-abolition societies across the region failed to dismantle racial hierarchies, continuing to marginalize Afro-descendants economically, socially, and politically.

One of the most enduring legacies of colonialism in Latin America is the ideology of mestizaje, or racial mixture, which is often celebrated as a sign of racial harmony. Yet this narrative has been instrumental in erasing the distinct identities and struggles of Black and Indigenous peoples. Mestizaje was designed to promote a national identity rooted in the blending of European, Indigenous, and African ancestry—but in practice, it privileged whiteness and European culture as the ideal, while rendering Blackness invisible or inferior. Rather than challenging racism, mestizaje masked it under the guise of unity, allowing societies to claim they were “post-racial” while maintaining deep structural inequalities.

This myth of harmonious racial mixing has contributed to widespread anti-Blackness throughout Latin America. Afro-descendants continue to face discrimination in access to education, employment, housing, and representation. In many Latin American countries, they are excluded from national narratives, underrepresented in government, and frequently stereotyped in media. The legacy of the slave trade, colonial rule, and racial ideologies like mestizaje has created enduring systems of anti-Blackness that must be acknowledged and dismantled in order to achieve real equity. Recognizing the true scale and impact of slavery in Latin America is a crucial step toward justice for the millions of Afro-Latinos whose histories and identities have long been denied.

The Dominican Republic is often painted as the poster child of anti-Blackness in Latin America, largely due to its tense history with Haiti and Eurocentric nationalism. However, this framing is both reductive and unfair. Every Latin American country has its own legacy of anti-Black violence, erasure, and exclusion — many of which are rarely scrutinized with the same intensity.

Take Argentina, for example. Though the country once had a significant Black population, it’s often falsely perceived as a white nation. After slavery was abolished, Black Argentines were systematically pushed out of existence through war drafts, disease exposure, intermarriage policies, and forced labor. Their erasure was not accidental but strategic — a concerted effort by the state to whiten the nation.

Across Latin America, from Mexico to the southernmost tip of Argentina, nations were built on the backs of African slaves. Enslaved Africans laid the physical and cultural foundations of the region. Yet today, their descendants remain disproportionately marginalized. Blackness in these countries is still often associated with servitude. Media, pop culture, and even consumer goods reinforce these hierarchies. Consider the caricatures on food packaging — Black faces grotesquely exaggerated to make products more “friendly” or “authentic.” These images continue a legacy of dehumanization.

Societal expectations across the region continue to pigeonhole Black people into roles of labor — “la muchacha,” the domestic worker; “el moreno,” the security guard or janitor. When a Black person rises to prominence, it’s treated as an anomaly, not the norm. In entertainment and music, anti-Blackness is subtle but pervasive. As highlighted in a Los Angeles Times op-ed by Katelina Eccleston, Bad Bunny was unfairly dismissed by a musicologist who claimed, “I don’t understand the importance of Bad Bunny.” This was more than just a critique of musical taste — it exposed a wider discomfort with the growing influence of Black and Afro-Caribbean aesthetics in Latin pop, particularly reggaetón, which has long roots in Afro-diasporic expression.

Latin American societies have often relied on the concept of mestizaje — the mixing of races — to promote a national image of unity and inclusion. In reality, mestizaje has served as a tool to disavow Blackness, encouraging populations to mix “upward” into whiteness. This has resulted in the systemic denial and erasure of Black heritage throughout the region.

In Panama, General Omar Torrijos openly limited the migration of Afro-Antilleans, who were arriving in large numbers to work on the Panama Canal. Their presence, he believed, threatened the national image of a Hispanic, mestizo Panama. These Afro-Caribbean laborers — essential to the construction of one of the most important global trade arteries — were seen not as contributors but as disruptions.

Anti-Blackness is not unique to the Dominican Republic. Rather, it is deeply entrenched in the DNA of Latin American nation-building. Singling out the DR — a country where the majority of the population has African ancestry — as the epitome of racial denial is, ironically, a form of anti-Blackness itself. It ignores the nuance of the Dominican experience, and more importantly, the transformative work being done by Black Dominicans to reclaim space, visibility, and dignity.

To move forward, we must broaden the lens. Anti-Blackness is a regional disease, not a Dominican defect. The work of dismantling it requires solidarity, not scapegoating.