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‍https://www.npr.org/2018/02/07/583477709/ibeyi-tiny-desk-concert‍

Ibeyi are a twin sister music duo comprised of Lisa-Kaindé Diaz and Naomi Diaz. Their music invokes a sense of peace and tranquility, weaving together stories of their ancestors and spirituality with their modern social issues. Drawing upon their Afro-Cuban and French-Venezuelan heritage, the sisters jump between Yoruba, French, Spanish, and English in their songs.

The song “Deathless” was inspired by Lisa-Kaindé’s encounter with racial profiling as a teenager. It is an uplifting anthem of resilience so necessary in a world full of social injustices. In an interview with NPR, she went on to say, “To be "Deathless" means that there's no end. Someone wrote, "They buried us, but they didn't know we were seeds." It means there's no end to love, there's no end to joy, there's no end to music.”

As an Afro-Latina, I can speak to the complexity of embracing both your blackness and your latinidad. Henry Louis Gates’ deep dive into “Blackness in Latin America” revealed that between 1502 and 1866, 11.2 million Africans were brought to the Americas under slavery. But only 388,000 landed in North America. All the rest were sent to Latin America and the Caribbean. Still, our understanding of slavery in the United States glosses over this fact. We understand African American history and identity. Afro-Latino culture is a mystery to us.

Latin America is not a monolith. Though each country’s history is linked, they have separate cultural identities and different views on blackness. When I went to Cuba, I witnessed national pride surrounding the country’s African roots. There’s an attitude that we’re all black here. But this recognition does not reduce the racism that Afro-Cubans experience from mixed-race people in power. It’s like in America, where white people priding themselves on a Cherokee great-great-great-great grandmother does not do anything to improve indigenous people’s lives.

In Havana, rows of government-sponsored souvenir shops sell Sambo dolls and other racist products for as far as the eye can see. In Trinidad, I paid my respects at the sugar plantations. It was emotional for me to stand on the same Earth my people were tortured on. But these spaces are not treated as hallowed shrines to the forgotten, the exploited. They are commodified. Everywhere you turn, smiling European tourists laugh and play as if they’re not dancing atop a graveyard.

In some countries, Black identity is rendered invisible. Mexico did not count Afro-Mexicans on their national census until 2016. But in Chile, and many other countries, Afro-Latinos are still fighting to be acknowledged on the Census at all.