Black in Latin America

Latin America is often associated with music, monuments and sun, but each of the six countries featured in Black in Latin America including, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Brazil, Mexico and Peru, has a secret history. On his journey, Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. discovers vivid stories and people marked by African roots behind a shared legacy of colonialism and slavery. Latin America and the Caribbean have the largest concentration of people with African ancestry outside Africa - up to 70 percent of the population in some countries. The region imported over ten times as many slaves as the United States, and kept them in bondage far longer. On this series of journeys, Professor Gates celebrates the massive influence of millions of people of African descent on the history and culture of Latin America and the Caribbean, and considers why and how their contribution is often forgotten or ignored. (Source: PBS)