Towards a new history of Black-Latinx solidarity
Paul Ortiz’s book An African American and Latinx History of the United States (2018), is a refreshing work that has opened broader vistas of the possible by recovering a wealthy history of Black and Latinx resistance. I hope to highlight important takeaways for those of us looking for a compass and to convince readers of puntorojo to engage with and expand on our people’s history outlined in the book. As I will outline below, the book allowed me to discover a proud history of Black-Brown of solidarity that shows that we are at our strongest who our struggles are united. It also provided inspiration to wage this fight in the present and I hope that it can do the same for others.
I came to An African American and Latinx History of the United States with the desire to understand Ortiz’s premise for an American history centered on the combined struggles African Americans and Latinx peoples. In this respect, the book did not disappoint, and like Howard Zinn’s classic, the historical breadth and solidarity-based ethos of Ortiz’s work is comparable. However, Ortiz’s book goes beyond the bounds of a traditional national history as the title might imply.
