12:06 | Lima, Jul. 12 (ANDINA).
Latin Grammy winner Susana Baca is building a center dedicated to Peru's African heritage in the village of Santa Barbara, Ica.
According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, in this village that still bears the name of the old Santa Barbara sugar plantation, Susana Baca is collecting the stories and music of the descendants of slaves to resuscitate Peru’s black history.
The internationally acclaimed diva is building a cultural center there dedicated to the African heritage of Peru's people, as well as the conglomeration of ethnicities that for centuries influenced this nation's music, food, art and economy but were routinely marginalized by a class-stratified society.
"I want these people to feel they belong to something … to feel vindicated," Baca says, seated on a patio among the small buildings that will form her center, with its pictures of Martin Luther King Jr. and jazz musicians.
"Official history is white," adds her husband, Ricardo Pereira, a sociologist who helps promote Baca's work. "The idea is to make visible a hidden history."
Two years ago, Peru became the first country in Latin America to formally apologize to its citizens of African descent for years of discrimination. And just the other day, the government bestowed recognition on several black Peruvian luminaries. Click here to read full story.
(END) EEP/LVT
Published: 7/12/2011