Start Your Holidays at the African Diaspora International Film Festival

What’s up? Iroko “Kíko” Keith Widyolar, the founder of New York Latin Culture Magazine, here. Everywhere I go, except New York City, people tell me, “you’re not from here.”

Claro que si. I’m a native-born multigenerational American of the United States who chooses to live in Spanish. So my point of view is American with South American and Caribbean influences. ¡Aché!

My first home was in Boyle Heights, a Chicano neighborhood in Downtown Los Angeles. I was a pre-teen in an African American suburb of Washington DC, where both my parents are Howard University graduates. I was also raised in Bangkok, Thailand where I learned that most of the world is poor, but it’s not their fault. Also that all religions seek to explain the very same mystery.

I’m a 20-year New Yorker, where I learned that life doesn’t end at the rivers, it begins there. Yo soy Boricua (de corazón) pa’ que tú lo sepa. In the Caribbean, Cubans and Dominicans say I am “aplatanado,” a gringo who has adopted local customs. I don’t know, I’m just me.

Soy calle. What I learned from the road is that we are far more African and Indigenous, and Latin culture is a far bigger part of United States culture, than most of us have been taught.

The Magazine is my way of understanding and thanking the Brazilian, Argentine, French, Colombian, Puerto Rican, and Afro-Dominican friends and families in my life’s journey. I have a mixed up Creole accent, but my family doesn’t speak English.

So over nearly 20 years, my concept of Latin has grown from the traditional Caribbean and Latin American; into the great mix of Indigenous Peoples of the Americas plus our mother cultures in Africa and Europe, with Jewish, Arab, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Irish, and even German influences.

“Tout moun se moun” is Haitian Kreyòl for “All People Are People.” There is only one human race and Afrika is Mother. “If you are not African, you are not human.” Please quote me on that.

Appearance is a false flag. We are all mixed, and when you learn to love and respect all peoples, your world grows exponentially. Mine has. I don’t just write about Latin culture, I live it. ¡Mi Gente, Ustedes!

“Ven, ven, Iroko, ven ven…”

The blues is the root of most American (and some Caribbean) popular music and dance, including: jazz, rhythm and blues, country, rock, reggae, soul, funk, disco, house, hip hop, reggaeton, and trap. Even American country music originates in Mother Afrika.

The Latin family has created art, music, dance, theatre, and food that is uniquely American, and loved around the world. It’s because Latin culture brings people together and turns the blues into joy. ¡Aguanilé!

The Kalûnga is the border of the realms of the living and the dead in Central Africa’s traditional Kongo culture. It is the horizon in the Yowa or Dikenga Cross, the Kongolese cosmological diagram which represents the spiritual journey through the stages of life and death. Psychology texts use similar diagrams to describe psychological development. La Altagracia taught me this. ¡Strange, but true!

In life, the Kalûnga is the Atlantic Ocean. Kongolese knew that anyone taken away across the ocean, never came back. It was believed to be a terrifying journey to the land of the dead. For too many it was, but it turns out there was life on the other side. More or less, that is the mix of Indigenous, European, African, and Asian peoples in the Americas, that we call Latin.