Black Venezuelans and Black Americans Have Much to Learn from Each Other – and Should
By Gregory Kane 

I kicked off Black History Month 2007 by kicking it with some Afro-Venezuelans.

Last Thursday, I visited the Venezuelan embassy to interview members of Eleggua, an Afro-Venezuelan music group of seven women and two men. I wondered what “Eleggua” meant in Spanish.

Absolutely nothing, it turns out. “Eleggua” isn’t a Spanish word. It’s Yoruba, the name of an African orisha, or god.

“He’s the god who opens the ways,” said Jorge Guerrero, one of the men in the group. “Another way of saying ‘opens the ways’ is ‘solves the problems.’”

The main problem this group of black folks had on what was their third visit to the United States was the weather. Coming from Venezuela, which one of the women in Eleggua said “is a tropical country,” they could barely tolerate the chill of last week.

But they were more than up to the task of performing for groups of school children in the nation’s capital. Last Friday, they performed for over 500 students from 11 District of Columbia schools. On Monday, they were scheduled to perform at the University of Maryland, College Park, which is just over the D.C. border in Prince George’s County, Md. Last Saturday, Eleggua performed at the Smithsonian’s Baird Auditorium. It was the folks at the Smithsonian who invited Eleggua to the United States this year to kick off Black History Month.

The group, which has been together 12 years, first came to this country for a New York rally whose participants expressed solidarity with the government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Eleggua was in Minneapolis, Minn., last year for a similar rally. Kalenka Valazquez, an Eleggua member who also acts as interpreter for the group, said there’s been a greater focus on Afro-Venezuelan culture and history since Chavez took office. When she was asked if Afro-Venezuelan history and culture were honored in the pre-Chavez era, Valazquez answered “Not very much. Not really.”

That may be why, according to Guerrero, Chavez won a near-unanimous vote in predominantly Afro-Venezuelan districts in the country’s last election. Afro-Venezuelan history and culture are now not only honored in Venezuela, thanks to Chavez, but Afro-Americans now have an opportunity to learn about that history and culture. Members of Eleggua are eager to learn ours.

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