Black in Latin America

Professor Gates explores how race has been socially constructed in a society whose people reflect centuries of inter-marriage, and how the country's troubled history with Haiti informs notions about racial classification. In Haiti, Professor Gates tells the story of the birth of the first-ever black republic, and finds out about the slaves' hard fought liberation over Napoleon Bonaparte's French Empire became a.

In Cuba, Professor Gates finds out how the culture, religion, politics and music of this island are inextricably linked to the huge amount of slave labour imported to produce its enormously profitable 19th-century sugar industry, and how race and racism have fared since Fidel Castro's Communist revolution in 1959.

In Brazil, Professor Gates delves behind the facade of Carnival to discover how this `rainbow nation' is waking up to its legacy as the world's largest slave economy.

In Mexico and Peru, Professor Gates explores the almost unknown history of the significant numbers of black people brought to these countries as early as the 16th and 17th centuries. The two countries together received far more slaves than the United States and the programme explores the worlds of culture that their descendants have created in Vera Cruz on the Gulf of Mexico, and Peru.