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This short story "Navidad para el nino negro," by the African Colombian author, Arnoldo Palacios,l initially appeared in the Christmas 1973 issue of the Bogota newspaper, El Tiempo. It is a distillation, the result of a long gestation; it is an example of memory and imagination evoking place and occasion. Some ten years passed between its inception and its publication. Circumstances intervened. "Christmas for a Black Child" is a story born of contrasts. It is a story about a man and a woman and their family and a holiday. It is a story of gift-giving that focuses on an event, a tradition, a celebration of great significance which is emblematic of the many threads the author gathers together in its telling. It is a story of family, strength in adversity, celebration, faith, and hope. Conceived while Palacios was living abroad, the form of the story first came to him one Christmas eve when, not having anywhere to spend the night, he explored Lausanne, Switzerland-its streets and shop windows festively adorned with lights and displaying an abundance of holiday temptations. The cold, the snow and the richness of it all would have provoked thoughts about home and ways of summoning up the tropical heat, the brilliant light, the powerfully flowing rivers, the deep greens along the shores, the strong black people, resiliant and creative, struggling and impro-vising to get through their hard times.
Palacios' literary production exemplifies a deeply rooted consciousness of the statement made by Chester Higgins, Jr., an African American photographer whose self-declared mission is to document the African diaspora. Higgins maintains, "We are not Africans because we are born in Africa, but because Africa is born in us." Although aware of the diaspora in general, Palacios is primarily concerned with articulating its particular manifestation in Colombia. As always with Palacios' writings-Las estrellas son negras (Bogota, 1949); La selva y la lluvia (Moscow, 1958); Buscando mi madrededios (n.d.), published in French translation as Les Mamelles du Choco, (1989)-he writes of the Choco. This is the region of Colombia located to the south of Panama, hugging the Pacific ocean as it is southward bound and extending east to encompass the western ranges of the Andes. This is the region traversed by many rivers and their...