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Article: Blurred racial lines.(genealogist Mario Valdes)(includes related information on World Wide Web sites on genealogy)
- Article from:
- American Visions
- Article date:
- August 1, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 Heritage Information Holdings, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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It was a painting of 16th-century Italy's Allessandro de Medici--the first duke of Florence--that originally puzzled a young Mario de Valdes y Cocom and eventually propelled him into exploring the genealogical and historical influence of people of African descent.
In the 1950s, in his native Belize, the young Valdes found the image of Medici--whose Renaissance-era career he had been studying in school--reproduced in an early 1900s Encyclopaedia Britannica. The brown skin, protruding lips and curly Afro of the subject disturbed Valdes, himself of Irish, Mayan, Carrillo (Spanish and Jewish), German and African ancestry. In Belize, he and his peers had been taught ...