Diaspora: The Global Trafficking of Culture
A project of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism Culture , In the News Diaspora: The Global Trafficking of Culture By Jorge Yeshayahu Gonzales-Lara | Long Island Al Día Translated by Chris Brandt In these last days of Passover, with its themes of exodus and exile, an article published in Spanish last month in Long Island Al Día about how diasporas work offered some relevant food for thought. Although the writer, Jorge Yeshayahu Gonzales-Lara, focuses his attention on the Peruvian diaspora, much of what he says also applies to other immigrant groups: Diasporas, seen as transnational phenomena, do not remain pure or completely faithful to their places of origin; rather their cultures contain elements of both places, the original and the [new] home, from which mixture a hybridization results. That is to say the subjects of the diasporas characterize themselves as cultural, linguistic, ethnic, religious and national hy