TV Host and Journalist Kim Haas Inspires Students to Explore Afro-Latino Culture

In a packed lecture hall, Mercy University students were treated to an exciting talk with Kim Haas, journalist, producer, and host of the PBS series “Afro-Latino Travels with Kim Haas.” Hosted by Mercy’s Center for Global Engagement, Haas was invited to speak about her experiences and how they led her to where she is today.

Haas said she became interested in learning about different cultures at age 6 during her first trip abroad. She showed the audience a photo of her grandmother, Cassie Keith, who’d grown up in the segregated south in the U.S. and who took her to Acapulco at age 6.  “I was hooked,” Haas said.  “I knew immediately that I wanted more travel, and more Spanish.”

Wanting more Spanish, and understanding its usefulness in today’s world, is why students were invited to hear Haas speak, says Alan Hartman, associate professor and director of the Modern Foreign Languages Program in Mercy’s School of Liberal Arts.  “I want them to know how they can put their Spanish into practice, and that there’s a future in it,” he said.

Haas, who has undergraduate and graduate degrees in Spanish, studied abroad in Seville, Spain and worked at Telemundo for many years. While at Telemundo, she recalls “that there was nobody there who looked like me.”

Out of her wish to see more Afro-Latino representation on television, she created the show “Afro-Latino Travels with Kim Haas,” to celebrate the African influence in Latin America. She has traveled extensively throughout Latin America.

Haas shared stories of Afro-Caribbean dance, Afro-Colombian food, and of the African slaves who built railway systems in Costa Rica and Brazil.  The students were surprised to learn that fully a third of Latin Americans today are of African ancestry and that more slaves taken from Africa landed in Latin America than North America. 

She urged the crowd to “change the narrative about the contributions of people of African descent in Latin America.  Those contributions are everywhere – in every single country in Central America and South America.”

“It felt so inclusive,” said sophomore Alma Kissi, an English major who is studying Spanish and plans to travel to Medellin for spring break. “Hearing this made me more interested to go and to learn about Colombia.”

“She was amazing,” said Germaine Bennett, a senior whose family is from Jamaica. “It made me want to know more about my ancestry.”