Yvette Modestin brings together Latin Americans and people of African ancestry - Boston, Massachusetts

“When Yvette Modestin was growing up in Colón , the city in Panama where the Caribbean people who helped build the Panama Canal settled, everyone looked like her. But once Modestin, an Afro West Indian Latino with European and South Asian ancestry, moved to Boston to get her psychology degree at Emmanuel College in 1986, she discovered what many other people with her ethnic background know: the combination of brown skin and fluency in Spanish makes some people uncomfortable.

Because of Modestin’s dark complexion, some of her fellow Latinos rejected her. Her Spanish-speaking skills and affinity for Latin culture made it hard for some African-Americans to embrace her.”

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