New TV Series offers a different view of Latin America
Afro-Latino Travels with Kim Haas shines a light on the historical and cultural contributions of Latin America’s African descendants Author: Angela Poe Russell, KING 5 Evening (KING 5) Published: 5:39 PM PST February 23, 2021 Updated: 4:37 PM PST March 12, 2021
SEATTLE It took Kim Haas more than ten years to make her dream a reality.
She came up with the idea of Afro-Latino Travels while working at a Spanish language television station in Philadelphia. I never saw anybody who looked like me on the station, on the channel, in programming, but yet I traveled and saw a whole lot of people who looked like me. It s like they are just ignored. They aren t seen, explained Haas.
Afro-Latinos in Latin America, Caribbean is the focus of this travel show Patricia Guadalupe
There are a slew of travel shows on television, but nothing quite like the one headed up by Philadelphia native Kim Haas. A media veteran with more than 20 years in the business including a stint at a Telemundo affiliate in Philadelphia Haas is not necessarily focusing on the locales or the foods of far-flung exotic places, but more on a specific segment of the population that she says gets overlooked time and time again. “Afro-Latino Travels With Kim Haas” celebrates the contributions of African descendants in the Caribbean and throughout Latin America.
Kim Haas, M.A. ’96, is filling a void with her PBS show,
Afro-Latino Travels with Kim Haas.
When Kim Haas, M.A. ’96, surveyed the travel-show landscape about 10 years ago, she felt there was a glaring need for a series that celebrated the historical and cultural contributions of Africans to Latin American countries. Her assessment was coming from an informed place.
Haas extensively studied the connections between Afro-Latino culture and identity first as an undergraduate student, and later at La Salle University, where she earned her master’s in bilingual and bicultural studies. Haas had traveled extensively, too, spending a year of her undergraduate studies abroad in Seville, Spain, and visiting countries with deep Afro-Latino ties like Cuba, Venezuela, and Brazil.