The Water Is Thin

It’s 90 miles Key West to Cuba, and people make it on all manner of watercraft, albeit some more successfully than others. The English Channel is only 21 miles across at the Strait of Dover. People SWIM that. The Iberian Peninsula is 10 miles off the coast of Africa.

The Iberian Peninsula is Spain and Portugal fused together in one finger of land that tips down off the southwest corner of Europe. The southern edge of the peninsula borders the Strait of Gibraltar, which is the waterway leading from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. The Strait of Gibraltar is less than 10 miles across at its narrowest point, making Europe and Africa the two closest continental neighbors with the exception of the Asia – Europe border, scrunched over the Urals.

We’re not even supposed to have diplomatic relations with Cuba, and yet we have an undeniable geographic relationship. The same is true of Spain and Africa. To assume that Spain did not have a social link with Africa prior to Columbus is absolute folly. It’s a locational no-brainer to realize that people were crossing that narrow strait.

The first introduction of Africans to North America was not through slavery. Africans sailed aboard Spanish ships as free citizens on expeditions to the New World. They established the footprint for freedom in the United States, a footprint for us all to walk in.