From the editor.

• Author: Kiernan, James Patrick
• Position: Editorial

Culture and ethnicity are generally the basis by which peoples and societies throughout the world define themselves. Most of us in the Western Hemisphere see ourselves as reflections of various combinations of Amerindian, African, and European. Race and the historical baggage of slavery, as well as the rich heritage of a variety of African cultures, still affect and animate societies where the African presence was predominant, particularly in Brazil and Haiti.

In this issue of Americas, Gilberto Gil, the popular singer and composer--and Brazil's new minister of culture--speculates on the connections between cultural expression and social justice, in an interview with Christian Cravo. While audiences around the world have been moved by that country's hit film City of God, which chronicles the destruction of youth in the drug wars in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, perhaps equally important, as Douglas Rogers explains, is the means of escape that acting has offered these boys and young men. In Haiti, Vodou...