If (and when) Kamala Harris is elected as Vice President of the USA this coming November, she will become only the second Afro-descended woman to hold that position in continental America. The distinction of being the first, belongs to Epsy Campbell Barr who created history when she was elected as Costa Rica’s Vice President in May 2018, a position she still holds.
Apart from being sisters of colour, these two amazing and talented women happen to share a common Jamaican heritage.
Epsy Campbell Barr is named after her paternal Jamaican grandmother Epsy, who migrated to Costa Rica with her husband in the early 1900s. We already know from Donald Harris of Kamala’s Jamaican roots and the Jamaican qualities he acquired from his grandparents. In his revealing article Reflections of a Jamaican Father Harris relates how he consciously sought to imbue in his two daughters a knowledge and appreciation of their Jamaican heritage, even as they grew up steeped in American culture and as Kamala herself has admitted, under the more dominant South Indian cultural influence of their mother Shamayla. Although neither Epsy nor Kamala was raised by their Jamaican grandparents we know from their public life and achievements that they inherited the strength and determination that are the hallmarks of Jamaican grandmothers celebrated in verse and popular lyrics.
Born a mere one year and three months apart –Epsy on July 4, 1963, Kamala on October 20, 1964 – both women, now in the prime of their lives, have had to fight patriarchy, gender and racial discrimination to reach where they are today, and are on a trajectory that could well take them to the pinnacle of power as Presidents of their respective countries within the next five years. Both are already enviable role models for people of African descent and particularly young black women in the African diaspora. Under the glare of the 2019/2020 Democratic party’s bruising primary campaign and the current Presidential campaign, details of Kamala Harris’s life and heritage have been laid bare to a hungry public by the international media.
Epsy Campbell Barr was never subjected to the same type of scrutiny until she made history in 2018. It was then that the world came to know of her as a trained economist, who was educated at the University of Costa Rica and later at the Foundation for Cultural and Social Sciences in Spain from which she holds a master’s degree in Development Co-operation. At the time she was elevated to the vice presidency, Campbell Barr was already a seasoned politician having been one of the founding members of Costa Rica’s Citizens Action Party in 2000 and its President from 2005-2009. Born into a family that included four other girls and having two daughters of her own, Epsy Campbell Barr’s entire public life has been built on political activism for the rights of women and peoples of African descent. Like Kamala Harris whose parents exposed her at an early age to the Civil Rights struggle in the US, Epsy Campbell Barr’s activism was inspired by stories of the battle waged by her immigrant foreparents who had to fight statelessness in a country that saw them as foreigners and temporary resident workers. The scars of that struggle are no different from the still sore wounds of the ‘Windrush atrocity’ of two years ago in the UK, and the persistent birther prejudice that first targeted Barack Obama and which is now being revived in a desperate but vain attempt to afflict Kamala Harris.
While her early activism was aimed at addressing the social marginalization and racism that existed in Costa Rica against people of African descent, in the years before assuming the Vice Presidency Campbell Barr broadened and extended her activities to encompass all of Latin America, including the Alliance of Leaders of African Descent in Latin America and the Black Parliament of the Americas. This has raised her profile and her stature both as a national and hemispheric leader.
In a 2018 interview, Essence Magazine described Epsy Campbell Barr as the “Michelle Obama of Afro-Latinas–gorgeous, articulate and impeccable in the face of sexism and racism…..a beautifully elegant and poised Black woman.”
Epsy Campbell Barr sees the nomination of Kamala Harris as proof of the fact that more and more doors are opening for Afro-descended women throughout the continent. Responding to a request by jamaicaglobalonline for a comment on the nomination, the Costa Rican Vice President writes:
“ The nomination of Senator Kamala Harris represents an opportunity to address issues of racial equality and to confront similar matters related to inclusive democracy. The future has to place Afro-descendant women in positions of power so that democracy continues to take hold for the benefit of society as a whole”.
Racial equality and inclusive democracy especially for women might not be the only imperatives on which the current Costa Rican and an incoming Biden/Harris administrations might find common ground. Another is climate change and the greening of America that was one of the areas highlighted at the recent US Democratic party’s national convention. Costa Rica is today recognized as one of the greenest countries in the world. Almost all its electricity is generated from green sources such as hydro and solar power. Addressing a World Government Summit in Dubai last February, Campbell Barr told delegates that preserving the environment and mitigating climate change were top priorities even in Costa Rica’s foreign policy and is also taught as an agenda marker in the country’s education system.
Members of Campbell Barr’s family are no strangers to Jamaica. The Vice President herself made her first official visit to the homeland of her grandparents in June 2019, when she attended the Jamaica Diaspora Conference signifying Costa Rica’s acknowledgement of the historical and continuing familial ties between the two countries. Epsy’s sister Shirley, an accomplished Afra-Latina writer in her own right, lived in Jamaica for a number of years in the early 2000s. Predictably, Epsy Campbell Barr is a fan of Reggae music and declares that she loves Jamaica reggae icon Bob Marley’s music and is an admirer of Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jamaica’s first National Hero and a national hero of Costa Rica recognized for his advocacy in Black social upliftment in that country.
There is one Jamaican trait that Kamala Harris and Epsy Campbell Barr share, that is, they are both great cooks. In Epsy’s case, the influence of her Jamaican heritage is unquestionably revealed by one of her signature dishes, rice and peas, without which no Jamaican Sunday dinner is complete.
To learn more about the Jamaica/Caribbean/Costa Rican connection, read The West Indians of Costa Rica: Race, Class, and the Integration of an Ethnic Minority by Ronald Harpelle, 2001, Ian Randle Publishers, Kingston. For the contribution of Jamaicans and other Caribbean people in the building of the United States of America see Making Waves: How the West Indies Shaped the United States by Debbie Jacob 2017, Ian Randle Publishers, Kingston and Miami.
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