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Healing from racism in Latin America
By Ellie Hidalgo
Lorena Cuéllar remembers being about four years old when her grandmother pointed out the difference in skin color between her two granddaughters.
In their native El Salvador, her grandmother used to say that Cuéllar was "linda pero morenita," (pretty but darker skinned). Cuéllar's cousin was light skinned. Even at that young age Cuéllar understood that in her neighborhood there was something negative about being darker skinned. She understood it even more clearly when her cousin received better gifts at Christmas.
Although these incidents took place some 40 years ago, Cuéllar says it's been important for her to revisit and heal from those memories in order to improve her present relationships with her cousin, with all Salvadoran women -- and, most especially, to feel more confident about herself.
It's not a struggle she faces alone. Although most Salvadoran women are different shades of brown hues, the ideal woman portrayed on television, in magazines, billboards, even school books, says Cuéllar, is a white woman with blue eyes and a model's figure. Businesses regularly advertise creams and peeling products for Salvadoran women to whiten their skin.
Cuéllar says the chance to think about her personal experiences and connect it with society's messages about race have been invaluable.
"Now I understand," says Cuéllar, when thinking about her cousin. "Those incidents made it hard for us to be friends. We were always competing."
United to end racism
Cuéllar spoke to The Tidings mid-May while attending a Latin American conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, that taught participants from Argentina, Mexico, El Salvador, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, Brazil and the United States how to use peer listening support groups -- called co-counseling -- to heal from the negative effects of racism and internalized racism.
The conference highlighted the efforts of United to End Racism, a project of Seattle-based Re-evaluation Counseling, whose work on eliminating racism will be included during a non-governmental forum immediately prior to the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa this August.
United to End Racism offers a process for people to heal from the damaging effects of racist attitudes or from internalizing in their hearts and minds racist messages about themselves.
Practiced in pairs and in support groups, participants take turns telling their stories and openly expressing their feelings about racism, say UER organizers. In doing so, the damage done by racism begins to dissipate and people start seeing themselves as smart, strong and good human beings.
Opening questions might include: What is your earliest memory of being treated differently because of your skin color? Or, what is your earliest memory of seeing another person treated harshly because of their skin color?
Sharing those stories allows people to see the chain of prejudices from their early years that continue into adulthood. And with the chance to talk or even cry about those heartbreaks, people across race and class lines are able to think more intelligently, treat diverse groups of people well and increase their commitment to act against racism, say UER organizers.
Forming women's groups
Throughout Argentina, Chile and Paraguay, a group of Dominican Sisters and lay Catholics have taken the tools of co-counseling to start support groups for women in the barrios struggling with issues of domestic violence, poverty and racism.
"We helped the women break the silence, to realize they were not alone," says Dominican Sister Veronica Rafferty, who immigrated from Ireland and is now based in Rosario, Argentina. Over time, says Sister Rafferty, the women "become leaders themselves."
The sisters and the lay women have begun additional support groups for the unemployed, men and youth.
A women's center has also been built in Argentina's Moreno Diocese that includes a computer room, literacy and health education, cooking and hairstyling classes and co-counseling support groups. The center was funded by Ireland Aid through the assistance of Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and current United Nations high commissioner for human rights.
Delia Valentina Linche, who lives in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, joined one of the women's support groups. She had always wondered why in her family of seven sisters and one brother, she was the only sister selected to do the hard work of rounding up the family's farm animals, helping to plant cotton and cooking for her family. While her sisters finished elementary school, Linche did not.
It wasn't until she began to recount her stories in a co-counseling support group that she realized she was the only one among the sisters who was darker skinned and had indigenous features. Linche was considered "morocha," and family members assumed she was strong and could do the hardest work.
"I always wondered, why? Now I got to know why, and I understand much more," says Linche. "You get to heal from things of your childhood.
"When you are hurting you can't see. Everything seems impossible," she continues. The process of listening to one another's stories, she says, "teaches us many things. We learn about our brothers and sisters, even the white people. We all have problems, and we come to know each other."
Racism is especially noticeable among the rich and the poor in Argentina, says Linche, who for years cleaned homes in Buenos Aires. "But for me and my way of thinking, we are all equal in God's eyes."
Healing racist attitudes
Amós Pérez, a light-skinned Mexican man who works as a government employee in Aguas Calientes, Mexico, says the co-counseling process has helped him to develop closer and more trusting relationships at work, both with his supervisors as well as with the people who report to him.
Pérez says that he used to micro-manage his employees giving them all the small details of how he wanted a job done. "This implied they were not intelligent," he says.
In healing from some of his own experiences of racism, he's learned to delegate. "I learned they could complete a job from their point of view, and it would enrich us all," he says. "This approach gives me more time, and I feel more joined at work."
To develop better relationships at work, Pérez says he needed to look at the roots of his own prejudice.
As a young person Pérez grew up on a large property owned by his grandfather, where corn, beans and coffee were grown. In the warmth of his grandfather's big house, Pérez enjoyed the constant story telling of his grandfather, uncles and father. "They could tell a joke about everything," he says. "I would listen to them for a long time."
While he loved his grandfather, Pérez says it became confusing for him to learn that the indigenous women who lived and worked on his grandfather's fields were obligated to come to the big house to cook and clean for its owners. The women were not paid for their housework.
In sharing these stories and releasing the painful emotion connected to them, he says the dull confusion he has carried for years is dissipating.
"I suddenly feel like something was lifted. Now I'm seeing things I didn't see before. Now I see people differently," says Pérez, 43, a father to two daughters. "People have dignity and can be trusted independent of color and social class."
The ability to heal from experiences of racism is very hopeful, adds Cuéllar. "We have been divided from each other for no good reason," she says. "But we can develop closer relationships with lots of people and create a world that is more human."
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Sun 19 Jun 2005 20:12 Post subject: Inside-the-family Racism in Latin America
Hi,
That's a good post. Some subtle forms of racism exist in Latin America, for sure. I remember when I was a kid, and how my relatives make fun of me because I was darker than them. Sometimes they make fun of my parents and insinuated I was a the result of an extramarital-relation relation, because both of my parents look more European than I do.
Well. The difference in skin tone between my relatives and myself was very minor indeed. I am sure you people in the U.S. won't even notice it.
Those attitudes are common in Latin America. And I am talking about countries were people is mestizo (European-Amerindian). And were differences in skin tones are not as dramatic as one find in the United States for example. Things get more complicated in countries were there are Blacks, and the differences in aspect are more striking.
However, things goes both ways. Not always is the "dark" the one that is discriminated. Pale males in Latin America, and specially blondy ones, are always accussed of being gays, for example. So those men usually act very male so there is not the smallest suspiction about them. Nicks like "face of a corpse", "crabs" and others are usually applied to white Latin Americans. Red haired are called "cooper heads" and blue or green eyed people receive the funny name of "cats". And foreigners are always "gringos" which say it all.
Orientals are always called "cat-faces" or worst "chino-cochino" that means dirty chinese and that is a reference to the lack of higiene of chinese restaurants. Blacks suffer the same kind of "jokes" in countries were there are Black communities, and they are always shown as sort of grown up children.
One get used to these stupid things in our countries. But the thing that hurt the most is that our own relatives, sometimes even the parents, the brothers or our children, and other times our best friends, can say those things to us. This is a obscure part of the "Hispanic" culture that should change, for sure.
The three largest racial groups in El Salvador are White, Mestizo, and African so colorism there wouldn't be the same as in your family in Chile. Salvadoran colorism would reflect true racism.
The three largest racial groups in El Salvador are White, Mestizo, and African so colorism there wouldn't be the same as in your family in Chile. Salvadoran colorism would reflect true racism.
Given that virtual all Latin Americans are thoroughly mixed, what can "racial groups" possibly mean in this context? I would be grateful to learn the source of this information.
Posted: Mon 20 Jun 2005 03:57 Post subject: demographics
Whoops got El Salvador confused with Nicaragua (that whole 1980s Reagan proxy war against the Soviets in Central America can be a bit confusing at times. (sarcasm and cynicism definitely implied):
Demographics of both countries can be found here (courtesy of the US Central Intelligence Agency ):
Posted: Mon 20 Jun 2005 04:20 Post subject: Re: demographics
triguy wrote:
The three largest racial groups in El Salvador are...
When asked for a source,
triguy wrote:
If you can't believe the CIA, who can you believe?
The term "racial groups" does not appear anywhere in the given source. In fact, the word "racial" does not appear anywhere in the given source. The CIA report explicitly refers to "ethnic" groups. Surely, Triguy knows the difference. "Ethnicity" is self-applied, voluntary, and cultural rather than biological. "Race" is presumably applied by society, involuntary, and biologicaly inherited. This is the second time within the past hour that Triguy has cited a reference that contradicts his claims.
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Mon 20 Jun 2005 16:57 Post subject: Re: Colorism in Latin America:Healing from racism in Lat Am
G-Man wrote:
Question: Is colorism the same thing as racism, especially in the context Latin America?
Is a family of mestizos that views a darker family member as less attractive, but loves him nontheless, guilty of racism or colorism?
I believe is victim of stupidity and nothing else. It's like laugh about how fat or how short a relative is. People should be more careful in treating the fellow human beings, specially when they are kids. I don't believe is racism.
From the Los Angeles Times
Mexican Postage Stamp Pushes Racial Envelope
By Chris Kraul and Reed Johnson
Times Staff Writers
June 30, 2005
MEXICO CITY — A newly issued series of postage stamps showing a once-popular black comic book character with exaggerated thick lips has reignited controversy over racial attitudes in Mexico, six weeks after President Vicente Fox was forced to apologize for remarks perceived as insensitive toward black Americans.
The five new stamps show a cartoon figure named Memin Pinguin, a picaresque urban child who gets by on wits and moxie, that has been one of Mexico's best-selling comic book characters.
Created by Yolanda Vargas Dulche in 1947, the character remains well known, though its popularity peaked in the 1950s and 1960s.
A day after the stamps were issued, an outcry ensued, with civil rights groups and prominent Afro-Mexicans, including pop singer Johnny Laboriel, calling the images outrageous.
"Of course people are going to be offended by the caricature," Laboriel said Wednesday. "The idea to put out this postage stamp is the biggest stupidity.
"They do this without thinking of the consequences."
Gustavo Islas, director of Mexico's postal service, emphasized that the stamps were intended to have nostalgia value. There was no plan to recall them, he said.
"Whoever sees the character as something offensive is looking at things completely wrongly," Islas said, adding that the comic book figure was "a beautiful personage with no importance given to color."
Mexico's Foreign Relations Ministry issued a statement saying that no offense should be taken, "just as Speedy Gonzalez has never been interpreted in a racial manner by the people in Mexico because he is a cartoon character," the statement read.
The dust-up comes in the wake of the indignation caused by Fox's remark in mid-May that Mexican migrants do jobs that "not even blacks want to do in the United States." Fox spent several days explaining and finally apologizing for "any hurt feelings."
He did so personally to the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who visited Fox at his official residence, Los Pinos, on May 18.
Reached by telephone Wednesday night in Little Rock, Ark., Jackson said that he found the "Sambo-type" stamp demeaning and "in many ways worse than what President Fox said last month."
"I called the Mexican ambassador in Washington and asked him to call President Fox and ask him to apologize and to take the stamp off the market," Jackson said.
Now the stamp is forcing Mexico to reexamine an issue that usually remains below the surface.
Many here and in other parts of Latin America say that their societies are more classist than racist in explaining discrimination suffered by indigenous and black people. Money and family history, they say, are the real social markers.
But many social commentators say that light-skinned Mexicans of European heritage are generally seen as having a leg up in competing for jobs, social prominence, education and other public services.
The social pages in local newspapers infrequently feature Mexicans of color, and Indians are rarely seen in television programming.
"Mexican society is fundamentally racist and classist," said Guadalupe Loaeza, a newspaper columnist. "The color of your skin is a key that either opens or shuts doors. The lighter your skin, the more doors open to you."
Racism extends to political preferences, she added. Many upper-middle-class Mexicans are expected to vote against front-running presidential candidate and Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolution Party because he is partly indigenous and brown-skinned, Loaeza said. That group of voters might tend to support Santiago Creel of the National Action Party because he has light skin and blue eyes, she said.
Racism is one of the many forms of discrimination practiced in Mexico, according to a survey published last month by the federal secretary of social development. It said 80% of Mexicans, among them women, children, indigenous and disabled people and the elderly, suffered discrimination in some way.
In Mexico, the problem of racism is most often manifested toward indigenous people, who get the short end of the stick in "a thousand different ways," Loaeza said.
Discrimination toward Mexican blacks should be placed in a "Mexican context" because the nation's history is very different from that of the United States, said University of Veracruz professor Sagrario Cruz.
"Mexico hasn't had a civil rights struggle," Cruz said. "There isn't a conscious awareness of being black. Most black Mexicans don't think of themselves as being black."
But Jose Luis Gutierrez Espindola of the National Council to Prevent Discrimination says many Mexican blacks feel marginalized. Blacks are poorer and receive less education and social services than any other Mexican demographic group, he said. "They don't feel integrated into the country."
Gregory Rodriguez, a Los Angeles-based writer researching a book about how Mexico's past may shape the future of the United States, said Mexico was a racial hodgepodge that evolved for five centuries with many of its tensions left unaddressed.
"Mexico is not even comfortable dealing with its white and brown heritage, let alone its black heritage," Rodriguez said.
Mexico's conflicted feelings about its black heritage, Rodriguez said, can be seen in artistic depictions of one of its national heroes, Jose Maria Morelos, a leader in the Mexican War of Independence. In some paintings and sculptures, Morelos, who was partly of African descent, is shown with dark skin and kinky hair. In others, he is light-skinned and more European looking.
Sociologist Luisa Strickland said Mexican blacks — most of whose ancestors entered the country centuries ago through the Caribbean port city of Veracruz, becoming slave laborers in sugar cane fields — were Mexico's "forgotten, invisible people."
Veracruz and Guerrero states remain the centers of Mexico's black and mulatto population, estimated at fewer than 1 million of the nation's 105 million people. Roughly 12 million Mexicans are indigenous.
Black Veracruzanos, Cruz said, take pride in their heritage, particularly in the African slave leader Gaspar Yanga, who organized a revolt in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. That resulted in the establishment of Yanga, the first town of free blacks in the Americas.
Mexico abolished slavery in 1829, more than three decades before the United States. But though racism toward blacks is prohibited by law in Mexico, Cruz said, discrimination remains evident in today's popular culture.
"You just have to watch Mexican TV and see the guys who are appearing on the screen. They are blond with blue eyes. Many Mexicans don't even know we have an important black population," Cruz said.
Postal director Islas insisted that the stamps were meant merely to commemorate a beloved cultural figure.
"In the post office, there are no races, there are no colors, no social positions," he said.
"It is just an excellent service that delivers in the most remote places."
Those kind of characters were quite common in the recent past. The Warner Brothers' cartoons, for example, of the '40s usually show Black African people with bones in the hair and rings in the nose. Those were international stereotypes of those times. Mexicans just followed in those times what the international market dictates.
Political correctness is a new tendency in the world.
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