Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Tue 27 Jun 2006 21:19 Post subject: LATIN AMERICA'S RACIAL CONTRADICTIONS
I found this text somewhere. Is from a Venezuelan writer about the issue of race.
I think is revealing.
Quote:
The problem arises when humanity values people in radically different manners, placing the choice between “better” and “worse” on the balance. The problem arises when the fact of having a different color of skin and taste for food or manner of walking is decisive in order to be considered good or bad, better or worse, commendable or disreputable. That is, powerful or powerless, dominant or dominated, conqueror or conquered.
It is a universal problem, it concerns all humanity, but in Latin America this schizophrenia is particularly intense, because it is structural. In other parts of the world there are problems of this kind, it is true, to the point of civil war and holocaust, but there the problem generally happens outside each individual. There are Black individuals and there are white individuals who reject each other. Some people reject other people. If you are not a U.S. African and you want to contact the U.S. African roots, you must meet other people. You must go out of yourself, you must read books, study other cultural roots.
In Latin America it is radically different, however, because you are Black and White at the same time, in one person, no matter what’s the color of your skin. You are both one and many persons, an actor with many roles, because you are Indian too, and your white part rejects the Black-Indian part, while the Black-Indian part resents the white part’s rejection and rebuffs it in revenge. There is a curious tradition in Spanish theater, the bululú: a single actor represents all the characters in a play. Latin Americans are bululú players, but in real life. You are the hero of a Shakespearean tragedy: Hamlet, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, torn apart by mortally conflicting origins and engagements... It began when the first conquistador raped the first Indian woman. Or when that Indian woman willingly gave herself to the conquistador because he was powerful. Their child was a resentful product of hatred or of mutual contempt — not a product of love.
There is no sense in segregating oneself, or part of oneself. “There is white people, there is Black people, and there is smart people,” as a popular singer used to sing. Only stupid people insist on such a stupid attitude as racism. Only we humans can be that stupid, for that matter, but only we humans can amend our mistakes. We’re slow and perversely reluctant at it, but we can do it, we’ve done it in the past, so we can do it in the future. It depends on us, only on us.
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Tue 27 Jun 2006 21:33 Post subject: To speak with a Latin American is to speak with mankind
And it continue...
Quote:
When you speak to a Latin American you are speaking with all the humanity. And when you forget that, you speak to no one because then, in conscious or unconscious retribution, this Latin American blocks ears and eyes and withdraws into himself, banishing everything that does not admit his inner complexity.
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All kingdoms are present among us, every people on Earth has brought to Latin America its means and manners (Tenemos de todos los reinos [‘We have something from every kingdom’] is the beautiful title of a book by Angelina Lemmo (1986), Caracas: Universidad Central de Venezuela). If you try to be simple and take Latin Americans for pure Europeans — as the perfumados did — they’ll respond with their simple Calibanistic side. If you try to be simple and take them for Indians or Africans, their Ariel side will respond with great offense. These Latin Americans have learned that most Europeans tend to diminish their African and Indian roots as “simple and primitive.” It is not true, they are not “primitive,” as modern anthropology has taught. So-called “primitive” communities — what we easily think of as “tribes” — are built around very complex and rational systems, from their architecture to their family systems. Structural anthropology has discovered long ago how rational the systems that rule all myths are. Many myths are still present among us supposedly “rational civilized” people. The myths of virginity and the hero — from Snow White to Indiana Jones —, for instance, are well and alive in this end of the 20th century. Myth is one of the radical elements composing human beings.
The difference with ancient Greeks and their cultural descendants is that for them reason is a separate conscious topic, in contrast with other peoples who did not develop this competence to “think reason” separately and had to learn it from Greek savants. Rationality is present in myth, but myth obscures it. What the ancient Greeks did was to explicitly isolate the rational component of myth (Briceño, 1994:17). This isolation of reason as a distinct subject matter led later to Descartes, Kant and the present development of the philosophy of science.
Latin America has the possibility of managing all the components it has gathered from all over the Planet to put them together in a harmonious whole. What has been missing is the holistic approach. A deep political decision is needed to engage in the formidable enterprise of integrating the whole jigsaw puzzle of humanity.
We have a beautiful example in the Metro de Caracas (the Caracas subway service), a place where a very clever social software has organized society into a model of orderly coexistence. At the Metro de Caracas there is no place for violence, inferiority complex or racism — not even the surreptitious kind generally practiced in Venezuela. Venezuelans think it is their only decorous institution — it is not true, there are other respectful institutions in Venezuela, but it is symptomatic that they perceive it as such. It has recently resented from the general economic crisis affecting the whole country with strikes and some incipient maintenance insufficiency, but it still persists as a very well organized service, that ought to be regarded as a model to the world. It is the exact opposite of the New York subway, for example — there are no muggers, rapists or violent thugs controlling it.
How could this happen? It happened because it was not dominated by the historical perversities controlling almost all Latin American initiatives: the authorities did not plan it to separate the “well-born” from the castaways. From day one the authorities abandoned the premise of building a Berlin Wall between our historical disjoined roots. Its organization only confirmed the best traits of those roots. It was conceived having in mind the universality of the people who would use it. As a consequence people, many of which behave in the most inappropriate manners elsewhere, conduct themselves in the subway in the best convivial and orderly style. Instead of dismal graffiti scribbled on the walls or trash trailing on the floor, there are sculptures and frescoes by the best Venezuelan artists. There is no brutal police force watching that people are staid and respectful. It is people themselves who react in the most positive manner to a context that respects them as human beings in the first place, forgetful of the historical dooms that have set them apart into separate ranks.
The Metro de Caracas proves it is possible — and easy. Let’s try things like that everywhere else.
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Wed 28 Jun 2006 20:32 Post subject: You are welcome
Olorun1 wrote:
Thanks Omar
You are welcome,
I have not found a sharper and more precise analysis than that. Is real, is funny and tragic at the same time. It reflect like we really are, and why we are so contradictory in these issues. I like it.
Joined: 02 Feb 2010 {Posts: 5 } Location: Hampton Roads, VA
Posted: Wed 28 Jun 2006 20:40 Post subject: Re: You are welcome
oevega wrote:
Olorun1 wrote:
Thanks Omar
You are welcome,
I have not found a sharper and more precise analysis than that. Is real, is funny and tragic at the same time. It reflect like we really are, and why we are so contradictory in these issues. I like it.
I hope you like it too.
Comments will be very welcome
Omar
I agree. It covers 'all the bases'. At times very entertaining, profound and powerful.
I read it very quickly. This is something you have to sit away from everyone with a highlighter, some index cards, and your favorite drink .
Very little to add or dispute on my part.
'
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