Marifeli Perez-Stable

Published in The Miami Herald

February 3, 2005

Up to 150 million Latin Americans are of African descent: 30 percent of the region’s population and three times the 40 million who are indigenous.

Five countries — Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Cuba — account for nearly 90 percent of Afro-descendants. Brazil and Colombia excepted, census and statistical data on Afro-descendant citizens are not particularly abundant or reliable. Consequently, better racial census categories and disaggregated race-based information are in order. Without them, policy changes are all the harder to make.

Indigenous peoples have long been mobilized. In some countries — Ecuador and Bolivia come to mind — their groups are already major players in national politics. In Guatemala, Mayan Indians — against whom genocide was perpetrated in the early 1980s — constitute a militant check from below. Afro-descendants have only more recently begun to claim their rightful place. Unsurprisingly, history matters.

There’s no overstating the searing legacy of slavery. Some 10 million Africans were forcibly transported to the Americas. Though Africa remained in their souls, slaves lost all tangible ties to their ancestral communities. Held as chattel, neither could they nurture — or be nurtured by — the bonds of family.

Forced labor

Under the Spanish empire, indigenous peoples remained in their pueblos, lived their culture and could take solace in their families. Their forced labor in the haciendas was more like serfdom — unequivocally cruel, demeaning and exploitative but slavery was more so. The Spanish monarchy entertained the question of whether Indians had souls and answered it affirmatively. Slave traders and plantation owners rarely raised that or any other question about the humanity of Africans.

Brazil and Colombia are the most advanced in terms of redressing past injustices. Both have constitutional provisions that prohibit racial or ethnic discrimination. Major legislation criminalizes discrimination, institutes disaggregated statistics, safeguards Afro-descendant cultural patrimony, establishes affirmative action and provides for the entitlement of peasant lands. Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Peru also have anti-discrimination laws aimed at Afro-descendant citizens. In all cases, however, the law is much stronger than its enforcement, and Latin American legal systems are still far from offering the recourse that the U.S. judiciary did to African Americans before and after the civil-rights movement. All the same, Afro-descendant mobilization in Latin America may yet take the law to task in the courts.

Race is a major determinant of exclusion. Afro-descendant citizens are burdened by higher illiteracy rates, less likely to make it to high school and even less so to the universities. Twenty percent of their adolescent children work rather than attend school. Among adults, unemployment and underemployment are rampant. In mid-January, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed into law a quota system whereby private universities receive tax breaks in exchange for reserving up to a fifth of places for poor students. At the same time, the government created a scholarship program –$74 million over five years — to increase their enrollment in higher education. Education is the best guarantee for social mobility.

As in the United States, Afro-descendants are overrepresented among the poor. In Latin America, grievous income inequalities — bottom 20 percent has 2 percent of total income, top 20 percent more than half — underscore the urgency of action. Gender is also an aggravating factor: poor women — largely darker-skinned and single mothers — are in the direst straits. While economic growth is imperative, combatting poverty also requires intelligent cooperation between the public and private sectors. Effective programs targeting poor women and their children — e.g., adult education, day care and healthcare — would quickly reap bountiful benefits at relatively modest costs.

Full inclusion

Symbols, even if not fully backed by actions, matter greatly. The Mexican Revolution placed the nation’s indigenous heritage at the heart of Mexican identity. Mexico City’s Museo Antropológico stands as a monumental testament of an inclusive credo. The Haitian Revolution — when slaves freed themselves and established the first black republic — should be a comparable moment for Afro-descendants but isn’t. Understanding why one heritage is embraced and not the other would tell us much about the dynamics of race and ethnicity in Latin America. Full inclusion, no doubt, bears a subjective dimension of giving due and enhancing individual self-worth. That means doing everything from revising national histories to affirming that black is beautiful.