Indigenous inclusion/black exclusion: Race, ethnicity and multicultural citizenship in Latin America

Journal of Latin American Studies

Volumn 37, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 285-310

  Hooker, Juliet ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

BLACK POPULATION; INDIGENOUS POPULATION;

LATIN AMERICA; WESTERN HEMISPHERE; WORLD;

EID: 21144455824     PISSN: 0022216X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0022216X05009016     Document Type: Article

References (78)

1. Donna Lee Van Cott identifies these as elements of what she calls the 'multicultural model'. See Van Cott, 'Constitutional Reform and Ethnic Rights in Latin America,' Parliamentary Affairs, vol. 53, No. 1 (2000), pp. 41-54.
2. Of the seventeen countries worldwide that have ratified ILO Convention 169, all but five are Latin American.
3. See for example Donna Lee Van Cott, The Friendly Liquidation of the Past: The Politics of Diversity in Latin America (Pittsburgh, 2000),
4. and Deborah Yashar, 'Democracy, Indigenous Movements, and the Postliberal Challenge in Latin America,' World Politics 52, no. 1 (1999), pp. 76-104.
5. In Brazil rural communities of descendants of escaped slaves known as quilombos have communal land rights. In Colombia Pacific Coast riverine black communities and the English-speaking Raizal population in the archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina were granted collective rights to land and the preservation of their traditional cultures by law 70 in 1993, which in principle extended such rights beyond the Pacific Coast as it contained articles referring to all Afro-Colombians and also included land rights for black communities in similar circumstances to those in the Pacific region. Ecuador's 1998 constitution recognises the rights of Afro-Ecuadoreans to any of the following rights extended to indigenous peoples 'to the extent they are applicable': the right to develop and strengthen their identity and spiritual, cultural, and linguistic traditions, to collective ownership of their communal lands, to have a say in the exploitation of the natural resources found on those lands and to participate in the benefits derived from such exploitation, to conserve their forms of social organisation and authority, to intellectual property over ancestral knowledge and to bilingual education. In Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua Afro-Latinos have the same rights as indigenous groups, which in Honduras and Guatemala include the right to collective ownership of land and bilingual education and in Nicaragua comprise all elements of the multicultural model.
6. Martín Hopenhayn and Alvaro Bello, 'Discriminación étnico racial y xenofobia en América Latina y el Caribe,' División de Desarollo Social de la Comisión Económica de las Naciones Unidas Para América Latina (CEPAL/ECLAC), Santiago, Chile, 2001, p. 5.
7. Further complicating the issue of the comparative size of the indigenous and black populations in Latin America is the fact that most estimates of the size of the black population include mulattoes, while mestizos are excluded from the indigenous category.
8. See Peter Oakley, 'Social Exclusion and Afro-Latinos,' Inter-American Development Bank Working Paper, 2001.
9. See Nelson do Valle Silva, 'A Research Note on the Cost of not being White in Brazil,' Studies in Comparative Interndtional Development, vol. 35, No. 2 (Summer 2000), pp. 18-28.
10. Harry Anthony Patrinos, 'The Cost of Discrimination in Latin America,' Studies in Comparative International Development 35, No. 2 (Summer 2000), p. 4.
11. Omar Arias and Suzzane Duryea, 'Social Exclusion due to Race or Ethnicity in Latin America: What do we Know,' Paper prepared for the Inter-American Development Bank, n. d.
12. Hopenhayn and Bello, 'Discriminación éthico racials,' p. 20.
13. Oakley, 'Social Evolution,' pp. 24-5.
14. Silva, 'A Research Note,' p. 21.
15. I thank one of the anonymous reviewers for bringing this important distinction to my attention. On dus point see also Peggy Lovell, 'Race, gender and development in Brazil,' Latin American Research Review, vol. 29, no. 3 (1994), pp. 7-35.
16. The paradigmatic example of this are myths of racial democracy that not only portrayed countries as racially mixed to such a degree that it was impossible to distinguish between different racial groups, but also consequently denied the existence of racism. For an analysis of the myth of racial democracy that focuses on Venezuela, see Winthrop R. Wright, Café Con Leche: Race, Class, and National Image in Venezuela (Austin, 1990).
17. See, for example, Alison Brysk and Carol Wise, 'Liberalization and Ethnic Conflict in Latin America,' Studies in Comparative International Development, vol. 32, No. 2 (1997), pp. 76-105,
18. and Yashar, 'The Postliberal Challenge'.
19. Van Cott, The Friendly Liquidation of the Past.
20. See Charles Hale, 'Does Multiculturalism Menace? Governance, Cultural Rights and the Politics of Identity in Guatemala,' Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 34 (2002), pp. 485-524.
21. As with any comparative essay that tries to analyse trends across an entire region there are limits to the number of countries that can be considered in detail. I discuss a variety of cases from both Central and South America to show that the patterns I identify seem to hold true for the region as a whole, but Caribbean countries are not included in the analysis. They are excluded because to my knowledge most Caribbean countries have not implemented similar multicultural policies to the rest of Latin America. Further research is needed to determine the extent to which (if at all) multicultural policies aimed at black and indigenous populations are being implemented in these countries, and whether or not discrepancies exist that mirror those in the rest of Latin America. On the existence of myths of racial democracy in the Hispanic Caribbean similar to those in the rest of Latin America, see Alejandro de la Fuente, A Nation For All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth Century Cuba (Chapel Hill, NC, 2001).
22. Deborah Yashar and Donna Lee Van Cott (whose cogent analyses of indigenous mobilisation inform this work) are among the few scholars to provide rationales for setting aside Afro-Latinos and focusing almost exclusively on indigenous movements in their analyses of multicultural citizenship reform in Latin America.
23. Van Cott suggests, for example, that Afro-Ecuadoreans may have gained broader rights in Ecuador's 1998 constitution than Afro-Colombians in 1991, in part because they represent a much smaller percentage of Ecuador's total population than blacks in Colombia, so granting them group rights would be less threatening to national elites in Ecuador than in Colombia. Van Cott, The Friendly Liquidation of the Past, p. 276. While blacks are estimated to compose between 4 and 22 per cent of Colombia's population (with some areas in the Pacific Coast being 80-90 per cent black), they represent approximately 3 per cent of the population in Ecuador. In contrast, 1-4 per cent of Colombians identify as indigenous, while it is estimated that 25 per cent of Ecuadoreans are indigenous. As noted earlier population estimates for indigenous and Afro-Latin groups in Latin America are notoriously disputed. Ecuador, like many other countries in the region, does not even count African descended populations. The figures I cite here are from the CIA World Factbook 2003. The range of the estimates depends on whether mixed populations are included in the 'black' and 'indigenous' categories.
24. See http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html.
25. In social science and popular understanding race is thought to refer to phenotypical differences between groups of people, while ethnicity denotes cultural differences. In most cases Afro-Latinos are seen as lacking 'ethnicity' and therefore as undeserving of collective rights; it is only in cases where race and ethnicity coincide that they are able to claim group rights.
26. In the Honduran case, for example, of the nine 'autochthonous peoples' recognised by the state, the two groups that claim African descent, the Garifuna (250,000) and the Negros de Habla Inglesa (80,000), rank second and third in terms of population size behind only the Lenca (400,000). Population figures are taken from Mark Anderson, 'Why Black Politics (Sometimes) Looks Like Indigenous Politics in Latin America: Insights from Garifuna Movements in Honduras,' Paper presented at the Rockefeller Seminar on Race Rights and Resources in the Americas at the University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, 21 March 2003.
27. Yashar, for example, argues that black political organising in Latin America has been limited to mostly urban movements, and the demands of urban movements differ significantly from those of rural indigenous movements. The demands of urban black movements, unlike those of (rural) indigenous movements, are for full inclusion into the system, not for group rights. Yashar, 'The Postliberal Challenge,' p. 104, n. 66. Van Cott also claims that where blacks have mobilised politically as a group it has been to demand equality, rather than recognition as a distinct group. Van Cott, The Friendly Liquidation of the Past, p. 276.
28. See, for example, Michael Hanchard, Orpheus and Power: The Movimento Negro of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil, 1945-1988 (Princeton, 1994),
29. and Howard Winant, 'Rethinking Race in Brazil,' Journal of latin American Studies, vol. 24 (1992), pp. 173-92.
30. See for example Anthony Marx, Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of the United States, South Africa, and Brazil (Cambridge, 1998),
31. and Melissa Nobles, Shades of Citizenship, Race and the Census in Modern Politics (Stanford, 2000).
32. There is obviously a historical dimension to the issue of what identities groups organise around and the kinds of demands they make that has to do with incentives provided by the state, among other factors. This is true for both Afro-Latinos and indigenous groups, as people who in the past may have identified as peasants and organised as such may now do so on the basis and in favour of indian and black identities. The shifting emphasis of the movimento negro in Brazil from cultural politics to socio-economic disadvantage is another example of the dynamic nature of group identity.
33. Author interview with Pablo de la Torre of the Comarca Afro-Ecuatoriana del Norte de Esmeraldas in Nicaragua in August of 2003.
34. Eva Thorne, 'The Politics of Afro-Latin Land Rights,' Paper presented at the 34th annual meeting of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists, Oakland, CA, 12-13 March 2003, p. 5.
35. Van Cott, for instance, attributes the failure of Afro-Colombians to gain the same collective rights as indigenous groups during the National Constituent Assembly (ANC) of 1991, to a lesser degree of politicisation of black identity and level of organisation of the black movement. In contrast, the indigenous movement in Colombia was already organised and was therefore capable of framing its grievances in terms that resonated with the crisis of legitimacy of the state that had prompted the call for constitutional reforms. See Van Cott, The Friendly Liquidation of the Past, pp. 76-7.
36. See Alison Brysk, From Tribal Village to Global Village: Indian Rights and International Relations in Latin America (Stanford, 2000).
37. In Guatemala, for example, the Garifuna gained the same rights as the Maya by virtue of being included in the ethnic/indigenous group category absent any demand on their part for such inclusion. The Garifuna are the descendants of escaped slaves and Caribs from the Antilles who were exiled to Central America by the British during the eighteenth century. There are Garifuna communities along the Caribbean coasts of Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and Nicaragua.
38. Van Cott, The friendly Liquidation of the Past, p. 76.
39. For discussions of the history of black political organising in Colombia prior to, and following, the ANC see Eduardo Restrepo, 'Afro-colombianos, antropologia y proyecto de modernidad en Colombia,' in Maria Victoria Uribe and Eduardo Restrepo (eds.), Antropologia en la modernidad: identidades, etnicidades y movimientos sociales en Colombia (Bogotá, 1997), pp. 279-319,
40. and Peter Wade, Blackness and Race Mixture: The Dynamics of Racial Identity in Colombia (Baltimore, 1993).
41. The clear exceptions to this trend are Nicaragua, Mexico and Guatemala, where indigenous insurgenceis (and in the case of Nicaragua, indigenous and black groups taking up arms against the Sandinista regime to demand self-government and other minority rights during the 1980s) prompted the state to try to resolve such conflicts politically bu agreeing to consider (in the Mexican and Guatemalan cases) or implementing (as in Nicaragua) multicultural citizenship reforms as part of peace accords.
42. Van Cott, The Friendly Liquidation of the Past, p. 278.
43. In fact, many Latin American states have fairly robust gender equality provisions. The point I am trying to make is rather that the inclusion of women could have played a similar symbobc role in restoring the state's legitimacy if what was at stake was only its democratic status rather than its national-democratic legitimacy. For a discussion of the role of women's movements in processes of transition from authoritarianism in Latin America, see Sonia E. Alvarez, Engendering Democracy in Brazil: Women's Movements in Transition Politics (Princeton, 1990),
44. and Lisa Baldez, Why Women Protest: Women's Movements in Chile (Cambridge, 2002).
45. For a discussion of the role of different social movements in transition processes throughout the region, see Arturo Escobar and Sonia E. Alvarez (eds.), The Making of Soaal Movements in Latin America: Identity, Strategy and Democracy (Boulder, 1992).
46. Edmund T. Gordon, Disparate Diasporas: Identity and Politics in an African Nicaraguan Community (Austin, 1998), p. 121.
47. Peter Wade, Race and Ethnicity in Latin America (London, 1997), p. 36.
48. It is important to note, however, that a rhetorical appeal to the indian roots of national culture is not the same as embracing indians themselves or respecting their rights as citizens. On Indigenismo: in Mexico see Alan Knight, 'Racism, Revolution and Indigenismo: Mexico, 1919-1940,' in Richard Graham (ed), The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870-1940 (Austin, 1990), pp. 71-113.
49. On the invisibility of blacks in Latin America see Wright, Café Cone Leche,
50. and Wade, Blackness and Race Mixture.
51. Wade, Race and Ethnicity, pp. 21, 85, 36.
52. Three indigenous delegates served in the ANC compared to no Afro-Colombians, and it was indigenous delegates who carried Afro-Colombians claims to the ANC.
53. Libia Grueso, Carlos Rosero and Arturo Escobar, 'The Process of Black Community Organizing in the Southern Pacific Coast Region of Colombia,' in Sonia E. Alvarez, Evelina Dagnino and Arturo Escobar (eds.), Cultures of Politics/Politics of Cultures: Re-visioning Latin American Social Movements (Boulder, 1998), p. 199.
54. Jaime Arocha Rodriguez, 'Afro-Colombia Denied,' NACLA Report on the Americas, vol. 35, No. 4 (1992), 46.
55. Restrepo, 'Afro-colombianos, antropología y proyecto de modernidad en Colombia,' pp. 295-301.
56. See also Peter Wade, 'The Cultural Politics of Blackness in Colombia,' American Ethnologist, 22, no. 2 (1995), pp. 342-358.
57. In Nicaragua criollo and Creole are not synonyms. Criollos are the descendants of Spaniards born in the Americas. Creoles are the descendants of escaped African slaves and slaves brought by the British to the Mosquito Coast during the sixteenth century who speak a Creole English language, and who became increasingly dominant in the society of the Mosquito Coast during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
58. On the shifting strategies of indigenous movements in Latin America and their remarkable success in recent decades, see Rachel Sieder (ed.), Multiculturalism in Latin America: Indigenous Rigbts, Diversity and Democracy (New York, 2002).
59. Inter-American Court of Human Rights, 'The Case of the Mayagna (Sumo) Community of Awas Tingni v. Nicaragua,' Judgment of August 31, 2001, p. 75.
60. Anderson, 'Why Black Politics (sometimes) looks like Indigenous Politics,' p. 3.
61. Yashar, for instance, makes a distinction between ethnic and racial cleavages and argues that she is concerned with the politicisation of the former, not the latter. 'This article does not address the politicization of racial cleavages in Latin America,' she notes. Yashar, 'The Postliberal Challenge,' p. 104, n. 4.
62. Wade, Race and Ethnicity, p. 37.
63. Yashar, 'The Postliberal Challenge,' pp. 88-96.
64. A number of communities have engaged in processes of 're-indianisation,' presumably in response to such imperatives. See, for example, Jonathan Warren, Racial Revolutions: Antiracism and Indian Resurgence in Brazil (Durham, NC, 2001).
65. Indigenous people who no longer possess the traits associated with cultural difference such as language, ritual, or traditional dress, and who live in urban areas can also be excluded from multicultural policies. As Hale notes, under 'neoliberal multiculturalism' certain kinds of rights claims and rights-claiming subjects are seen as more legitimate than others. See Hale, 'Does Multiculturalism Menace.' Alcida Ramos makes a similar point in her discussion of the 'hyperreal indian.'
66. See Alcida Ramos, The Commodification of the Indian (Brasilia, 2000).
67. For a discussion of how different narratives of mestizaje affected debates about collective rights in Nicaragua during the 1980s see Juliet Hooker, 'The Myth of Inclusion: Mestizo Nationalism, Identity Politics, and Citizenship in Nicaragua,' unpubl. PhD diss., Cornell University, 2001.
68. Basing group rights on cultural difference criteria also pose other problems, such as the possible reinforcement of patriarchal gender relations. See Susan Moller Okin, 'Feminism and Multiculturalism: Some Tensions,' Ethics, vol. 108, No. 4 (July 1998), pp. 661-84.
69. Anderson, 'Why Black Politics (sometimes) Looks Like Indigenous Politics,' p. 24.
70. Restrepo, 'Afro-Colombianos, antropología y proyecto de modernidad en Colombia.'
71. This critique of a politics of recognition based solely on cultural difference has been raised in debates about identity politics in the United States and elsewhere. See, for example, Wendy Brown, 'Wounded Attachments: Late Modern Oppositional Political Formations,' in John Rajchman (ed.), The Identity in Question (New York, 1995), pp. 199-227,
72. and Nancy Fraser, 'From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a 'Postsocialist Age,' in Nancy Fraser, Justice Interruptus: Crifical Reflections on the 'Postsocialist' Condition (New York, 1997).
73. Guillermo O'Donnell, 'Democracy, Law, and Comparative Politics,' in Studies in Comparative International Development, vol. 36, no. 1 (Spring 2001), p. 28.
74. Robert J. Cottrol and Tanya Kateri Hernandez, 'The Role of Law and Legal Institutions in Combating Social Exclusion in Latin American Countries: Afro-American Populations,' Paper prepared for the Inter-American Development Bank, n. d., pp. 14-15.
75. On current affirmative action debates in Brazil, see Mala Htun, 'From "Racial Democracy" to Affirmative Action: Changing State Policy on Race in Brazil,' Latin American Research Review, vol. 39, no. 1 (2004), pp. 60-89.
76. For an overview of legal measures against racial discrimination adopted by various Latin American countries, see Cottrol and Hernández, 'The Role of Law and Legal Institutions'.
77. Van Cott, 'Constitutional Reform and Ethnic Rights in Latin America,' p. 50.
78. On the arguments against affirmative action in Brazil, see for example, Antonio Sérgio Alfredo Guimaraes, 'Measures to Combat Discrimination and Racial Inequality in Brazil,' in Rebecca Reichmann (ed.), From Indifference to Inequality: Race in Contemporary Brazil (University Park, PA, 1999), pp. 139-53.