Passing Ethnicities and Identities

Text written within the framework of the collective action art project Mara de Salazar1
Susana Martnez Restrepo, PhD2 January, 2013

I first realized I was white at 18. This first experience passing ethnicities or identities occurred when I moved to France and people thought I was Spanish or Italian. During my first winter far from the tropics, my newly acquired European Mediterranean identity matched my whiter skin and straight hair. Although this was a revealing experience because I always thought I was of a mixed race, mestiza, I must admit I was happy passing as European. After all, I do have Spanish blood; and isnt Martnez a last name that originated in Spain? When I was 23, I lived with an indigenous community (YINE) in the Peruvian Amazon for a summer. The admiration for the indigenous women I might have descended from, created this romantic ideal in my head that I was partly like them. But YINE children would scream Gringa everyday when they saw how white my skin was compared to theirs during my morning swim at the Madre de Dios River. A few years later I moved to Singapore and I officially became White-Caucasian. I mean officially because in France racial categories are not allowed and because this was the first time I had to register my race in official documents. For Singaporean purposes, White-Caucasians are Westerners with big eyes and big noses. Culturally, I felt so distant from ethnic Chinese or Malays that I embraced my new identity and shared it with my fellow Australians, Americans and British.

Collective action art project Maria de Salazar, by Jorge Restrepo, 2012 Susana Martnez Restrepo is an associate researcher in the areas of Poverty, the Millennium Development Goals, and Human Development of the UNDP Regional Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean, with headquarters in New York City. Her doctoral dissertation was entitled, The economics of adolescents time allocation: Evidence of the impact of the Young Agent Project in Brazil, Economics of Education program at Columbia University in New York. During her doctoral studies, she worked on several research projects at NCREST (National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools and Teaching, Teachers College) and The Earth Institute, both at Columbia U.; as well as Harlem Childrens Zone (an NGO). She also worked as an associate researcher for the Centre for Governance and Leadership of the Prime Ministers office, Singapore. She has a Masters degree in Comparative Politics and an undergraduate degree in Pol itical Science and Latin American Studies from the Institute of Political Studies, Sciences-Po Paris. Her research interests include educational policies and employment for young people and women in vulnerable situations and risk behavior in adolescents.
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When I moved to New York City, I automatically became darker just by being considered Hispanic/Latina3 locally. My skin did not change; it remained the same. It gets a darker tone in summer and becomes lighter in winter. The same goes for my black hair: it gets curly and messy in summer and straight in winter. My eyes were still hazel, but I was seen as darker for the sole reason that I am a part of the largest minority, one that is on average darker than the descendants of British, Polish, Irish, Russians and Germans considered to be mainstream white-Americans. After initial resistance to being compared with Dominicans and Puerto Ricans, I finally embraced my new identity and I rapidly discovered the advantages of being a Hispanic/Latina in New York: from free sodas and extra chicken on my sandwich, to affirmative action or diversity oriented policies giving priorities to Latino women for scholarships and even certain jobs. From my new adopted (or imposed) identity, I also loved to be a counter stereotype of ignorant generalizations about Hispanics in New York. Due to traditional immigration flows in New York from Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and more recently Mexico, local stereotypes are often of people with dark skin, lazy, loud, with oversized families, limited education, living under help of welfare and mostly undocumented (Haslip-Viera & Baver, 1997).4 In this essay, I will explore why it can be so easy, at least for some, passing ethnicities and identities and what is the role of colonial and post-colonial history in shaping of our racial (racist) definitions and identities. This essay is part of an art family project, which explores our whitening process, by visually darkening our skin colors: That darker skin of the mixture between indigenous, African and Spanish, or other European ancestors that has almost disappeared from our physical features.

Free of all colors

Miscegenation, or the creation of racial categories and the construction of citizenship, has been a slow process made in several stages in my home country, Colombia. During colonization, Spanish men raped, lived with, procreated and/or married indigenous women and black slaves creating a vast population of whites, slaves and free of all colors. The paradox is that during colonial times, the Spanish created
In the United States, Hispanic or Latino is a person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race. The origin can be viewed as the heritage, nationality group, lineage, or country of birth of the person or the persons ancestors before their arrival in the United States. Because of previous migration trends , stereotypes (that vary according to States) are of people of a certain ethnicity. In New York for example, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans and more recently Mexicans account for most of the Hispanic or Latino Population. 4 See as well http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/12/latino-stereotypes_n_1877866.html
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legislation to separate indigenous, blacks and whites (Wade, 1994). There are many historiographical debates about this point. Whether desire, the lack of Spanish women during the first centuries, or necessity of establishing control over the newly colonized territory through the creation of a mixed population, all factors contribute to explaining the great process of mixing that occurred between the Spanish, the indigenous population and slaves during colonial times. The fact that this process occurred has been proven not only through the appearance of people, which constitutes the most obvious proof, but also by historians and through genetic studies about Antioquia, where more than 90 percent of the population descends from an indigenous/Amerindian woman (Carvajal-Carmona et al. 2000).

Jorge Andrs, student, participant of the Maria de Salazar collective action art project (by Jorge Restrepo, 2012)

Throughout the colonial era, mestizaje, or the mixing of race as perceived as a permanent threat in several ways: biological, in terms of damaging European purity and racial hierarchy; through cultural syncretism, as a threat against the mainstream Catholic tradition from Spain; and politically, due to the high number and growing unrest among the mestizos of the colonies (Cunin, 2004). Racial categories during colonial times (Virreinato de la Nueva Granada) included whites, the free of all colors (non-white free population), indigenous peoples (pueblos indios) and slaves (Herrera, 2001). This categorization changed after independence and during the 19th century, all Colombians, either whites or criollos, indigenous, zambos or

mulattoes, (and after the abolition of slaves the categorization came to include blacks) became automatically mixed citizens. 5

The Mestizo Myth and racism without races

The Mestizo Myth became politically necessary for the new imaginary and the construction of the new nation. The cult of the mestizo included what Jos Vasconcelos once called The Cosmic Race (or la Raza Csmica), a concept that defended the superiority of the hybrid race. As Manuel Gamio once wrote about the role of the mestizo in the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution: On the giant anvil of the Andes, virile races of Bronze and iron have struggled for centuries, from this struggle came the mestizo, the National race, the carrier of the national culture of the Future (Knight, 1990, p.85). Unlike the United States and South Africa where racist ideology segregated racial groups by law and prohibited interracial marriage, perhaps excluding the traditional elite, in Colombia or Brazil mixing was accepted, promoted after independence. The interesting part of the mestizo myth, was that in addition to creating an anticolonialSpanish discourse, there was also the political will to take over the collective land property of indigenous peoples under the Spanish colony and the Catholic Church. After independence took place in 1821 and throughout the 19th century, racial categories disappeared, giving way to the ideology of the mixedness (Wade, 1994). Until the new constitution of 1991, all racial categories disappeared from national discourse, peoples imaginary and public policies or interventions. Some authors have called this (mostly referring to the case of Brazil) a racial democracy,6 referring to the lack of racism and racial discrimination that took place due to the mixing of races, the absence of legal discrimination, and a history of friendly relations between masters and slaves (Marx, 1998). The cases of Colombia and Brazil were different since racism was characteristic of countries with specific laws prohibiting mixed race marriages, mixed race schools and even mixed race neighborhoods, where racial riots like South Africas Apartheid and the Jim Crow Laws in the United States took place (Marx, 1998).

Criollos was the term for Spanish descendants born in the colonies, Zambos refers to the mix of black and indigenous and mulattoes refers to the mix of white and black. 6 Democracia Racial or Racial Democracy was first advanced by Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre in his work Casa-Grande & Senzala published in 1933, but has been widely used for scholars during the 20 th century.
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The truth is that the Mestizo Myth and the absence of racial categories or legal discrimination in Colombia or in Brazil did not lead to less racial discrimination or increasing equality for minorities. Instead, this lead to what Cunin (2004) called racism without races, where, although statistically and legally invisible, negative color-based stereotypes, racial labels and signaling remained ingrained in the imaginary of the population. There cannot be racial discrimination in a country where everybody is mixed. Brazilian scholar Florestan Fernandes (1964) referred to this phenomenon as the prejudice of having no prejudices. Because the State assumes the absence of racial prejudice, it fails to enforce laws to counter racial discrimination, as it believes that such efforts are unnecessary.

The whitened mestizo

The ideology of white superiority that was inherited from the era of the Spanish colonization and imported more recently by the western colonial experience in Africa during the 19th century, gave rise to the whitening ideology. Racist ideologies such as this one considered necessary the whitening of the race through the correct breeding of races to solve the negro problem (Skidmore, 1974). In countries such as Brazil, whitening was a planned racial mixing policy with the purpose of minimizing the non-white part of the population or to whiten the mixed one. By the end of the 19th century, Mexican, Argentinean and Brazilian governments had established aggressive European migration policies in which newcomers were given incentives to migrate by being granted free land or work. In countries like Colombia the process was not through incentives granted by the government; instead, through increased immigration from the Spanish regions of Galicia, Basque country or Asturias, many people started getting whiter after several generations (Gonzalez Ochoa, 1960). This is specially the case of Antioquia, where most of my family is originally from. In addition to the commonality of Basque last names, popular wisdom based on the appearance of people in Antioquia created the myth that this area was a white region, where more than 80 percent of inhabitants were of European descent (Carvajal-Carmona et al. 2000). As an example, created in 1895 by Modesto Brocco, the painting Ham's Redemption (Redeno de Cam), graphically illustrates the whitening idea. Generation after generation, a family is becoming "whiter".

Redeno de Cam, Modesto Brocco (1895). Currently at the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, Rio De Janeiro (Oil on canvas).

The painting shows a black grandmother, a mulatto mother and a white baby. The older black woman is praising God for the fact that her grandson is white. The title refers to an episode of the Bible in the book

Genesis where Ham dishonors Noah, his father. Noah pronounces a curse, stating that Hams descendants and that of his son Canaan will be "servants of servants". The curse was regularly interpreted as having created visible racial characteristics in Ham's offspring, notably black skin (Sanders, 1969). During the 19th century this was known as the Hamitic Hypothesis. It was widely used by Europeans to legitimize slavery in the Americans and later in Africa as the latter was a result of the divine punishment imposed on the descendants of Ham (Cam in Portuguese) (Sanders, 1969). If we return to the discussion on the painting and we consider the Hamitic Hypothesis, it is possible to interpret that blacks were punished to be slaves; therefore becoming white (or passing), was seen as a form of redemption. It is not uncommon today to hear phrases such we are improving the race when someone of dark skin marries someone with lighter skin. In our imaginary, whitening still equal improving.

Becoming None of the Above

This is the part where many pieces of the puzzle of my identity come together. Im a mixed race, but I look white (so I pass for a European or White-Caucasian) and despite my awareness of mixedness, I still face strong racial stereotypes that I constantly challenge. The ideology of the mixedness in Colombia has been successful because it has become part of our national ideology. An illustrating example is the case of the first African-Colombian politicians elected for Congress in 2002 under negritudes/blackness racial affirmative action quotas. (Former athletes Maria Isabel Urrutia and Welington Ortiz) defended their mixedness of denied the need to introduce multiculturalism and affirmative action in higher education in Colombia (Cunin, 2003)7. In Colombia, the constitution of 1991 included and for the first time recognized (some) ethnic categories: Indigenous, Roma and several subgroups of African-Colombians such as Negro, Moreno (Dark), Palenquero, Raizal8 and none of the above. The latter represents the category where all white and mixed

This contradiction could be the result of both, a stereotype of success and social mobility suggesting that successful AfroColombians are either musicians or athletes (and also whites or mixed) and their own self-identification as mixed. 8 Roma refers to people of gypsy descent; Palenquero refers to people and a creole language spoken by escaped slaves Maroons. Raizal refers to people afro-descents from Caribbean Islands of San Andres and Providencia.
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races, as well as ethnic groups without any psychological, ethnic or physical affiliation could be grouped. According to this constitution of 1991, I was identified under none of the above. Along with the new ethnic categories, also came multicultural laws giving special rights to minorities in terms of education, collective land ownership and affirmative action in government and education (Cunin, 2004). A study about multiculturalism in the Caribbean coast of Colombia revealed that ethnically black African descendants identified themselves as mixed, and suggested that blacks were only located in Palenques/Maroons, which is on the Pacific Coast. It has already taken 20 years for African-Colombian movements to convince this group to identify themselves (during the Census and other surveys) as AfroColombians. While the census for 2005 revealed that only 10 percent of the Colombian population identified themselves as any of the African Colombian categories, estimations revealed that this population was in fact as high as 25 to 30 percent (Estupin, 2006).

We are all from East Africa

Passing so easily across identities and ethnicities made me wonder about my genetic heritage. I am not only mixed, none of the above, and White-Caucasian (or what other people perceive about physical features); I am also the result of thousands of years of migration and evolution. Thanks to an anonymous saliva sample sent to the Genographic Project from National Geographic I finally had scientific evidence of my maternal indigenous lineage.9 Even more powerful evidence came from results that indicated the route of migration of my ancestors: they left East Africa, which means that at some point in time, my ancestors (and all of our ancestors) were black. Some years ago, I met a person from China on a flight from New York to Brazil. For some reason our conversation landed on the topic of Mitochondrial DNA and we realized that we both belonged to genetic Haplogroup A (Sykes, 2003). This basically means that we descended from common ancestors in Asia that separated when mine crossed the Bearing Strait into Alaska and then migrated further south along the continent. The map below shows my Mitochondrial DNA test and the Migration Routes taken by my ancestors out of Africa 150.000 years ago, starting, within the territory known today as Ethiopia and Kenya. The Map also shows the different genetic mutations, as a result of adaptation, to local climate changes
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Human mitochondrial DNA Haplogroup. see Sykes (2003) 8

(from L1, to L2, L3, N and then A Haplogroups). Studies suggest that genetic mutations such as lighter skin, softer and lighter hair could have taken about 20.000 years to develop, particularly as a result to the exposure of the last glaciations period (Sykes, 2003).

Mitochondrial DNA Test, Genographic Project, National Geographic

Note: Genoma Project Mitocondrial DNA Test Susana Martinez Restrepo taken in 2010

My Haplogroup A is believed to have started in East Siberia as a result of a genetic mutation and today it constitutes the most common group in East Asia, among Eskimos, eight percent of Japanese and most ethnic groups of Central and South America. Although it seems that passing is my thing, I definitely do not look Chinese, Eskimo, or Native American. Nevertheless, in an imaginary world ruled by geneticists and with only DNA categories, most of my family and I, Eskimos, Chinese and Native Americans and Colombian Indigenous would have to mark X under the same survey box.

Conclusion
The mixedness, or mestizaje, as well as the social (colonial) construction of history had deeply affected how I perceive myself and how others perceive me. However, identity and ethnicity also change according to locations; and in my case, even during the different seasons of the year. Passing across ethnicities and identities is easy simply because ethnic categories are social and historical constructions often used to classify the other, the different and the unknown. For people like me or for most members of my family, passing is easy because we got whiter. In addition to my Amerindian Mitochondrial DNA, our family has a long genealogy of showing a long process of mixing, not only with indigenous but also with Sephardic Jews and Non-Spanish Europeans.

Dana, educator, participant of the Maria de Salazar collective action art project (by Jorge Restrepo, 2013).

While during the construction of nations-states in 19th century Europe, Jews were once considered the other (Sand, 2011), today they are considered white both in Europe and in the United States. I n Israel, Arabs are currently the other and the enemy, when only 60 years ago they were the masters of their own land. Mexicans, once inhabitants of todays California, Texas and New Mexico were defined during the 19 th century first as white, then as Chicanos for finally becoming Hispanics/Latinos for ethnic classification purposes of the United States. Even Irish and Italian immigrants in the United States were once considered

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a separate (and discriminated) minority. The Hutus and Tutsis killed each othe r during Rwandas genocide in 1994 in part as a result of hatred, discrimination and hierarchies created by racial categories established during the Belgium colonial times (Mandani, 2001). The genetic truth is that we all left (and stayed in) Africa about 50.000 years ago. My ancestors travelled out of Africa, became what today is known as Amerindian/Indigenous, got mixed with Spanish and lighter on a (most likely) racist effort to whiten up10. But lets not fool ourselves; the reality is that we all come from Africa! And for you, in your country, based on your own social (colonial) construction of history, perception and stereotypes, whom do I pass for?

References
Carvajal-Carmona, L.G, et al. (2000), Strong Amerind/White Sex Bias and a Possible Sephardic Contribution among the Founders of a Population in Northwest Colombia. Cunin, E. (2004), Identidades a flor de piel. Lo negro entre apariencias y pertenencias: mestizaje y categoras raciales en Cartagena (Colombia), Bogot: IFEA-ICANH-Uniandes-Observatorio del Caribe Colombiano, 2003. Cunin E, (2003), La politique ethnique entre altrit et strotype. Regards sur les lections de mars 2002 en Colombie", Problmes dAmrique Latine, n 48, printemps. Estupin, J.P (2006), Afro Colombianos y el Censo de 2005: Elementos preliminares para el anlisis del proceso censal con la poblacin afro Colombiana. La Revista del Centro Andino de Altos Estudios, CANDANE N 1, Bogot Colombia. Fernandes, F. (1964) A integrao do negro na sociedade de classes: estudo das relaes raciais no Brasil, Sao Paulo, Dominus Editora e editora da USP.
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Note by Jorge Restrepo: Susana Martinez is a descendant of Maria de Salazar.

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Freyre, G. (1933) Casa Grande & Senzala: formao da famlia brasileira sob o regime de economia patriarcal. Rio de Janeiro: Maia & Schmidt. Gonzlez Ochoa, 1960). La Raza Antioquea. In El pueblo Antioqueo. Medelln, Universidad de Antioquia. Haslip-Viera, G. & Baver, S. L Eds. (1997), Latinos in New York: Communities in Transition, University Notre Dame Press. Herrera Avila, M. (2001), Las divisiones poltico-administrativas del virreinato de la Nueva Granada a finales del perodo colonial, Historia Crtica N 22, 2001 Knight, A. (1990). Racism, revolution and indigenismo: Mexico 1910-1940. In the Idea of Race in Latin America, 1970-1940, Graham, R (ed.), 70-113. Austin: University of Texas Press. Marx, A (1998), Making the Race and the Nation: a Comparison of the United States, South Africa and Brazil. Cambridge University Press. Mamdani, M. (2001) When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and Genocide in Rwanda, Princeton. Sand, S. (2010), Comment le people juif fut invent, Champs Essais. Sanders, E. R. (1969), The Hamitic Hypothesis: Its Origin and Functions in Time Perspective," Journal of African History, 10 (1969), 521-532. Skidmore, T. (1974), Black Into White Race and Nationality in Brazilian Thought, Oxford University Press, New York. Sykes, B (2003). Mitochondrial DNA and human history. The Human Genome. Wellcome Trust. Retrieved 5 February 2012.

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Wade, P (1994), Representation and power of Black Colombians, IN Social Construction of the Past: representation as power. Ed George Bond and Angela Gilliam.

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