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The Black Experience in Latin

America and the Spanish Caribbean
Final Exam

Jonathan Lee
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#1 Popular Culture & Racial Politics

Popular culture in Latin America is indelibly shaped by African traditions

originating from the extensive Atlantic slave trade, which captured millions of people

primarily from West and Central Africa. Latin American nations have both adopted and

suppressed expressions of African cultures with implications in racial politics. Whereas

mass TV and print media largely exclude non-whites from positive portrayals and ignore

their significant cultural contributions, contemporary art forms like Hip-Hop provide

an opportunity for Black empowerment, space for discourse about social issues, and

transnational linkages between African-Americans and Afro-Cubans. Popular culture

has helped to politicize, mobilize, and raise the consciousness of Blacks while also

perpetuating negative stereotypes and internalized racism which hinder the development

of Black identity and possibilities for political group-building.

The rapid emergence of Hip-Hop culture in Latin American nations, particularly

Cuba, has politicized and raised the consciousness of Afro-Latinos. In Cuba, economic

difficulties following the collapse of the Soviet Union shifted popular participation

from breakdancing/bboying to rapping, as young Cubans primarily from black working-

class backgrounds sought a way to express their discontent with social and economic

conditions and connect with others in similar positions. Rap became the primary political

voice of Black Cuban youth who were largely excluded by the government and suffered

disproportionately from economic restructuring (Cuban HipHop: Desde El Principio,

Vanessa Diaz). Transnational Black consciousness was facilitated by interaction with

rappers from the United States who espoused socially conscious messages focusing on

political issues and conflicts, such as Common, Mos Def, Dead Prez, and The Roots.
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These collaborations were formalized by Black August concerts which brought Cuban

artists to America and vice-versa, emphasizing the shared struggles of both Afro-Cubans

and African-Americans and forging a cohesive Black identity in opposition to dominant

structures of oppression by the government and elites.

Other forms of music can also serve to confront racial oppression or at least draw

attention to it, although they are sometimes also guilty of perpetuating “problematic

stereotypes (Sawyer, p. 91).” Joe Arroyo’s Salsa music imposes a patriarchal view of

women while also asserting Black identity, a critical element in exposing the myth of

racial democracy, or the denial of racism to prove racial equality. By highlighting Black

struggles and unique experiences through the condemnation of violence enacted upon a

Black married couple by their Spanish master, Arroyo provides a form of resistance that

reaches a broad audience and stimulates the development of racial identity.

At the same time, other elements of popular culture subdue the efficacy of

racial politics to generate progress for disenfranchised Black populations. Mass media

often reifies the ideal of whitening and reinforcing Eurocentric beauty standards, as the

majority of positive television roles are filled by blonde Whites. Non-whites and Black

culture are routinely ignored or represented in a negative ways in all forms of media,

perpetuating racist ideas. For example, the popular Mexican comic book character

Memin Penguin is a stereotypical caricature who is “constantly bullied because of his

physical ‘ugliness’ (Muhammad, p. 196). Similarly, Telles describes the overwhelming

dominance of European beauty ideals and white models in print advertising and the

glaring deficiency of Brown and Black models (p. 156), which can lead to internalized

racism among non-whites and distancing from Black identity and consciousness-building.
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#2 Black Politics

Throughout Latin America, slaves languishing under brutal conditions formed

freedom movements, rebellions, and runaway slave communities, all of which were the

earliest manifestations of Black politics. The practice of Black politics, or the organized

political and social mobilization of people of African descent, continues to challenge the

systems which subjugate Blacks into inferior positions across Latin America. However,

the extent and influence of Black politics varies in degrees across different nations.

Perhaps the most embedded challenge to Black politics has been the legacy of

blanqueamiento, or whitening. Racial mixture between whites and non-whites was seen

as a method of “eliminat[ing] the black population, eventually resulting in a white or

mostly white Brazilian population (Telles, p. 28)” Whiteness affords social mobility and

increased access to opportunities, and Blacks themselves often choose to “escape the

more stigmatized non-white categories (Telles, p. 98)” by self-identifying as the more

ambiguous term Moreno, illustrating the prevalent desire to distance oneself from Black

identity and its disadvantages “Brownness” can effectively “be a means of escape from

blackness” (Andrews, p. 157) as dark-skinned people engage in contemporary attempts

to “pass” as Brown or white to combat persistent racial inequality in socioeconomic

factors like income, residential segregation, and education. This disparages blackness

and undermines the appeal of a “popular negro identity,” (Telles, p. 235) rendering Black

political participation more symbolic in nature due to extremely limited participation.

Dzidzienyo characterizes Black political participation as more symbolic in nature arguing

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that “the small ‘victories’ against discrimination…do not extend to an opening up of the

rest of Brazilian society to a more forthright discussion of…race relations (p. 142).”

Black politics has also been confined by the myth of Racial Democracy, or the

denial of the existence of present-day racism, which dismisses the plight of Afro-Cubans

who seek genuine instead of symbolic equality. Sawyer describes how “the myth of racial

equality sought to hinder the development of a black consciousness and black demands.

Blacks who did not buy into the myth of racial equality were attacked as ungrateful,

dangerous, against the cause of national freedom and unity, and worthy of societal

repression (Sawyer, p. 41).” After the violent suppression of the Partido Independiente

de Color in 1912 by the Cuban government, no independent Black movement has

materialized (Sawyer, Black Politics Lecture (12/3/2008)). Similarly, Blacks who

mobilized under the Castro regime were condemned as counterrevolutionary and Black

activists were singled out for exile and incarceration, contradicting the Castro regime’s

ideologies of racial equality. In essence, Black political participation in Cuba was used

as a tool for the Castro regime rather than a significant source of Black demands for

equality. Black involvement and support of the regime was held up as an example of

Cuba’s moral superiority and a critique of the United States: “The regime’s ideological

battle against racism was about combating U.S. imperialism and capitalism more than it

was about any real domestic agenda (Sawyer, p. 63).”

Despite these challenges, the mobilization of Afro-Latinos around shared race

and identity has resulted in significant improvements which continue to chip away at

centuries-old racial hierarchies. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, widespread opposition

to military dictatorship and the reestablishment of civil rule led to the emergence
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of multiple black civil rights organizations in Brazil, such as the Movimento Negro

Unificado, which led a rally of 2,000 Blacks opposing racial discrimination. These

groups were successful in preserving Black culture and identity, as well as pressuring the

government to enact “important antiracist and antisexist laws in the 1988 Constitution

(Telles, p. 50)” with the express intent of protecting the interests of disempowered

groups. More recently, the efforts of Black organizations have manifested in local

governmental and private affirmative action programs which have helped to increase

Black access to employment and education. On a global scale, Black politics in Brazil

achieved international recognition at the 2001 World Conference on Racism in Durban,

where the involvement of multiple delegates from Black-movement non-governmental

organizations precipitated increased media coverage and corresponding public awareness

about racism in Brazil (Telles, p. 71). Black leaders were also able to form transnational

linkages by forging a “common identity with black-rights leaders and organization in the

United States, with whom they shared valuable political and legal strategies (Telles, p.

76),” spreading their struggles beyond national borders and forming the basis of lasting

relationships. In Colombia, rural Blacks successfully lobbied the government to protect

their land rights and preserve their culture (Andrews, p. 184). These achievements all

signify that Black politics has achieved much greater significance in Brazil, which

has the largest population of Black people outside Africa, and to a smaller extent in

Colombia. However, other nations like Cuba remain inextricably tied to the myth of

racial democracy, severely limiting possibilities for widespread political mobilization of

Black populations around specific Black interests.

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#4 Comparisons between Brazil and the United States

African-Americans and Afro-Brazilians share a common history of slavery

and the brutality and continual inequalities which arose from decades of oppression.

However, divergent rates of intermarriage between Whites and non-whites, as well

as dissimilar levels of residential segregation, indicate that Black populations in these

countries experience varying degrees of social and physical distance from Whites.

Race relations in the United States were and continue to be primarily characterized by

a strict Black-White binary, whereas race relations in Brazil are largely built upon the

concept of race as a “floating signifier,” (Stuart Hall, Race, the Floating Signifier (1996)

) or the ambiguous definition of race, which often allows Brazilians to self-identify as

whatever race is most beneficial to them. The unspoken system of pigmentocracy, or

a racial hierarchy which places lighter-skinned people above darker-skinned people,

encourages Afro-Brazilians to “pass” as white or Brown. This helps to explain why Afro-

Brazilians are more likely to engage in horizontal relations across class as a means of

social advancement through whitening than African-Americans, who still exist at one

end of a “wide racial gap” in the United States (Telles, p. 223) and are marked as Black

regardless of mixed heritage.

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Brazilians often point to comparatively high rates of intermarriage as proof of

racial democracy, which I exposed as a myth in the preceding essays. Interpretations of

these higher rates have ranged from the legacy of miscegenation as a result of power

differentials between European slave-owners and powerless Black slaves to more benign

explanations that Portuguese tended to have “greater tolerance for nonwhites because

they had lived alongside the dark-skinned Moors for centuries (Telles, p. 174).” Other

historic explanations note that Portuguese colonists were overwhelmingly single men,

compared to entire families in the United States (Telles, p. 174). However, all can agree

that the empirical evidence is striking compared to the United States, as 19.1% and

15.9% of Brazilian Black men and women were married to whites in 1991, compared to

4.4% and 2.3% of Black men women in the United States in 1992 (Telles, p. 175-176).

This indicates that racial barriers are much more static and enduring in the United States

(Telles, p. 179), although the tendency for intermarriage to occur between lower-class

whites and Blacks suggests that strong class barriers still exist.

Perhaps the strongest measure of continued social distance in the United States is

the prevalence of residential segregation. Blacks and Whites rarely live in close

proximity to one another regardless of class background, whereas there is a greater range

of “interracial exposure experiences across Brazilian urban areas (Telles, p. 314) between

white and non-whites, predominantly those of the same class. In the United States,

organizations like the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation facilitated white flight from

inner cities to suburbs and also instituted the practice of redlining, or denying loans and

mortgage capital to Blacks (Sawyer, Segregation Lecture (11/17/2008)). This confined

Blacks and other minorities to the inner-city while expediting the growth of white
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suburbia. Restrictive covenants prohibited whites from reselling their homes to non-

whites, further perpetuating residential segregation and the decay of inner-city minority

neighborhoods. In contrast, these forms of blatant discrimination were not practiced in

Brazil (Telles, p. 206). Many low-income populations in Brazil live in favelas (many of

which began as liberated slave communities) on the outskirts of the central city, which is

predominantly white. Although there is evidence of racial segregation in favelas

themselves, Telles’ dissimilarity index, which “measures evenness in the distribution of

racial and household-income groups,” demonstrates that Black-white residential

segregation in U.S. urban areas is much more extreme than it is in Brazil, in some cases

twice as high (Telles, p. 206). Residential proximity affords more opportunities for

interracial friendship and marriage, which occurs more frequently between low-income

populations.

While higher degrees of intermarriage and residential proximity may imply that

Blacks in Brazil are more integrated with Whites, African-Americans and Afro-

Brazilians face similar challenges and obstacles to empowerment. Racial segregation in

Brazil and the United States leads to unequal access to high-quality education and public

services like health care and police protection, which perpetuates low socioeconomic

status and decreased life chances for Black people. Blacks are frequently the victims of

racial profiling and even physical abuse at the hands of police, as Black street children in

Brazil are harassed and even targeted for murder (Bus 174, Jose Padilha). In both the

United States and Brazil, blacks are overrepresented in the prison system and

unemployment rates, lagging far behind whites in income and educational attainment.

The onset of progressive Affirmative Action programs in Brazil have helped to increase
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Black representation and access to formerly exclusive institutions, significant inequalities

in the United States remain decades after similar programs were implemented.

Bibliography

Andrews, G.R. (2004). Afro-Latin America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Diaz, V. (2006). Cuban HipHop: Desde El Principio.

Dzidzienyo, A. (2005). The Changing World of Brazilian Race Relations? In Dzidzienyo,

A. & Oboler, S. (Eds.), Neither Enemies Nor Friends( 142). New York, NY:
Palgrave MacMillan.

Hall, S. (1996). Race, the Floating Signifier.

Muhamad, J.S. (1995). Mexico. In Minority Rights Group, No Longer Invisible (176).
London, United Kingdom: Minority Rights Publications.

Padilha, J. (2002). Bus 174.

Sawyer, M.Q. (12/3/2008). Black Politics Lecture.

Sawyer, M.Q. (2005). Du Bois’s Double Consciousness versus Latin American

Exceptionalism. SOULS 7 (3-4), 91

Sawyer, M.Q. (2006) Racial Politics in Post-Revolutionary Cuba. New York, NY:
Cambridge University Press.

Sawyer, M.Q. (11/17/2008) Segregation Lecture.

Telles, E. E. (2004) Race in Another America. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton

University Press.