Racism in Central America against the Indigenous Population - Essay Example

Racism in Central America against the Indigenous Population The problem of racism is still an issue of the day for Central America. One major part of this is the issue of racism and racialization concerning primarily indigenous population. Racisms have histories and are embedded within the processes of racialization which organize racisms around specific signifiers most especially, colour and physiogamy and culture. Racisms is "regimes of powe"' organized via institutional frameworks especially within the state as part of the disciplinary power of state agencies like the police, but which is subject to ongoing contestations. Central American politicians make a vital point in this respect in relation to visibility and its importance in disciplinary modes -racialized populations are always highly visible, marked out within the public sphere and within the discourses that construct the state and the nation. It is to the complex of state/nation articulations. Taking into account the historical background it should be noted that European racisms are marked by similarity and diversity expressed in the Spanish and Portuguese legacy in a history of the contestations between Christianity, Judaism and Islam and the presence of settled and large populations of black African and Jewish peoples. Spanish and Portuguese imperialism reinforced a sense of the specificities of European identities, however fictitious, and amplified the process of Otherization in relation to the indigenous populations and those enslaved and transported to Central America. The point as Stuart Hall writes: "The story of European identity is often told as if it had no exterior. But this tells us more about how cultural identities are constructed as 'imagined communities', through the marking of difference with others than it does about the actual relations of unequal exchange and uneven development through which a common European identity was forged (Hall, 1987). Such a process has had a profound impact on the cultural development of Central America not least upon the ways in which gender identities and relations are forged by racisms in Central American societies, whether in the form of the hegemonic gendering or the subaltern masculinities and femininities associated with subordinate groups. Despite the particular forms of mestization and cultural syncretism in this region, the prejudice and racial discrimination that people continue to experience negatively affect primarily the native indigenous population comprised of more than 80 indigenous groups that include at least 12 million Mexicans and 6 million Central Americans. In Northern Mexico indigenous people are a small minority: they are practically absent from the northeast but, in the northwest and central borderlands. While Mexicans are universally proud of their indigenous background, contemporary indigenous Mexicans are still the target of discrimination and outright racism. The most widespread religion at the present time is known as the Native American Church (Fortes de Leff, Aco, 2000). At the Conference held in 2000 it was announced that: " among the indisputable, deep-seated causes of discrimination in our societies, it is important to acknowledge structural inequality, the denial of culture and the lack of opportunities affecting not only ethnic minorities but also the low-income mestizo majorities" (Final Document, 2000). The reason for this discrepancy may be the Mexican government's policy of using linguistic, rather than racial, criteria as the basis of classification. In the states of Chiapas and Oaxapa and in the interior of the Yucatan peninsula the majority of the population is indigenous. Large indigenous minorities are also present in the central regions of Mexico (Fortes de Leff, Aco, 2000). Gender cannot be separated from nor lived outside racisms and the processes of racialization in Central America. In Costa-Rica and Guatemala the women's movement is crosscut by racism as well as class. Thus, opportunities for women in the modernizing period from the 1960s onwards were opportunities for 'whiter', urban women. By contrast for most working women concentrated in domestic service, who tend to be of African descent, these opportunities remain remote. Constructing 'the Other' has, in part, been about the ways in which the diversity of colonial peoples has been re-presented in relation to racial categorizations. In Central American states, especially Guatemala, this has been organized around an ideological configuration known as 'racial democracy', which is, in effect, the process of 'whitening' through miscegenation. Thus the figure of the mulatto woman becomes crucial both as a sign of transgression and of the coincidence of gendered and racialized identities (Molyneux, 1985). On the other hand, rights are particularly difficult to operationalize in legal politics if the object of these rights is to protect indigenous identity. Since rights language is usually attached to the idea that individuals should be protected, it tends not to work well when applied to collectives. It also gives rise to conflict when a collective asserts its rights over individuals who also make rights-based claims. That is, to assign self-government and jurisdictional authority to a group of indigenous population in order to protect their culture raises the spectre of insoluble conflict over rights. There is no reason to believe that autonomous self-governing groups will restrict their governance solely to preserving traditional economic activities such as hunting, fishing and trapping, especially when the importance of such activities is seen as subordinate to the goal of maintaining a unique cultural identity. This goal might very well require that the indigenous population attempt to curtail individual rights. This hypothetical danger is a troublesome commonplace in the proceedings of international meetings of indigenous peoples (Hall, 1987). It should be noted that the emergence of a large mixed intermediate group has established the myth of a Central American 'racial democracy' based on the predominance of the mestizo and the mulatto and in which racial marks are no barriers to marriage and social mobility. It is important to recognize, however, that the mechanisms of racial and social vertical mobility that exist in Central American societies draw their dynamic from an attempt to escape blackness that has been and continues to be negatively evaluated, and thus to whiten oneself and eventually the population as a whole. It provides a crucial link between 'whitening' and national identity. For the black population the 'escape' from blackness is marked by violence, a violence of distance and disavowal. It is not surprising, therefore, if leading Black intellectuals attack the notion of 'racial democracy' and seek to provide a new narrative which offers a central place to those of African descent. 'The enslaved African became a 'citizen' as stated under the law, but he also became a 'nigger', cornered from all sides'. The contradictions posed by this statement foreground the chasm between the rhetoric of citizenship and the reality of racism in the African diaspora. The attempt is to silence millions of Central American indigenous people with the illusion that, by solving the dichotomy between rich and poor or between worker and employer, all racial problems would be automatically resolved. This position of the Eurocentric ruling elite was taken to the extreme of elaborating an ideology called 'racial democracy' whose goal was to proclaim the virtues of Central American race relations, presenting them as an example to be followed by the rest of the world. Leaders of indigenous peoples across the Americas are in the process of forging a collective subject from great diversity - a diversity which has been ignored in the very language that has been used to describe indigenous peoples. Some leaders have coined the term 'forth world' for the fate of their peoples. The language of indigenous people is a pejorative term used to denote backwardness and thereby marginalization which is currently contested. These connotations are part of a form of racism which denied diversity and specificity and re-cast cultural attributes as negative, a form of cultural racism which fixes on difference and thereby constructs members of the indigenous peoples as 'Others', par excellence. This was made apparent in the ways in which ethnic identities were subsumed, and still are, within and between economic identities, a political-economic class identity with the ethnic referent made invisible. Peoples designated by their labour-power both within discourses of the right and the left. However, such designations could be reappropriated and used to define a politics of collective subjects in relation to resources, land, capital and workers rights. The symbolic use of 'peasants' and 'workers' is also part of public language in relation to the construction of the nations of Central America. Nationalist discourses are generally organized around very specific ethnicities which privilege a Eurocentric account of the nation against the indigenous voices that have to fight for a place in the nation. The terrain on which they choose to fight is ethnically defined while it recognizes the economic importance of land and labour. The situation in Central America, one small part of the whole, expresses the complexities of ethnic identities and claims to authenticity. For instance, the reform in Guatemala defines discrimination as "any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on gender, race, ethnicity, language, age, religion, economic situation, illness, civil state or on any other motive, reason or circumstance that impedes or makes it difficult for a person, group of persons or associations to exercise a right" (Central America report, 2002). Still there is a great debate over this interpretation, as many indigenous people suppose that it does not reflect international law against racism. Both Central America discourses - rights and participation - do not serve the interests of aboriginal peoples. The identity upon which their rights are based is an objective category assigned by courts which assesses linguistic and anthropological evidence before determining the degree of autonomy, the shape of local federalism which will be held suspended over national groups. There is also in play a racialized language in terms of the category of 'white' which implies power and a specific colonial heritage but in speaking of and for themselves do not position themselves within a binary opposition, rather cultural diversity is foregrounded. It cannot be otherwise due to the cultural, linguistic and economic differences between the indigenous peoples who are defined in opposition as one voice, but a voice of plurality. Thus, the demand for a plurination is one that recognizes Central American identity is 'fictitious' but relates to a history and geographical space organized by the state. Against this homogenizing identity are a set of claims to place and specific cultural identities that cannot be, and will not be, incorporated. This is not a simple matter of old traditions against the modernizing national project which defines the opposition as backward; rather than forward-looking (Fortes de Leff, Aco, 2000). For instance, white working class masculinities highlighting the ways in which in marking their own territory young men mark it against the 'alien' and the 'Other' which fuels the racism of working class urban life and can lead to physical aggression between groups over the defence of the neighbourhood. This suggests an alternative understanding of the 'nationalism of the neighbourhood' which, while it promotes a sense of belonging and exclusivity, does so on the basis of a more progressive politics which seeks to mobilize women. These categories of mestizo are tied to the urban world, to the centre rather than the margins or hinterland of rurality. Because they are given an urban location they are also articulated with the sale of labour power and the notion of the 'worker', the modern worker. While women workers are a crucial part of the labour force they are often invisible in relation to formal sector employment. Thus, citizenship is constructed as an economic category which is highly gendered. In addition, the constructions made by language distinguish women and workers, peasants and workers. But, there is an important twist to the story of the urban setting of citizenship and this relates to the development of the 'nationalism of the neighbourhood', the relationship between locale and the construction of an imagined community at the local level (Final Document, 2000). It is possible to conclude that consequently the racism against indigenous people articulated in Central America within the modernizing process is an 'official' identity contested by popular nationalisms in counter-hegemonic ways. The contestations over the nation are taking place within a social formation organized on democratic principles which themselves invite contestation. While this is not a participatory but a representative democracy in which all those eligible are bound to vote, the rhetoric of democracy is bound to conceptions of collectivities in competition for power, represented by individual and collective subjects. References 1. Central America report. Vol. XXIX, #39. Available at: www.inforpressca.com/CAR/homes/h2939.pdf 2. Hall, S. "Minimal slaves", I.C.A. Document 6, Institute of Contamporary Arts, London, 1987. 3. Final Document of Mexican and Central American forum on Racism. November 9-10, 2000. Available at: www.antirasistisk-senter.no/infobank/fn_konferanse/dokumenter/latinamerika.html 4. Fortes de Leff, J. & Espejel Aco, E. Cultural myths and social relationships in Mexico: A context for therapy. Journal of Family Psychotheapy, 11(4), 2000, pp. 79-92. 5. Molyneux, M. 'Mobilisation without Emanicipation Women's Interests, the State and Revolution in Nicaragua', Feminist Studies 11 (2), 1985, pp. 227-54. Read More