Part of a full day workshop at Bethune-Cookman University "Afro-Latino Adaptations:Images from the Caribbean and Brazil"

1. Rosana Resende
Beyond One Drop: Racial
Formation in Latin America
Center for Latin American Studies
University of Flrorida

2. Overview
• History and racial formation
• Latin America vs. U.S.
• Discourses and dominance
• Multicultural Latin America
• Gendering Mestizaje

3. Let’s talk about “race”
• Race as a social and subjective construct
– Categories get reworked
– Not experienced the same way everywhere
• Race as conflated with ethnicity
– Racialization based on other differences
• Race as it relates to biology
– Where does heritage fit in?
– Human variation
• Don’t apply US model!

4. Latin America vs. U.S.
Latin America
• Miscegenation
• Full siblings, different
• Race as fluid (color)
• Social, geographical
• Colonization by men
• Mixed nation
• Integrated (though not
evenly) societies
• Whitening policies
U.S.
• Hypodescent
• Full siblings, same
• Race as fixed (race)
• Biological
• Colonization by families
• White nation
• Discrete spheres for
whites and non-whites
• Anti-miscegenation ,
segregation

5. Predominant Others
• Brazil, Caribbean, Colombia,
Venezuela, Panama: Afro-
descendants
• Mesoamerica, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador,
Southern Cone: Indigenous
• Other “Others” include
Arabs, Asians

6. History and racial formation
• Male-led colonization
• Extractive, labor needs
• Land concentration and hierarchy

7. Triangular Trade

8. Colonial Period
• Indigenous and African slaves
• 350 years, 10+ million Africans
• Complex system of categorization based
on race (e.g., Mexican castas)
• Legacy of these labels
• Specific occupations and social
roles for mixed heritage
• “Erotic democracy” (Goldstein)
still privileged white males

9. Transatlantic Slave Trade
Timeline
• 1400s: Portugal begins trading for African slaves
• 1761: Portugal abolishes slavery in Portugal and in Portuguese
possessions in India by decree
• 1804: Haitian Independence
• 1807: Slave trading abolished in British Empire.
• 1808: Importation of slaves into the US prohibited
• 1811: Spain abolishes slavery at home and in colonies except Cuba,
PR, and Santo Domingo
• 1818: Treaty between Britain, Spain and Portugal to abolish slave
trade
• 1862: Cuba abolishes slave trade
• 1865 United States abolishes slavery with the 13th Amendment
• 1869 Portugal abolishes slavery in the African colonies
• 1873 Slavery abolished in Puerto Rico
• 1886 Slavery abolished in Cuba
• 1888 Brazil abolishes slavery

10. Mejorando la raza…

11. Hybridity, Purity, and Honor
• L.A. and Caribbean: hybrid nations
– Appropriated bodies
– Appropriated discourses
• Purity: the white woman’s legacy
• Machismo, marianismo, and purity
• Blanqueamiento as modernization
• Miscegenation as top-down,
paternalistic

12. Racial Consciousness
• Lack of racial solidarity and comfort in the
“middle” zone labeled an “escape hatch”
• Attempts to depoliticize race highlight
general racial tolerance and intermarriage,
multi-shaded households, and personal
narratives of multiracial ancestry
• Efforts to politicize race point to large scale
studies revealing that whites remain
disproportionately more visible in politics and
media, control more resources, and enjoy
more opportunities for advancement

13. “Subtle” Racism?
• The prejudice of no-prejudice
• Tolerance in personal relationships that
gloss over difference
• Racial stereotypes as acceptable humor
• Conflation of social class with color,
features
• Similarities to issues within African-
American communities (features, hair
texture, color, and social class as ways of
distinguishing)

14. One of these things…

15. Discourses and dominance
• The Cosmic Race, Racial Democracy,
and other myths
• Nation-building and race: valorizing
the non-European
• Non-white actors as national heroes
• Cultural mestizaje/mulatice: white goal
• Escape hatches and deradicalized
race consciousness

16. Identity-Based Movements

17. Multicultural Latin America
• Fragmented agendas, no longer class
• Rise of identity-based movements
• Different engagement with the state
manifested through:
– Local, discrete, or targeted movements
– External, transnational orientation
– Folklorization of indigeneity—engendered and
performative (tourism)

18. Cultural Mestizaje/Mulatice

19. Gendering Mestizaje
• Wade: gender inequality integrated
• Encounter: reframed feminine roles
• Goldstein’s Erotic democracy?
Mulatice and Marginality
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A
2o4TYf5qjg

20. Thank you!
Rosana Resende
University of Florida
Center for Latin American Studies