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The Black Americas Congratulations for bringing to light inyourFebruaryreport [Vol. XXV, No. 41 (an)issue long neglected by scholars of Latin America-the denial of pervasive racial discrimination throughout the region. Your otherwise excellent documentation of the problem's massive proportions was weakened only by your reliance upon analyses of historical patterns, and relative lack of attention to contemporary demographics and other socioeconomic indicators of racial inequality. As an aside, a similar trend characterizes scholarship on AM-can Brazil, partially due to the unavailability of adequate socioeconomic data disaggregated by race. This has hampered the efforts of black-movement activists to convince legislators and public officials of the urgency of the problem. In his analysis of Brazil's black-consciousness movement, John Burdick rightly concludes that popular African- Brazilian cultural practices-samba, condombld and umbanda-could serve as an even richer source of energy for Brazil's black movement. But I found too simplistic his location of Brazil's "blackest" masses at the margins of the "mulatto-based" African-Brazilian movement. Burdick's insistence on a divisive color line within the movement is neither useful nor accurate. A number of darker-skinned blacks (and dark black women, I might add) are now at the helm of several of Brazil's most important African-Brazilian organizations, among them the Unified Black Movement (MNU) and the Center for Studies and Assistance to Marginalized Populations (CEAP). Moreover, the election to Congress of darker-skinned Benedita da Silva and Carlos Alberto Cao in 1986 would undermine Burdick's claim that mulattos dominate movement leadership. (Da Silva was elected to a second term in 1990 and is a leading candidate this year in Rio's mayoral race.) While his analysis of overall trends in the movement is helpful, Burdick's limited and often outdated field data weaken his conclusions about the effectiveness of Brazil's contemporary black movement, particularly with regard to the movement's impact on public officials and policy debate. Thanks to the leadership of Da Silva and Cao, racial discrimination, abusive sterilization of black women and violation of the rights of black minors have been outlawed, Also, a number of state and municipal government agencies jointly organized an international seminar on discrimination and public policy in which international affirmative-action strategies were debated. And, in conjunction with these agencies, several black non-governmental organizations are in the process of formulating proposals for legislation to ensure equal-opportunity employment. Rather than dissecting what he perceives to be color and class barriers within the black movement, Burdick should draw readers' attention to the movement's groundbreaking policy initiatives, Rebecca Reichmann Ford Foundation Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Jaime Arocha Rodriguez's well-intentioned article, "Afro-Colombia Denied," in the February report merits the following observations regarding my supposed betrayal of black aspirations at the Constituent Assembly: I did not participate in any preliminary sessions of the Constituent Assembly in which a compromise proposal was agreed to by Indian and black organizations, and thus I was not committed to any specific position during the Assembly itself. When Lorenzo Muelas, an Indian leader and delegate to the Assembly, spoke, I stood up with him to demonstrate my solidarity, in view of the danger that powerful vested interests might deny rights not only to blacks but also to Indians. Obviously Muelas and I could not ignore the "ethnicity" of black groups. But we, like all the concerned lawyers, advisers and academics such as Arocha, had a hard time arriving at a legal definition of "ethnic group" or "ethnicity" to be inscribed in the Constitution. Delegates from the M- 19 Democratic Alliance, including myself, did challenge "binary calculations" in ethnicity, and succeeded in getting Article VII approved, which recognizes the pluri-eth- CONTiNUED ON PAGE 15CONTINUED FROM P.2 nic and multicultural character of Co- lombia. This article was one of our main initiatives. In view of the many obstacles in the Assembly, black groups scored a clear victory when Transitory Article 55 was approved. It acknowledges, for the first time in Colombian history, land rights for black riverine communities in the Pacific region and elsewhere. I intro- duced this article myself, and two In- dian deputies, among others, defended it. The Colombian government is pre- senting the required draft law to the Congress. Our speedy approval of the rights and autonomy of the black"raizal" communities of the Caribbean islands of San Andr6s, Providencia and Santa Catalina also belies the claim that we opposed the blacks. To defend black groups' land rights in "vacant lands," as Arocha advo- cates, is a permanent task, which re- quires articulate mass actions. Such a movement is starting to take shape in the Choc6 region thanks to the com- bined and harmonious efforts of local black and Indian groups, and it has the full support of the M-19 Democratic Alliance. commission was never constituted, it never met, and no cases were ever heard." Supreme-court hearings begun in October, 1991 continue at a slow pace. On the advice of his lawyer, Hugo Espafia has refused to testify until his release. He argues that expanding on his previous testimony will only impli- catehimfurther. Meanwhile, the weekly demonstrations in the plaza continue, but an incident earlier this year seemed an ominous portent of the changing political climate. On January 8, police in full riot gear surrounded hundreds of peaceful supporters marking the fourth anniversary of the disappearance. The police threw tear-gas canisters into the crowd and confiscated the demonstra- tors' placards and photographs. This new wave of police repression is seen as a sign that the government is growing weary of the persistent clamor raised by the Restrepo case. Now that the rightist government of Sixto Durfn Of course, the blacks could have gained more from the Constituent As- sembly had they organized more effec- tively as a pressure group or movement. Yet, for all the above reasons, it is impossible to accept Arocha's judg- ment that blacks were "disadvantaged," or his insinuation that they were slighted or denied in the new Constitution by the Indians or by me. Orlando Fals Borda Secretary General National Commission for Territorial Revision Bogotdi, Colombia Jaime Arocha Rodriguez responds: Neither Orlando Fals Borda's per- sonal defense of the concept of political autonomy, nor the fact that he did not take part in the preliminary meetings, can excuse his decision to ignore the compromise proposal submitted by the Subcommission on Equality and Multi- Ethnic Identity. As an official delegate, he could not have been unaware of it. In the preparatory sessions, as in the Assembly itself, no one had any diffi- culty recognizing the ethnicity of Indi- ans. And if defining the concept in legal terms was a significant obstacle, why didn't they consult the constitutions of Nicaragua or Brazil? Those countries resolved this question in 1987 and 1988, Ball6n was elected in July, many expect a legal loophole will be found to allow the ten jailed police officials to go free while awaiting trial, and indeed the trial could be delayed for years. Pedro Restrepo remains cautiously optimistic: "The court will march to a rhythm according to the pressure we put on it. In its own way, it's moving. When people first saw us in the plaza, they thought we were crazy. 'What can you do against the police or the state?' they asked. I said I don't know, but at least we are going to stick it out here. They covered it up, and we are uncovering it. And something did happen. The com- mission was formed, and after its re- port was released we began to get financial and moral support from many sectors-artists, unions, even the Quito Chamber of Commerce contributed money for the legal fund. If we keep up the same energy as the case goes through the courts, things will continue to hap- pen." respectively. In the preparatory sessions, the Indians' legal advisers gave ample evidence of their familarity with these texts. What's more, the representatives of black organizations and African- American studies experts spoke at length on the subject. Fals claims that in the Constitution, multi-ethnicity encompasses both Indi- ans and blacks. Then why is the charter so specific with respect to the territories and political representation of Indians, while the rights of blacks are relegated to a transitory article? The answer may well have something to do with the widespread belief that mestizaje is a democratizing force. The draft law mandated by Article 55 that Fals mentions is supposed to be drawn up by a Commission for Black Groups. To date, the commission has not even been set up, because politi- cians are trying to keep black organiza- tions from having any real input. Mean- while, territories such as those in the Baud6 region are still being called "va- cant" and therefore ownerless. As the new highway from Pereira advances toward TribugA, it is likely that blacks will lose the lands they have occupied for at least 200 years. It's astonishing thatFals had no prob- lem defining as legitimate ethnic groups CONTINUED ON PAGE 16 CONTINUED FROM P.15 the "raizal" people who have lived on Colombia's Caribbean islands since 1786. But he could not do the same for the descendants of Africans who ar- rived on the Pacific Coast with the Spanish conquistadors, and have been miners there since the seventeenth cen- tury. In 1982, Nina S. de Friedemann and I wrote a book on Indians and their organizations, Herederos del Jaguar y la Anaconda, for which Orlando Fals Borda wrote the prologue. At the time we found only one indigenous organi- zation, the Regional Indigenous Coun- cil of the Cauca Valley, to be unified and consolidated. All the others were plagued with vacillations concerning their ethnicity, and some even openly proclaimed their desire to become inte- grated into the mainstream. Today many black organizations face pressures similar to those that ten years ago kept the embryonic Indian movement divided. To speak contemp- tuously of black organizations as Fals does-alluding to their lack of effective organization as a pressure group--is to ignore the lasting repercussions of sla- very, and to deny blacks' potential for liberation. Latin American Jews Judith Laikin Elkin's "Colonial Legacy of Anti-Semitism" in your Feb- ruary report gave a thorough account of the historical underpinnings of anti- Semitism in Latin America. It seems to me, however, that she may have over- stated how deeply rooted anti-Jewish sentiment is among indigenous peoples, and among rural Mexicans in particu- lar. I lived in Oaxaca, Mexico for two years in the mid-1980s. I was never guarded about my Jewish identity, and never encountered hostility from the people there who are of Zapotec and Mixtec origin. That may be neither here nor there, but it does cause me to ques- tion the need for Elkin's Jewish col- leagues to travel in Mexico as non-Jews. In underscoring her point, Elkin noted Easter pageants in which effigies (mufecos) of Jews (judios) symbolize devils. Mufecos or gigantes are pa- I IIIIIIII raded about, beaten, burned orexploded all over Mexico during Pascua, but they are called Judas, notjudios. The Judas represents the figureJudas Iscariote who is punished for his betrayal of Christ. Understood in that light, such ceremo- nies may shock gringo sensibilities, but are less alarming in the context of any conclusions that might be drawn about widespread anti-Semitism among rural people. Of course, as Elkin points out, the meting out of punishment to Jews or conversos for things they may or may not have had anything to do with- including the death of Christ--has al- ways been key to anti-Jewish propa- ganda. The church, in its attempt to create a kind of ideological cohesion in fifteenth-century Spain, sought to re- ducethe Spain ofthree cultures--Catho- lic, Muslim and Jewish-into one, and when arguments failed, it resorted to force. As historian AmdricoCastropoints out, some Jews who converted became principal fanatics in the continued cam- paign for uniformity. Rabbi Salom6n Halevi became Bishop don Pablo de Santa Maria, an instigator of the po- groms of 1391, which he justified as revenge for the blood of Christ. Other new Christians were the most vocal in questioning, from within, the beliefs and religious orthodoxy of the Church. Still others, not oblivious to the continuing dangers for the converted, made their way to the Americas in order to distance themselves from the Inquisition. When the Inquisition wasestablished in Mexico, many conversos, among them crypto- Jews, became the first European settlers in New Mexico in their attempt to es- cape the hand of intolerance. Recent revelations emanating from research on The Secret Jews ofthe South- west have met with mixed reaction in both the Christian and Jewish commu- nities in the United States. The Jewish community, while it might find fasci- nating the extent of the continuation of Jewish practices among some conversos and their descendants, is not always ready to see this as "a valiant attempt...to remain faithful to their beliefs." The feelings of Jews today toward these people, and toward their former adopted homeland, Sefarad(Spain), remain am- bivalent. That the forces of history and of historical intolerance can change our 16 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS traditional views is underscored by the fact that the most important holiday among the secret Jews of Mexico was not the conventional Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, but Purim, the day which commemorates the courage of Queen Esther of Persia, a secret Jew herself. In the Purim story, when the Jews of Persia are threatened by the evil Haman, she steps forward to reveal her identity as a Jew, placing her life on the line to save her people. Her story must have had a special poignancy for a small community which was estranged from its past and isolated in its present pre- dicament in the New World. Howard Yank Eugene, Oregon Cover Art The cover of your May report [Vol. XXV, No. 5] features a drawing of a Mexican mask by New York artist Jim Stoccardo. The signatures of "Jim" appears in the comer, but no credit is given to the artists who produced the mask or the cultural milieu which made its creation possible. The mask is, in fact, a reproduction of an Aztec mask housed at the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. This oversight may give the impres- sion that although NACLA opposes the creation of economic free-trade zones, it supports cultural free zones-or that NACLA editors find cultural appro- priation acceptable when done by po- litically progressive organizations. I am a long-time reader of Report on the Americas, and am familiar with the excellent work published by the maga- zine over the years. It is in this context that I want to express my disappoint- ment and outrage. Your readers de- serve to know where the mask came from. Carlos Suarez-Boulangger Boston, MA Editors' note: We thank Carlos Suarez-Boulangger for bringing this oversight to our atten- tion. NACLA was not aware that the mask was a replica of an Aztec artifact. One of the editors discovered the mask at a friend's house during a dinnerparty. The friend had bought the mask at an outdoor market in Mexico, and did not know its origins. We then asked Jim Stoccardo to sketch it for us.
