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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 While his analysis of overall trends in the movement is helpful, Burdick’s limited and often outdated field data weaken his conclusions about the effectiveness of Brazil’s contemporary black movement, particularly with regard to the movement’s impact on public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.