Changing Identities: The Politics of Race and Globalization, Part I

This NACLA Report is the first of a projected trilogy on "The Politics of Race and Globalization." It continues the exploration begun in our 2001-2002 "Race and Racism in the Americas" series, which provided a broad-ranging but necessarily incomplete first passage through the intersection of race, culture and politics in this region of abounding human diversity. The current series investigates ethno-racial politics in the Americas under the specific conditions of "globalization," where this concept encompasses both the increasingly transnational flow of people and cultural products as well as the varied effects of neoliberal economic restructuring.

This first issue in the series, "Changing Identities," looks at the ways that globalization has reset the regional stage on which the politics of racial identity play out. As the contributing authors illustrate, racialized groups have engaged with these changes in the socio-political context differently to declare their varied presences and claims in new ways.

September/October
2004
Volume: 
38
Number: 
2

Taking Note

Marshall Beck
When a Mexican prosecutor brought formal charges against former president Luis Echeverría this summer for having ordered the 1971 massacre of some 40 student protesters, we seemed to be witnessing another signal event in the dismantling of impunity in Latin America. Maybe so, but the reality is complicated.

Intro

NACLA
This NACLA Report is the first of a projected trilogy on “The Politics of Race and Globalization.” It continues the exploration begun in our 2001-2002 “Race and Racism in the Americas” series, which provided a broad-ranging but necessarily incomplete first passage through the intersection of race, culture and politics in this region of abounding human diversity.

Open Forum

Wayne S. Smith
If I am remembered at all (which isn’t likely), it will probably be for having said in my first op-ed piece in the New York Times after leaving the U.S. Foreign Service back in 1982 that “Cuba seems to have the same effect on American administrations that the full moon once had on werewolves.”

Updates

Anastasia Moloney
Lina Moreno clutches a baby wrapped in a white blanket. She and her two sons have been squatting on a grass verge next to a traffic light in affluent North Bogotá since early morning. It is now dusk. Her eldest son, eight-year-old Nelson, weaves languidly through the waiting traffic carrying a laminated placard that reads, “We are a displaced family because of the violence. Please give what you can. God bless you.”
Eduardo Canel
On June 27, 2004, the 31st anniversary of the military coup that inaugurated a brutal 11-year dictatorship, Uruguayans chose the presidential candidates for the October 13 national elections. Signaling their desire for change, Uruguayans overwhelmingly rejected the ruling Colorado Party and confirmed the left-of-center coalition Progressive Encounter-Broad Front (EP-FA) as the country’s main political force.

Report

Livio Sansone
Brazilian race relations have always played a role in the construction of ideas about race and anti-racism in the United States. Before the growth of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, observers conceived of Brazil as a veritable racial paradise: a country of racial tolerance, no Jim Crow, possible intermarriage and hardly any residential segregation.
Ariana Hernandez-Reguant
Esa música que heredamos hijos y nietos de los africanos, la que mezclamos con la española, con la francesa y la portuguesa, la que fundimos bien con la inglesa… —Los Van Van, “Somos cubanos” Dicen que se comenta por toda La Habana, Que estos niches están acabando con todas las mujeres de La Habana toditas las mujeres Y no pasa nada… —La Charanga Habanera, “Lo siento por ti”
Eva T. Thorne
The history of the Garífuna people has long been tied to land. The Garífuna originate from the 17th century when, on the windward Caribbean island of St. Vincent, the island’s indigenous Arawak-Caribs integrated runaway and shipwrecked African slaves into their communities. European colonists first referred to their progeny as “Black Caribs” and later “Garífuna,” as they are still known.
Marco Siwi
For over 500 years Afro-Brazilians have expressed racial and cultural identity in ways reflective of both local and international realities. In the northeastern city of Salvador da Bahia, predominantly populated by Afro-descendents, capoeira, Candomblé, carnaval and a rich musical tradition testify to this dynamic process of racial and cultural formation.
Charles R. Hale
Ethnicity can be a powerful tool in the creation of human and social capital, but, if politicized, ethnicity can destroy capital. … Ethnic diversity is dysfunctional when it generates conflict. … . -World Bank Web site on “Social Capital and Ethnicity”

Tracking the Economy

Dean Baker & Todd Tucker
Mainstream economic thought holds that world capital should flow from developed countries where capital is abundant, to developing countries where capital is scarce and thus receives a higher return—much as rivers flow downstream.

Essays

Lesley Gill
When the School of the Americas (SOA) closed in January 2001 and the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) opened in the same building, very little actually changed. The shift represented only a partial victory for SOA Watch, the social movement seeking to close the institution. The military made only cosmetic changes to this training facility—implicated in some of the worst human rights violations in Latin America—as it tried to give the impression of a fresh beginning.

In Brief

Teo Ballvé
The first general strike to hit Peru in nearly five years could not have come at a worse time for the beleaguered administration of President Alejandro Toledo. Since his inauguration in 2001, Toledo and his administration have faced a virtual train wreck of setbacks—a paternity scandal, corruption charges, strikes, protests and states of emergency.

¡YA! Youth Activism

Craig Zheng
The world has had more than ten years to ponder the significance of the 1994 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico. While the Zapatista rebellion helped reframe the debate around neoliberal globalization, it also challenged those inspired by it to explore the meanings of solidarity and the relevance of Zapatismo to their own struggles.