Against Racism: Organizing for Social Change in Latin America PDF
Preview Against Racism: Organizing for Social Change in Latin America
AGAINST RACISM PITT LATIN AMERICAN SERIES CATHERINE M. CONAGHAN, EDITOR AGAINST RACISM ORGANIZING FOR SOCIAL CHANGE IN LATIN AMERICA EDITED BY MÓNICA G. MORENO FIGUEROA AND PETER WADE UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH PRESS Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15260 Copyright © 2022, University of Pittsburgh Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 13: 978-0-8229-4710-3 ISBN 10: 0-8229-4710-2 Cover art: Cecilia Jacinto Z Cover design: Melissa Dias-Mandoly CONTENTS PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS VII INTRODUCTION 3 Peter Wade and Mónica G. Moreno Figueroa 1. THE FORMATION OF MESTIZO NATIONS 28 Fernando García, Antonio Sérgio Guimarães, Emiko Saldívar, and Mara Viveros-Vigoya 2. ANTI-RACISM, INTERSECTIONALITY, AND THE STRUGGLE FOR DIGNITY 51 Mónica G. Moreno Figueroa and Mara Viveros-Vigoya 3. BODILY ANTI-RACISM: WHAT BODIES CAN “DO” TO CONTEST RACISM IN PUBLIC SPACES 73 Krisna Ruette-Orihuela 4. TERRITORY AND ANTI-RACISM 100 Peter Wade 5. UPWARD MOBILITY, PROFESSIONALIZATION, AND ANTI-RACISM 123 Gisela Carlos-Fregoso 6. GIVING MEANING TO RACIAL JUSTICE: SYMBOLIC USES OF LAW IN ANTI-RACIST STRUGGLES 145 María Moreno 7. ANTI-RACISM IN MESTIZO SOCIETIES 167 Peter Wade CONCLUSION 189 Mónica G. Moreno Figueroa and Peter Wade APPENDIX 207 NOTES 215 REFERENCES 225 INDEX 255 PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In a quirky teahouse in the north of England after a research seminar, many years ago, Mónica Moreno Figueroa suggested to Peter Wade that a project looking ethnographically at the diversity of anti-racist organizations and activities in Latin America would be a good idea. That suggestion plant- ed the seed that eventually grew to become LAPORA—Latin American Anti-Racism in a “Post-Racial” Age (note well the scare quotes around “post-racial,” on which more below)—a project funded by the United Kingdom’s Economic and Social Research Council (grant ES/N012747/1), which ran from January 2017 to November 2019, directed by Mónica from the University of Cambridge, with Peter acting as codirector at the Univer- sity of Manchester. At the design stage, the project involved four Latin American academics as coinvestigators: Antonio Sérgio Guimarães (Universidade de São Paulo/ CEBRAP), Mara Viveros-Vigoya (Universidad Nacional de Colombia), Fer- nando García (Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales–FLACSO, Ecuador), and Juan Carlos Martínez (Centro de Investigaciones y Estu- dios Superiores en Antropología Social—CIESAS, Pacífico Sur, Mexico). As it turned out, Juan Carlos participated for the first twelve months of the project, but for personal reasons he then withdrew. He was not replaced, as such, but Mónica, alongside our project’s international advisor, Emiko Saldívar (University of California, Santa Barbara), being experts on Mexi- co, took over some of this role (not least when it came to Emiko’s role in co- authoring the first chapter of this book). We would like to thank the Latin American coinvestigators from the bottom of our hearts for their dedicated VII VIII PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS work, intellectual inspiration, and support, and we owe a particular debt of gratitude to Emiko for going beyond her original role and for her consistent commitment to the project and her wise guidance. At the design stage, we also recruited advisory groups in each country, which underwent some changes as the project progressed. These groups were formed with the aim of bridging academia and activism, while also paying attention to racial diversity. We would like to extend our warm thanks to all these individuals for their support and interest. The groups ended up as follows: In Brazil: Suelaine Carneiro (a Black Brazilian organizer and member of Geledés), João Pacheco (Museu Nacional, Rio de Janeiro), Flavia Rios (Universidade Federal Fluminense), and Valter Silvério (Universidade Federal de São Carlos). In Colombia: Janneth Lozano Bustos (an organizer who works with Indigenous communities in Colombia to empower women), Claudia Mosquera (Universidad Nacional de Colombia), Maura Nasly Mos- quera (a Black Colombian activist organizer), and Fernando Urrea Gi- raldo (Universidad del Valle). In Ecuador: Rocío Cachimuel (Federación Indígena y Campesina Im- babura), Pablo Minda (Universidad Técnica Luis Vargas Torres de Es- meraldas), Mercedes Prieto (FLACSO, Ecuador), and John Antón Sán- chez (Instituto de Altos Estudios Nacionales). In Mexico: Eduardo Añorve Zapata (Black journalist, writer, trade union organizer, and cultural promoter), Alicia Castellanos Guerre- ro (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana), Rosalva Aída Hernández (CIESAS, Mexico City), and Pablo Yankelevich (El Colegio de México). At the start of the project, we recruited four postdoctoral researchers, two based in Cambridge with Mónica (Gisela Carlos-Fregoso, who worked in Mexico, and María Moreno, who worked in Ecuador) and two based in Manchester with Peter (Krisna Ruette-Orihuela, who worked in Colombia, and Luciane Rocha, who worked in Brazil). The four of them worked close- ly with the coinvestigators in the Latin American countries. We cannot say enough to convey how brilliant all four researchers have been throughout. They were the heart and soul of the project, and its success is mainly due to their efforts and unwavering commitment. In addition, after the project got under way and fieldwork was about to start, we recruited four local research assistants, who formed part of the team in each country. These people were Judith Bautista Pérez (Mexico), PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IX Renata Braga (Brazil), Luis Alfredo Briceño (Ecuador), and Danny María Ramírez Torres (Colombia). Warm thanks are due to them for their invalu- able contributions to the research process, despite the fact that, in the end, circumstances did not allow them to participate as coauthors in this book. The four postdoctoral researchers spent three months in the United Kingdom before beginning nine months of fieldwork in Latin America. During that time, the project held three workshops in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, when the whole project team came together with the national advisory group to discuss findings, review progress, and plan for the future. After fieldwork ended and the four postdoctoral researchers returned to the United Kingdom to analyze the data, we held a fourth workshop in Ecua- dor, presenting preliminary writings. These workshops were fundamental to the development of the project and acted as a forum for transnational ex- changes of ideas and information and as an inspiration for further research. As part of each workshop, we also held an event that was open to the general public in which we disseminated findings relevant to the country in question. The audience was composed mainly of academics, students, and activists (including some of the people we were working with), although interested members of the general public also attended. This was a valuable opportunity to test out some of our ideas in the arena of public opinion, and we found ourselves frequently having to defend the “post-racial” in our project’s title, pointing out that the scare quotes indicated we did not believe we were actually in a post-racial age (far from it), but the discourse of post-raciality was one of the obstacles that anti-racism had to confront and also that mestizaje, the main racial project in Latin America, could be understood as “post-racial” avant la lettre. The project culminated in a final, larger symposium in Manchester in November 2018, to which we invited guests from the United Kingdom, the United States, Latin America, and mainland Europe to comment on our findings and analysis. Some guests were asked to provide extended feed- back on pre-circulated papers, and we are very grateful to them, as this has helped shape the present book. Our thanks go to Ginetta Candelar- io, Andrew Canessa, Elisabeth Cunin, Tanya Kateri Hernández, Graziella Morães, Flavia Rios, Silvia Rodríguez Maeso, Gladys Tzul, and Irma Alicia Velásquez Nimatuj. Various members of the project team participated in dedicated panels and roundtables in the annual congress of the Latin Amer- ican Studies Association in 2018 (Barcelona), 2019 (Boston), and 2020 (vir- tual), and our thanks go to people from outside the project who kindly acted as discussants in 2018—Charlie Hale and Pamela Calla. The project did not formally end until November 2019 (because of two “no-cost extensions” granted by the ESRC), but the postdoctoral research- ers’ contracts ended in January 2019 and they moved on to other jobs.
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