Comparative Perspectives on Afro-Latin America

382 Pages·2012·4.22 MB·English

by  Kwame Dixon

Comparative Perspectives on Afro-Latin America
University Press of florida
Florida A&M University, Tallahassee
Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton
Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers
Florida International University, Miami
Florida State University, Tallahassee
New College of Florida, Sarasota
University of Central Florida, Orlando
University of Florida, Gainesville
University of North Florida, Jacksonville
University of South Florida, Tampa
University of West Florida, Pensacola
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
Comparative Perspectives
on Afro-Latin America
Edited by Kwame Dixon and John Burdick
ForEworD By HowarD winant
University Press of florida
Gainesville Tallahassee Tampa Boca Raton
Pensacola Orlando Miami Jacksonville Ft. Myers Sarasota
Copyright 2012 by Kwame Dixon and John Burdick
Printed in the United States of America. This book is printed on Glatfelter Natures
Book, a paper certified under the standards of the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC).
It is a recycled stock that contains 30 percent post-consumer waste and is acid-free.
All rights reserved
17 16 15 14 13 12 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Comparative perspectives on Afro-Latin America / edited by Kwame Dixon and John
Burdick ; foreword by Howard Winant.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8130-3756-1 (alk. paper)
1. Blacks—Latin America. 2. Blacks—Caribbean Area. I. Dixon, Kwame. II. Burdick,
John, 1959–
f1419.n4C65 2012
305.896'08—dc23 2011037509
The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State University
System of Florida, comprising Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic University,
Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida International University, Florida State University,
New College of Florida, University of Central Florida, University of Florida, University of
North Florida, University of South Florida, and University of West Florida.
University Press of Florida
15 Northwest 15th Street
Gainesville, FL 32611-2079
http://www.upf.com
Contents
List of Figures vii
Foreword: A New Hemispheric Blackness ix
Howard Winant
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction 1
Kwame Dixon and John Burdick
Part 1. BlaCkness and CUltUral differenCe
1. Nurturing Bantu Africanness in Bahia 21
Patricia de Santana Pinho
2. Strategies of the Black Pacific: Music and Diasporic Identity in Peru 42
Heidi Carolyn Feldman
3. Malandreo Negro: Gangsta Rap and the Politics of Exclusion in Venezuela 72
Sujatha Fernandes
4. Performing the African Diaspora in Mexico 93
Angela N. Castañeda
5. Visions of a Nineteenth-Century Cuba: Images of Blacks in the Work of
Víctor Patricio de Landaluze 114
Elizabeth Morán
Part 2. afro soCial MoveMents and MoBilization
6. Afro-Colombian Social Movements 135
Peter Wade
7. Beyond Citizenship as We Know It: Race and Ethnicity in Afro-Colombian
Struggles for Citizenship Equality 156
Bettina Ng’weno
8. Black Activism in Ecuador, 1979–2009 176
Ollie A. Johnson III
9. Afro-Ecuadorian Community Organizing and Political Struggle: Influences
on and Participation in Constitutional Processes 198
Jean Muteba Rahier
10. The Black Movement’s Foot Soldiers: Black Women and Neighborhood
Struggles for Land Rights in Brazil 219
Keisha-Khan Y. Perry
Part 3. state resPonses
11. Social Movements in Latin America: The Power of Regional and National
Networks 243
Judith A. Morrison
12. Negotiating Blackness within the Multicultural State: Creole Politics and
Identity in Nicaragua 264
Juliet Hooker
13. Todos Somos Iguales, Todos Somos Incas: Dilemmas of Afro-Peruvian
Citizenship and Inca Whiteness in Peru 282
Shane Greene
14. Sociology and Racial Inequality: Challenges and Approaches in Brazil 305
Antônio Guimarães
15. Black—but Not Haitian: Color, Class, and Ethnicity in the Dominican
Republic 323
Ernesto Sagás
List of Contributors 345
Index 349
Figures
2.1. Nicomedes Santa Cruz and his wife, Mercedes Castillo 47
2.2. Nicomedes Santa Cruz’s theory of the African origins of the Peruvian
marinera 48
2.3. Victoria Santa Cruz 52
2.4. Poster for the 2000 Black Summer Festival 58
2.5. Hatajos de negritos 59
3.1. Racial cartoon from El Universal 88
3.2. Racial cartoon from El Nacional 89
4.1. Poster for the Afro-Caribbean Festival, 2001 106
4.2. Poster for the Afro-Caribbean Festival, 1998 106
4.3. Poster for the Afro-Caribbean Festival, 2002 107
5.1. Víctor Patricio de Landaluze, En la ausencia (When Nobody Is Around),
ca. 1880 119
5.2. Víctor Patricio de Landaluze, José Francisco, ca. 1880 120
5.3. Víctor Patricio de Landaluze, Día de Rey en La Habana (Day of the Magi,
Havana), n.d. 124
5.4. Frédéric Mialhe, El Día de Reyes (Day of Kings), 1853 126
5.5. Víctor Patricio de Landaluze, Diablito (Little Devil), n.d. 127
9.1. Map of Ecuador’s traditional Afro-Ecuadorian communities, Esmeraldas
and Chota Valley 199
9.2. Afro-Ecuadorian delegation meeting with Alberto Acosta 210
9.3. Outside the president’s office at the Constituent Assembly in Montecristi 211
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Foreword
a new Hemispheric Blackness
When President George W. Bush asked Fernando Henrique Cardoso, then presi-
dent of Brazil, “Do you have blacks too?” (Pedreira 2002),1 he was reflecting more
than his own provincialism. He was expressing the ignorance of the vast majority
of the U.S. population about Afro-Latin America. How many North Americans
know that Brazil has the second-highest black population of any country in the
world? How many know that of the approximately 15 million Africans who sur-
vived the tortures of the Atlantic slave trade, roughly 85 percent were transported
to Latin America and the Caribbean (Curtin 1972) and only about 15 percent ar-
rived alive in the North American colonies and early United States? How many
North Americans know of the vast contributions Afro-Latin Americans have
made to the economic, political, and cultural development of the modern world?
Economically, Afro-Latinos were the world’s first industrial workers, toiling
in the engenhos (sugar factories) of the Brazilian Recôncavo, the Haitian mou-
lins (James [1963] 1989), and the Cuban ingenios (Moreno Fraginals 1976) to
establish sugar as the world’s most extensively traded international commodity
(Mintz 1985). Afro-Latinos were the gold miners, coffee pickers, and plantation
workers who made the circulation of capital possible in the sixteenth through
the nineteenth centuries. Indeed, Afro-Latino workers also played a major role
as the age of import-substitution industrialization dawned in Latin America in
the 1930s, especially in São Paulo but in other Latin American metropoles as
well (Andrews 1991; see also Andrews 2004).
How many are aware of the political centrality of Afro-Latin slave revolu-
tions in shaping not only black freedom movements around the world but also in
inventing modern anticolonialism and indeed modern democracy and popular
sovereignty?2 The first modern anti-imperial movements occurred throughout
the Western Hemisphere and depended in large measure on the armed struggles
of emancipated (and self-emancipated) slaves of African descent.3 Whole re-
gions of Latin America and the Caribbean were liberated territory occupied by
cimarrones, maroons, or quilombo communities, quasi–nation-states comprised