Latino: a general term for a diverse group of people.

      The sun beat down, the temperature rising to a marvelous 98 degrees, almost visibly browning our skin. The soccer ball flew towards me, jolting me from my blissful basking. I kicked it back, and a few short minutes later we had a break for lunch and water. Over our food I picked up a few snatches of conversations about dark skin and tanning, and things like that. There were a few comments that could have been racist but I was not really paying attention to them. All of the sudden one of my friends, who was one of the few people who could pass for white, leaned over to me, thrust his forearm out, and gestured for me to do the same. So I did, thinking nothing of it, besides possibly a little friendly competition to see who was more tan, like my friends and I do all the time, at home. I was much darker than he, so I was confident that I would win, and I could poke fun at him for a few minutes. So with confidence I rolled up my sleeve and put my forearm on the slightly sticky picnic table next to my friend’s.  Immediately it was apparent I was darker, so I did some mental translation, and said, “I’m darker than you” in Spanish. Then to my astonishment, my friend said ‘gano’ or “I won,” I didn’t get it at first, I though I misunderstood at first. Then my friend said something to the effect of, I’m lighter, I won.

      At first I thought I misheard, or didn’t understand what he was saying, then my other friend, Sebastian who was my exchange, came up and wanted to compare arms, so I put mine out, and he put his out. He had a lot of indigenous blood in him, and was generally darker than I. When we compared arms, I was lighter, and therefore won. This was very strange to me, the idea that being the least tan was the most desirable.

      I was on a student exchange program to Colombia to learn Spanish. At the time, I had been in the country for about two or three weeks. I had heard a few racist comments, but had not really paid attention to them, just because everyone says certain things in a group of friends that they either don’t mean, or they wouldn’t say in any other context. However, I gradually started to realize how deeply rooted and also fundamentally different racism is in Colombia.

      In the United States we commonly see Latinos as one racial group, however that view could not be farther from the truth. I have been to Mexico several times, and am half-Mexican and part Native American myself. But the majority of time I spent in Latin America so far was on my student exchange to Colombia. There is very distinct and institutionalized racism throughout Latin America, and most of the racial hierarchies are the same in Colombia as in the rest of Latin America, but since I am most familiar with Colombia, I will speak only to Colombia. In Colombia there is a hierarchy that goes: White European, then light-skinned Latin with traceable roots to Europeans, then light-skinned Latin, then dark skinned Latin, then Native mixed with Latin, then Native, then people of African descent. This was the model that I learned in the specific part of Colombia I was in. Teun A. van Djik, a Professor of discourse studies, namely focusing on racism, in Pompeu Fabre University in Barcelona writes in his book; Racism and Discourse in Spain and Latin America: “These local, regional and social differences of participants, class, professional, education, political ideology, as well as the differences of interaction context, define an infinite variety of forms of racism [in Latin America](91).

      Here, in America, we have a one-drop rule where if one of your ancestors is not white, then you are of that other race. However in Latin America if you have any white blood, or any blood that is “above” your racial status then you can fit into that “better” status.  This comes from the system and history of dominance through racism that Europeans set up (Dijk 83). Also much of the racism is often excused with as well as adding to and mixing with classism because Indigenous peoples and peoples of African descent are usually the poorest in the country (Dijk 83). Racism is so widespread and so common that the ex-minister of education in the 1940’s gave a speech in which he said things like “crossing the indigenous race with superior races is the only way to pull them out of their cultural and physiological prostration” (Djik 150). Even though the speech was in the 40’s, this is the kind of sentiment that I was exposed to, and that was shared regularly.

      Suzanne Oboler is a professor of Latin American studies at John Jay University, She wrote a book specifically upon the race relations between Latinos and Afro-Latinos. Racism is much less accepted in mainstream culture than it was in the 40’s however that does not mean that it is in anyway less than it was. Because racism is now hidden and denied, it actually makes it much harder to address and find solutions for (Oboler 40). However, Colombia is one of the very few countries that have officially acknowledged that there is institutionalized racism against the Afro population, and has at least written some reports (Oboler 41). However, this still ignores the Indigenous population which is often treated the same as, or very similar to the Afro population.

      Marilyn G. Miller, a professor at Tulane University writes about one of the most important ideas in Latin American identity in her book, Rise and Fall of the Cosmic Race. This idea is that of mestizaje. It comes from mestizo, basically mixed race. This is an extremely important concept for Latinos, because besides Indigenous peoples everyone in Latin America is a mestizo. In the twentieth century mestizo began to be described as the “truly representative class” and that “mestizaje and Latin Americanness are indissoluble terms” (Miller 3). The term mestizaje truly signifies race relations in Latin America, in all of its double meanings, double standards, and conundrums. Mestizaje was a term that was supposed to be anti-racist and anti-imperial, however when people started doing research into the word, it was found to be a tool of colonial domination. People argued that instead of helping get rid of racism it actually made the problem worse by having a stance of inclusion while practicing exclusion (Miller 4).

      Of course there were exceptions to this racial hierarchy, and many people were actively trying to end racism. I went to a college that was near where I was staying, and there were flyers and murals everywhere about equality, and respect for all regardless of race. These movements were mostly bound to collages and generally younger intellectuals. Many liberal collages came under attack by the government because of these liberal views. For example, a few weeks before I arrived there was a huge fight between college students and military, which I believe had to do with race relations, and resulted in many buildings being burned down.

      We were on a wooden palette covered in moss, a few days into a trip to the coast to live in a small, completely Black village. There were metal wheels attached to the bottom that rode on the train tracks. A dirt bike had been cobbled onto the back so the front wheel was attached to the palette, and the back wheel was on the rail. One of the villagers rode the bike at a breakneck speed, propelling the palette forward at what felt like 60 miles per hour. I was crammed onto the front of the palette with my friend. There were 12 other people on the palette with us and we all held onto each other to keep from falling off. We were going over a bridge that was several hundred feet above a chasm, which I could look between my feet and see the alarming sight of what looked like broken palettes, when my friend and exchange student yelled something inaudible in my ear. I leaned over to him, and wobbling, grabbed his shirt, I leaned in and asked him what he said. He yelled back that we both, but especially I needed to be careful because of the 'negros'. This was because of my lighter skin, which made me both respected and disliked.

      This trip really illustrated for me the complexities of race in Latin America, and how while a given group of people might be “Colombian”, they are also much more than that. I would urge people to really look into themselves and examine their preconceptions about race, where they got those ideas, and how they think about people because of their race. This is what being in Colombia made me do, and I realized how many ideas about race I carry around, as well as a heightened awareness of other people’s beliefs.
     

      Dijk, Teun A. van. Racism and Discourse in Spain and Latin America. John Benjamins Publishing Company. 2005. Book.
      Miller, Marilyn Grace. Rise and Fall of the Cosmic Race: The Cult of Mestizaje in Latin America. University of Texas Press. Book.
      Oboler, Suzanne and Dzidzienyo Anani. Neither Enemies nor Friends: Latinos, Blacks, Afro-Latinos. Palgrave Macmillan. Book.