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 Askia At-Large
Askia Muhammad
Columnist Page
Friday, January 7, 2005; Page 17
Afro-Latinos: Discovering Identity, Organizing
As early as 10 years after the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Bahamas in 1492, the African slave trade had begun and Spanish explorers had found their way to Central and South America with their cargo. Today however, in the minds of most people, Latin America is the exotic land of travel brochures south of the Equator, where racial issues don’t exist.
The reality is distinctly different.
“The truth is, we wish you heard more about race as a central element in the inequality in Latin America,” Jacqueline Mazza, an expert about African Descendant Issues at the Inter American Development Bank (IDB), told reporters recently.
The problems facing Blacks in Latin America are magnified because the Black presence has been overlooked until recently. The language barrier has also slowed the potential interaction between the very well organized African Norte Americanos and the powerless and un-organized African Latino Americanos.
While much attention has been properly given to the struggle of 40 million or so Blacks in the United States, up from chattel slavery, through Jim Crow-apartheid legal segregation, little attention has been paid up until now, to the plight of Brazil’s 80 million Black population, twice the size of the U.S. population, the largest anywhere outside the African continent, and second only to Nigeria in one single country.
But race is an all-important factor in gross inequality throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. “If you would ask, how many people would think that there are more indigenous peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean than there are African descendants?” Ms. Mazza said. “Most people would say yes, the indigenous population” is larger. But the reality is that the indigenous population throughout Latin America and the Caribbean is only 10 percent. The African descended population, on the other hand, is in the 30, 40 percent range and experts have very poor data, so it could actually be higher than that.
“So what we’re talking about is race playing a very central figure in the high levels of inequality in Latin America. In almost all cases the African descendants are among the poorest of the poor.
“We generally feel it is extremely significant, because the numbers that we do have show African descendants at the lower levels of quality of education. That is that Black children in Latin America are usually schooled in the lower quality schools. Not so unlike what you might incur in the United States,” she said.
Because of the invisibility of their plight and their struggle for equality, race makes all other negative social problems worse there.
“What is more significant for us in Latin America, is use of this term ‘Exclusion.’ because it’s much more profound, and much more multi-sectoral--the dimension of race across Latin America,” said Ms. Mazza. Black people don’t even try to get benefits to which they are entitled because of racial fear.
“People don’t even try to walk in to certain health service(s), they feel so unwelcome,” she said. “They don’t ask for the basic services that are their rights.”
Beginning in the early 1990s, Blacks started organizing themselves in Latin America. By the time of the U.N. World Conference Against Racism in Sept 2001, the African-descendant movement had gained political traction throughout Latin America.
In December 2000 there was a regional, preparatory conference in Santiago, Chile, according to Claire Nelson from the Social Development Division of IDB. “That was the first time Latin American governments were openly admitting that there was an issue of race and racism in their countries,” she said.
Colombia is where the first Latin American organization, modeled after the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus was formed. Ironically, the Afro-Latino racial equality movement has spread back to the U.S., according to the IDB experts. The U.S. Latino civil rights organization “La Raza” has created its own Afro-Latino contingent. “Even La Raza is beginning to recognize how large the Afro Latino community is,” said Ms. Mazza.
This is a really recent phenomenon, for the organization of the Black legislators in Latin America and the Caribbean. The group is planning its next meeting next March, in Costa Rica.
They’re going to try to first parallel and then gain support from Black legislators here in the United States. Latin American Black legislators are also very cognizant of the fact that they have to advance as a political organization.
The legislators have agreed to meet again, five years after the Santiago conference, which was where the first significant international commitment to human rights for Latinos of African descent was made, even though the Santiago meeting was a build-up to the larger and more widely well known Durban Conference on Racism in the summer of 2001.
The broad coalition of Afro-Latino non-governmental organizations is going to meet again in a June preparatory meeting, and Brazil will host a major conference in December 2005. |
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