Mestizaje and Blackness in Peru and Latin America

Mestizaje – racial and cultural mixture – is at the core of scholarly understandings of race in Latin America. Mestizaje is often described as racial and cultural mixture that involves progression towards whiteness. Few scholars, however, have paid attention to the ways that mestizaje works differently for blacks and Indians. This is a crucial oversight, as race mixture and whitening have very different meanings for blacks and Indians in Latin America.

In Peru, the question of race has been seen by national entities, and by scholars, as an Indian problem. Although the black population in Peru has received some treatment in terms of slavery and abolition, there have been few studies of the contemporary African-descended population in Peru, a notable exception being Heidi Feldman’s Black Rhythms of Peru (2006), which explores the black arts revival in Peru.

As race is conceptualized in Peru, a person with brown skin and black hair could be labeled white (blanco) or Indian (indio), or either of the two intermediate labels: cholo or mestizo. According to these studies, what determines one’s racial status is not skin color, but level of education, cultural markers such as language, dress and food, and geographic and class location. Because of flexible nature of these markers, through the process of mestizaje, an Indian can change his cultural traits and become a mestizo.

This conceptualization of race does not fit black Peruvians. For example, Orlove (1998) argues that a person is more Indian and less mestizo on the basis of his or her proximity to the earth. Indians are more likely to walk with muddy feet, whereas mestizos are more likely to wear leather shoes. This continuum of differences between going barefoot, wearing rubber sandals, wearing old shoes, and having new shoes makes little sense in the context of black Peruvians. Blackness is not defined in Peru on the basis of social or cultural attributes; it is a distinction made primarily on the basis of skin color, making it quite distinct from indigeneity.

Scholars of indigeneity in Peru have argued that Indians can be whitened through cultural assimilation (de la Cadena 2000; Ortiz 2001). However, when Afro-descendant residents of Ingenio talk about mixture or mestizaje, it is most frequently a discussion of how light or dark the children will be. I did not hear people in Ingenio talking about mestizaje as cultural mixture or as social whitening. People in Ingenio did not perceive blackness to be something that could disappear by virtue of changes in cultural or social features. In addition, people from Ingenio who migrated to Lima did not experience their upward social mobility as whitening. Cultural and social whitening are not possible for blacks from Ingenio because of the centrality of skin color in definitions of blackness.

Black Peruvians do not experience mestizaje and whitening in the same way that indigenous Peruvians do. For this reason, it is crucial to distinguish between mestizaje as cultural assimilation and mestizaje as intergenerational whitening. Further, it is crucial to remember that processes of mestizaje work differently for blacks and Indians.

Locating Ingenio in the African Diaspora

Ingenio de Buenos Aires is a small town in northern Peru where most of the residents are descendants of Africans brought to Peru as slaves. Most people in Ingenio, however, do not think of themselves as the descendants of Africans, and only a few have a historical memory of slavery in their community. Their history as the descendants of Africans, combined with their lack of a memory of Africa and of slavery, make it necessary to question the extent to which the concept of “diaspora” is useful for talking about the people of Ingenio.

Scholars such as Melville J. Herskovits have argued that diasporic Africans possess African cultural artifacts, while others, such as E. Franklin Frazier, have claimed that the circumstances in the New World have produced a shared and unique culture among blacks. Most scholars of the diaspora fall into either of these two camps, and most agree that diasporic blacks share something in common, whether it is something from the “homeland,” or something produced in the new territories.

Paul Gilroy’s foundational text, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993), is perhaps best representative of the idea that diasporic blacks have many common traits, as a result of their experiences of enslavement. For Gilroy, diasporic blacks share a “memory of slavery, actively preserved as a living intellectual resource in their expressive political culture” (Gilroy 1993: 39). This memory of slavery is not dormant, but used as a resource for the cultural, political and ideological struggles that breathe life into the global black community.

Although many people who live in Ingenio today have ancestors who were enslaved Africans, slavery does not play much of a role in local conceptions of history. This is in large part because of the extensive system of debt peonage in place both alongside and after slavery. At least 100,000 Africans were brought to Peru as slaves (Bowser 1974). Many of those brought to Piura (the state where Ingenio is located) were manumitted, escaped from slavery, or purchased their freedom and joined the masses of peons who worked as agricultural workers (Castillo Roman 1981; Reyes Flores 2001). Because debt peonage quickly replaced slavery as the primary form of agricultural exploitation in Piura, slavery is not the central way that villagers understand their history.

I am not the first to question the centrality of slavery in the African diasporic experience. Michelle Wright (2004: 3), for example, points out that there is no “cultural trope to which one can link all the African diasporic communities in the West,” including the Atlantic slave trade. As Paul Zeleza (2005) asserts, it is also crucial to complicate the very notion of Africa and of the diaspora. Although there are 54 states that make up the African Union today, the borders of Africa are constantly changing. What’s more, the African diaspora continues insofar as people leave Africa everyday, while others return. There is contention with regard to who is African and thus who is part of the diaspora. Despite this, the concept “African diaspora” is not vacuous: the forced removal of millions of people from Africa clearly has left its mark on the world, and even on Ingenio.

Patterson and Kelley (2000: 65) argue that the “diaspora is both a process and a condition. As a process it is constantly being remade through movement, migration, and travel, as well as imagined through thought, cultural production, and political struggle. Yet, as a condition, it is directly tied to the process by which it is being made and remade.” Thinking of the diaspora as a process and a condition allows us some flexibility in a conceptualization of the black experience. For, if we think of the diaspora as something that just is, we are unable to think about how it has been formed and how it is changing. This allows us to heed Herman Bennett’s suggestion to ask “how, when, why and under what circumstances slavery and racial oppression produced a black consciousness” (2000: 112).

My analyses of the way people in Ingenio talk about their history and their blackness point to the fact that it is not the case that simply because people in Ingenio are the descendants of African slaves that they logically will share cultural attributes and memories with others in the African diaspora. It is also not the case that the relationship between the people of Ingenio and the diaspora will be the same for each individual. For this reason, it is important to consider the interactions and processes that give meaning to being part of the African diaspora.

To gain insight into these interactions and processes that imbue blackness with meaning, I explore how historical experiences interact with present day conditions to influence the meanings that people in Ingenio give to blackness and Africa. I look at how flows of people, products, media images, and political movements work together to endow blackness with meaning, while taking into account the fact that these meanings are constantly changing and work differently for individuals on the basis of their particular social location. I analyze how people in Ingenio talk about Africa and slavery and their connection to them. Conceptualizing the African diaspora as both a condition and a process allows us to broaden our understanding of what it means to be black and of who is or can be considered part of the African diaspora.

People in Ingenio are part of the African diaspora insofar as they are descendants of African slaves. Yet, their weak ties to this history and to other members of the diaspora render problematic many generalizations we can make about the diaspora. Although many of their cultural practices may have their roots in Africa, and many of their social norms may be a product of slavery and the slave trade, people in Ingenio often do not perceive themselves to be rooted in a history that derives from Africa and the slave trade.

Vamos pa’ Chincha: Why the Afro-Peruvian Cultural Revival and Social Movements Have Little Relevance for Afro-Peruvians in Ingenio

Ingenio, the town where I conducted research for my dissertation and book on Afro-Peruvians, is over one thousand kilometers north of Lima, the capital of Peru. Although Ingenio is a town where most residents are of African descent, few residents of Ingenio are aware of the various cultural and social Afro-Peruvian movements that have been based in Lima since the 1940s. Their lack of awareness is indicative of the low visibility that these groups have gained in Peru overall. It is also indicative of the extent to which the overall goals of the movement are out of line with the daily reality of the people of Ingenio.

The beginnings of Afro-Peruvian social movements can be located in the black arts revival, which began in Peru in the 1940s. In 1945, the government of José Luis Bustamante y Rivera initiated a program to revalorize national folklore. Most of the funds were directed at indigenous cultural traditions, yet some black Peruvian cultural forms were promoted through these programs. Don Porfirio Vazquez, for example, was hired to teach Black Peruvian dance in a government-sponsored Limeño folklore academy. Through the connections he made there, Vasquez met José Durand and worked with him to create the Pancho Fierro Company, the first Afro-Peruvian dance company. In 1956, the Pancho Fierro Company made its public debut at the Lima Municipal Theater, bringing, for the first time, black traditions from the homes of black families to the stage. This marked the beginning of the black arts revival in Peru. The revival was strengthened through subsequent nationalist initiatives of the government of General Juan Velasco Alvarado, and the traditions brought alive through the revival remain at the core of Afro-Peruvian cultural production today (Feldman 2006).

The Afro-Peruvian cultural revival was closely followed by Afro-Peruvian social movements that sought to fight against discrimination and the invisibilization of blacks in Peru. In fact, one of the first movements, Cumanana, was both a cultural revival and a core of black activism. Nicomedes and Victoria Santa Cruz co-directed Cumanana from 1959 to 1961, and it continued for many years under the direction of Nicomedes Santa Cruz. Their productions often contested discrimination and celebrated blackness (Feldman 2006).

In the 1960s, Afro-Peruvians found inspiration in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, and began to form their own organizations. One of the first was Asociación Cultural para la Juventud Negra Peruana (Cultural Association for Black Peruvian Youth) or ACEJUNEP, founded in 1972 by José Campos. It was eventually disbanded due to a lack of funding. However, in 1983, José Campos, José Luciano and Juan José Vasquez formed the Instituto de Investigaciones Afro-Peruanas (Institute for Afro-Peruvian Studies) or INAPE. With Ford Foundation funding, INAPE carried out several studies of rural Afro-Peruvian communities. The funding, however, ran out, and the organization fell through. It was soon followed by the Movimento Negro Francisco Congo (Francisco Congo Black Movement) or MNFC, created in 1986 by people from INAPE (Luciano and Rodriguez 1995; Thomas 2008).

In the 1990s, black movements in Peru began to gain access again to international funding, and became more stable. Jorge Ramirez Reyna, for example, procured funds from USAID and the Kellogg Foundation for the Asociación Negra de Derechos Humanos (Black Association of Human Rights) or ASONEDH, which he founded in 1993. In 1999, former members of MNFC formed the Centro de Desarollo Etnico (Center for Ethnic Development) or CEDET, which was successful at securing United Nations funding for the development of black communities in Peru. By 2005, there were fifteen independent Afro-Peruvian social movement organizations in Peru. Only a handful, however, were financially stable, mostly due to their ability to secure funds from international donors (Thomas 2008).

At various points, leaders of these organizations have traveled to Ingenio to gain the support of residents and to build a mass-based movement. In my conversations with people in Ingenio, I learned that most residents were unaware that there is a black social movement in Peru. Those that attended the workshops sponsored by Afro-Peruvian groups remember them fondly and tell me they learned important things about their history and about human rights. However, apart from the occasional workshop, few residents of Ingenio have these Afro-Peruvian social movements at the forefront of their minds. Instead, they are much more likely to be concerned about the selling price of rice and their ability to meet their basic needs – especially food and water. Although many of these social movements see the people of Ingenio as their constituency, much work remains to be done before the people of Ingenio could be organized as Afro-Peruvians.

The black arts revival consisted of remembering and preserving black cultural forms from Lima and southern coastal Peru, primarily Chincha. These cultural forms are distinct from those practiced by blacks in northern Peru, where Ingenio is located. Thus, although artists such as Victoria and Nicomedes Santa Cruz made great strides in the promotion of Afro-Peruvian culture, this has little to do with the black people of Ingenio. The residents of Ingenio are well aware of Afro-Peruvian music and dance, as this genre has come to be called, yet they do not see it as part of their cultural traditions, even though they do consider themselves to be black and Peruvian.

In a similar fashion, the black social movement in Peru is based in Lima and is focused on gaining national visibility and fighting against discrimination – two goals I fully support. However, the people of Ingenio tend to be consumed with day-to-day survival and are therefore disinclined to participate actively in a movement against discrimination and for Afro-Peruvian visibility.

Yo Soy Negro: Blackness in Peru

It was a typically hot September afternoon in Ingenio, a small village in northern Peru. The Ingenio soccer team had won a match with the neighboring village. The losing team had gone back to their village, and a few men from Ingenio gathered around in a circle, passing a pitcher of chicha (corn beer) and a poto (gourd) from one person to the next. I sat on a bench near them, and saw one of the men pour the dregs from his gourd, wipe his mouth with his sleeve, and declare loudly “yo soy negro” (“I am black”). This got my attention, and when the men invited me to sit with them, I joined them. When I introduced myself, I told them I was visiting from the United States and was conducting research on the people and history of Ingenio. They offered suggestions of people I should talk to that would be able to tell me more about the history of the town.

Don Esteban, the man who had declared “yo soy negro,” asked me if there was racism in the United States, and if it was true that, in the US, blacks lived separately from whites. I started explaining segregation patterns in the US, when another man, Don Isaac, interrupted me to tell me about racism in Peru. He said that, in Peru, whites regard blacks as lesser, and as undesirable, and that racism is a problem in Peru.

Our conversation turned quickly to romance, and to the fact that, although there is racism, people often marry across color lines in Peru. Don Esteban said that, when he was younger, he wondered how anyone would want to be with him, since he is black. He and Don Isaac agreed that they both had desired white partners. Don Isaac said he wanted a white partner so that his children wouldn’t be as dark as him. Don Esteban also pointed out that “opposites attract.” They concurred that it was better for darker people to seek out lighter partners.

This conversation about race, color, and racism was one of many such discussions I would have in Ingenio while conducting ethnographic research between 2002 and 2007. The preference for lighter skin in intimate relationships was a common theme in these exchanges. Despite this preference, people in Ingenio did not hesitate to call themselves or others black. I often heard people claim the label negro (black), as Don Esteban did. I also heard people use the label as an insult, and in a more neutral fashion. Sometimes residents hurled insults in the context of an argument, for instance, when one woman called another a filthy black in a heated discussion over who had the right to build a house in the center of town. On other occasions, people used “black” in a teasing fashion, like when a brother called his sister an ugly black. And, sometimes men used “black” while flirting, such as when several young men called out to a woman “hola negrita” (hey, black girl) when she passed by the town square. Other times “black” was simply a descriptor, as when people referred to Señora Negra, a woman who lived on the edge of town.

When I first arrived in Ingenio in 2002 I was surprised to hear people using the word “black” with such frequency and variety, running the gamut from prideful to neutral to offensive. I was surprised because many scholars argue that most African-descended people in Latin America reject the label, “black,” in favor of other labels such as “moreno” (see Wright 1990; Wade 1993, 1997; Twine 1998; Whitten and Torres 1998; Lewis 2000). However, I soon realized I could not make any assumptions with regard to what people mean when they use the word “black.” I could not take it for granted that the claiming of blackness entailed an expression of solidarity with others of African descent nor that it indicated any ethnic allegiances. This was made clear by the fact that many people in Ingenio insisted to me that blackness is no more than a skin color, with no cultural or historical connotations. Any preference for lightness was simply aesthetic. When I asked people in Ingenio what it means to be black, they consistently told me that it means having dark skin.

In Yo Soy Negro: Blackness in Peru, I explore the ways people in Ingenio talk about blackness in the context of Latin American studies and African Diaspora studies. When contemplating the meaning of blackness from the perspective of African Diaspora studies, we can think about the degree to which either the denigration or the embracing of blackness is common in diasporic communities. From a Latin American studies perspective, we can consider how regional particularities must be taken into consideration to understand fully the meanings of blackness in Peru. Neither perspective provides a complete answer to what blackness denotes in Peru. However, by bringing Latin American studies into a dialogue with Diaspora studies, we can draw a more nuanced map of the complexities of blackness in Peru.

The local discourse of blackness in Ingenio centers on skin color, with subtexts related to sexuality and physical attraction. The existence of this local discourse of blackness raises questions with regard to how we can conceptualize and theorize the African diaspora. Specifically, it points to the need for a fluid conception of the African diaspora that allows for localized differences in ideas of blackness. In addition, the primacy that people in Ingenio give to skin color when talking about blackness defies the contention that, in Latin America, race is based on social status and cultural features. My argument that the discourse of blackness in Ingenio is primarily a discourse of color constitutes a challenge to scholarship on the black diaspora that points to the centrality of slavery for defining blackness in the diaspora and to scholarship on race in Latin America that places cultural and class differences at the core of racial discourses in the region.

The material in this book is based on fieldwork and interviews I collected in Ingenio de Buenos Aires and with migrants from Ingenio who live in Lima. Ingenio is a small town that sits on the lands of the former Hacienda Buenos Aires, in north coastal Peru. The name of the town – Ingenio – refers to a defunct sugar mill that was in operation until the early twentieth century. The majority of the inhabitants of Ingenio are the descendants of African slaves from haciendas in the region. The enslavement of Africans and their descendants in Peru ended in 1854 and the hacienda system came to an end with agrarian reforms in the early 1970s (Cuche 1976). Today, most families in Ingenio own a plot of land from which they eke out a meager existence.

Me and my three books I am writing….

I have been blogging a bit less lately. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is the fact that we moved to a new country. However, we are pretty well settled into the Dominican Republic, so that is no longer a good excuse. The main reason is that I have been working on my book.

I actually am working on three books – all in different stages. Right now, I am mainly working on my book on Afro-Peruvians – Yo Soy Negro: Blackness in Peru. This book is based on my 2005 dissertation on Afro-Peruvians, and it has taken me quite a while to get it into publishable shape. In fact, so long, that I have written another book! My second book is on immigration policy in the US – Immigration Nation? This book explains how US immigration policy results in a wide range of violations of international human rights. My third book is the one on deportees that I have barely started except for a draft of a proposal and this blog.

Since I am primarily working on Yo Soy Negro: Blackness in Peru right now, I will take the time to explain a bit what the book is about and why it has taken me so long to publish it. Yo Soy Negro is based on nearly two years of fieldwork and over 80 interviews in a black community in Peru. I argue that in Peru, when people talk about blackness, they are primarily talking about skin color. That might seem obvious, but skin color is quite distinct from race or ethnicity. And, many people presume that when people call themselves black they are referring to race and/or ethnicity. In Peru, I argue that this is not necessarily the case. For some black Peruvians, being black is just a skin color, and is not connected to other people of African descent, is not a reference to Africa, and does not mean that they are the descendants of slaves. In the community where I did my research, most people identified as black, but few thought they had African ancestors or that their ancestors had been brought to Peru as slaves. That is the general summary of the book, now on to why I have taken so long to publish it.

I wrote up a prospectus of Yo Soy Negro in January 2007, and sent it to several publishers. One publisher expressed interest in it. However, the reviews were mixed, and the editor asked me to revise it and submit it again. I did extensive revisions, and decided to send it to another publisher, one I thought would be a better fit for the book. I sent it to this second publisher in February 2008, while I was doing a post-doc at UIC. This second publisher took an entire year to get back with me. I received the reviews in February 2009. The reviewers did not look kindly upon the book, and the editor decided not to offer me a contract. So, I went back to the first editor. She was no longer interested, and I was back to square one.

I revised the book based on the reviewers’ critiques, and I submitted a full draft of the manuscript to University Press of Florida in May 2009, just before I began this blog. The editor took a couple of months to look it over and to find reviewers. She got the reviews back some time in October. Both reviewers were fairly positive and recommended publication of the book. The editorial board decided in November 2009 to offer me a contract. I spent a few days negotiating the terms of the contract with the editor, although there wasn’t much room for negotiation, since the book is based on my dissertation. Finally, she sent me the contract, which I now have to sign and send back to Florida.

I also need to revise the manuscript based on the reviewers’ critiques. My due date for that is March 15, 2010. As the revisions are not very extensive, meeting the deadline should not be a problem. The publication process takes about eleven months, so the book should be published in February 2011. For those academic types who might want to see a preview of the book, I have an article forthcoming in Social Problems in the February 2010 issue that explains why the distinction between race and color is important in the case of Afro-Peruvians, and, potentially Afro-Latin Americans in general. The title is: “Does Whitening Happen? Distinguishing between Race and Color Labels in an African-Descended Community in Peru.”

Although Immigration Nation? is officially my second book, I am hoping it is published first. I sent a prospectus and two sample chapters of that book to Paradigm Publishers in July 2009. The editor was quite interested in the book, and offered me a contract based on the prospectus and sample chapters. I then sent her the remaining chapters, and she worked on getting peer reviewers for the manuscript. I still have not seen the reviews, but they are supposed to come any day now. If the revisions are not too extensive, I hope to get the final version to her in early 2010. I would like for that book to be published in 2010, in time for it to be read by people working on immigration reform. The publishing process is supposed to be quicker at Paradigm – seven months in production. With any luck, Immigration Nation? will be published by August 2010.

Once I have those two books off of my desk – hopefully in March 2010 - I can begin to write the book on deportees. As I have been writing blog entries on a regular basis, and already have many of my interviews transcribed, I hope to complete that book in twelve months. My goal for finishing the book on deportees is May 2011. If I meet that goal, and find a suitable publisher in time, it should hit the shelves by May 2012.

For my book on deportees, I still do not have a publisher. I am hoping to go more mainstream with the book on deportees, and to find a publisher that can get my book into more bookstores and have it read by a wider audience. So, if you have any suggestions, please let me know!