Invitation Forum Some of those who were at the meeting last Sunday in the park, participate in a conversation on racism that exists in Mexico. In this regard, Karina, sent us this text, with the idea of \u200b\u200binviting us to reflect a bit on this form of oppression, which is but one of many that we live daily in our country.
Mexico: racism is not named Francesca Gargallo Masiosiare - Mexico
Despite overwhelming evidence, in our country are still denied the existence of practices of racial discrimi n. The president can talk about the jobs that blacks are not a union painting and swastikas on Paseo de la Reforma. Nothing happens. Perhaps because the Mexican racism is, say, "more subtle" or because ours is a racist especially against the Indians and the blacks in general, racism of exclusion in Mexico Nobody
admits to being racist, just as no one wants to be darker than a canon that does not require social acceptance. According to the National Council to Prevent DISCRIMINATION n (Conapred), 40% of Mexicans are willing to organize with others to request that we not be established close to a group of indigenous community. It is logical, since 43% think that the Indians will always have a social limitation for their racial characteristics.
The statement by President Vicente Fox on work or blacks want, that statement was never retracted, showing the shameful racism that we all suffer.
What is racism to Most people feel intimidated in front of his single mention? The Royal Academy offers two definitions: "exacerbation of racial sense of an ethnic group, especially when living with others," the first, and "anthropological or political doctrine based on this feeling and sometimes has led to the persecution of an ethnic group considered as inferior, "the second. Put this way, racism seems something almost clean, free of economic connotations, gender, access to public services. Worse still, a kind of madness or phobia, individually or collectively, a "disease" that no person is fully responsible.
therefore a friend in Paris could hold for a dinner: "Bush can say anything, unless it is racist. See to appoint a black woman Secretary of State ...". She said there is no reason to call a president racist reduced funds for the maintenance of the levees in New Orleans was an economic miscalculation that would bias related to the fact that the capital of Louisiana was inhabited by just 80% in black and poor population.
The two definitions do not explain the racism that is not named in Mexico. No power or political party claiming some kind of racial superiority and the official definition of Mexico as mestizo excitement silences any one ethnic group. However, it is clear that the inhabitants of 62 indigenous people and black and Asian minorities in Mexico suffer discrimi n, invisibilizació n, impoverishment and difficult access to public services as a result of racial discrimi n so diffuse as denied.
During the Regional Forum of Mexico and Central America on Racism, Discrimination, ne Intolerance to be held in Mexico City in November 2000, Ariel said that the discrimination Dulitzky No racial is denied in Latin America and that this desire to hide, distort or conceal the racism hinders effective measures that can be taken against him. Equality, whether racial, gender, ethnic, religious or economic, is still far from being seen in the region as a prerequisite and foundation of democracy. Any act of racism is, therefore, denied "we are not in Europe where migrants burn" played "to say that Indians have no culture is not racism, is that they have access to school" or justified yes , they got to jail, but did not understand what they were saying, do not speak English. "
jokes in Mexico, ridiculing all racial and ethnic groups than the majority or the elite (rich whites), highlighting some of the features appropriate to their marginalized status. At the same time you can not see a single television commercial or billboard that appears in an infant or child with indigenous features, being Indian is synonymous with being uneducated and act as a rancher is to show timidity or little savoir faire dinner between blacks yes and no one can distinguish a Chinese from another. All public areas of racism are common in our mouths and no family that does not wield a English grandparent, aunt or cousin English French to gain social status. Miscegenation accessory
Mestiza is the person who was born of a mother and father with different phenotypes belonging to ethnic groups or cultures. In Mexico and Central America is a person of European and Native American child, apparently without preference for any of its roots. However, the mixing masks a big lie, the harmony between racial and ethnic groups by colonial sexual violence, which remains the foundation of hierarchies of gender and race today. In fact, the role of indigenous and black women is rejected in the formation of national culture, the inequality between men and women is eroticized, and sexual violence against Native American and black have been turned into a romance, as in the case Cortes and Malinche. According to the Brazilian Angela Gilliam, to this set of cultural practices both sexist and racist, you could call America "the great white sperm theory of nation-building." Maybe that's why among the mestizos being blond is able to claim a parent or superior believe, beautiful and rights.
Finally, after all, conquest, colonization and racism have been inseparable and colonial culture has not disappeared with political independence. Violence is the daughter of this triad that starves, kills and offended by segregation.
The Colombian Carlos Arocha Rodriguez insists the idea that we are all mestizos, we are all coffee, all have black or Indian blood, prevents the development and group identifi specific race. While this myth is used to prevent the development of identities and their own demands, not be used to achieve greater equality and social integration. The official ideology of mestizaje diversity turns invisible, denied the right to dissent and allows, at the same time, the exclusion of all those who are outside the norm of the mestizo. In fact, although we are all mestizos, whiter do better.
In Mexico, mestizaje was an "invention" of the liberal criollos when, after the war of Independence, had to build the "citizen" not to recognize the indigenous peoples or their role and their ancestral rights that were incompatible with the capitalist project. Blood was someone who was not identified with the Indian, while it was ruled out as a target. Since then, the categorical imperative of those who wanted to get away was to "improve the race", which translated to "marry a guerita." Today the Catholic Church has strengthened the power of confusion: the Indian beatified Juan Diego, whose official portrait shows him as a bearded English. According
Sueli Carneiro, which could be considered stories or reminiscences of the colonial period remain alive in the social imaginary and acquire new clothes and functions in a supposedly democratic social order that keeps gender relations untouched by color, race, language spoken and religion instituted in the period of the trustees and slave.
The extent and sustainability of these practices, which accompany the myth of racial democracy mestizos, leading to the general public is unwilling to explain social disparities in terms of racial disparities, preferring explanations based on economic disparities . The first National Survey on Discrimination, n in Mexico, in 2005, reveals that one in three Mexicans believed that the only thing that should make the Indians out of poverty is not behaving as indigenous.
In 1994, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial DISCRIMINATION n OAS noted that Mexico "does not seem to realize that latent DISCRIMINATION n suffering (...) 56 indigenous groups falls within the definition of racial discrimi n ... is an inadequate description of the plight of these groups as a mere unequal participation in economic development. " Amnesty International today confirms that in the base of the disappearances, land invasions, arbitrary detention, violence against women, poverty and low education in indigenous areas in Mexico is racism.
The justification for DISCRIMINATION n based on class rather than race is a corollary of the premise of racial democracy and the ideological mask of crossbred monolithic societies, with their alleged absence of prejudice and discrimi n. If there is racial harmony because there is only one race (mestizo), all differences should be explained in terms of poverty, social status, education. Never be inferred that the absence or scarcity of public services to a particular community and their ethnicity is the factor that leads to their low education, poverty and marginalization. According Dulitzky, the only approach to the issue of race is seen as foreign by which seeks to bring the country problems United States belonging to (model of racial hatred against which all other social organizations should be compared).
Racism in a nutshell
leader Genaro Maya Sem Serech describes racism in these terms: "a belief, an imagination of the differences created in the interests of the exploiters against the Mayan people to justify their privileges and aggression. racism at its core express unfavorable prejudice, disgust, fear, distrust, contempt, hostility and hatred for the Maya people, as a mechanism to hide the state of domination, oppression and exploitation has been committed against our people. "
Nine out of ten Indians Conapred interviewed by saying that in Mexico they are discriminated against because of their status, who have fewer opportunities to get jobs and go to school than other people. Two out of three say they are zero opportunities to improve their living conditions and not respect their rights. One in five have been denied work by the simple fact of being indigenous.
Most indigenous representatives in the country, speaking of racism, discrimination lists of their cultural, religious, medical and legal, educational outreach and access to health and oppression by the authorities, particularly the army and police, and invasions of their land by ranchers. No lack of allegations of genocide and imprisonment of indigenous people in Oaxaca, as usual social and political system. "
In general, people who do not accept the existence of racism in Mexico, in response to allegations and claims of indigenous autonomy, refer to the Indian resistance to equality, we require that they become "Mexican", which behave like dark mestizos without their costumes, without history, without any dignity as children of colonizing universalism overwhelming with which racists are identified.
In Mexico, the indigenous population is concentrated in central and south. In 803 municipalities there are 17 000 indigenous villages predominantly by their size and dispersion, because of the disinterest of the federation and the diversion of resources, carry high levels of poverty and isolation, lack of public services and poor communication. Seriously suffer from the consequences of descapitalizació n the field, the lack of productive investment, high levels of soil erosion, lack of or poor quality of public education and lack of medical services. The black communities of Oaxaca, Guerrero and Veracruz suffer from the same evils, and as indigenous women, are blamed to be their cause.
racism in everyday life
I remember the impression he gave me ten years ago have come to the pharmacy Huejuquilla el Alto, Jalisco, crammed with people waiting to be addressed. I immediately called to the counter. When I said that there were many before me, the owner told me that the others were Huichol Indians ie. I still regret not having had the courage to endure the toothache and get out.
Lorenza Gutierrez, Huechapan, a mixed community of Puebla, recalls that school girls differed in their clothes, the language they spoke and how they combed, although the color and size were equal. Throughout the primary, every day, one of her classmates games pulled her braids to see how to put up with the Indian. Today organizations involved in women's productive and says that the true condition of the poor Indian is the more even "here only the poor Indian is Indian."
In May 2005, a Sunday morning, Juanita Perez, Tojolabal of Las Margaritas, Chiapas, had a day off during a workshop for indigenous women to be taught in Mexico City. Decided to go out with three companions whom he met in Tacubaya. Since they got to the subway, discrimination n became apparent and acquired different shades of racism: a group of young people who was on his way to Chapultepec mocked them for their costumes, two older men urged them not to dwell on the escalator, a woman shouted from the opposite platform he needed a maid and was offended when I said no job seekers. Once in Xochimilco, the youngest of them the boatman tried to seduce her and pulled her by the arm, when she walked away with her friends, the man yelled "india ugly" and "ungrateful."
In 1986, anthropologist Ivan Gomezcésar in the center of San Cristobal de las Casas, Tzotzil greeted some girls who were ready to sell homemade sweets on the floor of the plaza shortly after a group of boys coletos took away their goods, compared to the indifferent gaze of two policemen, to challenge the "Chilango" fraternize with the Indians. Soon after, hoping to make a call, saw a pharmacy sold to men trained in a row "Oil uakari monkey", a poison in the form of alcohol, to be emboldened and "speak English."
Tzotzil
At today philosopher Miguel Hernandez, who speaks and writes Tzeltal and Chol addition to their language, to enroll in primary school said he would not be able to learn anything because there was "a man of reason" because it is not expressed in English.
not go any further, we've all heard someone like this: mom child to the restaurant just throw the bottle of soda: "Do not be an Indian!". The parent explained to the friend who for many tasks are paid very poorly: "I work as black." The clerk at the pharmacy convincing a client that is really whitening cream: "It will look like blonde." The young woman leaving the maternity ward was to know the baby of her best friend, "Too bad he's black man." The middle-class in years entrenched behind his umbrella on the beach, "is that the sun hurt me, I stay as coastal blackened." The woman at the salon: "If I have hair on their legs is because I am not India." Facing
attitudes as they (anyone who wanted to open eyes and ears can perceive around them, they are daily), it is clear that to maintain that there is no racism in Mexico is the best way to deal with it and follow not tolerated. DISCRIMINATION n as a determinant of poverty and inequality is an obvious theme, it's time to say it is a real obstacle to democratic life. I
