Blacks in Latin America

IV

Black Society after Emancipation

The black inhabitants of Latin America and the Caribbean were able to enjoy the rights of full freedom depending on their relative numbers, their economic or occupational roles, and the degree of their access to political power. In parts of Latin America where the black population was relatively small, cultural and genetic integration with the white or Native American majority over time blurred considerably the obvious ethnic distinctions.

In Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay, the black sector constituted less than 1 percent of the population. In Central America, coastal Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, and the Caribbean, the black concentration ranged from 2 percent (Honduras) to 99 percent (Haiti). People of mixed African, European, and Native American ancestry, however, had ceased to be counted as “black.”

A

Prejudice Against Blacks

The rise of pseudoscientific racism and the popularity of social-engineering ideas among Latin American white elites militated against the social acceptance of the black population. The positivist followers of the French philosopher Auguste Comte thought Africans were far from ready for the stage of technical modernity, and neglected them. Adherents of social Darwinism considered the African dimension of the pluralistic society a sign of fundamental weakness because they assumed the natural superiority of the white race. The preoccupation of Marxists with class conditions dulled their awareness of the problems of race and color. Thus, the Latin American elites of the 19th century refused to accept cultural pluralism because they feared sharing power with the domestic black populations. Several Latin American nations adopted laws prohibiting black immigration during the 19th century. In most areas, the economic situation has not yet diversified or expanded sufficiently to allow blacks to move out of menial occupations. Most of them, therefore, remain in the lowest economic and social strata.

B

Assimilation of Latin Population

The prevalence of intermarriage precludes the historical development of a two-tiered society, and a racially mixed “colored” (as distinct from black) group frequently shared the legal and economic opportunities of the white elites. Race mixture in Latin America, however, is too complex for easy categorization. Centuries of contact among African, European, indigenous American, and Asian people have produced a socioethnic complexity in which status and racial designation depend on many factors.

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When slavery collapsed, governments compensated not the ex-slaves, but the ex-slave owners. The black masses possessed neither the requisite economic base nor the skills to compete with the wave of new immigrants who poured into the southeastern part of South America. Between 1870 and 1963, the country of Brazil absorbed nearly 5 million European immigrants, a large number of whom had official or private sponsors who paid for their transportation and resettlement costs. Eighty percent of these immigrants settled in São Paulo and the southern states of the country, virtually inundating the resident black populations. Later economic expansion did not substantially improve the poor economic conditions of the blacks. Color and race contributed to the continued expulsion of Afro-Brazilians from occupations above the marginal and menial tasks assigned to servants, odd jobbers, porters, and other nonorganized groups.

In Argentina the impact of European immigration on the country’s black people was even more dramatic. Between 1869 and 1914, the Argentine population increased from 1.8 million to 7.9 million. During this period the total population in the city of Buenos Aires increased eight-fold, but its black population remained stable. In 1970 the Afro-Argentines numbered only about 4000 in a city population of 8 million. Most of the black men died in continuous wars, and a large number of Afro-Argentine women married European immigrants, thereby losing their ethnic identity.

C

Peasant and Maroon Communities

In the West Indies the situation was different. White immigrants to the islands were not numerous enough to swamp the Afro-Caribbean populations. In some countries, independent African American communities were established in remote areas by runaway slaves known as Maroons. Maroon settlements were continually challenged by planters needing slaves. The Maroons resisted in Palmares, Brazil (from about 1605 to 1695), and in Esmeraldas, Ecuador (1570-1738). In Jamaica they signed (1796) a formal treaty with the British government after a series of conflicts and retained their independence until 1962. The Maroons were the first black peasants in the West Indies.

The trend to peasant production expanded greatly during the period after slavery. Ex-slaves bought up abandoned or bankrupt estates throughout the Caribbean. In Barbados and Antigua this was difficult, but in Cuba and Puerto Rico, land was available outside the sugar zones. Free peasant villages thus became a feature of Caribbean life. Blacks also entered commerce, the professions, and government. Throughout the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, Haiti remained the only independent black nation in the Americas. By 1962, when Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and other nations had become independent, there remained much to improve in the economic realm.

V

Culture

A strong African influence prevades music, dance, the arts, literature, speech forms, and religious practices in Latin America and the Caribbean. Africans, whether as slaves or free immigrants, brought a variety of African cultural influences to the New World. They came from too many places in Africa and were too scattered throughout the Americas to reestablish all the conditions of their homelands, but wherever possible, they did their best to reconcile reality with their beliefs. Like all other immigrant groups, they abandoned some aspects of their culture, modified others, and created new forms. This adaptation to local American conditions is called creolization. The number of Africans, their proportion in local society, and the length of time they spent in any one place were crucial in the development of an African American culture.

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