Thread: In Mexico, network's use of blackface renews racism debate

In Mexico, Times report on network's use of blackface renews racism debate

July 7, 2010 | 5:37 pm

The Mexican media conglomerate Televisa employs actors in blackface during a popular morning program on the World Cup, underscoring once more the conflicting attitudes held by Mexico and the United States about race and racism. Tracy Wilkinson writes in The Times:

But this is Mexico, and definitions of racism are complicated and influenced by the country's own tortured relationship with invading powers and indigenous cultures.

Many Mexicans will say they are not racist and that very little racism exists in Mexico, a nation, after all, of mestizos, who are of European and indigenous blood.

As proof, they point to the fact that slavery was ended in Mexico decades before it was abolished in the United States, and that Mexico never institutionalized racism the way the U.S. did with its segregationist laws that lasted into the 1960s.


Mexicans, it turns out, just don't see caricatures of Africans or black people as inherently racist, bringing to mind the flap in 2005 over a historic comic book character named Memin Pinguin, beloved by Mexicans but reviled in the U.S. for his exaggerated African features. Wilkinson adds:

Still, in Mexico and other parts of Latin America, people operate with a different comfort level when it comes to physical attributes. It remains common for Mexicans to use nicknames like "Chino" for someone with almond-shaped eyes, "Negrito" for someone with dark skin, "Gordo" (Fatso) for a plump person.

These terms are jarring when seen through the prism of U.S. sensibilities, but here they are usually used in a context of affection and friendship.

In online reader comments to an article in the El Universal newspaper on the Times report, many readers reacted with indignation to the suggestion that the Televisa skits are racist (link in Spanish). "Disgusting double standard for an imperialist and invading country," wrote one El Universal reader. "They should be ashamed criticizing a cartoon."

But another reader commented: "Showing people in black-face as primitive persons is the same as showing Mexicans as delinquents, and of course the latter doesn't strike us as a joke. Both acts are racist, but the difference is one makes us laugh and therefore it's approved."

Author David Lida, in a post on his blog, discussed the image used on a Mexican snack cake called "Negrito" as another instance of Mexico's blithe treatment of racial caricatures:

I've never met a Mexican who copped to being a racist. Some, particularly from the upper echelons, lament that their society is class-based, but argue that since nearly everyone is mestizo -- with a mixture of Spanish and indigenous blood -- therefore how could they be racist?

Meanwhile, in an article on the Memin Pinguin controversy in the Boston Review, historian Claudio Lomnitz argues that the scandalized American responses to Mexican racial caricatures reflect a recent phenomenon of identity politics and "political correctness" that has no direct equivalent in Mexico or the rest of Latin America. It's a long article but worth reading:

There has been a sea change since the 1980s in the ways that Latin American race relations are understood by American academics and educators. Criticism of race relations and racism in Brazil, Mexico, the Andes, the Caribbean, and Central America has developed as a natural extension of multiculturalism and identity politics in the United States, and many studies describe persistent racial inequalities masked by the idea of racial democracy. This criticism and research has, in turn, fed discussions of race in Latin America, albeit in an attenuated manner: Brazil has had its own proponents of “black power,â€

They are racist no matter what they claim. People from Mexico have told me this themselves many times. Lighter skinned people have more currency and mobility in everything. I used to criticize people who were prejudice against Mexicans stating that while we were having slavery and segregation they were busy intermarrying and creating a whole new race. Adding fuel to this misconception is the subtext that only euro-descent white people are racist. The strong squat barrel chested bodies of indigenous peoples of the region, along with their facial features - the ones who migrate here with their darker skins and claim that we are prejudice because of their brown-ness - they have lived lifetimes of receiving prejudice exactly because of their brown-ness which is part of why they so easily believe that we are offering more of the same to them.

Try to catch one of their fashion shows sometime. The models are all very European looking. Yes they may be a bit browner but they all have the European look. Until they include their native peoples and their African descent peoples in their fashion shows I have no reason to believe their claim.

We have not heard from Afro-Mexicans how they feel about caricatures as mentioned in the article. Fat people hold much pain about their size and anger against trim people too - they also know that culturally they need to laugh at themselves and their labels but of course it still hurts no matter how friendly the name-callers choose to portray it. I have had many discussions with Native-American women and how they cannot fit the body type that is considered beautiful in popular culture and how even their own men treat them much rougher than they treat white women because of the hatred of their own body type and because they think (the men do) that the women can take it.

People in the U.S. say "it's all in fun" as they bully people out of workplaces, ridicule them off the cheerleading squad and marginalize them with a vicious humor from their church, their non-profit, their club. These are just intellects with nothing better to do creating false hypothesis and believing the lies that they are told. Even grade school teachers are lied to in this way - being told "It is part of our culture to throw the birthday cake in the face of the birthday boy."

I DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES LIKE " mod edit " AND YES, THEY ARE VERY RACIST PEOPLE. AND, I JUST DON'T LIKE THEM

http://www.mexconnect.com/articles/666- ... -in-mexico

Now government controlled labor drafts called repartimientos, rather than slaves, provided workers to the Spanish-owned estates and mines at salaries set by the government. While the Plan of Iguala, proposed by Augustin de Iturbe in 1820 had abolished slavery, it was not until 1824 that a Constitution was adopted that actually freed them. Even so, it was not until 1829 that the last slaves were freed.

There were not quite as many black slaves taken to Mexico but they still had slavery almost to the time the US did.