Africans in Hispanic America

People of African descent live in all of the former Spanish colonies in the Americas. With few exceptions, they are the descendants of African slaves who were first brought to the Americas in 1502. African slavery finally ended in Spanish America in 1886, when Cuba became the last society to abolish it. A century later, the legacy of slavery remains apparent in all of the former slave-holding societies. Individuals who claim African ancestry are struggling everywhere for self-definition and a secure place in the lands of their birth.

Although blacks are a part of the human landscape everywhere, it is difficult to determine their demographic distribution. This is due to the fact that census data in most societies do not include the population's "racial" or ethnic heritages. The process of miscegenation, in addition, has occurred to such an extent that it complicates the task of "racial" identification. Some persons, reflecting a variety of complex historical and psychological factors, will not readily acknowledge that they are of African descent. These difficulties notwithstanding, one may cautiously divide the former Spanish possessions into three groups in accordance with the presumed size of their populations of African descent.

The first group consists of those societies where Afro-Latinos comprise one-third or more of the population. This is especially the case in the three Caribbean islands—Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. As much as 80 percent of the population of the Dominican Republic may be of African descent. Between one-third and two-fifths of Puerto Rico's population can claim African ancestry. In 1981 the Cuban census showed that 34 percent of the population was of African ancestry, a figure widely acknowledged by specialists as low. Taken together, the population of these three polyglot societies is approximately 18 million, of which 8 to 10 million may be of African descent. It should not be difficult to understand why this is the case. These islands, particularly Cuba, had been the recipients of sizable numbers of African slaves between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. With the exception of Panama, none of the societies of Central and South America falls into the first group. Many of the Afro-Panamanians are descendants of immigrants from the British Caribbean who came to help construct the Panama Canal and the railroad during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The second category of former Spanish colonies consists of those with African-derived populations of between 5 and 30 percent. These include Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Honduras, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Colombia. Although most of these people are descendants of the African slaves who worked in those societies, a fairly high percentage of the Afro-Venezuelans and Afro-Costa Ricans are immigrants from the West Indies and their progeny.

The third group comprises societies where less than 5 percent of the population is of African descent. In Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Paraguay, the presence of blacks is negligible. They comprise a slightly higher proportion of the population in Mexico, Peru, Guatemala, and El Salvador.

It is important to underscore this demographic variation because there is a rough correlation between the size of the black population and its impact on the larger society. In addition, politicians in societies with large black populations, such as those in the Caribbean, cannot ignore their presence and are compelled to treat them as significant interest groups. Consequently, blacks in those societies are able to influence the political culture to a far greater extent than are their counterparts who constitute a smaller share of the body politic elsewhere. Nevertheless, in countries such as Colombia and Ecuador, the peoples of African descent have wielded some degree of power in those areas and regions where their number is not inconsequential. These areas include the Esmeraldas district in Ecuador, and Buenaventura on the Pacific coast of Colombia.

Afro-Latin Americans do not constitute a monolithic group. They possess, for example, phenotypes ranging from very black at one extreme to Caucasoid at the other. There are class divisions, religious differences, and distinctions between those who are native to a particular society and those of foreign birth. Some individuals, regardless of the country in which they reside, will deny the African part of their heritage because of its association with slavery and the unhealthy impact that racism has had on their personhood. These persons have internalized a societal zeitgeist that ascribes a lesser human worth to those who share an African ancestry. Consequently, they are likely to define themselves in national terms such as "Cuban," "Mexican," or "Peruvian," and to eschew any "racial" identification. There is, of course, no incompatibility in simultaneously acknowledging a national as well as a "racial" or "ethnic" origin. The seeming rejection of one's "racial" heritage reflects the continuing salience and pernicious effects of a racist ideology that has never disappeared from the Spanish American landscape.

Racial prejudice, however, has never operated with the same overt and unrelenting malevolence in Spanish America as it has in the United States, and racial segregation never became official policy anywhere. Nevertheless, immigration laws were overtly racist in Spanish America until the 1950s, and institutional barriers to equality and social justice were omnipresent. Hispanic societies are not color blind: Undeniable systemic obstacles prevent the advancement of Afro-Latinos everywhere, and social prejudice directed at them remains an inescapable fact of life. Some observers maintain that the Spanish American variant of racism has had a more damaging impact on its victims than its more virulently expressed counterpart in the United States. One American noted in 1963, after a visit to Puerto Rico, "the Latin American system knows more about how to discriminate against the Negroes and make them like it than North Americans."

Under the circumstances, any assessment of the Afro-Latino condition must be made in the context of a racial zeitgeist that limits their possibilities and, in varying degrees, debases them as persons. Scholars have often noted that the adage "money whitens" is used in popular discourse in some societies and have mistakenly concluded that this indicates that an individual's position in society is largely a function of economic circumstances and not of "racial" heritage. The racism that underscores this adage, however, is obvious because it suggests that whiteness represents the societal standard. The depiction of Afro-Latinos in textbooks, comics, literature, and in private and public discourse is frequently negative, thereby demonstrating the pervasiveness of a racism that refuses to die.

The complex interplay of race and class in Spanish America has resulted in a disproportionate share of blacks occupying the lowest ranks of the social order. Poverty almost always wears a black face, or at least a brown one. This is the consequence of the survival of the structural and racial barriers to the advancement of blacks and Indians, who traditionally have been excluded from the elite groups. Cuba probably represents an exception to this pattern. The revolution effected fundamental changes in the country's social, economic, and political systems, as a result of which Afro-Cubans experienced an improvement in their condition. The Castro regime also tackled, with some success, the problem of institutional racism. The prejudice that undergirds and legitimizes social relations in Cuba, however, has been far more resistant to change. In addition, Afro-Cubans are less likely than Caucasians to be appointed to positions of real power in the government.

Despite the enormity of the problems they confront, Afro-Latinos have struggled to create a livable space for themselves. There are examples of individuals who have held and continue to hold elective office, usually at the local level, in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Venezuela, and elsewhere. Others have acquired a fair amount of real estate in Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, and the coastal areas of Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, and Peru. In Central America, Afro-American populations have begun to organize for better rights. Also, governments in Brazil, Colombia, Nicaragua, and Honduras now officially recognize the land rights of some maroon communities. Afro-Latinos, however, are still more likely to be found in service positions everywhere or to be unemployed. Although the professions have never been legally closed to them, at least in recent years, few persons have had the resources to acquire the requisite training. Contemporary Cuba stands alone in providing free education to those with the necessary aptitude, regardless of "racial" ancestry. However, Afro-Latin American organizations are trying to change this dynamic. In 2001 Brazil began to implement affirmative action policies for government agencies and university admissions.

If the impact of Afro-Latinos on the political systems in which they live is not significant in most societies, the same cannot be said of their cultural influence. Linguists readily acknowledge the continuing impact of African languages on the vocabulary of Spanish and the ways in which it is spoken in societies, such as those of the Caribbean, that imported large numbers of slaves. African musical instruments, such as the marimba and the drum, still enjoy wide appeal. Similarly, musical styles, dance, culinary tastes, and art forms reflect, in varying degrees of vigor, African influences.

The problems that Afro-Latinos confront are similar, in many respects, to those that bedevil other peoples of African descent in the diaspora. Overwhelmingly poor, largely excluded from positions of political power, and invariably the victims of a systemic racism, hope is a luxury for many of them. Some still cling to vestiges of an African past; others welcome integration into the body politic. Those who constitute insignificant minorities in many countries face the prospect of being absorbed by the larger groups. In time, their more numerous counterparts in other societies may see the barriers to their progress weaken, if not disappear entirely.

See alsoRace and Ethnicity; Slavery: Spanish America; Slave Trade.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Franklin Knight, The African Dimension in Latin American Societies (1974).

Robert Brent Toplin, ed., Slavery and Race Relations in Latin America (1974).

Leslie B. Rout, Jr., The African Experience in Spanish America, 1502 to the Present Day (1976).

Reid Andrews, The Afro-Argentines of Buenos Aires, 1880–1900 (1980).

Richard Graham, ed., The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870–1940 (1990).

Winthrop R. Wright, Café con Leche: Race, Class, and National Image in Venezuela (1990).

Michael L. Conniff and Thomas J. Davis, Africans in the Americas: A History of the Black Diaspora (1994).

Additional Bibliography

Andrews, George Reid. Afro-Latin America, 1800–2000. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Ares Queija, Berta, and Alessandro Stella, eds. Negros, mulatos, zambaigos: Derroteros africanos en los mundos ibéricos. Seville, Spain: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2000.

Davis, Darién J. Beyond Slavery: The Multilayered Legacy of Africans in Latin America and the Caribbean. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007.

Landers, Jane, and Barry Robinson, eds. Slaves, Subjects, and Subversives: Blacks in Colonial Latin America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006.

Naro, Nancy Priscilla, ed. Blacks, Coloureds and National Identity in Nineteenth-century Latin America. London: Institute of Latin American Studies, 2003.

Velázquez Gutiérrez, María Elisa, and Ethel Correa Duró, eds. Poblaciones y culturas de origen africano en México. Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 2005.

                                      Colin A. Palmer