Latinx & Simon Bolivar

Things are a bit different in the South-South.

The One-Drop Rule

In Latin America, if you have one-drop of indigenous blood … and everyone does because everyone’s grand-father, or great-grand-father, or great-great-grandfather took an indigenous woman for his wife and bride … You’re indigenous!

So magically … we’re all indigenous!

And that’s the narrative, as began by Simon Bolivar, to rally the troops to expel the Spanish Crown from Gran Colombia.

Ergo, no one is racist in South America, so classism helps even things out.

Culture & Colorism

Due to this, colorism isn’t viewed as a problem in social interactions either, though it drives the undertow without a doubt.

For decades, if not centuries, a pathology of blanqueamiento (whitening /bleaching) was pushed across the continent and Caribbean islands; encouraging a racial whitening of the population, which eventually gave way to the mestizaje identity label.

Mestizaje indicates those of mixed European and indigenous descent.

While Latinidad likes to consider itself a unified demographic, white supremacy remains embedded in the foundation of the identity.

An individual I knew had a dress-code for work which prevented them from wearing dark shirts, as they were supposed to wear colors that “brought out the olive tones” of their skin.

So they could better perform the identity they were paid to perform.

It is also worth noting that in the early days of LULAC, leaders, regarding the Black civil rights movement, expressed their alignment with whiteness explicitly.

Though it is now socially and politically acceptable to distance one’s self from whiteness, and so the pendulums swing.

Political Identities

In reaction to the aforementioned ideas, two specific identities have arisen to contest the unifying label of Latinidad.

In the Southwest United States there is the Chicano label, specifically designed to differentiate oneself from the Mexican-American identity.

This identity indicates someone who places emphasis on their indigenous lineage.

As well, there is the Andino identity, which emerged in much the same way as the Chicano identity, albeit in Peru a few decades previous.

What is important to note is that, again, these identities can be assumed, and performed; and there are social, and at times financial, benefits for performing these identities.

While there are also living descendents, and keepers-of-tradition, for many specific tribes in North and South America, who are not performing, as well.

This too, is something of which we should remain cognizant.