Tag Archives: Slavery

Week 6 – Citizenship and Rights

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This week’s material did not really surprise me at all. After learning about the social disorder and disagreement that followed independence in Latin American nations last week, it seemed to follow suit that there would be immense class, gender and racial struggles as well.

During this era, many nations sought to define civil rights as in who deserves them and what rights those are. Again, not surprisingly, the common theme was that property-owning white males were placed at the top of the hierarchy, awarded rights of free speech and political activity. During this time, there was also a concomitant changing economy as pressure to end slavery was mounting. This led to questions of how to organize society and civil rights of those who were former slaves – how do they fit in? In a lot of places (Cuba, Brazil, USA), the answer for white elites was to portray Africans as dangerous breeding things like KKK, eugenics and the like. This meant that though former slaves were technically “free” there was not much disruption to the social hierarchy that put white males at the top.

There were many regional differences in how emancipation came about and how former slaves were treated post-abolishment. These differences illuminated for me why, as a Canadian I have grown up hearing much more about racial discrimination and tensions in the US rather than in Brazil which imported many more slaves. In post-slavery US, the white elites acted to enshrine discrimination/segregation into law as slavery had been very much linked to race in the sense that there weren’t many/any people of colour who weren’t slaves. This is in contrast to places such as Brazil, in which there were many prominent free Africans, some of whom were wealthy. This made it so that post-abolishment Brazil could not enshrine discrimination into law like what happened in the US but instead had less overt methods of discrimination. In Cuba, rather than scapegoating African former slaves for their race per say, white elites used religion as a tool to frame them as savage/uncivilized as was shown through Nina Rodrigues writings.

Women were also amongst those whose civil rights were under question. Some women, like Maria Enchenique, argued for more rights and opportunities for women in education and in the public sphere. Where as others, like Josefina Pelliza de Sagasta proclaimed that women should not have as much freedom as men otherwise they would lose their greatest charms.

Being Canadian, I have heard and learned extensively about the effects of slavery and racial hierarchies on modern American culture both in the US and in Canada. My question that came out of this week is: is there a similar racial tensions and lasting institutional racism in Latin American countries today? Or did the fact that Latin American nations didn’t have overt laws that made racism legal after emancipation make it so that today, there is less of a divide?

Week 3 – The Colonial Experience

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This week we peaked into what the early times of post-colonization looked like and the ways in which identities were changed, erased and created. We did this through examining the popular artworks known as casta paintings and through the life of Catalina de Erauso.

Casta paintings are a series of panels that each depict a family unit with a label as to what combination of races that family is. They are a way of giving a taxonomy to the racial mixes that occurred as a result of colonization of the Americas and the import of African slaves. I did find it surprising that there were so many more slaves brought to Brazil than to other places in the New world as I have never heard of the history or the modern day effects of slavery in Brazil as I have with countries like the US.

The casta paintings depict the racial hierarchy with the more pale Spaniards and spanish descendants wearing better clothes and having more professional jobs and the darker skinned mulatos, indians and zambos being portrayed as coachmen, vendors, shoemakers. In addition to giving a taxonomy and hierarchy to the racial mixes, casta paintings also enforced gender norms to some degree. Some panels, usually those depicting lower-ranking racial statuses, display gender-based violence and others depicting women in typical gender roles such as seamstresses and cooks.

The story of Catalina de Erauso was in stark contrast to the attempt of casta paintings to control and delineate gender and racial identities. Catalina, born and raised as a woman decided to escape her dull life as a nun and disguise herself as a man. As a man she had a lot of opportunities and adventures which took her to the New World. Her story reminded me somewhat of Mulan except as the translators Michele and Gabriel Stepto point out, “the rewards of her transformation were gained almost wholly at the expense of the victims of colonialism”. Again, we are faced with a character who in some ways was a pioneer and perhaps a hero but at the same time she was a murderous conquistador.

I found it particularly interesting that when Catalina revealed herself, she was not punished. In a society that went so far as to delineate hierarchies and status of races and genders as to create casta paintings, why was Catalina not punished when she revealed her biological sex to king Phillip and to the Pope Urban?