Associated Readings
- Peter Winn, “Capital Sins,” from Americas, pp. 165-199 (2006)
- David Fleischer, “Brazil: From military regime to Workers’ Party Government,” from Latin America: Its Problems and Its Promise, pp. 470-482 (2011)
- Seth Racusen, “Affirmative Action & Identity” from Brazil's New Racial Politics, pp. 89-122 (2010)
- "Brazil in Black and White" (53 minutes, PBS, Blackboard video tab or via this link)
I. Introducing Brazil (Draws from World Scholar/Latin America & the Caribbean, 2011)
Introduction
Brazil, the largest country in South America, contains twenty-six states and the federal district of Brasília (the nation's capital). Mostly tropical or semitropical in climate, the nation encompasses dense forests, including the Amazon Basin, as well a semiarid region in the northeast, mountains and plains in the southwest, midwestern savannahs, a long Atlantic coastline, and a vast wetland area.
Inhabited by numerous Amerindian groups, Brazil was first visited by the Portuguese in April 1500. Colonization efforts began in earnest in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with the arrival of European immigrants and the importation of enslaved Africans. Sugarcane (and later cotton and coffee), gold, and diamonds were the major commodities, and by 1807 the colony was both prosperous and ethnically diverse.
With Napoleon's invasion of Portugal in 1807, the prince regent fled to the colony, set up his government there, and expanded trade. Independence was declared in 1822, and after decades of monarchical rule, in 1889 Brazil became a republic. Troubled in its early years by economic and political crises, the nation continued to struggle throughout the twentieth century with questions of national identity and the quashing of freedoms by military dictatorships. A transition to democracy began in 1979 and culminated in popular elections in 1988. Former metalworker and union organizaer Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected president in 2002 and reelected in 2006. Lula completed his second term at the end of last year (2010). His chief of staff, a former Marxist rebel named Dilma Rousseff, launched a successful campaign and since January of this year, a woman presides over Latin America's largest country and economy.
First watch the following short narrated slide show by yours truly (25 minutes):
Watch the following recent "60 Minutes" episode (14 minutes) to get familiar with Lula, with Dilma, and with Brazil's emergence as a force to be reckoned with in the 21st century.
Please now watch the following clip about President Dilma Rousseff, from lefty journalist Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now" video podcast (9 minutes).
For a very-recent update on Dilma -- how the first 100 days of her presidency have gone -- please read this short article.
II. Racial Categories and Affirmative Action
To launch our inquiry into racial categories, racial inequality, and affirmative action in Brazil, let me begin with three generalizations about USians:
#1. By and large, we are comfortable with the category, "race."
By this I mean that we tend to take for granted that everyone naturally has a race, that is, that human beings naturally occupy race categories. So, when I am asked to identify my "race" on a survey such as the census, the question isn't strange or vexing to me since I take for granted that people have races, I know what the main race categories are, and I know which one I fit into. Conversely, when asked to identify the "race" of Denzel Washingon and George Clooney, the answers come forth easily enough: Denzel is Black/African-American and George is Caucasian/white.
#2. Identifying a person's "race" signifies more than just skin color.
When I invoke these racial categories, I am referencing more than simply the color of each actor's skin. (And, of course, the skin color of Caucasians isn't white at all; it's pinkish/orange-ish.) That is, the category "race" reaches farther and deeper than mere superficial physical characteristics. To identify someone's race is to say something who they are in some essential way. I am not necessarily talking about racism here; just that as a category, "race" has more-than-merely-descriptive connotations.
#3. Race is inherited from one's parents and it doesn't change.
In other words, my status as a "white guy" is fundamentally linked to the race categories my parents fall into (both also "white"). The anthropological term we use for this sort of status category is "ascribed" -- meaning, you can't change it, it's fixed at birth. We don't generally think of race as a "situational" term.
Now, another generalization: In Brazil, generalizations 1-3 above traditionally do not apply. In other words, until fairly recently, most Brazilians wouldn't be comfortable with the question, "What's his race?" This is not to say that Brazilians don't have or don't use vocabulary to refer to physical differences such as skin color. They do! But, the larger category into which terms like branco (white) and negro ("black") fit isn't raça ("race"); it's cor ("color").
Another major difference in Brazil is that race isn't an ascribed category--to the contrary, the same person might identify as branco in one setting and then moreno (mixed color) in another. Brazilians have virtually dozens of terms that refer to physical differences of the sort that we in the U.S. would think of as "racial." The Brazilian vocabulary for describing "racial" differences is thus both extensive and highly flexible.
You might be asking at this point, if race doesn't exist in Brazil, what about racism? For most of the 20th century, the most common answer to this question was: If there's no race, there can be no racism. Indeed, many of Brazil's major 20th-century intellectuals proudly declared their country a "racial democracy" where racial hybridity and mixing (rather then racial contrast and difference) is what makes Brazil so distinctive, so special. Even today, many a Brazilian will say to you (should you ask about this) that race isn't important, what is important is class. What matters in life is not whether you are black, but whether you are poor.
The problem with this way of thinking, of course, is that if you look around the country, you will see a troubling pattern: Race or no race, poor people in Brazil tend to be darker-skinned. Similarly, people who secure entry into the best universities (and thus get the best jobs) tend to be white.
The reality expressed in the preceding sentence is the basis for Brazil's consideration of affirmative action (which they call "racial quotas") initiatives over the past decade. Read Seth Racusen's corresponding article and then watch the film "Brazil in Black and White" (53 minutes) now to learn about the history behind this controversial initiative and how it's playing out in the handful of Brazilian universities that have implemented affirmative action.
PART 2. Latin America’s Largest Social Movement: The Landless Workers’ Movement (MST)
Associated Readings
- Tim Padgett, “Brazil’s landless rebels,” Time, January 19 (1998)
- John Hammond, “Law and disorder: The Brazilian landless farmworkers’ movement,” pp. 469-489 (1999)
- Wendy Wolford, “This land is ours now: spatial imaginaries and the struggle for land in Brazil.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 94, pp. 409-424 (2004)
- "Raiz Forte" (“Strong Roots”) (2001, 41 minutes)
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