Race In Latin America Summary

In the book The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870-1940, editor Richard Graham uses a combination of articles to address the ideas and issues of race in four Latin American nations between the 1870s and the 1940s. These nations include Mexico, Brazil, Cuba and Argentina. Between these years, many Latin American leaders want to base their countries like those in Europe. This also includes the use of European scientific racism, which is used to place nonwhite racial groups into lower categories of inferiority. With this, comes the push for a total white dominant society. This review will focus on the articles of the book and what the authors had to say in regards to race and whitening. Thomas Skidmore starts the discussion of the influence

Like Brazil, Argentina wants a dominant white population, and also wants to use European immigrant labor to help their economy. They push for this, while at the same time, push other nonwhite racial groups aside. But even though white Europeans are coming into Brazil, many Argentinean elites begin to resent them as well as they did Africans and Indians earlier. By the time of early 20th century nationalism, Argentina has crafted an education system based on patriotism and hatred for both native nonwhite races, as well as European immigrants. In the case of Cuba, Helg points out that the country “followed Argentina’s model of nation building, despite great differences in racial makeup” (Helg, 47). Like Argentina, Cuba’s black population is decreasing and they hope like many Argentines, that blacks will disappear. This is pushed by writers such as Fernando Ortiz who enforced the racist idea of Africans as an inferior racial group. Afro-Cubans soon decide to take action after the continuous segregated and suppressed policies enforced on them. They create their own political party and make “demands designed for integrating the class of color” (Helg, 55). In response, there are massacres committed, laws that outlaw witchcraft practices, and restrictions on immigration. This especially applies to Haitians, who are feared by Cubans, because of the possibility that they might start a revolution in Cuba. All of these measures are taken in order to continue the whitening process and repress the rights of nonwhites. The last segment of the author’s article is rather confusing. When comparing both nations, the author points out that Argentina succeeded in their whitening process, while Cuba did not. Some Argentinean intellectuals included “Latin immigrants into a newly created Argentinean culture that was a