Paper short abstract:

This paper interrogates the conflicting tensions that emerge when positioning the mestizo as an antiracist subject and her claim of experiencing racism as a worthy object to tackle.

Paper long abstract:

This paper interrogates the conflicting tensions that emerge when positioning the mestizo as an antiracist subject and her claim of experiencing racism as a worthy object to tackle. Mestizaje as a discourse appears as successfully defeating racism via the celebration of mixture and the appearance of inclusion. While the failure of such attempt has been extensively researched, little attention has been given to the analysis of mestizaje as a lived experience that reproduces racism in the everyday life of those who resist an indigenous, black or 'immigrant' racialised position. Although the figure of the mestizo is open to everyone through strategies of inclusion so they can enter the realm of the nation, logics of exclusion are also present, mainly reflected in the possibilities of the mestizo body. The body of the mestizo is read in contrasting and multiple ways. Occupying the category of mestizo exposes the subject to unreliable screening processes that underpin and structure people's opportunities of accessing a 'good life'. Simultaneously, the success of mestizaje in avoiding racialised positions in favour of national ones, means that possible mestizo subjects resist a racialised categorization making anti-racist struggle hard to grasp. So what happens when the will to be considered a mestizo is not encountered or uptaken? What problems do this raise for the subjects and objects of anti-racism?

Paper short abstract:

I seek to examine the mediated (re)production of mestizaje and its pervasive racist logic of blanqueamiento or whitening understood in physical and cultural terms in Mexican telenovelas.

Paper long abstract:

I seek to examine the mediated (re)production of mestizaje and its pervasive racist logic of blanqueamiento or whitening understood in physical and cultural terms in Mexican telenovelas. I will explore how whiteness is valorized, upheld as the beauty ideal, and equated with notions of modernity, sophistication, power and wealth through a study of telenovelas' stereotypes, casting choices and central love plots that always includes marriage and a major class ascension. I will focus in particular on how telenovelas offer domestic work as a point of entry into modernity and the "white" world, but only to the main female characters that can easily bridge the class divide precisely because they exhibit pronounced European phenotypes and white/light skin in the first place. Telenovelas depict the illusion that mestizaje is all-inclusive, offering the means of integration and civilization through domestic service. However, telenovelas mask the fact that mobility in Mexico, while fluid, is underlined by racial whiteness and as such, the darker, more indigenous-looking characters are either contained for their alleged violence or doomed to remain in the background. As a case study, I will analyze the 1997 telenovela María Isabel, which featured a Huichola Indian (played by a white actress) as its eponymous main character. Note here that María Isabel was released only a few years after the Zapatista uprising in 1994 and the San Andrés Accords in 1996, in which the question of the indigenous was key to the political agenda of the time.

Paper short abstract:

The paper examines how genetic data about population diversity in Colombia, Mexico and Brazil circulate in public spaces beyond the scientific community (journals, labs) and how different sectors of the public engage with this information and react to it. Do ideas about diversity become “geneticised”?

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents some results from a collective project on the circulation of genomic data about population diversity in Colombia, Mexico and Brazil. These data address issues of ethnic and racial difference, mixedness, the history of race-sex relationships and the characteristics of national populations. The paper examines how these data circulate in public spaces beyond the scientific community (journals, labs) and how different sectors of the public engage with this information and react to it. I will explore the question of to what extent a process of "geneticisation" is taking place and whether popular ideas about cultural and racial diversity in the nation (and its relation to health and social policy) are being "biologised" by the circulation of genetic data and whether genetics is undermining popular conceptions of race. This has implications for changing ideas about race, racism and anti-racism.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper I will present the process of sexualisation and racialisation of Colombian immigrants in the Chilean case. Through the analysis of media material from 2010 till the present, I will illustrate how the northern region of Chile has been represented as an “invaded space” by “black bodies”.

Paper long abstract:

The sustained increase of Latin American immigration in Chile over the last decade has led to a greater visibility of "black" people in everyday spaces. In this context, the emergence but also the updating of practices and discourses that racialised sexuality articulate the relevance of contemporary processes of racialisation / sexualisation with their historical anchor in colonial stereotypes. In this paper I will present the process of sexualisation and racialisation of Colombian immigrants in the Chilean case. Through the analysis of media material from 2010 till the present, I will illustrate how the northern region of Chile has been represented as an "invaded space" by "black bodies". I will argue that these representations are based in a hipersexualisation of the Colombians as "others" sexual available and I threat to social order. Notions of race and sexuality are used by the media and politicians to present migration as a "problem" for the control of borders.

Paper short abstract:

This article aims to present ethnographic research on strategies that Peruvian migrants from Andean and Afro-Peruvian descent bring into play to counter racialization as migrants in Europe. The focus is on their joint resistance practices to gain visibility and claim membership specifically in Belgium.

Paper long abstract:

This article aims to present ethnographic research on the diverse strategies that Peruvian migrants from Andean and Afro-Peruvian descent bring into play to counter racialization of migrant populations in Europe. The focus is on the joint resistance practices of Andean and Afro-Peruvian migrants to gain visibility and claim membership specifically in Belgium.

In Belgium, the dominant discourse has associated migrants with the idea of guest worker, allochton and immigrants of Muslim origin. Through different immigration and integration policies the country has reproduced a hierarchical structure of inferiorization and segregation of the migrant population. In this context Peruvian migrants who previously have been silenced and marginalised in Peru because of their ethnic origin, have tried to resist discrimination and gain visibility in Belgium through cultural, religious and political participation within the host society. The ethnographic data analysed here --part of a doctoral research on Andean Migration and de-coloniality-- centres on the participation of Andean and Afro-Peruvian origin migrants in the organization of a Quechua language course in Brussels, the festivities to celebrate the Lord of the Miracles, and participation in a Belgian political party. The racialization of Peruvian migrants here is analysed under the analytic axis of the 'coloniality of power' (Aníbal Quijano) and the strategies they use to counter discrimination are considered within the theoretical framework of de-coloniality.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes the changes in the racial discourses of Argentinean and Chilean authorities regarding Patagonia inhabitants between the 1840s and the 1920s, as well as the reconfiguration of popular identities through lines of class, origin, occupation and time of arrival.

Paper long abstract:

This paper addresses the relation between settler colonialism and indigenous and migrant nomadism proposing that the occupation of southern Patagonia by Argentina and Chile produced a complex racial/ethnic hierarchy out of previous binarisms. In the States' languages, and as a result of their own erratic immigration and land policies, imbricated social relations replaced the initial opposition between civilization and barbarism. National and regional origin, class and occupation as well as time of residence combined for producing shifting identities within workers, authorities and entrepreneurs by 1910. Based on extensive research on Argentinean and Chilean administrative and judiciary sources, this paper proposes to understand racism and ethnicity as resulting out of international, national and regional power relations. In southern Patagonia by the end of the period, regional identity emerged out of a multinational immigration where the "sence of place" (Wade) and occupation replaced regional or national origin as the main marker. The paper is organized in three sections: 1) Politics of racial immigration; 2) Nomadism and settlement; 3) Class, "Race" and Region.

Paper short abstract:

In the 1990s, Guaraní communities in the Bolivian Chaco mobilised to claim collective rights to their ancestral territories – culminating in the creation of Tierras Comunitarias de Orígen (TCOs). In this paper, I ask: Who was made invisible by the discursive construction and legal consolidation of TCO claims?

Paper long abstract:

In the 1990s, Guaraní communities in the Bolivian Chaco mobilised alongside other lowland ethnic groups to claim collective rights to their ancestral territories - a struggle that culminated in the creation of Tierras Comunitarias de Orígen (TCOs) in 1996. Underpinning these ethnic claims were territorial counter-narratives that drew on global discourses of indigeneity to frame the Guaraní as an oppressed "indigenous people" struggling to "recover territory" from powerful mestizo patrones. Yet, the reality of ethnic identities and land relations in the Chaco is more complex than such narratives - or the official TCO land titling process - acknowledged. In this paper, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork in TCO "Itika Guasu" to ask: Who was made invisible by the discursive construction and legal consolidation of TCO claims? In particular, I highlight the fate of "campesinos" - a label used to refer to poor small farmers, many of whom haled from rural highland communities and lacked formal property rights. Unaccounted for by NGOs or the state, many of these poor migrants initially opted to join the Guaraní organisation. However, their interpellation into the "indigenous" category - promoted by local NGOs - ultimately unravelled, in ways that served to re-inscribe notions of racial difference and bolster elite-led opposition to indigenous land rights. Through an examination of these fluid processes of identity-construction surrounding indigenous territorial claims, this paper reflects on the limited capacity of neoliberal cultural rights, and statist enactments of them, to grapple with the heterogeneous identities, competing claims, and racialised exclusions of postcolonial territory.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the linkage between economic situation, racial affiliation and indigeneity in a Bolivian lowland comunidad which leads back to colonial constructions and reveals why today some people identify with the indigenous movement while many others do not.

Paper long abstract:

Focussing on the Tacana people of Amazonian Bolivia, this presentation looks at the uncomfortable linkage between economic standing and racial affiliation in an indigenous comunidad, a connection which has gone largely ignored in the politics around indigeneity. In the definition of the United Nations and Forum of Indigenous Issues, the term 'indigenous people' indicates a homogenous group. In Bolivia, definitions around race are directly linked to one's economic situation and in this has made some Tacana people more 'indian' than others. Mestizo (racially mixed) Tacana people who are offspring of white authorities a the patron or priest, have traditionally held the leadership positions in the comunidad, and as leadership runs in the family, their offspring now hold the representative positions within the indigenous movement. Ironically this would mean that not 'authentic' Tacana are representing Tacana people, but as in line with colonial history, they are being represented by outsiders. Or are they? Who defines indigenous? It has been argued that 'the indigenous' as has become constructed to fit the neo-liberal model in Latin America, only allows for a prototype Indian subject, the "permitted Indian" (Hale 2004). This paper demonstrates that present Tacana leaders may not be 'authentically' Tacana, in line with how indian-ness has been constructed historically, but due to their past advantageous position, they are the only type of indigenous leaders the indigenous movement, which is part of the neo-liberal model, can allow for.

Paper short abstract:

Linguistic racism in Latin America, where speakers of indigenous languages are disadvantaged in relation to Spanish speakers, intersects with racial, ethnic and gender difference, and is by its nature a subtle form of discrimination that, despite new legislation, is hard to counteract.

Paper long abstract:

This paper takes as its premise the daily realities of linguistic racism in Latin America, most powerful where speakers of indigenous languages are socially disadvantaged in relation to Spanish speakers, as in the Andean-Amazonian states of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. The paper will discuss how linguistic discrimination intersects with, and mediates, racial, ethnic and gender discrimination, and is also a function of unequal educational opportunities and access to literacy. It will examine the legislative frameworks currently being put in place to counter these problems. It will discuss how emerging legislation on language rights articulates with new anti-racism laws, laws on prior consultation, education reform, and constitutional reform. The paper will seek to make a contribution to the debates generated by the panel by bringing the key issue of linguistic identity to the fore. Linguistic racism is one of the hardest forms of racism to tackle, because language as a medium of social interaction can act below the level of consciousness, allowing for subtle and unrecognised forms of discrimination that, despite legislation, are hard to counteract in practice.