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OCHOA-WINEMILLER RACIALISM, DRUGS EDITION & MIGRATION CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN RACIALISM, DRUGS Racialism, Drugs, and Migration: Contemporary Issues in Latin America and the Caribbean provides students with a collection of curated readings that focus on modern challenges within these regions. The anthology is divided into three distinct sections. Section I features a RACIALISM, DRUGS, & MIGRATION focus on ethnicity and racialism, with readings that address the nationalization of ethnicity, Black politics in Latin America, Mexico’s indigenous resistance to globalization, and the myth of racial democracy & MIGRATION in Brazil. In Section II, students read articles about the history, production, and trade of drugs within Latin America, as well as the effects of the War on Drugs on Latin American females and the CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN environment. Section III speaks to issues related to migration and transnationalism, including the migration of indentured Indians from India to the Caribbean, return migration to the Caribbean, issues related to poverty and inequality in Mexico, and more. Designed to encourage discussion, critical thinking, and reflection, Racialism, Drugs, and Migration is an ideal resource for courses in ethnic and cultural studies. Virginia Ochoa-Winemiller is a professor of La�n American, Caribbean, and U.S. La�no studies at New Jersey City University. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. from Louisiana State University. As both an archaeologist and cultural geographer, Dr. Ochoa-Winemiller has conducted research in La�n America including several places in the Yucatan Peninsula, Belize, and Honduras. Her research interests include spa�al analysis, geographic informa�on systems, ethnic and food geography, ethnoarchaeology, po�ery analysis and produc�on, prehistoric households and domes�city, se�lement pa�erns, social stra�fica�on, and origins of urbaniza�on in Middle America. www.cognella.com EDITED BY SKU 83008-1B Virginia Ochoa-Winemiller, Ph.D. Racialism, Drugs, and Migration CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN First Edition Edited by Virginia Ochoa-Winemiller, PhD New Jersey City University SAN DIEGO Bassim Hamadeh, CEO and Publisher John Remington, Executive Editor Gem Rabanera, Senior Project Editor Celeste Paed, Associate Production Editor Emely Villavicencio, Senior Graphic Designer Stephanie Kohl, Licensing Coordinator Natalie Piccotti, Director of Marketing Kassie Graves, Vice President of Editorial Jamie Giganti, Director of Academic Publishing Copyright © 2021 by Cognella, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted, re- produced, transmitted, or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information retrieval system without the written permission of Cognella, Inc. For inquiries regarding permissions, translations, foreign rights, audio rights, and any other forms of reproduction, please contact the Cognella Licensing Department at rights@cognella.com. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Cover image copyright © 2007 iStockphoto LP/jwebb. Printed in the United States of America. 3970 Sorrento Valley Blvd., Ste. 500, San Diego, CA 92121 Contents Introduction vii SECTION I Ethnicity and Racialism 1 Reading 1.1 Regenerating the Race: Race, Class, and the Nationalization of Ethnicity 3 Greg Grandin Reading 1.2 Black Politics in Latin America: An Analysis of National and Transnational Politics 35 Ollie A. Johnson III Reading 1.3 Indigenous Mexico: Globalization and Resistance 59 Thomas D. Hall, James V. Fenelon, and Glen David Kuecker Reading 1.4 The Myth of Racial Democracy in Brazil: Constructing New Ethnic Spaces for Afro-Brazilians 87 Emily Jullié SECTION II Drugs: History, Production, and Trade in Latin America 101 Reading 2.1 Coca: The Leaf at the Center of the War on Drugs 103 Caroline S. Conzelman, Coletta A. Youngers, Jim Shultz, Caitlin Esch, Leny Olivera, and Linda Farthing Reading 2.2 Latinas and the War on Drugs in the United States, Latin America, and Europe 131 Juanita Díaz-Cotto Reading 2.3 The War on Drugs in Colombia: The Environment, the Treadmill of Destruction and Risk-Transfer Militarism 149 Chad L. Smith, Gregory Hooks, and Michael Lengefeld Reading 2.4 US and Mexican Cooperation: The Merida Initiative and Drug Trafficking 173 Yasemin Tekin SECTION III Issues in Latin America: Migration and Transnationalism 187 Reading 3.1 From Tainos to Africans in the Caribbean: Labor, Migration, and Resistance 189 Jalil Sued-Badillo Reading 3.2 The Migration of Indentured Indians from India to the Caribbean 205 Lomarsh Roopnarine Reading 3.3 Return Migration to the Caribbean: Locating the Concept in Historical Space 223 Dennis A.V. Brown Reading 3.4 Migration vs. Development? The Case of Poverty and Inequality in Mexico 239 Agustín Escobar Latapi Introduction As regions, both Latin America and the Caribbean have historically overcome many social, political, and economic issues that transformed their countries and people (See Figures 0.1 and 0.2). A multidisciplinary approach is needed to contextualize and critically reflect on the internal impact of these problems and the role that the global community has played in generating and/or resolving some of them. Nevertheless, the origins, complexity, and overarching effects of many of these issues have remained largely misunderstood. This anthology aims to provide an overview of three topics critical to historical and modern Latin America and the Caribbean: racialism, drug-re- lated activities, and migration. An overview of both ethnicity and race is critically important to understanding mul- ticulturalism, creolization, cultural hybridity, representation, identity, and population mobility in both Latin America and the Caribbean. Usually perceived as mixed and spared from racial and ethnic conflict, instead these regions had a conflicting history of contentious policies and cultural attitudes that contextualize current cultural and social changes as well as population mobility. European conquest and colonization introduced the ideology and politics of race or racialism to the Americas. Slavery and peonage became the conducive agents to control a Native and African population already devastated by war, disease, and relocation. Those who could not flee resisted by selectively incorporating the new and the old to create a hybrid cultural landscape that has managed to preserve many African and Native cultural traits. As such, cultural resistance was the force challenging oppression and the aftershocks of the European enterprise of colonization. After independence, the political agenda of nation-building aimed toward homogeneity. New identities such as Mestizo, Ladino, and Creole emerged as the preferred means of representation of a mainly mixed but whitened urbanite population. Indio, Negro, and Mulato became othering categories for an impoverished and uneducated population singled out by skin color, an outdated Native culture and lifestyle, and the burden of servitude. Although slavery had ended and the state rec- ognized the rights of Natives and Africans, racism and discrimination still prevailed. In modern times, descendants of both Natives and Africans have been constitutionally recognized as minorities with cultural and, in most cases, land and resources rights. At the same time, economic neoliberalism and pseudo-democratic political ideologies vii viii | Racialism, Drugs, and Migration viii |Racialism,Drugs, FIGURE 0.1 The Caribbean Region Introduction |ix Introduction FIGURE 0.2 The Latin American Region x | Racialism, Drugs, and Migration in Latin America and the Caribbean continued to highlight the need to integrate these minority groups and merge them with the state national identity. For the most part, the success of this state-supported nationalistic agenda has been based on the overall rejection of Garifuna, Maya, and Nahuatl ethnic identities and subsequent replacement with “mestizo” national labels such as Belizean, Guatemalan, or Mexican. Furthermore, the unrelenting forces of globalization have accelerated culture change, threatening the preservation and authenticity of Native and African legacies that, along with revamped forms of racialism, are leading to current waves of casual and covert racism, culture appropriation, land and resource seizures, ethnocide, and genocide. Latin America is a crucial geographic zone for drug production and trafficking. The Andean countries of Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia are the world’s main cocaine producers, while Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean have become the prin- cipal corridors for transporting drugs into the United States and Europe. As a result, the countries of the region have suffered various consequences of drug trafficking and U.S.-led eradication and interdiction efforts commonly known as the War on Drugs. The failure of the War on Drugs program has been evident by its inability to suppress both the supply and demand of cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines. Drug production and trafficking areas have led to an upsurge of violence, corruption, impunity, erosion of rule of law, and human rights violations caused by the emergence of powerful organized crime groups and drug cartels. As a result, more than 60,000 people have died in