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Representations of Race, Entanglements of Power: Whiteness, Garveyism, and Redemptive Geographies in Costa Rica, 1921-1950

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Representations of Race, Entanglements of Power: Whiteness, Garveyism, and Redemptive Geographies in Costa Rica, 1921-1950 Representations of Race, Entanglements of Power: Whiteness, Garveyism, and Redemptive Geographies in Costa Rica, 1921-1950 By Asia Leeds A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in African Diaspora Studies in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Ula Y. Taylor, Chair Professor Robert L. Allen Professor Nelson Maldonado-Torres Fall 2010 Abstract Representations of Race, Entanglements of Power: Whiteness, Garveyism, and Redemptive Geographies in Costa Rica, 1921-1950 by Asia Leeds Doctor of Philosophy in African Diaspora Studies University of California, Berkeley Professor Ula Y. Taylor, Chair This dissertation explores the making of race and the politics of belonging in Costa Rica between 1921 and 1950, during a period of shifting racial borders and entangled terrains of power. While the idea of “racial democracy” and official discourses of mestizaje (racial mixing) predominate in Latin America, Costa Rica has been long held as a unique country in Central America with an exceptional social geography characterized by “whiteness” and homogeneity. Employed in the United Fruit Company enclave in the Atlantic region of Limón since the late nineteenth century but not formally granted citizenship until 1949, persons of British West Indian origin posed alternative claims to racial belonging, based heavily on the language and ideas of Garveyism— the Pan-African political philosophy of Marcus Garvey and his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). The surge of anti-imperial protest against the United Fruit Company in the 1920s and the subsequent renegotiation of the Company’s contract in 1934 transferred the centers of banana production from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast, where “persons of color” were prohibited from employment. This process re-drew the borders of the nation and initiated the “Costa Ricanization” of Limón. Theorizing Limón as a borderland formed by the encounters of U.S., Central American, and Caribbean ideas of race, this dissertation maps the convergences and divergences of two distinct yet interwoven articulations of racial citizenship in Costa Rica; one West Indian, Garveyite, and black, and the other criollo-identified and white. Utilizing interdisciplinary research methods and critical theories of race and diaspora, this project employs an analytical lens that engages the national and transnational politics of race, and the relationship between space, power, discourse, and visual culture in the making and contestation of racial belonging. This dissertation draws from the fields of African Diaspora Studies, Latin American Studies, Intellectual History, Cultural Geography, Women’s Studies, and Media Studies to analyze the languages, logics, signifiers, and imageries of racial belonging, reading newspapers and petitions as “counterarchives” and key sites where Costa Ricans and West Indians forged cultures of redemption and contours of citizenship, putting them on the record. Introducing the concept of “redemptive geographies,” the discursive spaces and territorial claims in which Costa Ricans and West Indians negotiated modern subjectivity and “diasporic” identity, 1 this dissertation examines the re-mapping of the European and African diasporas alongside articulations of belonging to the Costa Rican nation. Costa Ricans re-formulated criollo whiteness and re-inscribed a mythology of homogeneity based on an identification with the Spanish settlers of the colonial past. The idea of national whiteness reinforced the outsider status of West Indians and was also an anti-imperial critique of the power of United Fruit in the country, which effectively reduced them to the status of colonized non-whites. Plagued with the problems of placelessness, lack of citizenship, and misrepresentation as savage threats to the Costa Rican nation, West Indians “invented” Africa in particular ways, highlighting legacies of greatness and civilization through the poetics and imageries of Garveyism to articulate black modernity and Afro-Costa Rican identity. A key function of the dissertation is to highlight the internal hierarchies and exclusions that underpin the making of these redemptive geographies, complicating the notion of looking at history from below. I examine the ways Costa Rican and Garveyite ideologies of racial belonging invoked ideas and discourses of respectability, upstanding morality, and honorable behavior that drew interior borders along the lines of class, culture, gender, and sexuality. Defining and representing female honor was critical to producing and reproducing the authentic national body. I not only investigate the imageries of womanhood, motherhood, and femininity—including the frequent photographs of women featured in the newspapers—but I also analyze the ways that women theorized their own place within the projects of redemption. 2 For Polly and Pop Pop i Table of Contents List of Figures iv Introduction v Costa Rica: Race, Exceptionalism, and Limón vii Coloniality, Culture, and Color-Lines xi Redemption and Representation at the Crossroads: “Problem-Spaces” and the Politics of Becoming xii Structure of the Dissertation xvi Acknowledgements xix Curriculum Vitae xxi Chapter One: Color-Lines, Entangled Colonialities, and Racial Landscapes in Costa Rica 1 I. The Terrains of Nation and the Racial Politics of Belonging 1 II. Peoplehood, “Problem-Spaces,” and Ideologies of Race 7 III. Imaginative Geographies, Imperial Legacies, and Racial Redemption 11 Chapter Two: Damas de honor: Newspaper Portraits and the Female Image in Black and White 18 I. Bananas, Garveyism, and United Fruit: The Gendered Contours of (Im)migration to Limón 18 Limón and the Boundaries of Whiteness 21 Race, Gender, and Migration: Women in Limón 24 Manhood, Sexuality, and the U.N.I.A. 28 II. The (Trans)national Newspaper and the Politics of the Portrait 31 Body Politics: Dominant Images of Black Woman 35 Counterarchives, Racial Representation, and the Garveyite Politics of Respectability 36 Ladies of Honor and the politics of white womanhood 43 Chapter Three: Race, Place, and Diasporic Identity: Entanglements of Power and Belonging 49 I. Diasporic Citizenship and the Reproduction of Race 49 The Meanings of Diaspora in Costa Rica 53 Redemptive Motherhood and Racial Purity 55 II. The Invention of Africa and the Discourses of African Redemption 61 The Making of Black Solidarity 63 Abyssinia and Black Sovereignty 66 The Politics of Culture and the Campaign Against Pocomia 70 III. Criollo Double-Consciousness and the Interclass Production of Whiteness 72 U.S. Colonialty and the Fear of Africanization in Latin America 73 Racism, Nationalism, and Anti-Imperialism 75 The SEAP and the New Banana Contract 78 Anti-black Laws and the Politics of Racial Segregation 80 ii Chapter Four: Mapping Afro-Costa Rica: Nationalism, Citizenship, and the Practice of Garveyism 84 I. Competing Nationalism and the Contestation of Belonging 84 Counter-Narratives of Black Belonging 85 Black Capitalism 88 II. The Persistent Influence of Garveyism and the Future of the UNIA in Limón 92 Local and Transnational Dynamics of Garveyism: Women’s Leadership in the Redemption of Limón 93 Conflict in the Limón Division 96 III. Making the Case for West Indian Citizenship and the formation of Afro-Costa Rican Identity 99 Young People’s Critiques of the UNIA and the formation of Afro-Costa Rican Organizations 100 Petitioning the Costa Rican Government 102 Black citizenship in the midst of Civil War 104 Conclusion: The Intervention of Redemptive Geographies and the Continued Significance of Race in Costa Rica 106 Dark Continent Discourse, Dual Narcissism, and Entangled Logics of Race 106 Implications for Academia and Beyond 109 Redemptive Geographies, World-Making, and Africana Thought 111 Bibliography 115 iii List of Figures Maps I.1 Physical Map of Costa Rica Images 1.1 Emblem of the Costa Rican Flag 2.1 Miss Monica Clunie 2.2 Damas de honor 2.3 Homenaje a Bellezas Limoneses 2.4 Album of UNIA women 2.5 Sociales de Cartago 2.6 Album La Prensa: Señorita Aída Charpentier Rucavado 2.7 Album La Prensa: Carmen Serrano 2.8 Del Concurso de Belleza 2.9 Aida Heilbron Young 2.10 Nuestras Amiguitas 3.1 Negro Dolls 3.2 Distinguida Amiga Ausente 3.3 Regreso De Una Dama 3.4 Glaxo Cria Niños Robustos Hermosos 3.5 Abisinia Paso a la Historia List of Abbreviations UNIA Universal Negro Improvement Association ANCR Archivos Nacionales de Costa Rica YWSC Young Women’s Social Club UFCO United Fruit Company SEAP Sociedad Economica de Amigos del País List of Archives Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Negro World Archivos Nactional de Costa Rica Biblioteca Nacional de Costa Rica La Tribuna La Gaceta Limón Searchlight La Prensa La Prensa Nueva La Prensa Libre Voz del Atlántico Trabajo iv Introduction Map I.1 “Physical Map of Costa Rica.” Online image. 2008. Costa Rica Traveler. Downloaded 19 June 2009. <http://www.costaricatraveler.com/english/maps.php>. What is known as El Valle Central, or the Central Valley is located in the mountainous, high altitude, temperate central region of the nation, which includes the capital city, San José. The province of Limón runs along the Caribbean Sea and is largely made up of tropical lowlands. In a letter he wrote for the Limón Searchlight, a West Indian1 weekly newspaper, Charles McLeod accused his wife Louise of leaving “[his] home and protection to carry on with other men.”2 Publicly declaring the “misconduct” of Louise,
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