Races, Racism, and Physical Anthropology in Mexico

JASs forum What is race today? Scientific, legal, and Journal of Anthropological Sciences social appraisals from around the globe Vol. 96 (2018), pp. 239-245 doi 10.4436/JASS.96018 Races, racism, and physical anthropology in Mexico Florencia Peña-Saint-Martin & José Luis Vera-Cortés Graduate Program of Physical Anthropology, National School of Anthropology and History, Mexico City e-mail: [email protected] This text has two goals: (1) to make it clear 30, 2018) magnificently synthesizes the impact that, given its historical development as a colo- of the conquest on the native peoples: “In 1492 nized country, racism established its foundations the natives discovered that they were Indians, in Mexico and is present even in the nation’s con- they discovered that they were living in America, temporary dynamics and (2) to point out that they discovered that they were naked, they dis- physical anthropology, the discipline responsible covered that sin existed, they discovered that they for physically characterizing indigenous popula- owed obedience to a king and a queen in another tions from a scientific perspective made no com- world and to a God in another heaven, and that mitment to studying racism, denouncing it, and that God had invented guilt and clothing and combating it. had commanded that whoever worshipped the Furthermore, it has not been a central focus sun and the moon and the earth and the rain that in its contributions. To accomplish this, this moistened it had to be burned alive.” “The indig- essay is divided into two major sections to dem- enous peoples are those who, having a histori- onstrate that the country is rife with racism and cal continuity with the populations settled here to shed light on the position of the discipline before the conquest, preserve a cultural identity regarding this situation. that gives them social cohesion and distinguishes Like several other countries, Mexico was them from other sectors of society” (Own trans- colonized in the sixteenth century. This start- lation, CONAPRED, 2007). ing point in the reconstruction of its history In other words, the metaphoric “encounter of and in social analyses is impossible to avoid. two worlds” meant for those peoples not only their This is because 525 years after the Europeans defeat to an alterity that later on subjugated them “discovered” the continent they named America politically and economically, resulting in high and 496 years since the fall of Tenochtitlan at mortality rates and subjecting them to humiliat- the hands of the Spanish conquerors, leading ing slavery, but also that treated them as inferior to the formation of New Spain and a 289-year human beings. It would be no exaggeration to long colonial period, this founding condition of claim that the conquest actually took place when what is today the nation continues to revitalize the conqueror’s worldview was imposed on the itself. Recovering this condition becomes inevi- conquered through symbolic violence that ulti- table, especially if what is analyzed is anthro- mately made them feel despised. They saw them- pologically related to the national identity and selves as dirty and ugly (dark-skinned, short, with the ethnic and linguistic plurality characterizing straight hair and eyelashes, rounded bodies, coarse it, which are reflected in the biological and cul- features, etc.) in contrast to European phenotypes, tural diversity of contemporary Mexicans, as well ways of life, and manners, regarded as beautiful, as in the historical ways of symbolizing them. worth imitating and superior. That is to say since Eduardo Galeano (https://www.goodreads.com/ that time, the interactions between groups trig- quotes/1856051-en- 1492-los-nativos-descubri- gered an early form of racism, apart from social eron-que-eran-indios-descubrieron-que, March and economic changes (Mexican Independence, the JASs is published by the Istituto Italiano di Antropologia www.isita-org.com 240 JASs forum: What is race today? Scientific, legal, and social appraisals from around the globe Revolution, stabilizing development, neoliberal- they constitute the nation’s cultural richness ism, migrations, and so forth), that continue to and diversity… on the other… it is that cultural characterize the country today. difference that has made them throughout Racism “… is understood to be racial discrim- our history subjects of discrimination” (Own ination, all distinction, exclusion, restriction, or translation. CONAPRED, 2007, p. 5). preference based on race, color, lineage, national or ethnic origin that is aimed at or that results in More than five hundred years later, the annulling or diminishing the recognition, enjoy- European phenotype continues to be consid- ment, or exercise, under conditions of equality, of ered “better”. It has been confirmed that in itself human rights in political, economic, social, cul- it represents social advantages, such as better tural and any other sphere of public life” (Own jobs, higher salaries, more possibilities of social translation. CONAPRED, 2011, p. 51). mobility, and so forth. As a counterpart, the It has been documented that the conquest “Indian” continues to be discriminated against, of what is now Mexico formed a melting pot condemned to be the poorest of the poor. Also, between the Spaniards, known as peninsulares, to a lesser extent, “mestizos,” are too, especially and the Creoles or criollos, the natives or Indians, if their phenotype is combined with poverty, and with less demographic weight, also the blacks making it valid to state that, as a result of the who were brought here as slaves. It was a melt- colonial formation of interpersonal relations and ing pot that established an official social hierar- social hierarchies, ethnicity and skin color strati- chy based on castas (not on races), classifying the fied and continues to stratify society as a result of “cross” between these ethnic mixtures with spe- prevailing racism. cific names. For example, a Spanish man with an Given this panorama, and finally recognizing indigenous woman produced an offspring called the seriousness of the problem, in 2003, Mexico a mestizo; a mestizo with a Spanish woman: castizo; issued the Ley Federal para Prevenir y Eliminar a Spanish man with a black woman: a mulato, and la Discriminación (Federal Law to Prevent and so forth. Of course, at the peak of this hierarchy Eliminate Discrimination; http://www.diputa- and a far cry from the others were the Spaniards dos.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf/262_011216. and criollos, those phenotypically closest to pdf, March 22, 2018), creating with it the Europeans. It is essential to note that the recog- Consejo Nacional para Prevenir la Discriminación nition of these combinations denoted that since (National Council to Prevent Discrimination; colonial times, the crossbreeding that would later CONAPRED, http://www.conapred.org.mx/, give rise to the metaphor “bronze race,” existed. March 22, 2018), an institution whose objective In other words, the symbolization of the mestizo is to diminish discrimination through policies was used after the Mexican Revolution (1910) as and measures that guarantee the right to equity. an explicit policy of integration, based on delib- It receives complaints and implements actions erate attempts to assimilate the Indian into the to promote the exercise of rights and opportuni- nation, blurring them and “whitening them,” so ties, independently of ethnic origin, gender, age, they would stop being Indians. disability, social or economic condition health, The strength of this colonial symbolic pregnancy, language, religion, opinions, sexual violence persists even today. The category of preferences, marital status, etc. Since 2005, this “Indian” denotes in itself the condition of the agency has conducted Surveys on Discrimination colonized and is used as an insult: in Mexico. The first (2005) corroborated with hard data that could be observed daily: the pres- “Indigenous peoples in Mexico form part of ence of racism in the country. these groups that are in a state of vulnerability In 2010, the second survey was carried out, through a situation that is extremely quantifying that 64 percent of those surveyed contradictory, because while on the one hand considered themselves to be brown-skinned, that JASs forum: What is race today? Scientific, legal, and 241 social appraisals from around the globe more than half confirmed that people insult oth- without considering racism, the social disadvan- ers in the street for their skin color, 23.3 percent tages, and the conditions of life in which they would not consider letting people of another race had been and still are subsumed. live in their homes, and 28 percent affirmed that people are treated different depending on the color of their skin (CONAPRED, 2011). Physical anthropology and raciology. A synthesis of the problem carried out by An overview of its rise in colonized Aguirre (2015, p. 10) reports that the social countries groups that suffer the most discrimination are: indigenous people (27.6 %); homosexuals (20.5 The aim of the project that established the %); women (9.5 %), and the disabled (9.5 %), origin of Anthropology as a scientific discipline highlighting that one out of every three of those was to inventory the world’s diversity (alterity). surveyed (36.3 %) stated they had experienced Consequently, parallel to the development of discrimination. Six out of every ten (64.2%) said knowledge, forms of interaction were generated, that in Mexico there is a lot or an extreme amount specifically of appropriation and intervention in of racism and two out of ten, that there is an aver- the reality that was being studied by introduc- age quantity (20.5%), totaling 84.7%. The third ing an order in what was apparently chaotic: the part (33.6%) said that racial discrimination is manifestly diverse. In the act of naming things manifested by denying people job opportunities, of an alien world in order to organize and clas- 17.1% by preventing them from gaining access sify them, the physical and cultural differences to certain places, and 14.5% by insulting them of human beings were prioritized.

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