Blackness in the Andes Previous Publications Rahier, Jean Muteba. 2013. Kings for Three Days: The Play of Race and Gender in an Afro-Ecuadorian Festival. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Rahier, Jean Muteba, ed. 2012. Black Social Movements in Latin America: From Monocultural Mestizaje to Multiculturalism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Rahier, Jean Muteba, Percy Hintzen, and Felipe Smith, eds. 2010. Global Circuits of Blackness: Interrogating the African Diaspora. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Hintzen, Percy, and Jean Muteba Rahier, eds. 2003. Problematizing Blackness: Self Ethnographies by Black Immigrants to the United States. New York and London: Routledge. Rahier, Jean Muteba, ed. 1999. Representations of Blackness and the Performance of Identities. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Rahier, Jean Muteba. 1987. La Décima: Poesía Oral Negra del Ecuador. Quito: Abya-Yala and Centro Cultural Afro-Ecuatoriano. Blackness in the Andes Ethnographic Vignettes of Cultural Politics in the Time of Multiculturalism Jean Muteba Rahier BLACKNESS IN THE ANDES Copyright © Jean Muteba Rahier, 2014. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 All rights reserved. First published in 2013 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-44496-0 ISBN 978-1-137-27272-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137272720 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Amnet First edition: January 2014 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To Nadège Marguerite, Simone Esmeralda, Bassirou Jean, and Kazady Yusuf. Contents List of Figures & Tables ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 Chapter 1 The Afro-Esmeraldian Décimas—Ecuador: Creolization/Malleability in the Time of Interculturalismo and Neo-Essentialism 9 Chapter 2 Presence of Blackness and Representations of Jews in the Afro-Esmeraldian Celebrations of Semana Santa 37 Chapter 3 From Panacea for Harmonious Race Relations to Ideological Tool for Oppression and National Identity Imagination: Reflections from the Andes on Mestizaje through Time and Space 65 Chapter 4 Afrodescendants, the Multicultural Turn and the “New” Latin American Constitutions and Other Special Legislations: Particularities of the Andean Region by Jean Muteba Rahier and Mamyrah Dougé Prosper 89 Chapter 5 A Glimpse at Afro-Ecuadorian Politics, Influences on and Participation in Constitutional Processes, and State Corporatism 105 Chapter 6 Blackness, the Racial-Spatial Order at Work, and Beauty Contest Politics: Señoras, Mujeres, Blanqueamiento, and the Negra Permitida 121 Chapter 7 Stereotypes of Hypersexuality and the Embodiment of Blackness: Some Narratives of Female Sexuality in Quito, Ecuador 147 viii Contents Chapter 8 Fútbol and the (Tri-)Color of the Ecuadorian Nation: Ideological and Visual (Dis-)Continuities of Black Otherness from Monocultural Mestizaje to Multiculturalism 175 Appendix 199 Notes 207 Cited References 219 Index 237 List of Figures & Tables Map 1.1. The two Afro-Ecuadorian communities that took shape during the colonial period: The Esmeraldas Province and the Chota-Mira Valley. (Jean Muteba Rahier) 11 Map 2.1. The three regions of Ecuador—the Coast, the Sierra or Andes, and the Oriente—and the northern region of Esmeraldas Province around the Santiago River basin. (Maps by Paul Pugliese, General Cartography, Inc.) 39 Table 5.1. National Census of 2010 (Censo de Población y Vivienda [CPV] 2010; Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos [INEC]). (See http://www.inec .gob.ec/estadisticas/) 106 Acknowledgments As I explain in the introduction to this book, the work published here was conducted over many years, from the late 1980s through 2013. This means that I am accountable for help and advice received along the way to a long list of people. I must begin by thanking Juan García Salazar for his generous wel- coming embrace in 1984, when we first met before he introduced me to the Ecuadorian province of Esmeraldas and to the Grupo Afroecu- atoriano, which was then publishing the Cuadernos Afroecuatorianos. In Ecuador, I am most thankful to the inhabitants of the villages and towns of the northern region of Esmeraldas Province, who allowed me among them repeatedly between the mid-1980s and 2010. Among these villages and towns are La Tola, Limones, Borbón, San Lorenzo, El Cuerval, La Tolita Pampa de Oro, Selva Alegre, Playa de Oro, Olmedo, Santo Domingo de Ónzole, Colón, and San Francisco de Ónzole. I am forever grateful to Edgardo Prado, his wife, Pany, and their children, for their generous solidarity and gift of affectionate fam- ily ambiance when I was residing in Ecuador (Esmeraldas and Quito). My gratitude also goes to those who have welcomed me in the villages of the Chota-Mira Valley: El Chota, Juncal, Piquiucho, and Carpuela. The various research initiatives I pursued over the years would not have been possible without the support of Rocío Rueda Novoa, Oscar Chalá, José Chalá, Manuel Mancheno, Iván Saltos, Hernán Ibarra, Carlos de la Torre, Jhon Antón, Jacqueline Pavón Espinoza, Susana Cervantes, Catherine Walsh, Alexandra Ocles Padilla, my colleagues of the Depar- tamento de Antropología de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador (PUCE) in Quito from 1986 through 1991, Marc Franck, the ambassador of Belgium in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and his wife, Marie-Paule Bastin, their children, and so many others. In Belgium and France, I must thank Carmen Bernand, Anne-Marie Losonczy, Odile Hoffman, Elisabeth Cunin, Christian Rinaudo, Luc de Heusch, and Philippe Descola for their advice and support. In the United States, I am in debt to Norm Whitten and Percy Hintzen for old brotherly advice. I am also lucky to have benefited xii Acknowledgments from fruitful intellectual exchanges with José Almeida, my colleagues and graduate students of the Department of Geography & Anthropol- ogy at Louisiana State University from 1992 to 1998, my colleagues and graduate students of the Department of Global & Sociocultural Studies and of the African & African Diaspora Studies since 1998, and with those who specifically read versions of the essays presented in this book and who provided useful feedback: Robin Sheriff, James Sweet, Felipe Smith, and many others. I must mention my fruitful collaboration with Mamyrah Prosper, a PhD student in the Depart- ment of Global & Sociocultural Studies in my university, for Chapter 4. Thanks to her archival research in our law library and elsewhere, we were able to get the data needed to write that chapter. None of this work would have been possible without the support of my institution, Florida International University, and of its College of Arts & Sciences, School of International & Public Affairs, African & African Diaspora Studies Program, and Latin American and Carib- bean Studies Center. At Palgrave Macmillan, I must thank Editorial Director Farideh Koohi-Kamali and her assistant Sara Doskow for their tolerance of my numerous delays in sending in the final manuscript. I am also thank- ful to those who were involved in the peer review and copyediting processes. Many thanks to Dennika Mays, my graduate student assistant, who helped me with the making of the book’s index. Last but not least, I must acknowledge the loving and plentiful support of my life partner, Mariama Jaiteh, who has always been there with the necessary and serene encouragements in times of self-doubts. The content of this book has benefited from the input of all who are named here. I remain solely responsible for its many shortcomings..