Race and Society in
Mexico
Hello all, and welcome back to this
awesome blog, if I do say so myself. Now today we will be tackling a giant
problem 500 years in the making.
As always, let’s start with some historical background. Everyone elementary school kid knows the poem “In Fourteen hundred ninety-two/ Columbus sailed the Ocean blue.” The poem is much longer than that and tells the tale of Cristopher Columbus, an Italian sailor that managed to get money from the Spanish crown to try the craziest thing imaginable: sailing west from Spain instead of east to reach India and cut out Portugal from the goods they would get. At this time, Spain recently got rid of the “evil” Moors, the Muslims that had conquered most of the Iberian Peninsula over 700 years prior. Because of this Spain, which at the time was not a unified country but rather many separate kingdoms, needed money. Portugal was freed from the Muslim power much earlier than the kingdoms of Spain, so they were able to take over many trade routes and gain money from said trading, but Spain did not have that luxury. The two main kingdoms of Spain at the time were the kingdoms of Aragon, headed by King Ferdinand II, and of Castile, headed by Queen Isabella I. The two rulers married and as a result were able to unify most of Spain.
Now I’m sure some of you have seen
the title and are asking yourselves what Spain and Cristopher Columbus has to
do with Mexico, and as always I’m getting there. With the power of the Spanish
behind him, Columbus set sail west to find a new route to India. Now to clear
some misconceptions, Columbus didn’t sail west to prove the Earth was round
because people actually knew that was a fact. Columbus went west to find a
shorter path to India, but he bumped into some islands in the Caribbean and
believed he had found India, a belief he would hold to his deathbed.
Let’s fast-forward about a good 17
or so years to 1519. This is the year of that the Conquistador Hernán Cortés arrived in Mexico, or at least the Aztec
empire and began his conquest. Now to clarify some more misconceptions. The
Aztecs, or Nahuatl as their proper name is, did not believe Cortés was
Quetzalcoatl, the winged serpent deity of the Nahuas. Any records that indicate
this is true were written years after the actual conquest occurred and the
Spanish destroyed many records from before their arrival. This is important
because if people lose their past, anyone could tell them what they want to
hear and this causes people to be easy to control. Within a few generations,
Spain and Spanish influence was very important in the colonies, so much so that
an entire hierarchical system, castas,
were created for this. The Spanish colonizers had a type of motto when it came
to their work, “Obedezco pero no cumplo”
which translated to English means: “I obey but I do not complete.” This refers
to the fact that the colonizers were prevented from having interracial
relations with the indigenous people, but still had those relations, either by
force or with consent. This is important because this breaks the myth that all
Spaniards raped and pillaged the indigenous people upon arrival. While there
certainly were some Spaniards that did participate in this “activity” there
were many examples of indigenous rulers or chiefs “trading” their daughters to
Spaniards in order to move up the social ladder. Because of this interracial
relations, a new hierarchical system was created, the casta system. This system
had people in different ethnic and racial groups depending on their parentage.
For example, a Spaniard born in the New World was called a Criollo and lower on the social ladder, while a Spanish born in
Spain was simply called Spanish and was at the top of the ladder. Paintings
depicting this hierarchy were commissioned and attempted to demonstrate to the
people in Spain that there was order and stability in the colonies where none
truly existed.
So this racial based hierarchy was
pretty strict, with the “whiter” you were the higher up you “deserved” to be.
This is another example of “Obedezco pero
no cumplo” in action. While typically racially mixed people were not
supposed to be in the upper classes and have money, they were and did, with
their skin color appearing whiter in the official records. A mestizo, if
talented in an art or intelligent enough to make money and save it, could
appear as white at the time of his death and would be acknowledged as such.
This idea of whiteness being important and essential to moving up the
socio-economic ladder would continue for many years, even after the Mexican War
for Independence.
Porfirio Diaz, president and
dictator of Mexico, wanted to “modernize” Mexico in the late 19th
century. His attempts of modernization meant making streets and buildings look
European and especially French, by widening streets and planting trees near the
streets, as well as hiring French architects to build his buildings in a very
French style. He also built “official” buildings, such as national theaters and
post offices to name a few. These official buildings all had a few things in
common with their interior designs: long winding staircases and many arches,
these were all European designs and influences. Diaz’s Europhile tendencies
expanded past just the ideas of what a “modern” Mexico should look like, but
also how Mexicans should look, act, and what their history should be. Much of
this revolved around ignoring the present indigenous population and instead
focusing on the long dead indigenous, such as the Olmec or Aztec, in order to
give Mexico an “exotic” look by focusing on the stories of those dead
indigenous in an attempt to demonstrate how unique Mexico was and that being a
Mestizo country was not something to be ashamed of. I should note; however,
that not all that Diaz did was just to make Mexico appear modern was wrong. He supplied
many cities with running water and electricity, and also improved the poor
railroad system. These were all helpful to push Mexico out from the rural,
agricultural setting it typically had and helped push it to a new modern
country. These improvements were not very well done though, with only major
cities receiving running water and electricity, and additionally these works
were made off of the backs of the poor Mestizo and indigenous populations,
where many times they would be paid less than American or other immigrant
workers for the same jobs.
You may have noticed that I wrote
that Diaz used long dead indigenous people to improve the image of Mexico for
the world and that he ignored the present indigenous population. This is
demonstrated in Diaz’s personal life as well, since he was a Mestizo at least,
having come from a state with a relatively large indigenous population: Oaxaca,
the same state that Mexico’s first indigenous president was from, Benito
Juarez. Diaz would often wear white make-up powder to appear whiter and
“European” when it was clear that he was not European at all. Diaz would use
this and other things, such as holding a birthday party for Kaiser Wilhelm in
Mexico City for many rich American and European investors that, you guessed it,
were white.
Some of you may be wondering where
I’m going with this information of Diaz and his Europhile system. Well, this
idea that Diaz had of whites and Europeans being naturally superior to the
Mestizo and indigenous populations was not an idea that Diaz or any of his
cronies came up with, rather this idea was one that the world in general was
beginning to accept through the spread of “scientific facts” from scientists
and other intellectuals from that time. The science used to explain why whites
were superior to any other “race” of people, physically and intellectually by
the shape of the body and size of certain body parts.
Diaz’s Europhile tendencies,
especially his repression of Mestizo and indigenous population, were what
ultimately caused the Mexican Revolution in 1910 when peasants rose up and took
arms to remove Diaz and his cronies from power, and to later fight for
campesino rights. Fast forwarding a few 10 years or so, and in the 1920s-1930s
was the beginning of the Indigenismo movement. The Indigenismo movement was
created by the Mexican government in the 1920s to promote indigenous culture
and integrate them into the Mexican society without assimilating them. This may
sound like a good idea at first glance, but in reality this was done mostly
without much indigenous feedback and was done by, once again old white dudes.
One problem with the Indigenismo movement was that it forced the indigenous to
be clean and educated, thereby removing some indigenous traditions when it came
to those areas. In a nutshell, Indigenismo is another form of racism in Mexican
society, pushing ideas of what traditions should be and what a “universal”
Mexico should look like, with indigenous people being treated like children
under the Mexican government, with the government looking after the indigenous
and having the government inspect the indigenous populations to make sure that
they are following the laws of proper sanitation and education.
Where am I going with this talk of
Indigenismo and Porfirio Diaz and the Spanish conquest of Mexico in 1519? Well,
all of this is connected because the Spanish ideas of the Casta system hierarchy was continued into the 19th
century with Diaz’s Europhile regime based on pseudoscientific methods to
determine the worth of a person, and the Indigenismo movement of the 1920s attempting
to honor the living indigenous while forcing them to conform to a specific
lifestyle, are methods by which the Mexican government directly and indirectly pushed
a certain image of what Mexico and Mexicans should be like.
The trend of whiteness being
important for success is very noticeable in Mexican soap operas, called telenovelas or novelas for short. In novelas,
until fairly recently, most of the main characters were white or light skinned,
usually with light brown or blonde hair, and the darker skinned actors were
background extras or servants/housecleaners if they were female. This is a
problem because it shows to people that only white and light skinned people can
be successful or attractive.
This link shows how children in
Mexico view which is better, being light skinned or dark skinned. This
demonstrates how in the approximately 500 years after Spain conquered what
would eventually be Mexico nothing much has changed in society. http://www.upworthy.com/heres-what-happens-when-you-put-a-few-little-kids-in-a-room-with-2-dolls-in-2-different-colors-aa2-4d?c=reccon1
As always, I remind you all, dear
readers, to be unique and individuals and don’t fear being different or an
outsider, because it is those that are
brave enough to be different and fight the norm that are the ones that
accomplish change.