Brief Political History of Race in Latin America 

Thanks for watching! I did this for my classes during the pandemic originally, but I'm really happy other people have found them useful.

I agree. Argentina looks like it has fewer mestizos or more white people only when compared to other Latin American countries, but they still have a sizable mestizo population, no question.

@ Uruguay are the whitest country in latin America and 92 percent are White

@@smilingwomen3841 in 2011, 8% of Uruguayans called themselves black or afro-descendant. So the 92% would be correct if everyone else thought of themselves as white and not mixed and/or of other groups like Asian or indigenous.

I feel for you bro😢

"caste system" never existed, is a 1960s pseudohistoric model no one historian support now.

Bro I've never heard of this

​@luissanchez2067 is it a thing

In Colombia as well

I heard of this in my short time living in Mexico, as well from some other latin americans while living in the US (I'm from Uruguay). In Uruguay, I never heard of such a thing, but also, we're majority European-descent. Nonetheless some racism always existed, but never systematic in casts, segregation or anything like that, most people don't mention color. There is a small discrimination against Venezuelans that have emigrated, but that seems more of cultural differences than racial. Still wrong though, of course

Thank you for the kinds words. It's definitely fast, because I'm trying to get in as much as possible in a very, very short period of time.

Because its a made up thing by europeans so they could say "we arebetter" , at least the modern iteration. Its dumb to pretend to play the game of the idiots that made it up to keep you down .

but then why does racism still exist in latin america despite race being a "social construct"

@@angelicadayanafernandez1525 , “if we dont talk about it doesnt exist” unlike bad usa

@@angelicadayanafernandez1525 Classism ≠ Racism

@@angelicadayanafernandez1525race as North Americans understand it due to an westernised view of race, is more to be compared class in Latin America. Blacks are à class, and whites are a class. So it’s more like classism

Yes, feudalism, which is by definition a complex social pyramid. And what you're trying to say not very clearly in the rest of the message is why I say in the video that people "might be higher or lower in the social hierarchy depending on any number of variables including the place they lived, the colonial period in question, and the kind of work they did" and it was not "entirely dependent on a person’s skin color and to the extent that it was varied greatly across the Spanish Empire."

Indeed there were. One of their descendants became one of the most famous Peruvian Presidents of recent memory, Alberto Fujimori.

@ Not something to be really proud of

@@kpg2758 Pride has nothing to do with it, really. Even if Fujimori was the worst President in Peruvian history (and I don't think he is, given the competition) he's still notable as one of the few prominent people of Asian descent in Latin America.

Who were called insulares? The difference between illustrados and indios was one of class, and not race?

@@radioactivedetective6876 By the way insulares are the Spaniards who were born in the Philippines or any Spanish Colony. You are correct about the illustrados which is about class rather than race. lllustrados can came from Mestizos, Sangley, Principalia or Indios. This class of people had flourished in the mid 19th century, when the Colonial Philippines opened for world trade. The word Illustrado came from the word Enlightenment, since rich Filipinos, who can afford to study in Europe brought the enlightened ideas to the Philippines. To avoid confusion, Illustrados are any Filipinos who are educated in Europe and brought the ideas of liberalism and independence in the islands.

@@brianthesage5119 Thanks a lot for such a clear explanation. I am from a post-colonial country myself: India. And in India we had our own old religion-based caste system - which is a horrible system. There was not a lot of marriages between Indians (of whichever caste, religious, linguistic or ethnic background) and the British colonisers during the British Raj, and the small community of people of mixed British and Indian descent (born during the colonial period) is known as the Anglo-Indian community, with no further segmentation, and they identify as Indians and not as belonging to particular regions of India. A coastal state of India, Goa, was a Portugese colony, and there are people of mixed Portugese and Indian descent, but they mostly identify as (and referred to as) Goanese i.e. in terms of the region, and not in terms of ethnic descent (Luso-Indians).

yeah, at some point soon. I'm behind on several, but I'll add it to the queue.

white are the second largest ethnic group before the Mestizo or mixed race and Cuba is 64 percent being White and Puerto rico had 25 percent had pure european Ancenstry mostly of White Cuban and White puerto rican were descendant were Spanish and Italian and French immigrant

I very much appreciate the comment.

If you don’t think that colonization, miscegenation and migration is political then I don’t know what to tell you.

@ you barely mention governments, what type of governments, ideologies and what they did, parties or important political figures or events and it doesn't have it Unless your definition of political is very broad

@@accent1666 colonization of the Americas was something that governments did, miscegenation was also permitted or not by various governments, all political. And migration by definition is a political thing because people go from one country to another and laws rule that. Since the whole point of the video is for it to be brief, I don't have time to explain all of that, the assumption is that the audience will understand why it is political. But clearly not everyone does.

@ ill be honest , the tittle does lend itself to make you think its gonn a be about the national policies and parties surrounding race, in contrast to , lets say anglo apartheid or outright murdering , like inthe us or southafrica.

Brazil is the most mixed country in the world

@@JUSTINHANSENQUISPE no, It's not, Venezuela is!

You are misinformed.

Dominicans do have a lot of indigenous genes , and the culture

Why leyenda negra?

about what exactly?

@ I can write pages but I'll spare both of us. I'll address the main thing I had a problem with. I may address the rest in a video in the future. I mainly had an issue with the part where you mention that we gained independence from both Haiti and Spain but we give more importance to our independence from Haiti "in the mind of Dominicans". When Haiti occupied Santo Domingo, which was an agreement on both sides more than a hostile takeover, since the Dominican elites saw the benefits of this at the time with Haiti being in a position of power, they started imposing their will. There's a decent sized list of the restrictions they imposed, but I'll focus on 3, they forbade the use of Spanish, they closed the Catholic churches, and they closed the universities. This was a direct attack towards our Hispanic identity, which I would assume you understand why this is a problem almost 300 years after Columbus arrived. We celebrate our Independence from this regime because this was the moment in our history that we defended our Hispanic identity. We had already lived under Spain for hundreds of years and though mixed, we still descend from them so alot of our culture comes from them. To expect us to harbor the same sentiments towards Spain, whom we get most of our culture from vs Haiti, who tried to erase our culture, is absurd to say the least. We literally had to go to war, against the odds, to say that we are Hispanic today. How can any proud Hispanic/Latino not respect that?

In other words, you just repeated exactly what I said. In the DR, independence from Spain, which was definitely declared (TWICE), is of far less importance than that of independence from Haiti. This is one of the main Dominican national tenets. I don't see why you would find that controversial since you just confirmed it.

​@ The issue is the reasoning you gave for it. You emphasized that the reason we give more importance to the independence from Haiti is because of their proximity and because the leaders used it as a scare tactic. I won't deny those things as factors, but the main reason is what I explained, which there was not even a hint of in your video.

@@dominicanyorktalk4980 ok, so the argument here is not that what I said was wrong ("I won't deny those as factors"), but rather that I did not include the importance of Hispanidad in the explanation. But this video is about race. The whole point is to explain why mestizaje as part of the Dominican national myth is different than other mestizajes as national myths in Latin America. Saying anything about Hispanidad wouldn't make a lot of sense, since they all had as a root.

Not sure where you’re getting this. The video says: Argentina and Uruguay had a somewhat comparable narrative but UNLIKE CHILE they had a much larger afro-descendant and indigenous population.

@ they had much larger, can be interpreted as also had but much more, it’s not very clear. Still Argentina doesn’t have much of an Afro-descent minority, we exchange a hell of a lot with Argentina, we share a very long border, we have the same indigenous groups down south, very large on both sides and they also have similar weather as Chile, because is the same territory. I don’t think they had a black minority from prior to the 21st century same as Chile, anyways best is to research, I suppose.

@@patriciafj9324 right, much larger. Because they did have some, not many, but definitely some. www.memoriachilena.gob.cl/602/w3-article-100668.html

Yeah. Later on that was the norm. In the early years, it was by the Europeans themselves.

@ Initially the Portuguese occasionally kidnapped but it was mainly from arabized Berber peoples.

huh? you think black africans are native to the Americas? and that they were not enslaved and forcibly transported?

why is that lie always perpetuated? it's been proven time and time again that people from sub-saharan africa were forcibly transported to the americas via the transatlantic slave trade, hence, they were never native to the americas. what are you trying to say exactly in your comment?...

Your belief has no foundation in reality and it’s offensive to the indigenous people that lived in the americas