Original article in Spanish at: http://www.ejournal.unam.mx/rms/2004-2/RMS04201.pdf
1. THE PARADOXES OF EQUALITY
We start from the point that, we humans are all equal and have our value to society. But not all of us are fully aware of this fact and practice racism or racial discrimination. We speak of equality paradoxes by the fact that when we say that at the same time everyone should have equal rights, we contradict each other in \”Universalism as regards cultures and human beings\” (Castoriadis, 1985: 07). It will be discussed later on the historical weight of racism in society and whether it is a product of modernity in the way we see today, or whether it is simply a mirror of the historical view and the relation between race and gender in Mexico and the variants of anti-indigenous racism in the country.
2. IDENTITY AND ALTERITY
Identity according to Fossaert (1983) \”is a collective perception of \”us\”(within the group) as opposed to\” others \”(outside the group,) due to the recognition of shared traits and a common collective memory.\” This feeling of belonging to something functions almost like an invisible mortar connecting the people. Identity and alterity are two sides of the same coin. Identity is not something purely linked to origin and ethnicity, but to social, class, political and territorial factors. Collective identity is a way of giving meaning to the \”us\” and it does not exist without its counterpart, alterity, which is the \”notion of another emphasizing the difference that constitutes social life, as it is effected through the dynamics of social relationships. Thus, difference is simultaneously the basis of social life and a permanent source of tension and conflict \”(G. Velho, 1996: 10).
3. THE UNIVERSAL AND RECURRENT MECHANISMS OF EXCLUSION AND INTOLERANCE AND THE CRISIS OF RACISM
If we define exclusion as \”the systematic negation in history that the idea, and the practice associated with it, that others are others.\” (Castoriadis, 1985) we see that this is a much more universal phenomenon than we thought. There is thus only one \”us\” and the \”others\” where we consider ourselves equal, superior or inferior, but hardly any society recognizes itself as inferior to another. Just as in seeing another society as equals, we imagine why we keep our customs if there is nothing special about them. Historical societies have never been able to compare themselves to each other and the tolerance of other people\’s customs is something very difficult to accept, leading to the next step: racism.
4. THE RACISM
The race
Nowadays, according to biologists, physical anthropologists and geneticists, the concept of race does not exist biologically, whereas there are obviously genetic variations. Most psychologists say that human capacities and limitations are not as significant in their differences as can be attributed to blacks, whites, Asians, and so on. (Wade, 1997: 13). With the discovery of the genome in the 2000s, it is stated that 99.9% of the planet\’s population are biologically equal regardless of the geographic territory in which they are or the color of their skin. This finding makes it possible to challenge those who attribute the genetics of a certain group to their \”inferior, slow … behavior to work like animals\” (Ridley, 2000).
Ethnicity
Ethnicity is a term that has been used in place of race, since the latter is considered to be the propagator of racism. \”The general consensus is that ethnicity refers to \’cultural\’ differences whereas race refers to genetic differences.\” (Wade, 1997: 16-17). Still according to Wade, people rely on their geographic location in order to speak of difference and equality. Ethnicity is based on the social concept of \’place of origin\’ and the cultural differences it deduces. To substitute one term for another happens a lot in Latin America, especially in Mexico, because of its colonial history.
The class relationship with ethnicity and race
Classical Marxist theory says that the origins of racism can be found in colonial class relations, saying that these social categories were created by the bourgeoisie in order to better master the labor force considered by them as \’inferior\’ and fit only for manual labor . We know that nowadays this vision is not correct, because it is very simplistic for the following reasons:
a)The ideological categories affect economic factors;
b)Racial identifications may vary during history;
c)How would racial discrimination be explained within categories oppressed by each other?
5. WHEN AND WHERE IS RACISM BORN?
Many European experts say that racism first arose in colonialism and it settled with the consolidation of nation-states of the twentieth century.
In medieval Europe the cult of the \’wrong\’ god was a reason for exclusion and even death, since the person had been born in an unworthy culture, according to Moreno Feliú (1994). For Wieviorka (1994), it is possible to make this correlation between racism and history, but for him the relationship with modernity must also be made, since there was a structuring principle of inequality in society before modernity, while now society is based on the contrary principle. Differentialism is a way of being racist and hiding behind culture and being as racist as someone who does it openly. How to express the forms of racism? We will see it next.
6. RACISM IN MODERN TIMES
Racism regarding inequality is where the group in power considers the others having a place in society, this place being always below them. This is the traditional logic of racism, which raises the idea that some are inferior to others and should be treated as such. This thought was the guiding thread of many intercultural relations between colonized countries and their \’discoverers\’ during the colonization process.
In the racism of differentiation, we have the phenomena of decriminalization and exclusion, highlighting the cultural difference of the subject vs. the collective. Racism, which responds to this logic, is called neoromancism or cultural fundamentalism and has manifested itself in the last 20 years in the so-called \’first world\’ countries in the form of racism against immigrants, for example, because they are considered so \’different\’ that it becomes impossible to coexist, leading to marginalization, exclusion and even fundamentalist violence.
7. MEXICO, A RACIST COUNTRY?
In Mexico the racism of \’assimilation\’ as an ideology today, was born in the late nineteenth century as an understanding that only the superiority of mixed races and not the purity of blood would ensure a solid and firm nationality. The miscegenation between whites and the natives was seen as necessary by politicians as a response to the \’red menace\’, thus leading the natives to a desperate position. The Chiapa population was marked by a racism of segregation and exploitation of indigenous labor, even representing 80% of the population in colonial times. Through the \’indigenous problem\’, a policy of racism of assimilation by the state was developed, subjecting the nation to progressive laundering around 1911. The government had to change its discourse in the 1970s, speaking of plural ethnicity multiculturalism in order to have a new political attitude toward the peoples of Mexico. In 2001 the Zapatista Army proclaimed the landowners as racist and broke contact with the government, demanding indigenous dignity and cultural recognition.
8. RACE, GENRE AND NATION
According to Alpen Ruiz (2001: 4), \”all nationalisms are based on appropriating women discursively or physically.\” However, as Verena Stolke (1993) says, in \”class societies, the homology between race and sex and gender and ethnicity remains.\” The souls and bodies of Mexican indigenous women are responsible for the myth of an homogeneous and mixed Mexico. (Hernández Castillo, 1998). Ruiz thus points out that it was the role of the woman to \’gives birth\’ to this new nation, based on the tradition of the indigenous world and that bleaching was only for men, with women being relegated to remain \’dark and feminine\’. Also, in indigenous culture women are seen as the property of society (understood society as men), thus claiming women as millennial transmitters of culture (Gall and Hernandez). This analysis suggests that Mexican indigenous women suffer the highest degree of discrimination in the country, being placed at the lowest level of sexual, class and race differences. In much of the twentieth century, a paternalistic and sexist mode of segregation racism was reserved for them, resulting in manifestations of great violence. When the indigenous woman defends her land with sticks and stones from the government, the \”metaphor that equates women and the land is reversed, reformed … Women and land make up a new equation that breaks the foundational pact of the Mexican nation\” (Belausteguigoitia, 2001: 17). The native mothers of the nation were thus subjected to the most extreme form of racism: extermination.
9. TWO-TIME REFLECTIONS: MEXICO AND THE WORLD
With one approach, Castoriadis asserts that it is not correct to conclude a subject like this without resorting to the dualism between universalism-particularism. Some understand universalism as \”[…] The only solid basis on which we must follow as basic principles to the defense of human rights\” (Castoriadis, 1985).
By believing that we fight against racism because we do not recognize universal application values, we will certainly fall into cultural relativism that inevitably leads to racist behavior. We may also fall into valuing the values of the West, unconsciously for some, to make use of human rights in a colonialist way, not listening to what exists in the voice of \”others.\” (Collier and Speed, 2001).
10. CONCLUSION
The struggle for human rights and the possibility of \”others\” being heard are in vogue in Mexico today. Many civilian struggles bringing human rights afoot with respect to cultural diversity, and the struggle exists to reject the myth that Mexico is a non-racist country, and this is thanks to indigenous voices who, although many, agree on various aspects. Several academics, NGOs and even government agencies want to agree on the various phenomena of discrimination and exclusion that are present in the country in order to understand and combat them effectively. Another point is to extinguish the policies of erasing the \’indigenous problem\’, ending assimilation and laundering, which is the key point of denunciations. To end racism in Mexico today is to denounce all violence, segregation and appropriation of the indigenous body. It is giving voice and word, values and representation to a culture without the intention of \’saving\’ it, but giving it its proper place instead.
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