Convivial Constellations in Latin America by Luciane Scarato Fernando Baldraia Maya Manzi

Author:Luciane Scarato, Fernando Baldraia, Maya Manzi [Luciane Scarato, Fernando Baldraia, Maya Manzi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Family & Relationships, Relationships, Friendship, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Sociology
ISBN: 9781000093360
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2020-07-30T04:00:00+00:00

The resilience of mestizaje

Questions remain about the extent to which ethnic mobilizations and the multicultural turn have effectively toppled discourses and practices of mestizaje. This is partly a question of appreciating the degree of corporatist co-optation of black and indigenous activism and politics (Agudelo 2005; French 2009; Rahier 2012; Paschel 2016), which blunts their disruptive and transformative edge. It is also a question of reevaluating mestizaje itself. This requires a deeper insight into the way that the project of mestizaje involves not just aiming to produce homogeneity, but also recognizing the racialized diversity that the very idea of the mestizo depends upon: the mestizo is unimaginable without the black, the white, and the indigenous (Wade 2005, pp. 239–257).

It is also important to grasp that mestizaje works not just by erecting a smokescreen of falsehoods woven together in a mere rhetoric of inclusion. Mestizaje can certainly contain such rhetoric, but hegemonic discourses succeed to the extent that they play on elements of social reality that resonate with people’s life experiences and perceptions. Hegemonic ideas work by articulating (in the dual sense of linking together and expressing) diverse symbols, ideas, concepts, terms, images, and feelings into narratives that are convincing (Grossberg 1996; pp. 131–50; Hall 1996, pp. 411–40). They are not entirely real, but they are not entirely false either.

Narratives about the convivial aspects of mestizaje resonate with facets of many people’s lived experience, even as they may also experience its racist aspects (Wade 2005, pp. 239–57); the social positioning of a person will shape which aspects resonate most strongly. Describing a low-income neighborhood of Salvador, Brazil, Sansone (2003) says that “color is seen as important in the orientation of social and power relations in some areas and moments, while considered irrelevant in others.” The local residents perceive a “hard” area of social relations (interactions with the police, the world of work, and of marriage and dating) and a “soft” one (street corners, parties, the neighborhood, sports, and religion) (see also Telles 2004 on “vertical” versus “horizontal” relations).

Contrary to ideals of mestizaje as powered by the conviviality of mixed families, Sansone identified the world of marriage and dating as a “hard” one and it is well known that social hierarchies – including ones of race – play a vital role in choosing a mate, whether for marriage or for a more temporary liaison. In Rio de Janeiro, dark-skinned working-class women may attempt, playing on the image of the sexy mulata, to seduce a coroa (literally a crown; figuratively a knight in shining armor), who is an older, whiter, richer man, who will give them money and other gifts in return for a sexual relationship (Goldstein 2003). In Cuba, romantic relationships between black and white people are evaluated according to racist stereotypes about blackness (Fernandez 2010). In Bogotá, Colombia, black-white couples find themselves subject to racialized and racist ideas about black male and female hypersexuality (Viveros Vigoya 2002, pp. 60–77).

Even once formed, families are not going to be free from the concerns that shape the conjugal relationships on which they are based.

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