Racial Mixing and National Integration in Latin America: The Return of Racial Differences in Mexico and Brazil

Affirmative Action in Brazil and the Related Debates

For decades, the ideology of racial mixing, ⁶ class-based Marxist approaches to society, ⁷ and dictatorial rule ⁸ served to obscure issues related to racial differences and racism in Brazil. After democratization in the 1980s, Brazilians realized that their society had a sophisticated mechanism of racial discrimination against blacks and dark-skinned people and that there was a strong psychological association between skin color (and other physical traits) and position in the social hierarchy (Paixão, 2012). During the first decade of the twenty-first century, a set of affirmative action measures was undertaken to reverse this situation. Quotas for blacks in the universities, the result of the pressure of social movements and the presidential initiative of Fernando Henrique Cardoso and international pressure from, for example, the Third World Conference against Racism in Durban in 2001 (Htun, 2004; Martins, Medeiros, and Nascimento, 2004; Silva and Paixão, 2014; Telles, 2004; Telles and Paixão, 2013), were the most controversial policies adopted and generated most of the debate. Arguments in favor of these policies included that they were a way of combating racial discrimination and racism and that they had had a direct effect on discrimination in higher education, where there were now more poor and dark-skinned people than before (Nobles, 2012).

Opponents argued that they might generate legal identities that created an opposition between whites and blacks or people of African descent (Maggie, 2012); that they replicated the U.S. approach to the problem, which was unsuitable for Brazil, where policies should seek to reduce poverty while focusing less on racial issues (Maggie, 2012); that implementation would be problematic because of the difficulty of determining who was black in Brazil (Santos and Anya, 2006) (although some have pointed out that universities have not encountered problems in this regard [Nobles, 2012]); ⁹ and that they kept blacks from competing for university admission (Paulo Renato Souza, cited in Htun, 2004) and insulted them by assuming that they could not be accepted on their own merits (Htun, 2004). Silva and Paixão (2014) point out that affirmative action policies have substantially changed during the past decade; they focus not so much on race as on socioeconomic inequalities. In 2012 the Supreme Court ruled affirmative action legal, and that same year the federal government made it mandatory across all federal universities beginning in 2016 (Telles and Paixão, 2013).

Studies of Race in Mexico and Political Action

Although studies of issues related to racial differences in Mexico are not new (see, e.g., Vasconcelos, 2015 [1925] and Aguirre Beltrán, 1972 [1946]), research on this topic has increased substantially in recent years (Arceo-Gomez and Campos-Vazquez, 2014; CONAPRED, 2011; Flores and Telles, 2012; Gall, 2004; Hoffmann and Rinaudo, 2014; Lewis, 2000; Martínez Casas et al., 2014; Stavenhagen, 2014; Sue, 2013; Telles, Flores, and Urrea-Giraldo, 2015; Telles and the PERLA, 2014; Villarreal, 2010). Most of these works focus on collecting solid and generalizable empirical quantitative evidence ¹⁰ to enable a better understanding of issues such as racial discrimination (including discrimination based on skin color), racial identification, and the importance of racial differences in social stratification. This wide array of studies has made important contributions based on the ways in which racial mixing and racial differences are approached.

Among these contributions is that they address the mestizo population. While the vast majority of the Mexican population is self-identified as and considered mestizo, previous work on racial issues focused on the population of black/African descent (see Sue, 2010, for a comprehensive bibliography) or on indigenous groups. Martínez Casas et al. (2014) found that among mestizos skin color played an important role when it came to educational performance and concluded that mestizos were hardly a homogeneous racial group with equal opportunities as the ideology of racial mixing would have it. At the same time, they showed that classifications in terms of ethnic/racial categories did not coincide with the way people perceived themselves; for example, more than half of those considered indigenous described themselves as mestizos. They pointed out that those with a higher education level were more likely to do so and that this was closely related to individuals’ greater exposure to the ideology of racial mixing. In addition, certain features of other family members were associated with a greater propensity for self-identification as mestizo.

An ethnographic study by Sue (2013) examined the way mestizo and urban populations from Veracruz negotiated their daily lives in the face of a powerful ideology of racial mixing. She analyzed mestizos’ attitudes toward interracial marriage and found that although they approved of such unions they would not marry anyone with very dark skin. She showed that interracial marriages were not necessarily free of racism and that since they were strongly shaped by the idea of racial mixing (e.g., some people chose to marry partners with paler skin so that their children would be lighter) they were therefore no antiracist panacea. For Sue, the main reason for people’s daily reproduction of the ideology of racial mixing was that it helped solidify their national identity as Mexicans.

Finally, Hoffmann and Rinaudo (2014) compared two Mexican contexts with predominantly black populations and different degrees of racial mixing, the Costa Chica and Veracruz. This allowed them to observe, even if indirectly, the possible implications of varying degrees of racial mixing for the lives of Afro-Mexicans.

Another contribution of these studies is that they favor classification based on skin color, which is seen as a key element in the social determination of race and an ideal form of ethnic/racial classification ¹¹ for studying racial discrimination (Telles, Flores, and Urrea-Giraldo, 2015; Telles and the PERLA, 2014). Skin color, after all, reflects the positions people occupy in the color/race hierarchy and the way they are treated by society (Sue, 2013). These studies are all the more important for being unprecedented in Mexico and addressing phenomena that were previously invisible or lacked the evidence necessary for assessing the presence or absence of discrimination. Villarreal (2010) employed the Mexico 2006 Panel Study, in which interviewers classified respondents’ skin color in terms of four categories: white, light-brown, dark-brown, and other. Telles and the PERLA (2014) and Telles, Flores, and Urrea-Giraldo (2015) classified respondents’ facial skin color according to a palette, drawn from photographs available on the Internet and extensively tested in several countries of the region, that included 11 shades, with 1 being the lightest and 11 the darkest. Sue (2013) classified her Veracruz respondents according to four skin-color categories: light, light-brown, brown, and dark-brown.

These studies are valuable for providing new empirical evidence of discrimination and racial stratification. Various researchers have obtained empirical evidence on differences in skin color and phenotype and their association with disparities in economic and social opportunities that have not disappeared in spite of a high degree of racial mixing. According to these results, racial mixing does not lead to national integration but quite the opposite: we still have a social stratification system in which the most disadvantaged members of the population are those with darker skin. In fact, Mexico has been described as a “pigmentocracy” ¹² (Sue, 2013; Telles, Flores, and Urrea-Giraldo, 2015; Telles and the PERLA, 2014).

Villarreal (2010) found that individuals with darker skin had lower socioeconomic status, even when variables from the Mexico 2006 Panel Study were used to control for individual characteristics. In response, Flores and Telles (2012) attempted to disentangle the implications of class, ethnicity, and race for Mexican social stratification. Using the Latin American Public Opinion Project, ¹³ a representative nationwide survey conducted in Mexico and other countries, they were able to examine people’s socioeconomic status in more detail. Agreeing with Villarreal that skin color was a good predictor of status, they found that it affected socioeconomic status even before entry into the labor market because of the accumulated disadvantages of racial discrimination in prior generations. ¹⁴

Martínez Casas and colleagues (2014) studied educational achievement in relation to different racial classifications and found that self-identified mestizos had higher educational levels. However, when the classification was based on the study’s color palette, darker skin tones was consistently related to lower education levels, even when controlling for ethnic/racial category. Their study is one of six representative surveys of race and ethnicity carried out by the Project on Ethnicity and Race in Latin America in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru (see Telles and the PERLA, 2014). These surveys focused on Afro-descendants in Brazil and Colombia and the indigenous populations of Mexico and Peru and employed various forms of ethnic/racial classification and measures of inequality, ¹⁵ including questions regarding perceptions of discrimination, ¹⁶ public opinion, racial minorities, social policies, and social movements. ¹⁷

In their analysis of educational inequality due to skin color in eight countries, Telles, Flores, and Urrea (2015) employed data from the Latin American Public Opinion Project and the Project on Ethnicity and Race in Latin America to reveal that people with darker skin have lower levels of schooling. They also found that self-identification as indigenous or black was linked to lower levels of schooling, although the statistical evidence in this case was not as robust as that for skin color.

All these studies of differences in skin color and educational and professional performance employed statistical models that allowed for the introduction of a series of control variables (for example, an individual’s socio-demographic characteristics or parents’ occupations). Other studies have sought evidence of discrimination against indigenous populations based on skin color in hiring. Arceo-Gomez and Campos-Vazquez (2014) developed a method for analyzing whether the photographs included with curricula vitae were being used to select candidates with a particular skin color and phenotype and found that companies discriminated against people who had indigenous features. The substantial increase in the number of studies of racial difference and racial mixing is reflected in the recent creation of academic networks and research groups on these topics such as the Project on Ethnicity and Race in Latin America and the Red Integra, established in 2014. ¹⁸

During the last decade of the twentieth century, some progress was made in the field of public policy for addressing racial discrimination and racism. In Mexico, the Law to Prevent and Eliminate Discrimination was introduced in 2003. ¹⁹ Under this law the Consejo Nacional de Prevención de la Discriminación (National Council for the Prevention of Discrimination—CONAPRED) was established, and in 2005 and 2010 it conducted a survey that provided a general picture of discrimination across Mexico: “The [2005 survey] results revealed a society practicing exclusion of, contempt for, and discrimination against certain groups; perhaps even more worrisome is the fact that they showed that discrimination was strongly rooted and taken for granted in social culture and reproduced by means of cultural values instilled within the family” (Székely, 2006: 5). The 2010 survey, conducted with the Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, documents the changes that had taken place over five years in the perception of discrimination across the country and its regional breakdown. It also explored the views of individuals in their dual role as victims of discrimination and discriminators and presented a comprehensive view of the topic in the general population and within particular groups (Barba, 2012; CONAPRED, 2011). The two surveys served to identify racial discrimination in Mexico, but they did not fully address it. Reading their results without understanding their limitations can lead to a skewed picture of the way discrimination really operates.

Another noteworthy action taken by the government in response to international pressure ²⁰ is the inclusion of “Afro-Mexican” as a potential self-descriptor in the 2015 intercensal survey of the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (National Institute of Statistics and Geography—INEGI) (Archibold, 2014; CONAPRED, 2014; Rudiño, 2014). According to Rudiño (2014), “People of African descent in Mexico want the intercensal survey . . . to ‘at least lead to the design of specific public policies’ directed at this population, which has not been officially counted for years, and therefore its constitutional recognition and inclusion in public programs, budgets, and institutions.”

Conclusions

Fifty years after the publication of “Seven Erroneous Theses about Latin America,” issues involving racial differences have become very important in Latin America. In Brazil, where the black and mulatto populations are demographically significant and civic groups have for decades pointed to rampant racial discrimination, since the beginning of the twenty-first century the government has implemented affirmative action policies for the black population intended to reverse social inequalities based on racial differences. In Mexico the study of issues related to racial differences and racial mixing is experiencing unprecedented prominence. Much of this research has focused on contemporary society and on the mestizo population, skin color, and the development of survey instruments for gathering evidence of inequality and discrimination based on racial differences. We have also witnessed incipient (albeit limited) governmental action to document, recognize, and reduce race-based discrimination and eradicate racism.

As for whether racial mixing leads to national integration, the evidence for the Mexican and Brazilian cases presented here shows that this is not the case—at least not in a direct and automatic way. Racial mixing does not lead to equal opportunities, and therefore it does not lead to national integration. The information provided here raises new questions calling for research. How effective will Brazilian affirmative action policies be in the long run? Can we assume that Mexico is on the verge of implementing specific policies for Afro-descendants? Will government policies address issues involving racial differences more holistically, including the whole population? Finally, what are the interests of the researchers who undertake studies of this kind and of those who finance them?