The German author Stefan Zweig, who fled to Brazil from Nazi Germany, already considered Brazil a paradise characterized by hybridity and said in 1941 that Brazil “has taken the racial problem, that unsettles our European world ad absurdum in the simplest manner: in plainly ignoring its validity.” (translation S.L.)[2] According to Zweig, “for hundreds of years the Brazilian nation relies on the sole principle of free and unrestrained mixing, perfect equality of black and white, brown and yellow. (…) There are no limits to colours, no boundaries, no supercilious hierarchies…”[3]

Hence the image of Brazil as a tolerant, peaceful, “mestiço” nation is not at all new. But it ignores then and still today the multifaceted forms of discrimination and specifically Brazilian shapes of racism.

From a subaltern colonialism

The aforementioned sociologist, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, contributed one of the major analyses on Portuguese (post)colonialism.[4] Using the characters Prospero and Caliban from Shakespeare’s piece “The Tempest” he describes the Portuguese colonists as bipolar: Sometimes they are more like Prospero, the former Duke who now reigns the island and therefore embodies the typical colonist for Santos. Sometimes they rather resemble Prospero’s slave Caliban, his name an anagram for “cannibal”, who stands for the colonized people.

Santos derives the “Caliban” elements of Portugal from its increasing semi-peripheral position in the world capitalist system from the 17th century onwards and the loss of its naval and trade supremacy which it held in the 15th and 16th century. After temporarily being a Spanish province, the country was increasingly dependent on England financially and regarding external and economic policies. Thus England had strong influence on Brazil – the largest Portuguese colony – and acted as a co-colonist, hence the reason for often referring to Portuguese colonialism as subaltern. To some extent the Portuguese were colonists as well as colonized people and in that period settlers and immigrants in their colonies at the same time.

Santos’ image of Portugal as a “mix” between Prospero and Caliban runs the risk of trivializing Portuguese colonialism. Accordingly, cultural scientist Fernando Arenas warns not to overemphasise the subaltern character of Portuguese colonialism. After all, Portugal “was still able to forge a tightly centralized and interdependent triangular trade system across the Atlantic after it lost its commercial and military hegemony in the Indian Ocean by the end of the sixteenth century”, and the history of Portuguese colonialism also showed some “unambiguous Prospero-like figures”.[5] However, Santos’ interest is not to present Portuguese colonialism as non-violent and peaceful, but rather to analyse its specific characteristics – without proclaiming its exceptionality like national ideologues in Brazil and Portugal later did.

Hence, according to Santos, the main difference between British and Portuguese colonialism for example was “that the ambiguity and hybridity between colonizer and colonized … was the experience of Portuguese colonialism for long periods of time.”[6] The boundary between colonizer and colonized was not so easily to be drawn in Portuguese colonialism; the issue of difference was far more complex. Many Portuguese settlers were poor farmers, criminals or “New Christians” (converted Jews) and thus to some extent colonized “others” themselves. In contrast to the British colonists they did not have a “strong state” supporting them and nor were they so rigid in maintaining the boundary between colonists and colonized people. This influenced the identity regime of the Portuguese colonialism, which was far more penetrable than the Anglo-Saxon.[7]

Even nowadays the porosity of Portuguese colonialism is apparent in Brazil from the variety of ethnic categories and self-designations. Unlike the USA, where the strict bipolarization of black and white predominated for a long time due to the one-drop rule, Brazil developed a highly refined spectrum with many intermediate stages. However neither in colonial times nor today this high degree of flexibility means absence of racism. In fact for decades, sociologists and anti-racist activists analyse the cordial racism as a (post)colonial singularity of Brazil – a racism that is subtle but still powerful.[8]

… into an internal colonialism

Due to the expansion of other European naval powers from the 17th century onwards, Portugal lost its supremacy in the spice trade with Asia and its bases in Africa were mainly used to guarantee the participation in slave trade. Brazil then became the most important colony for Portugal, whose economic performance and natural resources hugely outpaced the small motherland for many years and thus led to economic dependence on the colony. When gold was found in the Brazilian hinterland in the early 18th century, many Portuguese emigrated and Brazil’s population swelled to two million and around 1800 it reached the three million mark. The strong bond between Brazil and Portugal is exemplified by the Portuguese court’s flight to Brazil in 1808 to escape Napoleon’s troops. The seat of parliament was moved to Rio de Janeiro until 1821 – a unique act in the history of European colonialism, “whereby the metropole became a de facto appendix of the colony”.[9]

The relocation of the capital to Rio de Janeiro laid the foundations for Brazilian independence. Within the framework of the “United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and Algarve” at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Brazil formally gained equality to its motherland. Public riots in Portugal forced King João VI to return in 1821. His son Pedro remained governing Brazil and declared its independence in 1822. While other South American states led by Simón Bolívar gained their independence as republics, Brazil implemented a monarchy and thus fulfilled “one of the most conservative and oligarchic independences of the Latin-American continent”.[10]

Independent Brazil enjoyed a high degree of autonomy towards Portugal under emperor Pedro I. However the strong political, economical and cultural alliances persisted, not least to the fact that father and son were governing the two countries. The Brazilian empire was “firmly anchored in a conservative, plantation-based, slave-holding system that critics…describe as tantamount to the continuation of colonialism”[11]; even though this gradually changed under Pedro II (1840-1889). This “internal colonialism”[12] of the Portuguese descendants towards enslaved Africans and Indigenes is the essential characteristic of the young independent Brazil. Slave labour was of substantial economic relevance for this system, which is why the Luso-Brazilian elites had a strong interest in continuing slave trade. A British intervention in 1850 ended the transatlantic slave trade, but internally it continued between the North and South of Brazil. The changes in the agricultural and population structure were followed by a slow transition from slave to wage labour: coffee replaced sugar as the most important export product. The coffee boom attracted European immigrants and thus made slave labour increasingly redundant. In 1871 a law declared all children from slaves born after this date as free and finally in 1888 crown princess Isabel abolished slavery. Many supporters of abolitionism were also opponents of the monarchy and in fact only a few months later on the 15th of November 1889 the monarchy was overthrown and the republic proclaimed.

The praise of the miscigenação

In the following decades the ensaios de interpretação do Brasil (essays on the interpretation of Brazil) became a very popular genre for Brazilian intellectuals to reflect on the development and specifics of the “Brazilian Nation” – and thus widely contributed to its construction.[13] One of the best known examples is the work “Casa Grande & Senzala” (English: “The Masters & the Slaves”) by sociologist Gilberto Freyre published in 1933, where he interpreted the Brazilian colonial society as a dynamic, contradictory system of social intimacy and violence. For him one of the reasons for the social and cultural proximity of the colonists and colonised compared to other colonial powers, was the repetition of the process of cultural and ethnical “mixing”, which the Portuguese supposedly had undergone with Arabs and Jews in the motherland and then – according to Freyre – again took place in colonial Brazil between Portuguese, enslaved Africans and Indigenes.[14]

This understanding ignores the violent history of slavery and genocide of indigenous inhabitants respectively and legitimizes it through a trivial romanticisation. Yet this myth, even today, forms the basis of the powerful narrative of mestiçagem/miscigenação (miscegenation), which also appears in other national ideologies of Latin America. Advocates of this narrative, Sérgio Costa explains, wanted to “coin the model of a culturally and biologically ‘mixed’ nation, in which ethnic and racial lines of demarcation dissolve” (translation S.L.)[15] and thus drafting an alternative to the powerful race theories of the beginning of the 20th century that advised against any “racial interbreeding”. Freyre’s innovation was the positive interpretation of this miscigenação, which until then was always considered the source of degeneration and obstacle for the development of Brazil. Nevertheless his approach is also founded on racist arguments as he assigns inherent characteristics to different population groups, which then constituted the “mestiço Brazilian race”.

Freyre’s approach fit perfectly into the nationalistic discourses of the prevailing Estado Novo from Getúlio Vargas in the 1930s that proclaimed the idea of a Brazilian “racial democracy” (democracia racial) and euphemised the inequality of the different groups. Praise of the miscigenação was thus also a measure for Brazilian elites to disguise racist structures and discrimination, and to retain power. Expert on roman languages, Claudius Armbruster, writes that, “the generally progressive idea of a mestiço-democratic Brazil turns into a dangerous ideology for Afro-Brazilians to the extent in which this utopia is being presented as reality” (translation S.L.).[16] For many advocates of miscigenação, the “mixing” also, if nothing else, pointed the way to the embranquecimento (“whitening”) of the Brazilian population. Additionally the miscigenação was determined by sexist rules that in fact allowed relationships between white men and Black or Indigene women, but not vice versa.[17] It was therefore by no means a consequence of the absence of racism but a consequence of a specific form of racism that combined images intentionally propagating the excessive sexuality of people of African and Indigenous descent with the mystified encouragement of interracial mixture.

Freyre’s ideas also provided the basis for the lusotropicalismo – one of the most powerful and controversial meta-narratives in Portuguese colonialism.[18] Its underlying assumption states that the Portuguese have “mixed” stronger with people from the tropics as a result of several geographical, historical, cultural and genetic factors and hence were softer colonists than other European colonial powers.[19] The perception of a Portuguese exceptionalism particularly gained importance under the Salazar dictatorship ruling Portugal from 1926 onwards. Aiming at the reestablishment of a Portuguese global power, the authoritarian regime attributed great significance to the remaining colonies especially in Africa and created an image of Portugal as a “pluri-continental and multiracial” state. Besides, it integrates Portuguese colonialism in the bigger narrative on the role of Portugal in the European expansion already happening since the 15th century.[20]

Miguel Vale de Almeida notes that Brazil already was a projection of the fantasy that the Portuguese were the better colonists at that time. In acting as a role model for the alleged humanistic, multicultural colonization in Africa, it was the symbolic resource for the construction of a Portuguese colonial empire in Africa.[21] Freyre’s ideas fitted the strategy and he was accordingly invited by Portugal to visit the African colonies in 1950. He only then started to use the concept of Lusotropicalism in his work. While it only received little resonance in Brazil, it played a central role in the official discourse in Portugal.[22]

Only the Brazilian military dictatorship established in 1964 transferred Freyre’s lusotropicalistic ideas to Brazil as parts of the military envisaged a central role for Brazil in Africa.

The military regime adopted an ambiguous position in regard of the Portuguese colonialisation in Africa and pursued a policy of “active neutrality”, which caused strong resentment in political leaders not only in the Portuguese colonies but in other African countries too. They had hoped for more support and solidarity from Brazil in the anti-colonial fight.[23]

Brazil in Africa, Africa in Brazil

This is one of many examples of the ambivalent role of Brazil compared to other Portuguese (ex)colonies especially in Africa, which also depicts Brazil’s general position in the world: On the one hand, Brazil has always been an ally to the west and maintained privileged relationships to Portugal, Western Europe and USA – though they were characterized by classical centre and periphery asymmetries. On the other hand, Brazil is progressively oriented towards the global south and thus trying to break away from the economical dependence on the north and establish itself as a regional or even global leading power.[24]

Brazil shows a certain historico-political sensitivity in regards of slave trade. In view of the fact that Brazil imported the largest quantity of enslaved Africans in the Americas, the government today emphasises the historic debt and responsibility towards Africa. Nevertheless the coalitions with African countries are clearly motivated by realpolitik and economic interests. Even though Brazil has especially strong bonds to Lusophone Africa, the interest in the African continent relies upon the long-term goal of changing global market and trade patterns in Brazil’s favour and not primarily on the idea of a community induced by Portuguese colonialism.[25]

At the same time the idea of “Africa” repeatedly plays a central, albeit ambivalent, role in the construction of a Brazilian national identity, which is still partially based on Freyre’s image of Brazil as a melting pot, in which Africans, Indigenes and the Portuguese have merged harmoniously. Although “African” was associated with traditionalism and backwardness for a long time, this changed with the strengthening of the Black civil rights movement at the end of the 1970s and the connected appreciation of the Afro-Brazilian heritage.

This also led to an intensified debate on racism in Brazil, in which the paradigm democracia racial was strongly attacked. It states that there is no racism or racial inequality in Brazil as a result of the high degree of “ethnic mixing”. For organizations like the United Black Movement (MNU – Movimento Negro Unificado) this myth “was not only a manipulation of the reality, but also an instrument of political domination that disguises black people’s subordination” (translation S.L.).[26]

The constitution of 1988 was an important milestone. While the military dictatorship that ruled until 1985 pursued the policy of (forced) integration of ethnic minorities into the “mestiço” Brazilian nation, the new constitution of 1988 accounted for the tendencies of (re)ethnicising of the mainly Indigene and Black populations since the beginning of the 1980s. In guaranteeing the protection of indigenous cultures and the land claim of Quilombo communities, the Brazilian state turned away from the assimilation strategy and now rather follows a policy of recognition towards ethnic differences.[27]

Affirmative Action – an attempt at reconciliation

Regardless of the theoretical appreciation of the “mestiço” heritage, Afro-Brazilians and Indigenes are still today more affected by poverty and discrimination than white Brazilians. At the beginning of this millennium many state universities therefore established quotas for Afro-Brazilians, Indigenes and pupils from public schools to actively fight racial discrimination. Critics regard the quotas as a danger to the equality of all citizens in the country, but the Brazilian Supreme Court nevertheless confirmed their constitutionality in April 2012. The anti-racist movement especially welcomes the establishment of quotas as a measure of reconciliation of historical inequalities. The implementation of university quotas relaunched the public debate about racism in Brazil, which is closely linked to questions of national identity. Some fear that the quotas jeopardize the flexible “ethnic” categories typical for Brazil and thus the mestiçagem, the cultural and biological “mix” that plays a central role in the national narrative. In contrast Black Brazilians argue that despite the alleged flexibility of racial categories in Brazil, all non-white Brazilians tend to be considered as Black and are hence affected by discrimination. They therefore request that the category negro in statistical surveys should be used in order to aggregate the categories preto (black) and pardo (brown).[28]

In a manner of speaking Brazil is undergoing a “typical postcolonial” debate on the definition of Black people and the position of Afro-Brazilians in society. One major problem, also found in similar discussions, that comes along with combating racism and discrimination is the creation of respective categories.

Although much has happened in the past years, there are still good reasons for affirmative action measures like quotas. The formal equality before the law is a mere myth as long as the social reality is shaped by discrimination and racism. And in this regard Brazil is miles away from the well-presented ideal of the “rainbow nation”, as there are still some people who are “more equal than others”.

The post “Whitening” and Whitewashing: Postcolonial Brazil is not an Egalitarian “Rainbow Nation” appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

Oscar López Rivera is a freedom fighter for the independence of Puerto Rico. He has the unenviable distinction of being the longest-held Puerto Rican political prisoner in the United States. He was charged with seditious conspiracy, that is, to conspire to end the United States government’s control over Puerto Rico through force, via membership in the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN). Initially, he was sentenced to 55 years in prison in 1981; later, in 1987, 15 more years were added to his sentence due to an alleged conspiracy to escape, a charge that according to his defense attorney, Jan Susler, was fabricated by the government.[1] In total, Oscar’s prison sentence amounts to 70 years. Thus far, he has completed 32 of those years. Susler, in an interview for the online newspaper Noticel, said:

Cuando lo acusan a él y los demás [nacionalistas puertorriqueños] de conspiración básicamente es porque el gobierno no sabía quién había hecho qué, ni qué específicamente habían hecho. Conspiración no es haber hecho algo. Es una acusación de haberse puesto de acuerdo para terminar con el control colonial de los Estados Unidos en Puerto Rico. Si el gobierno estadounidense supiera que estas personas hubieran cometido algo específico, los hubiesen acusado de otros delitos, pero no fue así. Ante la falta de evidencia, sólo los acusaron de conspiración sediciosa.[2]

[When he and the others [Puerto Rican nationalists] are charged with conspiracy, it’s basically because the government didn’t know who had done what, or what exactly they had done. Conspiracy is not having done something. It is a charge of having agreed to put an end to colonial control of the United States in Puerto Rico. If the U. S. government had known that they had done something specific, they would have charged them with other crimes, but that was not the case. Given the lack of evidence, they charged them only with seditious conspiracy.[3]]

When they were arrested, López Rivera and his compatriots refused to recognize U. S. jurisdiction over them, pleading that U. S. control over Puerto Rico is illegitimate and a crime against humanity, and that they should therefore be considered prisoners of war and tried before an international court. In spite of the fact that this is a valid legal argument recognized by various international judicial bodies, the U. S. government refused to accept it and tried them as common criminals.[4]

Historical background

In order to understand López Rivera’s case, it is necessary to know a little about Puerto Rican history. The territory has a century-long political status problem that dates back to the United States’ invasion of the island in 1898, during the Spanish-American War, from which the United States emerged as a world power. Until that time, the island had been one of the last colonies (along with Cuba and the Philippines) that were still left to the Spanish Empire after the wars of independence in the rest of Latin America. Since then, the island has become an overseas possession of the United States, subject to the will of Congress, which has the final word over all matters concerning Puerto Rico. With the change of sovereignty, a military government was imposed that lasted until 1900, the year Congress passed the Foraker Act, which provided for the creation of a civilian government, and English was decreed the official language of public instruction, remaining as such until 1948.

That same year, Puerto Ricans were allowed for the first time to elect their own governor. Prior to that, the President of the United States designated the governor. The current status of Puerto Rico was established in 1952, known as the Estado Libre Asociado (ELA) in Spanish and translated into English as “Commonwealth” in official documents. In practice, the ELA didn’t bring about real change in the relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States, since the territory’s sovereignty still lies in the hands of Congress and any change in the Constitution of Puerto Rico has to be approved by it. Puerto Rico doesn’t have representation before the federal government either, save for a non-voting representative in Congress known as the Resident Commissioner, nor do Puerto Ricans have the right to vote for President. The island is also obligated by law to only use U. S. ships, which are among the most expensive in the world, when transporting goods by sea.

From the time of the invasion, many struggles were fought to free Puerto Rico from U. S. domination through various means within and outside the electoral system, including armed struggle. One of the most dramatic examples of armed struggle was the nationalist uprising in 1950. José “Che” Paraliticci, states in his book Cien años tras las rejas: Historia de los presos independentistas puertorriqueños bajo el regimen de los Estados Unidos (One Hundred Years Behind Bars: The History of Pro-Independence Prisoners under the United States Regime) that, “Since the United States invaded Puerto Rico in 1898 and took possession of the country both militarily and politically, there has not been a single decade in which a supporter of independence hasn’t gone to jail, with the exception, perhaps, of the twenties.”[5] Persecution of the independence movement increased during the forties and fifties, becoming one of the most violently repressive times in its history.

The campaign to release Oscar López Rivera

Oscar López Rivera’s case is noteworthy for several reasons. Firstly, his sentence is disproportionately long, considering that he was not found guilty of any violent acts. Indeed, when he was sentenced in 1981, the average prison sentence for murder was 10.3 years, which makes his sentence over five times longer than the average sentence for murder.[6] Another noteworthy aspect is that in 1999 Bill Clinton, then President of the United States, offered him and other political prisoners a pardon if they would serve ten more years. López Rivera rejected the offer because two of his compatriots in prison, José Alberto Torres and Haydée Beltrán, were not included in it at that time. Torres and Beltrán have since been released, while López Rivera remains in prison.[7] Lastly, his case has received much international attention during the past year, with an ever-growing multitude of people advocating for his release. Supporters include examples as diverse as Ricky Martin, the musical group Calle 13, the South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the indigenous Guatemalan leader Rigoberta Menchú, Northern Irish peace activist Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Argentinian human rights activist Arturo Pérez Esquivel, and people from across the political spectrum in Puerto Rico, the United States, and the rest of the world.

The campaign to release López Rivera has gained momentum since 2012, which marked López Rivera’s thirtieth year in prison. There are currently several efforts and initiatives to create awareness of his case, both locally and internationally, and to pressure President Barack Obama to grant him a pardon. Some notable examples are the simultaneous protests held in the cities of San Juan (the capital of Puerto Rico), New York, Chicago, and Washington, D. C., on November 23, 2013, and the protest held every last Sunday of the month by the group 32 x Oscar. Additionally, every week El Nuevo Día, one of the main Puerto Rican newspapers, publishes the letters that López Rivera sends his granddaughter. It is very likely that the momentum and the certain urgency with which the campaign has been moving this past year is due to the fact that President Obama is in his second term in office. Since the Constitution forbids him to run for office again in 2016, there is a greater chance that the elections will be won by the candidate of the GOP, reducing considerably López Rivera’s chances of getting a pardon.

Oscar López Rivera and Nelson Mandela: Avatars of a same spirit

López Rivera’s case highlights the tensions between Puerto Rico and the United States as a result of their colonial relationship; it is an obvious example of how Puerto Ricans do not have the power to decide the fate of one of their own citizens, a fact that is instinctively felt and resented in the Puerto Rican psyche, regardless of what political affiliation one might have.[8] The case also reveals the contradictions inherent to colonialism. Recently, the world suffered the loss of Nelson Mandela, who was, like López Rivera, a political prisoner because of his struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Among the multiple tributes offered to the memory of Mandela, including from President Obama, it is easy to forget that Mandela was on the list of the United States’ most wanted terrorists until not very long ago and that his incarceration in South Africa was achieved thanks to the cooperation of the U. S. government. An event honoring Mandela was organized in New York in 1990, on occasion of his first visit to the United States after having been released from prison a few months earlier. At the time, David Dinkins was mayor of New York, the first black person to hold that office and whose campaign received the support of the Puerto Rican community. Among the organizers of the event were several Puerto Ricans that played a key role in the election of Dinkins. They proposed to invite as guests of honor Puerto Rican nationalists Lolita Lebrón, Rafael Cancel Miranda, and Oscar Collazo, who had also been political prisoners. When the Secret Service found out, they proceeded to warn Dinkins, who made public statements calling the Puerto Rican nationalists “murderers.” The irony of this episode is that at the time, Mandela was still on the same list of wanted terrorists as López Rivera.[9] Later, Mandela publicly stated that it would have been an honor for him to have shared the floor with the Puerto Rican nationalists, who, like him, fought for the liberation of their people.[10]

The similarities between Mandela and López Rivera are many. Both men share the experience of being political prisoners, both were charged with seditious conspiracy, both embraced armed struggle as a mechanism to achieve self-government, both appeared on the United States’ list of wanted terrorists, and both had the overwhelming support of their respective peoples for their release from prison. As Howard Jordan wrote in an article for the Institute of the Black World:

While Oscar López Rivera’s name does not have the international immediate name recognition of Mandela’s, the parallels are striking. Both Mandela and now Oscar López were jailed for “seditious conspiracy” for trying to overthrow a colonial government that was violating international law and committing “crimes against humanity.” Also in their respective eras Mandela and Oscar were the longest held political prisoners, receiving disproportionate sentences though having never engaged in any act of violence. Both men were also tortured, held in solitary confinement, and had barbaric acts committed against their persons in prison.

Both freedom fighters garnered calls for their release from religious leaders, Members of Congress, elected officials and celebrities. Nobel Prize Laureate and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu stated that López’s only crime was “conspiring to free his people from the shackles of imperial injustice.”[11]

It is necessary to add that both men’s ideas about armed struggle are complex and nuanced. Both López Rivera and Mandela embraced armed struggle as a way to achieve their purposes in the belief that it is the right of all peoples to resort to it when they suffer oppression and are denied the right to self-determination. However, neither one would rejoice whenever violence was resorted to in the name of national liberation,[12] a very different attitude from that of the fanatic extremist who indiscriminately and blindly is willing to commit atrocities for the sake of an ideal, whatever it may be.

Oscar López Rivera is a political prisoner in a country that categorically denies the existence of them in its jails. But exist they do. In spite of the U. S. government’s efforts to draw attention away from that fact, and from the case of López Rivera in particular, calls for his release have been too strong to ignore. It remains to be seen whether President Obama will improve his poor record when it comes to granting pardons (the lowest of all the presidents in recent history)[13] and finally understand the enormous contradiction of being a Nobel Peace Prize winner and a warden of political prisoners at the same time.

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