The Not So Friendly (Racial) Skies of Mexico

Vicente Guerrero

I recently spent 8 days in the city of Oaxaca in Mexico. The time off gave me some time to recharge my batteries, but also to think about some of the issues related to education, society, culture, and identity that I care about in my personal and professional life. In the next few posts I plan to explore some of the experiences I had and place them in the larger context of the Latino/Mexican experience of ethnic identity, race, socioeconomic class, and access to resources. My own study in the social sciences was really motivated by this type of exploration and connecting of the personal to larger society, a process that famed sociologist C. Wright Mills called engaging with the “sociological imagination.”

Here I will start with race. This topic jumped to the forefront because days before my family was scheduled to return to the United States news about our airline, AeroMexico, grabbed the headlines. AeroMexico hired the advertising firm Catatonia (the irony of their name being so close to catatonic, or in a paralyzed stupor, is not lost here) to construct a new publicity campaign. The firm put out a call for actors and brazenly stated that “nadie moreno” (no dark-skinned people) should apply. The ad further stated that the applicants should have a “Polanco look,” referring to an upscale and mostly White neighborhood in Mexico City. AeroMexico had the sense to distance itself from the comments by stating that it had nothing to do with the content of the call, and it soon thereafter apologized, regardless of their responsibility in creating the ad.

The incident reminded me of an experience I had teaching graduate students in a study abroad course in Mexico. The course I co-taught focused on adolescent development and the adaptation of immigrant students, mainly Latinos, in the American school system. We had an opportunity to see some immigrant sending communities in Mexico, visit local schools, and meet with youth development workers there. This gave us a better sense of the experiences that Mexican immigrant students arrived with in the United States.

During a visiting lecture by a Mexican professor of sociology who focused on youth, one of the students asked the role that race and class played in the lives of students in Mexico. Up to that point, he focused more broadly on issues of Mexican culture, the close-knit nature of Mexican families, gender relations, and the adherence to traditional Catholic values. The professor, a man in his late-sixties, with snow-white hair, light hazel eyes, and a sartorial presence that would fit in at any elite university campus in the world, said that this was an interesting question, but not really relevant. He said that it was understandable that an American student would be concerned about race given our long history of racial tension stemming from slavery. Unlike the U.S., he said that Mexico abolished slavery early in its history. Mexico also had a long history of mestizaje or racial mixing, such that races in Mexico were hard to distinguish.

The same student who asked the initial question, who himself was of Mexican-descent, posed the follow-up, “In my own experience I have seen that Mexicans discrimante against other Mexicans with darker skin, and even use the derogatory term indio (Indian) to insult dark-skinned people.” The professor responded, “Well, that is not really racism. After all, how, if most Mexicans are mestizos and have indigenous ancestry, could they be racist? Classist? Perhaps. There are many poor people in Mexico. But, it would be impossible for someone with such heritage to be racist.” And the light-skinned professor ended the conversation there.

Race has been an ever-present part of Mexico’s history as writer Gregory Rodriguez documented in his book, “Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds.” The title alone evokes the complicated ancestry of Mexico’s citizens. Racial categorizations were present throughout colonial Mexico, such as indios (Indians/Indigenous people), Negros (blacks) mulattoes (those of mixed black and white heritage), mestizos (those of mixed indigenous and white heritage), criollos (those of Spanish heritage born in Mexico) and the españoles (Spaniards living in Mexico, but born in Spain). This complicated racial system of classification, not surprisingly was mapped closely to social class hierarchies. It was complicated further as many races intermarried, seen by the use of so many categories. The categorizations still exist today, but are used much less frequently as a larger Mexican identity has taken hold.

In the 1920’s, Jose Vasconcelos, a philosopher and Mexico’s first secretary of education, proclaimed the Mexican people a “cosmic race,” a race of the future, given their willingness to intermarry. He claimed that this mixture would create power, almost through a process of natural selection of the best attributes of all races and through the creation of harmony and commonality among all people. Mexico’s mestizos would thus become a model for what the whole globalized world would eventually become. An important side note is that some saw Vasconcelos as racist himself and that his ideal of a raza cosmica was just a way for him to justify the whitening of darker races.

Mexico’s unique history has allowed it to forget how race permeates its society. It abolished slavery very early in its history when Vicente Guerrero issued a decree emancipating Mexico’s slaves in 1829. Guerrero, the second president of Mexico, had African ancestry, with his father Pedro being an African Mexican. Perhaps it was Guerrero’s fervent nationalism, placing Mexico first, even before his own father who did not support Mexican independence that allows Mexicans to set aside his race. His famous quote, the motto of the Mexican state that bears his name, is “Mi patria es primero.”

Benito Juarez

Similarly, Benito Juarez ascended to the presidency, being of indigenous Zapotec heritage, but again it is his Mexican identity and nationalism that is embraced by Mexicans, with only a secondary acknowledgement of his background; and if anything, the election of these two historical Mexican heroes is used as evidence to show that Mexico is not racist. You would be hard-pressed, however, to find another Mexican president with skin as dark as these men or with similar ancestries.

My trip to Oaxaca’s airport early on a Sunday morning confirmed the relationship between race and power in Mexico. State and federal police were heavily patrolling many of the streets. I imagine that similar to the United States, that civil service jobs provide a path to upward mobility for lower income Mexicans. Notably, the overwhelming majority of the dozens of officers I saw on our taxi ride had deep bronzed hues, jet-black hair, and indigenous features that gave little evidence of racial mixing.

As we entered the terminal the smell of poorly refined gasoline receded and we rolled our luggage across the marble floors to an airport restaurant to eat breakfast. Judging from accents, I assumed many of my fellow diners to be Mexican nationals. We all ordered breakfasts that were triple the price of what you would find in Oaxaca’s center. We wore our souvenirs of hand-woven shirts and blouses accented with indigenous designs. We tapped away on our smartphones, probably recounting to friends the tour we had just taken of one of the poorest regions of Mexico. The attendant called us to board and we entered the AeroMexico plane bound for Mexico City, affirming the Polanco look of its clientele.

Yes to Possible Worlds and "What Ifs?"

“Counterfactuals may be effective for political posturing, dramatic effect, or peddling outlandish pseudoscientific ideas, but they are not useful in advancing public discourse about race, gun violence, law enforcement, the criminal justice system, or any of the myriad issues our society faces.”
Rene Luis Alvarez

I could not disagree with this idea more. My co-blogger, a historian, argues for an empirically driven examination of the past as a guide for how we should construct policy for the future. I agree that looking at data and past events can help us avoid pitfalls and emulate ideas that have been proven to work; However, sometimes the ideas that we use are adopted and held on to because of tradition or politics, and may also have roots in pseudo-science.

A recent example of someone adhering to unsupported ideas in the creation of policy is Jason Richwine, the Harvard PhD who argued in his dissertation that Latinos are genetically intellectually inferior and thus are not worth investing in or even admitting into the country. The basis of his argument, scores on IQ tests, has long been called into question as true measures of intelligence. Such empiricism and “fact-based” arguments have been around for years and they have been shown to be of only limited validity for years. Even a member of Richwine’s dissertation committee thought so. George Borjas regarding his student's focus stated , "I don't find the IQ academic work all that interesting. Economic outcomes and IQ are only weakly related, and IQ only measures one kind of ability. I've been lucky to have met many high-IQ people in academia who are total losers, and many smart, but not super-smart people, who are incredibly successful because of persistence, motivation, etc. So I just think that, on the whole, the focus on IQ is a bit misguided.”

But we hang on to these failed ideas from the past, nonetheless. As Albert Einstein stated, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” But, to be more accurate, the results were the ones that xenophobes and supremacists desire—putting down minority groups and legally and culturally making it acceptable to do so. Many apologists for George Zimmerman have used “facts” to show that we really should profile African Americans given their higher incarceration rates, higher crime rates, and higher crime rates against whites compared to the rate of violence against blacks that whites commit. These are all facts, but they fail to entertain the world of possibilities. The problem is that African-Americans are seen as criminals and the perceived solution is that African-Americans should be treated as criminals. It is this logic that shows a real lack of imagination and empathy-two key reasons to use, “what if?” questions.

Sir Ken Robinson, an internationally recognized scholar and educational advisor who promotes creativity, suggests that imagination and empathy are inextricably linked. By asking “what if?” questions, we place ourselves in the shoes of others, we imagine innovative solutions to deeply entrenched problems, and we have fun while doing it.

An article in The Atlantic points to the very idea of using creativity to encourage engagement and joy in learning. The article describes The Future Project, an organization that aims to encourage creative thinking and imagination in children. They argue that this is desperately needed given that we have become so limited in the way we teach children to adhere to standardized measures of their performance.

Daniel Pink, a writer who focuses on leadership and productivity in business, has argued that by giving people freedom and space to think and imagine, that they will actually become more efficient than if they were given incentives or punishments. He presents compelling evidence from social psychology and behavioral economics to show that this is true. 

So, having time to think, just like a history professor, or a blogger, or a journalist might, is really a great thing. That is where we have the potential to create the type of world that we really would like to live in. As Robert Kennedy stated, “There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”

And to the question of “why not?” I would definitely add, “what if?”

The Uselessness of "What if...?" Questions

“Millions of people around the world believe we have been visited in the past by extraterrestrial beings.  What if it were true?  Did ancient aliens really help to shape our history?”

These lines open the History Channel series Ancient Aliens.  The show purports to examine and reveal the hidden truths of how extraterrestrial travelers influenced the course of human history.  Apparently alien involvement has been pretty extensive.  According to the show, aliens are responsible for pretty much every major development of the past; including dinosaur extinction, human evolution, the growth of civilization, the founding of religions, the American Revolution, and the rise of Nazi Germany, to name a few.  Now in its fifth season, I suppose Ancient Aliens would be considered a hit, but it is not without its detectors, who attempt to debunk the show’s claims on a point-by-point basis by showing how ancient alien proponents misrepresent or distort available evidence to defend their positions.  While valid, these critiques overlook a more fundamental problem, evidenced by the program’s opening lines.  The entire enterprise is based on the counterfactual question “What if it were true?”  The fact is that it is not true and engaging in counterfactual inquiry is a poor way to think about the past.

Most people probably are familiar with counterfactuals.  Some of the more popular ones include: What if the South had won the Civil War?  What if the Allies had lost World War II?  What if the United States did not drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?  The facts remain, however, that the North won the Civil War, the Axis powers lost World War II, and the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan.  To consider otherwise holds little value.

In his seminal book, Historians' Fallacies: Towards a Logic of Historical Thought (New York: Harper Perennial, 1970), David Hackett Fischer discusses the limitations of counterfactuals, or “the fallacy of fictional questions” as he calls them.  “There is nothing fallacious in fictional constructs,” Fischer writes, “as long as they are properly recognized for what they are and are clearly distinguished from empirical problems.”  Fischer acknowledges counterfactuals’ usefulness as metaphors or analogies of suggested inference, but concludes, “[T]hey prove nothing and can never be proved by an empirical method” (original emphasis, page 16).

I thought about counterfactuals in the wake of this week’s verdict in George Zimmerman’s trial.  There are variations on this theme, but the dominating fictional question asks “What if Trayvon Martin were white and George Zimmerman were black?”  Martin’s father advanced this idea during his interview on the Today show, further asking of the jurors “What would your verdict have been had it been your child?”

The loss of any life through gun violence is tragic.  For some, the tragedy of gun violence plays out on a nearly daily basis.  Nevertheless, the facts of this case remain that Martin was an African American male teenager, Zimmerman is an Hispanic male adult, and the prosecution failed to prove its case against Zimmerman beyond a reasonable doubt according to the rules of our system of jurisprudence.  “What if” questions and similar conjectures about this case do not alter these facts.

 

Counterfactuals may be effective for political posturing, dramatic effect, or peddling outlandish pseudoscientific ideas, but they are not useful in advancing public discourse about race, gun violence, law enforcement, the criminal justice system, or any of the myriad issues our society faces.  To paraphrase Fischer, why go out of our way to make difficult problems impossible, when they are already difficult enough to solve as they actually are?

(Latin) America's Pastime: Beisbol

In 2005 Major League Baseball created a ballot for fans to elect the greatest Latino players of all time, known as the Latino Legends Team. Included on that list were notable names such as Roberto Clemente, Rod Carew, Luis Aparicio, and Fernando Valenzuela. The final votes created a team that was heavily composed of more contemporary players, such as Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols, Pedro Martinez, and Ivan Rodriguez. While this created some controversy, an even larger one was not realizing how deep Latino roots are in Major League Baseball by not even placing names of some Latinos on the ballot. Two of the most notable omissions were Ted Williams, who spoke fluent Spanish and whose mother was Mexican, or Reginald Martinez Jackson, whose father was half-Puerto Rican.

Latin Americans have played baseball in their own countries since the mid-1800s. Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Mexico all played baseball prior to the 20th Century. Cuban students who studied in the United States brought the game home to their country as early as 1860. An American importer, Albert Addlesberg, introduced baseball to Nicaragua in the 1880’s; it was an easy transition from cricket, which the British had already brought there. Mexico and Venezuela each established professional baseball leagues in the 1920’s that continue to exist today.

Two Cuban players, Rafael Almeida and Armando Marsans, played for the Cincinnati Reds in 1911. The first major league player from Latin America was Cuban Charles P. Pedroes, who played in 1902.

Today 27-percent of Major League Baseball players are Latino, with over 24-percent of them born in Latin America. The rest of the Latino players, such as Matthew Garza or Sergio Romo, are U.S.-born American citizens, despite their Spanish names and Mexican heritage.

So, Latinos and Latin Americans have been involved with baseball for well over a century, since the creation of the game, really. In a previous post I commented on how Latin Americans like to remind those from the United States that they are not the only “Americans” in this hemisphere given that countries from North and South America arguably contain “Americans,” too. I don’t buy that argument so much, but when talking about baseball as an “American” pastime, I really have to say that we are talking about more countries than just the United States.

Apparently, not many agree that Latinos have a place in baseball given the uproar that emerged on social media over the All-Star break. First, Cuban Yoenis Cespedes won the homerun derby. In a reprisal of last year’s journalistic performance, Pedro Gomez of ESPN conducted an interview in Spanish and then translated the interviewee’s answers into English. Last year, it was only a few questions to Robinson Cano’s father, who does not speak English, while this year he conducted his entire interview with Cespedes in Spanish, while providing immediate translation. Cespedes has only been in the United States for two years, so it is highly unlikely that his English is very good, as anyone who has taken years of a foreign language in high school can attest to. But his homerun hitting is awesome, and that is what true baseball fans should care about. A vocal few, however, just couldn’t handle it and spouted off with xenophobic and discriminatory comments on Twitter. It is very likely that ESPN approved of this not-so subtle pandering to Latinos and Spanish speaking audiences given that they chose him to do the interview again.

The following day, New York born, Puerto Rican-descent singer, Marc Anthony sang "God Bless America" (in English-I shouldn’t have to qualify that, but, oh well). Again, the Twitter-verse lit up with discriminatory comments questioning his right to sing one of our national songs. Even if he were born in Puerto Rico, those who objected should be reminded that he would still be an American citizen, but I would not expect the critics to know even that given that many misidentified Marc Anthony as Mexican or illegal.

National CBS columnist Gregg Doyel wrote a great response of this All-American issue that I will end with here:

“… people got mad, maybe because people get mad when they’re scared. And people are scared of Spanish. Scared that they don’t understand what others are saying. Envious that they can’t speak two languages. Frightened that maybe this world is changing, and people like us — people who speak only English — will be left behind… America is changing, people. Better or worse, the days of everyone here speaking one language -- a language named for a country in Europe; ironic, really -- are gone. English will always be our native language, but it's not going to be the only language. Those days? Long gone. You can bitch and moan about it, like people decades ago bitched and moaned about integration, but this is the country we have. Understand that.”

Bien dicho.

Your "Daily" Dose

In my recent post, I suggested that categorical labels like “Hispanic” or “Latino” homogenize the cultural heritages of people with ancestral roots in Latin America.  It is an idea I have written about before, most notably here and here. 

No sooner had I published my post on Monday evening, when I was treated to this wonderful piece on “The Daily Show” in which Al Madrigal interviews people from different Latino backgrounds about the heterogeneity among Latino populations.  (Who knew Chileans love mayonnaise so much?!?)

I have to admit my envy over how the visual image can accomplish better what the written word at times struggles to do, but I am happy with how this piece demonstrates what I have been saying for years.