Forbes Mexico, June 2, 2020
By María Fernanda Navarro
MV Note: This article is two and a half years old, but we just happened upon it in our internet wanderings. It is also from an English language source, Forbes. However, it is from their Spanish language edition. It also consists primarily of an interview with Julio Vallejo, director of the Pigmentocracy Foundation, an organization focused on "transforming the current narrative and image of brown skin in Mexico". As the topic of racism in Mexico is significant and it presents a Mexican voice, we deemed it appropriate for translation now in Mexico Voices.
On May 23, the name of Yalitza Aparicio, the Oaxacan actress who starred in the film Roma, appeared on Twitter's trending lists after she made public her participation as a columnist for The New York Times newspaper on her social networks. The responses to this tweet ranged from congratulations and displays of pride to insults, questions regarding her talent and ability to act and write, and even insults to her physical appearance.
Yesterday, the Mexican actor Tenoch Huerta sparked a debate on social networks about whether Mexicans were victims or perpetrators of racist acts, after he posted a message on his twitter account warning that although it was important to show support for the protests taking place in United States, it was necessary to address and put a face to this phenomenon that also affected the country.
"When we finish supporting the much-needed anti-racism movement in the United States, can we talk about racism in Mexico? Or will that subject remain taboo?"
Racism in Mexico, unlike in the United States, is a latent problem but so deeply rooted in Mexican culture that it goes almost unnoticed; warns Julio Vallejo, director of the Pigmentocracy Foundation, an organization focused on "transforming the current narrative and image of brown skin in Mexico."
"In Mexico, since its inception in Independence, we have said, 'Here there are no longer castes, the caste system [of the Spanish] is removed (...) From now on, we are all mestizos [mixed race indigenous and Spanish]. We are all the same.'
"So the conversation was eliminated. We kept it in the drawer and that allowed it, in practice, to develop as a very sophisticated and silent form of racism. It is not so obvious; it is confused with classism, with the supposed standards of beauty, with the difference from "good people". It has never been an open conversation ”, Vallejo warned in an interview with Forbes Mexico.
However, racism is palpable in the "glass ceilings" or the low presence of brown-skinned people in political, academic, business and even media elites.
In fact, the skin tone of Mexicans is a factor that determines the job opportunities they access, the level of studies they reach and even the income they receive, confirms the study prepared by Oxfam Mexico, “Inequality Speaks for My Race: The impact of ethnic-racial characteristics on the inequality of opportunities in Mexico”.
The discrimination and inequality faced by members of ethnic-racial groups such as indigenous and Afro-descendants is related, to a large extent, to belonging to families with greater socioeconomic disadvantages, the study points out.
For example, the publication details that:
- 26.4% of ... indigenous, did not finish primary school [through 6th grade];
- 23.9% of ... black or mulatto were in this situation, and
- 10.7% of those considered white or mestizo.
- 8.5% of the indigenous population;
- 12.4% black or mulatto, and
- 25.5% were white or mestizo.
To a great extent, acts of racism, warns the director of Pigmentocracia, occur when a person who does not have the physical characteristics of the elites "sneaks" into those circles, as in the case of Yalitza Aparicio.
“Racism as a social construction, uses physical characteristics to differentiate between you and the other. The more visible that characteristic is, the more efficient the system is at marginalizing. In Mexico, skin color is that control variable, where the upper class has an immediate identification as to who does not belong to it, and when someone like Yalitza filters upwards, the upper class goes crazy”, said Vallejo.
Vallejo puts his finger on the sore spot and warns that in the collective imagination the life of a white child is worth more than that of an indigenous person. He gives as an example of a publication that went viral a few years ago in which it was denounced that a blonde girl with green eyes was selling chewing gum on the streets of Guadalajara.
“Everybody was outraged that a five-year-old girl was selling gum on the corner, when we see that every day with indigenous or brown children and nobody does anything.”
Addressing the issue is a good start. Despite the fact that this phenomenon has occurred in Mexico since its inception as a nation, the debate about racial discrimination is just awakening, and it must focus on a series of reconciliation policies and a culture of respect, before "many people start to get angry." .
"(In the protests and riots in the United States) you can see a future potential that we don't want for Mexico, but perhaps these things can happen. What is happening in the United States is the result of accumulated racial sentiment, and in Mexico that resentment is more and more alive, more and more awake and more and more angry. So, we will have to see what happens when more people start to wake up and are angry," Vallejo concluded.