Yo Soy Negro

Cover

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Title Page, Copyright

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Contents

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pp. v-vi

Acknowledgments

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pp. vii-x

This book has benefited immensely from conversations, writing groups, social media, class discussions, seminars, workshops, online communities, and the goodwill of many people. I feel inclined to thank everyone I have met in the past few years. Alas, I cannot do that individually, but will do so en masse: thank you! ...

Introduction

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pp. 1-27

It was a typically hot September afternoon in Ingenio de Buenos Aires, a small village in northern Peru. The Ingenio soccer team had won a match with the neighboring village. The losing team had gone back to their village, and a few men from Ingenio gathered around in a circle, passing a pitcher of chichi (corn beer) and a poto (gourd) from one person to the next. ...

1. Black, but Not African

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pp. 28-58

In Ingenio, most people consider themselves to be black. Few, however, think of themselves as the descendants of African slaves. Millions of Africans were displaced from their homelands through the slave trade and dispersed throughout the Americas, as well as into the Middle East and Europe (Segal 1995). ...

2. Locating Black Peruvians in Latin America

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pp. 59-88

In the first chapter, I explored the presumption that the history of slavery in Ingenio would give rise to a collective memory of slavery. In this chapter, I consider another common assumption: the presumed importance of cultural and social (as opposed to physical) attributes for defining race in Latin America. ...

3. Race and Color Labels in Peru

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pp. 89-113

Mirella Campoverde and Alejandro Ortiz are both Peruvian, yet inhabit vastly different worlds. Mirella is a dark-skinned, poor, single mother whose future holds little possibility for upward mobility. Dr. Ortiz is a fair-skinned, well-known anthropology professor. ...

4. Diasporic Discourses and Local Blackness Compared

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pp. 114-142

When these three Peruvians use the word black, what are they referring to? Can we presume that their willingness to use the word black, instead of moreno or brown, implies solidarity with people in other parts of the world who identify as blacks? Or, is the relationship between these uses of black and those in other parts of the diaspora purely semantic? ...

5. Black Is Beautiful or White Is Right?

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pp. 143-169

From time to time during my fieldwork in Ingenio, I would go to Señora Zulema’s house in the afternoons and watch telenovelas with her and Señora Gertrudis, her sister. Both women were in their fifties and lived relatively comfortably, although not nearly as luxuriously as the wealthy people portrayed in the telenovelas they watched. ...

6. The Politics of Difference in Peru

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pp. 170-200

In this book, I have made the case that there is a local discourse of blackness in Ingenio that is connected to Latin American discourses of racial difference as well as to diasporic discourses of blackness, yet is unique in the primacy it gives to color as the defining feature of blackness. ...

Epilogue

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pp. 201-206

In this book, I have explored why generalizations about the black experience in the diaspora, in Latin America, and even in Peru are not always useful for describing blacks in Ingenio. I also have considered why generalizations about racial categorizations and processes of racialization in Latin America have limited utility for the case of Ingenio. ...

Glossary

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pp. 207-210

Notes

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pp. 211-214

Bibliography

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pp. 215-226

Index

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pp. 227-236

About the Author, Further Reading

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Tanya Maria Golash-Boza is assistant professor of sociology and American studies at the University of Kansas. She is the author of Immigration Nation?: Raids, Detentions, and Deportations in Post–9/11 America (Paradigm Publishers, 2010) and has published articles in such journals as Social Forces, Social Problems, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and International Migration Review.