Afro-Latin America: Black Lives, 1600–2000 by George Reid Andrews (review)

This book, the most recent by historian George Reid Andrews, builds on two main pillars. The first is the social cleansing of black identity from Latin American national identity in the nineteenth century, and the manner in which it was re-inscribed toward middle of the twentieth century. The second is the role of racial democracy in undermining positive black identity. The book revolves around the following questions; how did the relationship between visibility and invisibility, and between voice and silence, evolve over time? How did elite discourses silence black discourses in the twentieth century? How did these new discourses on national identity lead to census classifications elaborated beyond traditional racial categories, such as white and mestizo? How have recent constitutional changes in key countries addressed black rights issues? The author also looks at four black writers, two men and two women, whose works spanned several centuries and gave them significant roles in shaping the social and cultural institutions of the times.

In five short vignettes, Andrews covers a historical terrain all too familiar to most scholars and students of Afro-Latin America. The first chapter is a cursory review of slavery, how the enslaved Africans arrived to the Americas, visibility and invisibility, and racial democracy. Chapter 2 explores how "race" was used to structure the lives of blacks in the social order of colonial Latin America, and then looks at how white immigration at the start of the twentieth century "re-whitened" those nations—and in so doing pushed blacks further down in the social hierarchy. The main focus is the rise of scientific racism and its role in the construction and perpetuation of racial categories (negro, moreno, mulatto, and mestizo) and the various discourses associated with race and the rise of the formal census in many Latin American countries.

It is argued that the rise of formal censuses, along with an interest in collecting more demographic data on black communities (in such areas as poverty, education, health care), has led to better methods for understanding social and political inequality across the region. Indeed, the collection of accurate census and demographic data was one of the many demands of black social movements for decades. The gathering of such data not only provided an empirical basis for measuring inequality, but it also enabled governments to better measure the social impact of long-term, structural discrimination and inequality. For example, Brazil over the course of the twentieth century registered some of the highest indicators of racial inequality, not only in Latin America, but in the world as a whole (37).

Chapter 3 explores the writings of four Afro-Latin American historical figures. The Afro-Peruvian Úrsula de Jesús (1604–1666) was an enslaved woman raised in a convent; she gained her freedom but remained a consecrated free servant. Jacinto Ventura de Molina (1766–1841) was a shoemaker, soldier and lawyer. Ricardo Batrell Oviedo (1880-?), a veteran of Cuban independence (1895–98), wrote vividly of the tragedies of war and the failure of Cuban societies to fully acknowledge the pivotal role of black soldiers and officers in the struggle for independence. Last, there is María de los Reyes Castillo Bueno (1902–1997), an Afro-Cuban woman who during her life witnessed the violent repression of the island's Partido Independiente de Color, and, as a teenager, joined Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association. This chapter, however, seems oddly out of place; it is not clear how it fits into the overall book.

Given Andrews's stature in the field and his overall contribution to the study of Black Latin America, this new book is a curious piece of scholarship. Its five terse chapters—not counting the notes and the index—constitute just 93 pages, rendering its treatments thin, or even sparse. Conceptually, although the book is on firm ground, it is too formulaic and too often merely re-articulates themes, concepts, and ideas about...