Yo Soy Negro: Blackness in Peru

6. The Politics of Difference in Peru

chapter 6 The Politics of Difference in Peru Peruvian blacks avoid speaking about the condition of blacks as an ethnic group, which confirms their option for assimilation in the official culture through miscegenation and/or cultural integration. Only blacks associated with revival or specific artistic groups seem conscious of their ethnic origins. Raúl Romero National elites in Latin America have tended to perceive Indians as a distinct cultural group in a way that has not been true for blacks. Juliet Hooker 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. The unique nature of the local discourse of blackness in Ingenio raises questions about the implementation of multicultural reforms in Peru. For example , if blacks in Peru see themselves as different in skin tone, but not as distinct in culture from non-blacks, what is the role of multicultural reforms? Blacks in Ingenio do not usually differentiate themselves culturally from non-black Peruvians. Most Ingenieros identify with the dominant coastal (criollo) culture in Peru. Throughout the history of the Peruvian nation, Peruvian elites have defined blackness primarily based on skin The Politics of Difference in Peru r 171 color, whereas they nearly always have defined indigeneity based on culture . Nevertheless, distinct Afro-Peruvian cultural forms have survived in Peru. And, although blackness is defined in terms of color, these color identifications are imbued with cultural significations. In this chapter, I argue that Ingenieros generally do not see themselves as partakers in black culture because of the limited way that black culture has been defined in Peru—as consisting solely of cultural forms that emanate from communities in southern Peru such as Chincha and Lima.These cultural forms have little to do with the local experience in Ingenio.Nevertheless , the possibility exists for blackness to be uplifted and celebrated in Ingenio insofar as blacks there are connected to the black diaspora through their self-identification as black and their history and present-day experience of exclusion and oppression. Moreover, a multicultural reform that took on structural racism and individual bigotry would no doubt be of benefit in Ingenio. Blacks and Indians, Separate and Unequal: Multicultural Reforms in Latin America Multicultural reforms are well under way in Peru. A recent set of multicultural reforms took place with a $5 million loan from, and under the auspices of, the World Bank. This project, called the Indigenous and AfroPeruvian People’s Development Project, undertaken between January 2000 and June 2004, is part of a larger World Bank initiative to promote a multicultural agenda in Latin America. Although these multicultural reforms had an external influence (the World Bank) we can trace the roots of Peruvian discussions of multiculturalism to President Juan Velasco Alvarado’s efforts at inclusion. On June 24, 1969, President Velasco renamed June 24, which had been the Day of the Indian, the Day of the Peasant, “symbolizing the administration’s presumed commitment to move away from divisive ethnic categories and towards a more inclusive and unified Peruvian nation” (Yashar 2005: 230). A politics of sameness—“We are all Peruvians”—held center stage in Peruvian nationalist discourse throughout the 1970s and 1980s, although there were certain gestures toward Andean indigenous groups (but rarely to Amazonians or Afro-Peruvians). During the 1970s, agrarian reform took center stage, with Velasco promising to give land to those who tilled it. The official discourse centered on the rights of peasants as peasants, not 172 r Yo Soy Negro as members of any particular ethnic group. Most of Velasco’s measures directed at indigenous people were designed to make the nation more inclusive. Velasco instituted the Educational Reform of 1972, which was targeted at indigenous communities, and a 1975 law made Quechua coequal with Spanish. This law required the usage of Quechua in courts and schools and provoked an outcry among middle- and upper-class people in Lima (García 2004). The decade of the 1980s was overshadowed by Peru’s dirty war—the struggle between Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and Peruvian military forces. The violence of this period made it difficult to gain support for any demands for indigenous rights (García 2004). Presidents Fernando Belaúnde and Alan García...