Students protest in Porto Alegre, a city in southern Brazil, against budget cuts in education. Black students, generally the poorest, suffer the most from the deterioration of schools, the reduction of scholarships, the shrinking of school meal programs and the loss of opportunities to study. CREDIT: CPERS- Fotos Públicas

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 8 2022 (IPS)

The battle against racism and inequality will be a long one in Brazil, because a prejudice against the intellectual capacity of blacks is a problem rooted in the national culture, and even in the minds of Afro-Brazilians themselves, as well as highlighted in the country’s official history.

The basic idea spread is that Brazil is the creation of its Portuguese colonizers, especially with regard to everything that requires brains, lamented Luciana da Cruz Brito, professor of history at the Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia (UFRB).

Few recognize Machado de Assis, considered the greatest Brazilian writer, and Mario de Andrade, another great writer and leader of the modernist movement of a century ago, as black.

“Most believe that the Rebouças were white, whose last name is on a Rio de Janeiro tunnel and avenues in São Paulo and Porto Alegre, which pay homage to them,” Brito told IPS by telephone from Cachoeira, a city of 33,000 inhabitants in the state of Bahia, where the UFRB’s Center for Arts, Humanities and Literature is located.

The brothers André and Antonio Rebouças were the first black engineers in Brazil, responsible for the construction of several ports, railroads and highways. The former was also prominent in the Paraguayan War or the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870, which united Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay against Paraguay) and in the movement for the abolition of slavery.

Brazil was the last Western country to put an end to slavery, by a law signed by Princess Isabel de Bourbon e Bragança, daughter of Emperor Pedro II, on May 13, 1888. The Brazilian monarchy would fall 18 months later, to a military coup that proclaimed the country a republic.

Highlighting the step taken by the princess as a decisive and even unique measure is part of the whitening of the history of Latin America’s largest and most populous country.

This official history seeks to conceal or downplay the role of abolitionists and of the black movement, which celebrates Black Consciousness Day every Nov. 20, the date of the assassination of the hero of the black struggles, Zumbi, in 1695.

Ignoring black history

White historiography, in which indigenous and black people are not counted as full subjects, is a great barrier to the struggle against racism, and to reducing Brazil’s notorious inequality, Brito said, recalling the conclusions of another black woman historian, Beatriz Nascimento, who was shot dead in Rio de Janeiro in 1995, at the age of 52.

From abolition to the first decades of the 20th century, the Brazilian elite deployed a campaign of “white supremacy, which considered blacks an obstacle to the vision of European nationhood and the mixing of races a sabotage to Europeanization,” she said.

The whitening policy included the promotion of European immigration to replace slave labor in the coffee harvest and other agricultural and industrial activities.

Black participation in the most productive agricultural sectors, in industrialization and the emergence of a national bourgeoisie, with the rise of artisans to entrepreneurs, was ignored, and this strengthened their exclusion, wrote Joel Rufino dos Santos, a historian and writer who died in 2015, in his book “El Saber del negro” (The Knowledge of Blacks).

But the whitewashing of history, with the systematic erasure of black knowledge and talent in the construction of the nation, is “a perverse and effective policy” in neutralizing anti-racism efforts and will therefore prolong the problem, said Brito.

Brazil’s history ignores blacks even though they make up 56 percent of the population. Among other forms of discrimination, it limits their participation to brute, dehumanized labor, destroys self-esteem and hinders the progress of people of African descent by spreading the belief that blacks are intellectually less capable. CREDIT: Courtesy of Luciana Brito

Epistemicide

“It destroys self-esteem and instills in the minds of black students the message that they are not capable of learning, of being creative. It’s a barrier to learning, children go to school out of obligation, not to learn,” she said.

It is “epistemicide,” said Natalia Alves, a history teacher who volunteers at Educafro (Education and Citizenship of Afrodescendants and the Destitute), a non-governmental network of educational centers that facilitate the inclusion of the poor, especially blacks, in universities, through scholarships and preparatory courses.

Epistemicide is the systematic destruction of rival forms of knowledge, or the suppression or death of forms of knowledge of peoples considered marginal by the colonial or dominant culture.

Blacks are treated as “abject objects” and the fact that the first universities were founded in Africa is ignored, as is the fact that the arrival of enslaved Africans contributed to Brazil’s agricultural development and to the gold mining boom that enriched the current state of Minas Gerais, she told IPS by e-mail from Rio de Janeiro.

The gold boom in southern Minas Gerais, which began at the end of the 17th century and peaked in the following century, owes a great deal to people from Africa. This golden period saw the birth of historic cities such as Ouro Preto, initially Vila Rica and today a tourist center whose ancient churches give a central place to sculptures of Antonio Francisco Lisboa alias Aleijadinho, a black man.

The Portuguese colonizers did not know much about mining and metallurgy, so they brought slaves with knowledge of these activities from the Gold Coast, an extensive area along the coasts of present-day Benin, Ghana, Nigeria and Togo, Laurentino Gomes wrote in the second volume of his trilogy “Slavery”.

Gomes is a journalist who became a highly successful writer of books on Brazilian history.

Brazil’s official history erases the intellectual contributions of people of African descent to the construction of the country, condemning them to precarious jobs and marginalization in Brazilian society, according to Natalia Alves, a volunteer history teacher at Educafro, a non-governmental network of centers that facilitate access to university for black and poor people. CREDIT: Courtesy of Natalia Alves

Black protagonists made invisible

There are many examples of the intellectual, technical or artistic protagonism of Afro-descendants who are largely invisible or neglected. This is the case of important black women writers, such as Carolina Maria de Jesus, who recounted her life in a favela or shantytown in the 1960s, and Conceição Evaristo, both now belatedly recognized, according to Alves.

In addition, the teaching of the history of African and indigenous cultures in primary and secondary schools, as required by a 2008 law, is not implemented as it should be, and the media “reinforce stigmas” by reporting on police massacres in the favelas, which occur frequently in Rio de Janeiro, she said. Poverty ends up becoming the culprit.

The advances achieved by Afro-descendants and the poor include university entrance quotas started by the State University of Rio de Janeiro in 2000 and made mandatory nationwide by a 2012 law.

This type of affirmative action, aimed at reducing inequalities, is effective, according to data and studies.

In the United States, where affirmative action measures began to be adopted in the 1970s, blacks have reached the presidency – Barack Obama (2009-2017) – and the position of secretary of state – Colin Powell (2001-2005) and Condoleezza Rice (2005-2009) – in addition to achieving prominence in film, music and sports.

“The civil rights movement exposed U.S. racism to the world in the 1950s and 1960s, then quotas produced that number of prominent blacks, even though they are a minority,” just 13 percent of the U.S. population, stressed Brito, who specialized in the study of slavery in Brazil and the United States.

In Brazil, Afro-descendants (including blacks and people of mixed-race) make up 56 percent of the country’s population of 214 million, according to the official census. But they are still a minority (38 percent) in the universities and have the worst indicators in poverty, unemployment and murders, totally disproportionate to their share of the population.

However, the country adopted university quotas for blacks and the poor four decades after the United States. The results should emerge in a few more decades, the professor hopes.

But “what does a black body raised to the power structure actually change, if it does not change the structure of racism, which continues to provoke violence and where recent murders of young black men sparked the massive ‘Black Lives Matter (#Blacklivesmatter)’ protests?” asked Alves.

The 50 percent quotas in public universities for high school students from public schools, where the majority are black, do not take into account the reality of areas such as the Recôncavo region of Bahia, where 80 percent of the population is black, said Professor Brito.

In addition, the budget cuts imposed on them by the current far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro have reduced scholarships and resources, mainly to the detriment of poor students, she stressed.

Delegates to the first Summit of Women Leaders of African Descent of the Americas taking part in one of the working groups organised during the three-day gathering held Jun. 26-28 in Managua, Nicaragua. Credit: José Adán Silva/IPS

By José Adán Silva
MANAGUA, Jun 29 2015 (IPS)

They say they are tired of waiting for justice after centuries of neglect and contempt due to the color of their skin. Black women leaders from 22 countries of the Americas have decided to create a political platform that set a 10-year target for empowering women of African descent and overcoming discrimination.

“We’re going to fight with all of our strength to break the chains of racism and racially-motivated violence,” Shary García from Colombia told IPS at the end of the first Summit of Women Leaders of African Descent of the Americas, which drew 270 delegates to Managua Jun. 26-28.

García said the three days of debates in the Nicaraguan capital gave rise to the Political Declaration of Managua, whose 17 demands and central themes are aimed at eradicating discrimination based on a combination of racial and gender reasons in the Americas.

“It wasn’t easy to sum up in 17 ideas the complaints and demands of 270 women and their families, who have experienced discrimination, violence and the denial of their rights all their lives. But each and every one of us who came here knows that this is how the beginning of the end of discrimination starts.”

Altagracia Balcácer from the Dominican Republic told IPS that the 17 main themes are cross-cut by concepts like fighting racism, demanding a decent life and anti-poverty policies, demanding the right to make decisions about the future, and freedom of choice regarding sexual and reproductive rights.

“The demands include halting violence towards black women, giving the population of African descent visibility in the national statistics and census, protecting black children and adolescents, and offering opportunities to youngsters in this population group,” she said.

Other concerns, she said, are “protecting the environment, expanding access to natural and economic resources, and guaranteeing food security and sovereignty.”

In addition, the delegates called for “protection and decent treatment of immigrants, salvaging and acknowledging our cultural heritage, respect from the media, the non-stigmatisation of black people, expanding access to justice and guaranteeing safety for women and their communities.”

The Jun. 26 opening of the first Summit of Women Leaders of African Descent of the Americas Américas, when ended two days later in Managua with a declaration outlining the next decade of struggle for their rights. Credit: Courtesy of RMAAD

Dorotea Wilson, general coordinator of the Network of Afro-Latin American, Afro-Caribbean and Diaspora Women (RMAAD), told IPS that the document does not demand the recognition of rights, but the enforcement of all treaties, laws and international conventions referring to black women that have been signed since the 2001 World Conference against Racism held in Durban, South Africa.

The Political Declaration of Managua “is not an expression of good intentions; it is an official document demanding the implementation of public policies in all countries of the Americas…to start once and for all to recognise and give their rightful place to the black populations on the continent,” said Wilson, from Nicaragua.

“With this platform, our aim is to move towards compliance with all of our rights in the context of the U.N. International Decade for People of African Descent,” added the head of the Managua-based RMAAD, which is active in 24 countries.

In January the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 2015-2024 as the International Decade for People of African Descent, to promote respect for their rights and freedoms and greater knowledge of and respect for their diverse heritage and cultures.

According to the U.N., some 200 million people in the Americas identify themselves as being of African descent.

Wilson explained that over the next decade, black women in Latin America will document, with clear, reliable indicators, the real situation of people of African descent. They also hope to see poverty levels drop.

“We say ‘reliable’ because we don’t exist in the existing statistics, we’re invisible,” said Wilson. “Another of the summit’s achievements is that in each country in the Americas we will set up an observatory to follow up on the demands set forth here.”

To that end, they have technical and institutional support from U.N. agencies, European donor countries, non-governmental organisations, and defenders of human rights and gender rights.

They will also try to get their list of demands accepted by the Organisation of American States (OAS).

Dorotea Wilson of Nicaragua, the head of the Network of Afro-Latin American, Afro-Caribbean and Diaspora Women, during a working session in the summit held in Managua. Credit: Courtesy of RMAAD

The idea, said Wilson, is to press countries to design public policies targeting women and people of African descent, and to create follow-up mechanisms to make it possible to gauge the progress made by the time the next summit is held five years from now.

The head of RMAAD said the women who took part in the summit made it clear that there is a perception that police brutality and violence in general against black people are on the rise, especially in the United States and Brazil, two of the countries that were represented in the summit.

“Hate crimes in the United States make the international headlines,” Wilson said. “But because the population of African descent is invisible in Latin America, racially-motivated killings in the region do not come to public attention.”

As a panelist in the forum on human rights, Nilza Iriaci said that “in my country, Brazil, hate crimes happen every day, but there is no sense of scandal.” Brazil is the Latin American country with the largest black population.

A 2010 study by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), “Afrodescendant Population of Latin America”, which was updated two years later, found that despite the creation of new legal frameworks and institutions to protect the rights of people of African descent in the region, most of the black population lived in poverty and suffered from discrimination.

Vicenta Camusso, a representative of black women in Uruguay, said things had not changed since the study was carried out. “It’s the same as always – our rights and the poverty we suffer have not improved one bit,” she told IPS.

She said that although every country in the region has legal frameworks protecting the rights of women and blacks, no specific budget funds are allotted.

“Partly because of this, most black women continue to live in inferior living conditions compared to women of other races, and young black people experience the same exclusion and violence as the older generations did,” she said.

“Since Durban, little to nothing has changed for women of African descent in the Americas,” 7she complained. “More than 80 percent of black people in the region live in a state of poverty and social inequality, with few opportunities for improvement, because of ethnic-racial reasons.”

Camusso pointed out that the 2001 global conference emerged from official efforts by the international community to design actions aimed at fighting racism, racial discrimination, ethnic conflicts, and associated violence.

In the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, the international community, U.N. agencies, development aid institutions, private organisations and society in general pledged “to combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.”

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

One of the walkways built by the community of Santa Rosa de Aguán to connect the local houses with the beach to preserve the sand dunes. Credit: Thelma Mejía/IPS

By Thelma Mejía
SANTA ROSA DE AGUÁN, Honduras , Mar 26 2014 (IPS)

At the mouth of the Aguán river on the Caribbean coast of Honduras, a Garífuna community living in a natural paradise that was devastated 15 years ago by Hurricane Mitch has set an example of adaptation to climate change.

“We don’t want to make the sea angry again, we don’t want a repeat of what happened with Mitch, which destroyed so many houses in the town – nearly all of the ones along the seashore,” community leader Claudina Gamboa, 35, told IPS.

Around the coastal town of Santa Rosa de Aguán, the stunning landscape is almost as pristine as when the first Garífunas came to Honduras in the 18th century.

To reach Santa Rosa de Aguán, founded in 1886 and home to just over 3,000 people, IPS drove by car for 12 hours from Tegucigalpa through five of this Central American country’s 18 departments or provinces, until reaching the village of Dos Bocas, 567 km northeast of the capital.

From this village on the mainland, a small boat runs to Santa Rosa de Aguán, located on the sand in the delta of the Aguán river, whose name in the Garífuna language means “abundant waters.”

Half of the trip is on roads in terrible conditions, which become unnerving when it gets dark. But after crossing the river late at night, under a starry sky with a sea breeze caressing the skin, the journey finally comes to a peaceful end.

A three-year project to help the sand dunes recover, which was completed in 2013, was carried out by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) through the Global Environment Facility’s (GEF) Small Grants Programme, with additional support from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).

The project sought to generate conditions that would enable the local community to adapt to the risks of climate change and protect the natural ecosystem of the dunes.

The initiative enlisted 40 local volunteers, almost all of them women, who went door to door to raise awareness on the importance of protecting the environment and to educate people about the risks posed by climate change.

“They called them crazy, and thought the people working on that were stupid, but I asked them ‘don’t stop, just keep doing it.’ Now there is greater awareness and people have seen the winds aren’t hitting so hard,” Atanasia Ruíz, a former deputy mayor of the town (2008-2014) and a survivor of Hurricane Mitch, told IPS.

She and Gamboa said the women played an essential role in raising awareness on climate change, and added that thanks to their efforts, the project left an imprint on the white sand and the local inhabitants.

People in the community now understand the importance of protecting the coastal system and preserving the dunes, and have learned to organise behind that goal, Gamboa said. “It’s really touching to see the old women from our town picking up garbage for recycling,” she said.

The sand dunes act as natural protective barriers that keep the wind or waves from smashing into the town during storms.

“When the sea got mad, it made us pay. When Mitch hit, everything here was flattened, it was just horrible,” Gamboa said.

Some people left town, she said, “because we were told that we couldn’t live here, that it was too vulnerable and that the sea would always flood us because there was no way to keep it out.

“But many of us stayed, and with the knowledge they gave us, we know how to protect ourselves and our town,” she said, proudly pointing out how the vegetation has begun to grow in the dunes.

In late October 1998, Hurricane Mitch left 11,000 dead and 8,000 missing in Honduras, while causing enormous economic losses and damage to infrastructure.

Santa Rosa de Aguán was hit especially hard, with storm surges up to five metres high. The bodies of more than 40 people from the town were found, while others went missing.

The effort to recover the sand dunes along the coast included the construction of wide wooden walkways to protect the sand.

In addition, the remains of cinder block houses destroyed by Mitch were finally removed, to prevent them from inhibiting the natural formation of dunes.

The project also introduced recycling, to clear garbage from the beach and the sandy unpaved streets of this town, where visitors are greeted with “buiti achuluruni”, which means “welcome” in the Garífuna language.

Lícida Nicolasa Gómez is an 18-year-old member of the Garífuna community who prefers to be called “Alondra”, her nickname since childhood.

“I loved it when they invited me to the dunes and recycling project, because we were deforesting the dunes, hurting them, destroying the vegetation, but we’re not doing that anymore,” she said.

“We even made a mural on one of the walls of the community centre, to remember what kind of town we wanted,” she added, with a broad smile.

The mural of scraps of plastic and other recyclable materials made on the community centre wall by the people of Santa Rosa de Aguán to celebrate their way of life and the beauty of Garífuna women, and remind the town of the need to mitigate climate change. Credit: Thelma Mejía/IPS

The mural includes scraps of plastic, metal, tiles and bottle tops. It reflects the beauty of the Garífunas, showing people fishing, crops of mandioc and plantain, and the sea and bright sun, while reflecting the desire to live in harmony with the environment.

The sand dunes are up to five metres high in this small town at the mouth of a river that runs through the country’s tropical rainforest.

Hugo Galeano, from GEF’s Small Grants Programme, told IPS that Santa Rosa de Aguán became even more vulnerable after Hurricane Mitch, which affected the local livelihoods based on fishing, farming and livestock.

For this community built between the river and the sea, flooding is one of the main threats to survival, said the representative of the GEF programme.

Ricardo Norales, 80, told IPS that, although the sand dunes and vegetation are growing, “the location of our community means we are still exposed to inclement weather.

“With the project, we saw how the wind and the sea don’t penetrate our homes as much anymore. But we need this kind of aid to be more sustainable,” he said.

The history of Santa Rosa de Aguán is marked by the impact of tropical storms and hurricanes, which have hit the town directly or indirectly many times since it was founded.

But the sand dunes are once again taking shape along the shoreline, where the community has built walkways to the sea.

Local inhabitants want their town to be seen as an example of adaptation to climate change and the construction of alternatives making survival possible. Several of them said they did not want an “ayó” – good-bye in Garífuna – for their community.

A protest by the residents of Rio dos Macacos against the occupation of their land and violations of their rights by the Aratu naval base. Credit: Coha.org

By Fabíola Ortiz
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 14 2014 (IPS)

Residents of the small community of Rio dos Macacos, made up of descendants of slaves in the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia, reported to United Nations bodies that they were attacked by military personnel from the Aratu naval base, which occupies part of their land.

Ednei dos Santos, one of the leaders of the quilombo – the term given to remote communities in Brazil originally founded by runaway or freed slaves – and his sister Rosimeire say they were beaten by members of the navy on Jan. 6, in front of her daughters, before they were detained.

Human rights organisations secured their release four hours later.

Ednei dos Santos, 28, told IPS that the incident was just the latest of the frequent threats and intimidation against the 70 families living in the quilombo.

On Friday, Jan. 10, human rights groups presented the case to the U.N. Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent and three U.N. special rapporteurs. They are also preparing to file a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

The families of Rio dos Macacos have been struggling for five decades to gain legal title to their land, which is located on the São Tomé de Paripe peninsula on the fringes of the municipalities of Simões Filho and Salvador, the capital of Bahia.

There is evidence that the quilombo has existed for 150 years, and indications that slaves took refuge on the land there as early as 238 years ago.

In Brazil, slavery was not abolished until 1888, decades after the country’s independence from Portugal, in 1822.

The 300-hectare area has been at the centre of a legal dispute since the 1960s, when the navy built a base there as well as a village for the families of navy personnel, during the 1964-1985 military dictatorship.

Two years ago, the courts ruled in favour of the community’s claim to the land, but the state appealed the sentence.

In the meantime, the quilombolas – as the residents of quilombos are known – have to walk or drive through the navy village to reach their community.

“The violence is constant; they stop us from coming and going – even ambulances are frequently kept from reaching the community to provide medical assistance,” Ednei dos Santos said.

He and his 35-year-old sister said they were hit, punched and threatened with firearms by navy personnel. She said she was also the victim of sexual assault.

The incident began when they were accosted by military personnel from the navy village as they drove back from a nearby town, where they had registered Rosimeire’s two daughters, aged six and 17, for the coming school year.

“A sergeant, who had already threatened us before, and five other armed men, smashed open the door to my car and started to hit me,” Ednei said. “They also hit my sister, until leaving her partly undressed. The girls were terrified.”

Ednei and Rosimeire dos Santos were detained, and were only allowed to leave when officials from the government’s Special Secretariat for Policies on Promotion of Racial Equality and lawyers from Afro-Brazilian movements showed up.

The Aratu naval base happens to be a favourite vacation spot for Brazilian presidents to spend the year-end holidays. President Dilma Rousseff was there until Jan. 5, the day before the incident reported by the dos Santos.

“We don’t trust the government anymore,” Rosimeire dos Santos, who was hospitalised after the attack, told IPS. “People don’t understand that in today’s Brazil, torture is still occurring, just like in times of slavery. We are still fighting for our freedom.

“I don’t go out with my daughters anymore because I’m afraid that they’ll kill me in front of them. They told us that when they were out of uniform, they were going to burst open our heads with bullets.

“Two men got on top of me, one of them put my head between his legs, with my pants down and my breasts uncovered. It was total humiliation; holding a gun to my head they spit on my face,” said an anguished Rosimeire.

She warned that people could get killed in Rio dos Macacos if the routine violence the residents face isn’t brought to a halt.

“Our territory is not for sale, we’re not going to swap it and it’s not up for negotiation. I was born and raised here, and this is where my mother has our family buried,” she said, with emotion.

A report completed in August 2012 by the National Institute of Colonisation and Agrarian Reform confirmed that residents of the community were descendants of slaves from plantations that produced sugar for the Aratu mill in colonial times.

But despite the fact that the Brazilian constitution specifies that quilombos are entitled to collective ownership of the land they have historically occupied, the community of Rio dos Macacos has not yet been issued title to their 300 hectares.

In October 2012, a federal court ruled that the navy must pull out of the area. But the ruling has been appealed by the state.

Meanwhile, the public defender’s office demanded on Jan. 8 that the navy urgently clarify the incident involving the dos Santos.

The next day, a group of social movements issued a statement deploring the attacks on the community and defending legal recognition of the quilombo and the local residents’ right to their land

It also demanded that a road be built so residents could go in and out of the quilombo without having to pass through the navy village, to avoid the aggressive military control over access to the community.

On Jan. 10, three of the organisations filed complaints about the incident to three U.N. special rapporteurs – in the Field of Cultural Rights, on the Right to Adequate Housing, and on the situation of Human Rights Defenders – as well as to the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, which visited Brazil in December.

“In the community you can’t tell that the military dictatorship is over,” Marisa Viegas, a lawyer with Justiça Global, one of the human rights groups that brought the complaints, told IPS. “The military continue to use repression against the local residents, who are unable to achieve minimal living conditions.”

Her organisation has been assisting the Rio dos Macacos community for the past decade.

According to Viegas, two activists who defend the human rights of the quilombolas were attacked.

She said cultural and housing rights and freedom are under attack in the community, and the quilombolas are not allowed to freely move about, receive visitors or build decent housing.

Pointing out that the constitution guarantees the quilombolas’ right to their land, the activist said that “in practice the contrary is happening, with people being pressured to leave.”

Viegas said the state has failed to live up to international commitments to not violate, and to not tolerate violations of, the rights of residents of communities like the quilombos.

“In this case it is the state itself committing the violations, which is doubly serious,” she said.

A communiqué issued by the navy stated that an investigation of the complaint filed about the incident involving the dos Santos was being carried out with support from the public prosecution service, “to determine what happened, and the circumstances and responsibilities.”

The institution also stated that the inquiry would be conducted “with transparency and in an impartial manner.” It added that the military personnel accused of attacking the dos Santos had been temporarily suspended.

Members of La Muñeca Negra, a group that makes papier-mâché figures inspired by Afro-Cuban deities. Credit: Ernesto Pérez Zambrano/IPS

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Nov 25 2013 (IPS)

From a very young age, Irma Castañeda has braided her curly hair and cared for it with natural recipes inherited from her mother, ignoring the widespread conception that black women’s hair is “ugly” or “bad”.

Gently, with skilful hands, she aims to chip away at something much more complex: the silence surrounding the issue of race, a subject that was taboo for decades in official rhetoric, according to which racism was eradicated by the Cuban revolution in 1959.

In the Balcón Arimao barrio in the largely black municipality of La Lisa, on the west side of Havana, Castañeda and nine other women have launched an effort to improve self-esteem, teaching hairdressing techniques and traditional cosmetics recipes for black skin, because they are not available in stores.

“Whether it is straightened or worn in an Afro or dreadlocks, hair can look beautiful on a black woman, who has the right to have resources for taking care of her image,” Castañeda told IPS.

“We want to break the stereotype that we black women are less beautiful, without trying to look like white models,” added Castañeda, an educator by profession and promoter of the project Rizos (Spanish for “Curls”).

For these hairdressers, facial masks and tweezers are tools for raising awareness around problems faced by people of African descent, who officially account for 36 percent of Cuba’s population of nearly 11.2 million, although researchers such as Esteban Morales estimate the non-white population at around 60 percent.

Rizos is one of a number of initiatives of the Afrodescendent Neighbourhood Network (Red Barrial Afrodescendiente, RBA), which is reviving anti-racist activism in Havana.

About a year ago, activists from various urban communities founded the RBA to take research and debate about the race question into the neighbourhoods. Every month, in a community centre in La Lisa, lectures are given to train 35 local leaders.

All of these people, who work in different jobs and have different educational levels, assume the responsibility of taking what they learn to their families, neighbourhoods, and workplaces.

Marlene Bayeux, a 63-year-old former veterinarian, says she knows what it feels like to be underestimated. “To be respected as a professional, I had to overcome a racist boss, but if I had been equipped with the arguments that I learned in the network’s workshops, I would have saved myself a lot of grief,” she told IPS.

Bayeux feels that she contributes to the cause as part of La Muñeca Negra (The Black Doll) – a group of artisans who create papier-mâché figures inspired by female Afro-Cuban deities.

Another group sews black rag dolls, but they are dressed as flight attendants, doctors, nurses, and soldiers, instead of the typical religious or slave woman rag dolls.

While small, these efforts are important because of the direction they are moving in, historian Daisy Rubiera told IPS. She is part of the Cuban chapter of the regional network of African Descendants from Latin America and the Caribbean (ARAC), created in September of last year.

Rubiera described the work being carried out by academia and intellectuals as insufficient; for years, they have been talking, carrying out research and even making money on the issue, but they have not managed to really reach the wider public, she said.

“The historic causes of racial discrimination do not appear in the official texts, so they go unnoticed by the majority,” said Rubiera, who is an advisor to the RBA.

Maritza López, who is the RBA’s coordinator and has extensive experience in social work in poor neighbourhoods, said discussions need to happen with the people most affected, who are in the streets and not in bookstores, theatres or academic seminars.

“Academic activism opened up the road, but the intellectuals need to come down to our neighbourhoods to transmit their knowledge and wisdom in terms that people can understand,” López told IPS.

In Cuba, racial discrimination is manifest above all in subtle personal, social, and cultural prejudice and attitudes. It is low-key because public displays of racism are not socially acceptable.

“Sometimes black people do not perceive that they are being discriminated against because socially, the problem is accepted as natural,” said retired high school teacher Hildelisa Leal.

Segregation and discrimination are also reflected by the fact that blacks or people of mixed-race are a majority among the poor and a minority in decision-making posts and emerging economic sectors such as tourism and self-employment, according to researcher María del Carmen Zabala.

According to her studies, less than 20 percent of Cubans who leave the country in search of a better future are non-whites. For that reason, most of the remittances sent home by immigrants – an essential source of income for much of the population – go to white families.

According to the 2002 census, while unemployment stood at 2.9 percent among whites, it rose to 6.3 percent among the black and mixed-race workforce. And with respect to higher education, 4.4 percent more whites than non-whites held a degree.

These figures have not been updated with information from the 2012 census.

President Raul Castro has referred to increasing the presence of blacks in political office.

In the legislative National Assembly elected this year, 37 percent of seats are held by non-whites.

In January 2012, the ruling Communist Party declared its intention of “confronting prejudice and discriminatory conduct based on skin colour that runs counter to the Constitution and law and hurts national unity.”

However, activists are demanding more resounding actions in this nation, which has the second-highest proportion of blacks in Latin America after Brazil.

Tato Quiñones, a leading member of the citizens’ project Cofradía de la Negritud (roughly, Brotherhood of Blackness), is proposing a specific legal structure for prosecuting acts of racial discrimination.

In an award-winning essay, researcher Zuleica Romay suggested a general law against discrimination.

Learning about the cultural and historic roots of racism has helped Damayanti Matos, a member of the RBA, feel more empowered.

“I became aware of my rights – it used to seem normal for people to address me as ‘negra’ (black woman),” she told IPS. “Now I know that behind that innocent gesture, there is a history of discrimination.”

A young black street vendor selling "acarajé", a traditional type of fritter, in Salvador, Bahia in Brazil’s Northeast. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Walter García and Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 21 2013 (IPS)

Carla Vilas Boas is of mixed-race descent – African, European and indigenous – like a majority of the population of Brazil. But she spends hours straightening her hair, trying to look more like the blond, blue-eyed women she sees in the mirror of television.

The 32-year-old domestic worker acknowledges that Brazil’s popular telenovelas have started to include characters like her – people from the country’s favelas or shantytowns, who work long workdays for low wages.

But among the actors and the models shown in ads, “there are only a few darker-skinned people among all the blue-eyed blonds. And you wonder: if I buy that shampoo and go to the hairdresser, can I look like that?” she remarked to IPS.

But her hair “never looks that way,” even with the new shampoo or the visit to the hairstylist, and Vilas Boas said that makes her feel “really bad.”

More than half of the women in this country of 200 million people – where over 50 percent of the population identified themselves as black or “mulatto” in the last census – do not identify with the images they see on TV.

Experts say that because of the prejudices reflected in the choice of actors and models, advertisers potentially lose a large segment of consumers.

A survey by the Data Popular polling firm and the Patrícia Galvão Institute (IPG), a women’s rights organisation, interviewed 1,501 women and men over the age of 18 in 100 towns and cities spread across every region of the country.

In the study “Representations of women in TV advertising”, 56 percent of those surveyed said ads did not show “real” Brazilian women.

For 65 percent of the respondents, the model of beauty in TV ads has little to do with the way Brazilian women really look, and 60 percent said they think women get frustrated when they do not feel reflected on TV.

Most ads show “young, white, thin, blond, straight-haired upper-class women,” the study says.

At the age of 17, Karina Lopes feels insecure as a woman. Her body has changed, but not into the shape she sees in the ads offering her clothes, make-up and low-cal yogurt.

“Even if I eat that yogurt every day, I’ll never be thin like that woman selling it,” she told IPS. “You feel bad because that image is so different from the way you look. Normal women aren’t shown on TV.”

Mara Vidal, assistant director of IPG, said “women come in all colours and shapes. We aren’t stereotypes. That’s what the public is saying – it’s not something that women’s organisations or academic studies came up with.

“It’s the public who are saying ‘we want to be better represented in society, not just by one single, universal type’,” Vidal told IPS.

She said she also suffered in the past. As a girl, she didn’t want to go to school because other kids called her “black girl with broom-bristle hair” because of her brown skin and red hair.

“I didn’t start liking my hair till I got to university, when I stopped straightening it,” she said. “My generation wasn’t as aware as people are today. The concept of someone who was ‘good-looking’ didn’t include people with our hair and colouring.”

In the study, 51 percent of those surveyed said they would like to see more black women in ads, and 64 percent said they would like to see more women from lower-income sectors.

Brazilian TV and the country’s world-famous telenovelas have gradually started to overcome prejudice and today black or brown-skinned characters are less limited to the traditional discriminatory roles of domestics, family drivers, or criminals. Some have even cast darker-skinned women as central characters.

But advertising, unless it specifically targets that segment of the population, still does not represent blacks.

“In an ad for margarine we don’t see black women or happy black families. But in the area of cosmetics we’re starting to see a change,” Vidal said.

For example, there are now lines of products specifically designed for darker-skinned women and shampoos for “curly” or “dark-coloured” hair.

Meanwhile, advertising by the government and public enterprises has become increasingly “politically correct,” reflecting the country’s ethnic diversity.

But that is not happening yet “as much as we would like,” said Vidal. “Brazil, because of its tradition of excluding blacks, has not yet dared to fully show that reality.”

Renato Meirelles, director of Data Popular, said that exclusion is now hurting advertisers. According to the polling firm, women in Brazil represent 500 billion dollars a year in income and are the ones who decide on 85 percent of what families consume.

Women are not just a “niche market but the main consumer market, and advertisers don’t know how to reach out to them,” Meirelles told IPS.

The idea that “Brazilian women want to be like Europeans is old,” he said. “Now women are proud of their new identity.”

Factors that have helped boost this newfound self-esteem include laws aimed at fighting racial discrimination that have been adopted in recent years and the fact that some 30 million people have left poverty behind and have moved up into the middle class.

According to Meirelles, “the big problem of advertisers and advertising agencies is that they belong to the elite and their decisions emerge from an elite mind-set. That’s why they fail to understand that a new consumer market has emerged.

“Their fear is that white women won’t buy a product if the girl in the ad is black. Few of them worry that black women won’t buy products because the model in the ad is white,” he said.

“Aspiration has given way to inspiration, where the model represents successful black women. Companies should understand this process of achievement that we have experienced,” he said.

A Nigerian diviner dances and sings next to a Brazilian priest of the Candomblé religion, brought to this South American country by African slaves, that is now being rescued from oblivion in school texts on national history and culture.

He is Jokotoye Awolade Bankole, a 55-year-old tribal prince from Onpeu-Ogbomoso in the southwestern Nigerian state of Oyo, and a devotee of Ifa, a divination system of the Yoruba people that was declared part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2005 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

Candomblé priest Alexander Rocha da Silva, or “Alexander de Oxossi” as he is known in his religion, has welcomed Bankole to his “terreiro” or temple. He is white, although as he told IPS, “who in Brazil can say he has nothing of Africa under his skin?”

Half of the Brazilian population is black or mixed-race. Graffiti on a wall at the Bom Jardim Cultural Centre in Fortaleza. Credit: Mario Osava/IPSBrazil

This country, where over 50 percent of the population of 194 million identify themselves as black or “mulatto” in the census, has emphasised its European history, the Portuguese “conquest” and the practice of the Catholic religion.

According to the 2010 census, 64.6 percent of the population identify as Catholics, followed by 22.2 percent who profess evangelical, mainly neopentecostal, denominations.

Many of those who openly declare themselves to be followers of religions of African origin, like Umbanda and Candomblé, who represent 0.3 percent of the population, practise their rituals in the shadows.

“There is still a lot of discrimination, especially when someone at school or at university professes an African religion,” says Glaucia Bastos, an “iyanifa” (Ifa priestess).

Brought to Brazil by African slaves, Candomblé was subjected to more or less severe repression from colonial times, and had to disguise itself in order to survive.

“Candomblé did not suffer as much from the Catholic influence as other religions, because black people continued to worship their ‘orixás’ (deities) under the guise of Catholic saints,” Alexander de Oxossi told IPS.

Open persecution by the police of Afro-Brazilian religions continued past the mid-20th century.

Bastos, whose father is Portuguese but who identifies herself as black “because of her mother’s family tree,” tells IPS that “up until 27 years ago, people in the streets used to shout ‘macumbera’ at me,” a word of African origin used pejoratively to mean a practitioner of black magic.

Edna Teixeira de Araujo told IPS that until around 1970, Candomblé was practised in the backyards of samba – an Afro-Brazilian musical rhythm – houses. “There would be a samba dance circle in the front, and Candomblé would be going on behind, to keep it hidden,” said de Araujo, who like other participants at this celebration in honour of Bankole was wearing a festive Nigerian Yoruba gown.

But times changed, and federal law 7,716, which stipulates that religious intolerance amounts to racism, no longer permits open demonstrations of prejudice.

In 2007, Jan. 21 was named the annual National Day Against Religious Intolerance in memory of Mãe Gilda, a Candomblé priestess from the Northeast state of Bahia who died in 2000 from heart problems blamed on religious persecution by neopentecostal churches.

But in spite of the signs of progress, devotees of Afro-Brazilian religions still feel persecuted.

“Even today, any problem that arises is blamed on a curse by Candomblé or Umbanda practitioners,” de Araujo said.

Bankole, who is from a region of Nigeria that was decimated by the slave trade up to little more than a century ago, came to Brazil to help build respect for Afro-Brazilian religions.

Through an interpreter, Bankole told IPS that due to slavery, many Africans from different parts of the continent experienced the mixing or loss of their customs in Brazil, including their tribal languages and Ifa, which he is now trying to revive.

That was the aim of the lecture on “Memory, Ancestors and Identity in the African Context” that he delivered on Nov. 13 in Yoruba, a language spoken by 10 million people in Africa.

The event was organised by the “coordinating body of experts in education for ethnic and racial relations”, which trains teachers to apply the 2010 law that requires the study of African history and the Brazilian black community at all levels in the public and private education system in Brazil.

Bankole is optimistic because he has found on his travels that many other forms of awareness of African ancestry persist in Brazil and other Latin American countries, including orixá worship in Candomblé.

“And even Brazil’s carnival bears the imprint of African culture,” Bankole said, smiling.

Bastos, whose roots rejoined Africa when she married Edundayo Olalekan Awe, a Nigerian who was acting as interpreter for Bankole, again took trees as a metaphor to refer to cultural and religious mixing in Brazil.

“It’s the same tree, and everyone has planted it as he or she wishes,” she said.

Like a tree with different roots, the “xirê” – drumming and singing for the orixás – mingles in the terreiro of Alexander de Oxossi, the priest or “doté”, with the flavours of the foods to be offered to the orixás, prepared by Iya Rosana de Bessem, like acarajé, a typical dish from Bahia.

Bahian-style garments in the ritual circle alternate with Nigerian “alaká” shawls worn by Brazilian women.

So a piece of African earth is embedded in Brazilian soil, and Brazilian earth is embedded in Africa, keeping memories alive in the shade of the trees.

Children in Araçuaí, Minas Gerais, in eastern Brazil. Credit: Rodrigo Dai – Courtesy of Ser Criança

By Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 14 2012 (IPS)

If a black woman and a white woman both need emergency obstetric care, a Brazilian doctor will assist the white woman because of the stereotype that black women are better at handling pain and are used to giving birth.

Because of cultural and social conventions in Brazil “blacks are seen in terms of stereotypes, and that leads to them not having the same guarantees in healthcare treatment as whites have,” Crisfanny Souza Soares, a psychologist with the National Network for Social Monitoring and Health of the Black Population, told IPS.

A campaign in Brazil is seeking to combat these stereotypes, which reflect racism that undermines public health, in the country’s hospital system.

The Pro Health National Mobilisation of the Black Population was launched this year by Afro-Brazilian organisations with support from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

The aim of the campaign, whose theme is “Long, healthy life free of racism”, is comprehensive healthcare at all stages of life. It encourages society, and especially the health system, to fight discrimination, in order to bring down the high mortality rates among the country’s black population.

“Practically all health indicators for black women are worse than for white women,” said Souza Soares. “In breast cancer screenings, doctors spend less time checking the breasts of black women, and black women receive less anaesthesia when they give birth.”

Half of Brazil’s 192 million people define themselves as “black” in the census.

The Health Ministry, which has been implementing an integral national policy targeting the black population in the Unified Health System (SUS) since 2006, has carried out studies to detect stereotypes and racism.

“The idea that blacks are better at handling pain and at living with illnesses is prevalent throughout the health system, from nursing assistants to doctors,” said Deise Queiroz, coordinator of the Articulação Política de Juventudes Negras, an organisation focused on youth policies in the northeastern state of Bahia.

Queiroz has experienced that in person, especially when she goes to the doctor with her mother, a diabetic with high blood pressure who is frequently in need of assistance from the public health system.

The activist told IPS that the SUS, a model in terms of democratising healthcare, has failed to meet the high level of demand, “and racist attitudes have become more overt.”

The Brazilian constitution says healthcare is a universal right, and it is the duty of the state to guarantee its provision. And the SUS establishes that everyone has the right to quality, humane treatment free of discrimination.

But racism persists, both obvious and subtle. “It is reflected in the living conditions of people and in the way health services are organised and policies are formulated,” Fernanda Lopes, a UNFPA representative in Brazil, told IPS.

“That is why specific policies aimed at achieving equality must be crafted,” she said.

An epidemiological study by the Health Ministry provided concrete information to help design policies, such as indicators like prenatal care, types of births, low birthweight, and maternal-child morbid-mortality rates broken down by race, skin colour and ethnicity.

It also analyses other aspects, such as the right to and access to family planning, which are much more precarious among black women.

This aspect is a central focus of the UNFPA State of World Population 2012 report released Wednesday Nov. 14, entitled, “By Choice, Not by Chance: Family Planning, Human Rights and Development”.

For example, among whites in Brazil, girls between the ages of 15 and 19 accounted for 19 percent of live births, but among blacks, girls in that age group accounted for 29 percent of births.

And while 62 percent of the mothers of white babies reported that they had at least seven prenatal checkups, only 37 percent of the mothers of newborn black or mixed-race babies had gone in for that number of prenatal visits.

There are also differences in child mortality rates. The risk of a black or mixed-race child dying before reaching the age of five as a result of infectious or parasitic diseases is 60 percent higher than the risk faced by a white child. And the risk of dying of malnutrition is 90 percent higher.

The study also found that more black women die of pregnancy-related complications like hypertension.

“They say the worse health indicators among the black population are because most black people are poor, which makes them more vulnerable, said Souza Soares. But other variables, which are simply reflections of racism, cannot be denied, she argued.

“If we see two young men in a hospital, both of whom were shot, it’s more likely that the white youth will be seen as a victim, while it will be assumed that the young black man is there because he was involved in a crime,” she says.

And sometimes this reflection of the “cultural imaginary…determines how a health professional establishes priorities of who gets medical attention first.”

Another concern involves the diseases prevalent in the black population, such as sickle-cell anaemia, type 2 diabetes, and hypertension, for which the health system does not have specific policies.

Black women are 50 percent more likely than whites to develop type 2 diabetes, and high blood pressure is two times more prevalent among black women than among the general population.

And in the case of sickle-cell anaemia, which could be detected in newborns, some 3,500 Brazilian children are born with the disease every year, making it the most common genetic disorder in Brazil, according to the Pro Health National Mobilisation of the Black Population.

“The black population generally dies at a younger age, and deaths due to avoidable causes are more frequent,” Lopes said.

The policy aimed at combating discrimination in healthcare “should minimise the impact of longstanding inequalities by means of affirmative action strategies,” she said.

UNFPA is working with the government and the black movement to strengthen the policy and the training of professionals needed to implement it.

“The challenge is to answer the question why in a country where blacks represent 50 percent of the population, we have such different health situations,” the Health Ministry admitted.