I.2.9 DIGITAL ARCHIVE 807738
Writing from Uruguay during what would be the last year of his fifteen-year exile, Brazilian anthropologist and educator Darcy Ribeiro (1922–1997) first published this essay in 1976 in the newly established Mexican journal Vuelta, founded by Octavio Paz. Approaching his subject with a broader perspective afforded by years away from Brazil, Ribeiro recognizes a fundamental unity in the region despite its obvious cultural and linguistic differences. He notes that one chief unifying principle is the challenge Latin or “Poor” America faces from Anglo or “Rich” America. The main thrust of his argument, however, resides in questioning the nuances of such an overarching construct as “Latin America.” The essay has been reprinted extensively; see, for example, Ribeiro’s América Latina, a pátria grande [(Rio de Janeiro: Editora Guanabara, 1986)]. This translation is based on the version published as “A América Latina existe?” in the anthology Ensaios insólitos [(Porto Alegre: L & PM Editores, 1979), 217– 19; 221–25].
DOES LATIN AMERICA EXIST? There is no doubt that it does. But it is always good to delve deeply into the meaning of that existence.
Geographically, Latin America is well known as the product of its continent’s continuity. Within this physical foundation, however, there is neither any corresponding unified sociopolitical structure nor any functioning and interactive coexistence. The whole of the vast continent is broken up into single nationalities, some of them scarcely viable as frameworks within which people may realize their potential. Indeed, geographic continuity never functioned here as a unifying factor because for centuries the different colonial establishments from which Latin America’s societies were born coexisted without cooperating. Each one would communicate directly with its colonial mother country. Even today, we Latin Americans live as if we were an archipelago of islands linked by sea and air; more often we turn outward to the great economic centers of the world, rather than inward. Indeed, the borders of Latin America, running along the barren mountain ranges or through the impenetrable jungle, isolate more than they connect, and rarely allow for an intensive coexistence.
On the linguistic-cultural level, we Latin Americans constitute a category with as much or as little homogeneity as the neo-Britannic world of peoples who predominantly speak English. This could seem inadequate to those who speak of Latin America as a concrete, active, and uniform entity; they forget that included in this category are, among others, the Brazilians, Mexicans, Haitians, and the French incursion into Canada, given their essentially neo-Latin linguistic uniformity. [These are] peoples as different from one another as North Americans are from Australians and Afrikaners, for example. This simple list shows the scope of the two categories and their scant usefulness as a classification.
By reducing the scale from Latin to Iberian, we arrive at an entity a bit more uniform—in truth, scarcely more homogenous because it only excludes the descendants of the French colonies. The Brazilians, Argentineans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Chileans, etc. would remain within this category. From the viewpoint of each of these nationalities, their own national essences possess much more vigor and uniqueness than does the Iberian-American common denominator.
If we reduce the scale even more, we can distinguish two contrasting categories: one of Lusitanian American content wholly concentrated in Brazil and another of Hispanic American content, which gathers together the remaining peoples. The differences between them are at least as relevant as those distinguishing Portugal from Spain. As can be seen, they are of little significance because they are based on a minimal linguistic variation that manages not to obstruct communication, although we tend to exaggerate it due to a long shared history of often combative interactions.
Looking at Latin America as a whole, one notices the presence—and absence—of certain groups that both brighten and diversify the scene. For example, the indigenous presence is well documented in Guatemala and in the Andean Altiplano, where it is the majority, as well as in Mexico, where Indian groups reach into the millions and even predominate in certain regions. In these cases, those who come from the indigenous populations are part of such a large group that they were integrated into national societies with an ethnically diverse peasantry; in the future their destiny will be redefined as autonomous groups. This means that in the years to come countries like Guatemala, Bolivia, Ecuador, and also extensive areas of other nations, such as Mexico and Colombia, will be subject to profound social convulsions, all ethnic in nature. These will either redefine the national frameworks or restructure them as federations of autonomous peoples.
The situation is completely different in other countries, where only micro-ethnic tribal groups can be found, immersed in nations with vast, ethnically homogenous societies. In these cases, a visible indigenous presence must be taken into account, whether in the form of language, like that of the Guarani in Paraguay, or, especially, the phenotype of the populations’ majorities, as it occurs in Brazil, Chile, and Venezuela. This, however, does not justify incorporating Indo-Americans into a separate category, as others have suggested. I really doubt that any explanatory typology could be achieved through this line of reasoning. All these peoples find their genetic and cultural sources in their indigenous traits. Whatever the fate of these surviving indigenous populations may be, their contribution has been absorbed in such a way that their ethnic configuration will not be significantly altered. That is, the intermarriage, assimilation, and Europeanization of the ancient indigenous groups within the heart of these national populations are either complete or still in progress. This tends to homogenize—not merge—all these ethnic lineages, converting them into differentiated contributors to the national ethnicity. This does not mean that the Indians who survived as tribes within these countries will disappear. On the contrary, despite becoming increasingly acculturated, they will survive in a differentiated state and will become ever more numerous.
Another component that distinguishes this framework, and that presents its own particular aspects, is the presence of the African Negro, solidly concentrated along the Brazilian coast with the earliest colonization, in the mining areas, and in the West Indies where sugar plantations flourished. Beyond these regions, various pockets of Negro population are found in Venezuela, Colombia, Guyana, Peru, and in some areas of Central America. Here as well, assimilation and absorption of this group reached a point of Americanization in the same manner as, or perhaps one even more complete than that of any other case. It is certain that African influences on folklore, music, and religion are palpable in areas where the Negro was more predominant. But their persistence can be mainly explained by conditions that marginalized these populations, who in no case constituted ethnic blocs that were unable to assimilate or who aspired to autonomy.
. . .
Anthropologists, who were particularly interested in the uniqueness of these peoples, produced a vast body of literature that emphasized their distinctiveness, perhaps even to the point of excess. In fact, it is possible to prepare long lists of surviving cultural attributes that allow us to link these groups to their original sources. However, it is certain here as well that the similarities are more significant than the differences, since these groups are completely “Americanized.” In a linguistic and cultural sense they are people of their country, and even “our people,” according to the emotional identification commonly used by their co-inhabitants. Their peculiarities, which perhaps have a tendency to fade, barely differentiate them from the national community on account of their remote origin.
The same occurs with components of the non-Iberian groups more recently arrived from Europe. Each of them contributes to the national being in a particular way, neither with superiority nor inferiority, which allows them to be defined in a limiting manner as, for example, Anglo-Uruguayans, Italo-Argentineans, Germanic Chileans, or French Brazilians. However, it must be pointed out that they all enjoy a higher social standing, based partly on cultural and economic advantages, but principally on a greater social acceptance that privileges them within societies dominated by whites.
. . .
Beyond all the differentiating factors—colonial origins, the presence, absence, or sheer number of indigenous and African groups and other components—what stands out in the Latin American world is the unity of the result produced by Iberian expansion into America and by a successful process of homogenization. Present in greater or smaller proportions in various regions, all these groups constituted ethnic-national societies whose populations are the product of racial intermingling that continues today. Aside from indigenous groups descended from ancient civilizations and micro-ethnic tribes that survive in isolation, in no case do we find the original indigenous peoples—not the Europeans, Asians, or Africans—just as they were when they detached from their origins. Their descendants are the neo-Americans, whose worldviews, ways of life, and aspirations—which are essentially identical—make them one of the most vigorous branches of the human species. By incorporating people from all parts of the earth, a mestiço people was created, who carry in their visage an ethnic-cultural heritage taken from all sources of humanity. This inheritance, which has spread rather than concentrating itself in ethnic pockets, imposed a basic ethnic origin—chiefly Iberian in some countries, principally indigenous or African in others—thus coloring the Latin American panorama without fracturing it due to clashing elements. Thus both uniformity and the homogenization process again stand out as the explanatory models that encompass more than 90 percent of Latin Americans.
This continual standardization process is well known in certain domains, such as in linguistics and cultural studies. As a matter of fact, the languages and cultural structures of Latin America are much more homogeneous than those of the colonizing countries—perhaps even more than in any other part of the world, with the exception of the neo-British nations. In fact, both the Spanish and Portuguese spoken in the Americas have fewer regional variations than those spoken in their countries of origin. Spoken by hundreds of millions of people and despite covering an extensive area in Latin America, Spanish has minimal regional variations with regard to the spoken accent. It did not evolve into any dialects. In Spain, various languages that are unintelligible to each other continue to be spoken. The same occurs in relation to the Portuguese and English languages. That is, the Spaniards, the Portuguese, and the English, who were never able to assimilate the linguistic-dialectical pockets within their own, smaller territories, came to the Americas and imposed on their much larger colonies a near absolute linguistic uniformity and an equally notable cultural homogeneity.
Thus we return to the initial uniformity. It matters little that it is not perceived with clarity within each national context, and this is because each nation takes great pains to emphasize its uniqueness as a mechanism of self-glorification and self-affirmation in a way that only has meaning for those who share the same ethnic loyalties. It is certain that our “Latin Americanness”— which is quite evident to those who view us from afar and perceive our macroethnicity—has still not made us one autonomous political entity: neither one nation nor a federation of Latin American states. It is not impossible, however, that history will succeed in doing so. [Simón] Bolivar’s goal was to offset the United States of the North [the U.S.] with the United States of the South. The Patria Grande [Great Fatherland] of [Uruguayan general José Gervasio] Artigas or even the Nuestra América [Our America] conceived by [José] Martí [SEE DOCUMENT I.3.3] both indicate a similar path.
From where does this unifying power stem? How can we explain the resistance to assimilation of linguistic-cultural islands such as the Basques, the Galicians, and the Catalans, or even the regional dialects of Portuguese, as compared to the flexibility of the differentiated groups that form the Iberian American peoples?
Perhaps the explanation lies in the distinctive characteristics of the process that formed our peoples, with its intentionality, prosperity, and violence. Here the colonial powers, which operated in a truly despotic manner, had an explicit project with very clear goals. Almost immediately they succeeded in subjugating the preexisting society, paralyzing the original culture and converting its population into a submissive labor force.
The process also served to standardize the prosperity of the colonial undertaking, both during the looting of riches accumulated over the ages, as well as in the various methods that took hold after the appropriation of mercantile production. This great wealth allowed for the creation of a vast military, governmental, and ecclesiastical bureaucracy that would rule every aspect of the society. All productive enterprises were established according to precise plans. Cities emerged through acts of will, with streets drawn according to predetermined patterns and buildings constructed according to prescribed plans. Ethnic-social categories were formed to regulate one’s entire life, predetermining the jobs to which one could aspire and the clothes and even the type of jewels one could wear, as well as those one could marry. All this intentional and artificial order had an ultimate objective: to defend the colony and make it prosperous for the colonial power’s use. There was also a secondary goal, although it was presented as the primary objective: to create a young metropolitan society that would be faithful to the Catholic missionary ideology.
The dominant native classes, as the managers of that colonial pact and cultural construction, never formed [the top level of] an autonomous society; they were a mere administrative stratum that watched over and legitimized the colonization. Once these societies became independent, the exogenous character of the dominant classes, which had been forged during the colonial period along with their own interests, led them to continue ruling their nations as if they were consuls appointed by the colonial powers. Hence they instituted a political and socioeconomic order that was perfectly synchronized with latifundio [a large landowner system] and entreguismo [exploitation]. They promoted cultural creativity as if it were the local representation of foreign cultural traditions.
The intentionality of this process led to, on the one hand, the search for rationality while attempting to obtain desired results through efficient actions. On the other hand, there was a determination to realize the colonizers’ ambitions through a scheme that was alien to the aspirations of the masses conscripted as a labor force. At no moment in the process of colonization did the groups involved in production form a community that existed for its own sake, a people with its own goals to realize, such as the basic necessities for survival and prosperity. Instead they were human fuel in the form of muscular energy, destined to be consumed in order to generate profits.
Little by little an undeniable contradiction emerges between the plan of the colonizers and their successors and the interests of the human community that resulted from the colonization: that is, between the purposes and behavior of the ruling class and the subordinated majority population that carried out the endeavor that was first colonial, later national. For this population, the challenge throughout the centuries was how to mature into a people conscious of its own interests and aspiring to mutual participation in determining its own destiny. Given the class opposition, achieving these goals involved the struggle against the ruling managerial class of the old social older. Even today this is the principal challenge that we Latin Americans face.
The term “Latin America” has gained a highly significant connotation from the opposition of Anglo-Americans and Latin Americans. In addition to their already diverse cultural attributes, the two clashed even more strongly with regard to socioeconomic rivalry. Here the two groups interact, one as Rich America and the other as Poor America. They hold asymmetrical positions and relations along an axis, with power at one pole and dependency at the other. It can be said that, in a certain sense, it is chiefly as the opposite of Rich America that Latin Americans are most accurately gathered under one designation.
Another bipolar connotation originates in the view of Latin America held by other countries that unites and confuses our nations as variations on the same pattern, seeing all as backward and underdeveloped as a result of Iberian colonization. Despite being constructed with the advantages and disadvantages of distance and simplification, this external architectural perspective is perhaps more accurate. Why do we insist that we are Brazilians and not Argentineans, that our capital is Brasilia and not Buenos Aires? Or that we are Chileans and not Venezuelans, that our ancient indigenous ancestors are the Incas, because the Aztecs belong to the Mexicans? An outside observer might ask: Are you not perhaps all the descendants of one indigenous source, or the results of Iberian colonization? Were you not all emancipated during the course of the decolonization movement? And are you not also the ones who dishonorably mortgaged your countries to British bankers after independence? Do you not recognize how you were and still are being colonized by North American corporations?
Beyond all these factors of diversification and unification, the engine of integration that operated—and still operates—in Latin America to create its cultural uniformity promises to one day realize an economic and sociopolitical unity. This promise rests on the fact that we are the product of the same civilization process—the Iberian expansion—that planted seedlings here with a prodigious capacity to grow and multiply.
Considering the fundamental uniformity of the civilization process and its historical agents—the Iberian people—all other sources emerge as factors of differentiation. Indigenous groups, as varied as they were within their cultural norms and degrees of development, could only have contributed to diversification if they had played a major, influential role. African groups, in turn, having originated from an infinite number of peoples, also would have produced multiple phenotypes in the New World if they had imposed their culture in a dominant manner.
As we can see, the essential unity of Latin America stems from the evolution of civilization. It shaped us during the course of the Mercantile Revolution—specifically the Iberian mercantile expansion, which generated a dynamic that led to the formation of an ensemble of nations not only unique in the world, but also increasingly homogeneous. Even when the civilization process triggered by the Industrial Revolution followed and Latin America freed itself from Iberian rule and broke up into multiple nations, the macroethnic unity was maintained and emphasized. The civilization process that is at work nowadays is being set in motion by a new technological revolution: the thermonuclear. The more it affects the nations of Latin America, the more it will reinforce their ethnic identity as the expression of a new civilization. It is even quite probable that this will give rise to the supranational political entity that will serve as the framework within which Latin Americans will realize their destiny. Within this framework, various currently oppressed indigenous groups (Quechua, Aymará, Maya, Mapuche, and so on) will stand out more visibly and assertively than they do today. Yet, the macro-ethnic scenario within which all the nations of the subcontinent will coexist will continue to have an Iberian American face.