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08/24/2004:

"Black and Indian Power: The Meaning of Hugo Chávez"

by William Loren Katz counterpunch.org
To the sputtering fury of a Bush administration who has repeatedly conspired with Venezuela's elite to drive Hugo Chavez from power, the Black Indian President of this oil-rich nation has scored a decisive 59% victory over a recall effort. Chavez now sits more comfortably than ever atop a fourth of the world oil supplies -- equal to that of Iraq -- and he supplies a fifth of US oil needs. In addition, he is current leader of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC. George W. Bush would prefer his friends in Saudi Arabia rather than Chavez set global oil prices. US attacks on Chavez caricature him as a tyrant in the class of Saddam Hussein, or a Marxist, or a ferociously anti-American clone of Castro. Actually, his populist uprising springs from multicultural grass roots that pre-date the foreign invasion of the Americas that began in 1492.

Like four-fifths of Venezuelans, Chavez was born of poor Black and Indian parents. Since the days of Columbus descendants of the Spanish conquistadores have supplied the governing classes of the Americas, and have denied indiginous people a say in their future. Chavez represents a strong challenge.

Chavez is not only proud of his biracial legacy, but has begun to use oil revenues to help the poor of all colors improve their education and economic standing. He also flatly rejects Bush administration efforts to isolate Cuba, counts Castro a friend, and has repeatedly accused the US of meddling in his country and around the world.

Chavez rules a country where three percent of the population, mostly of white European descent, own 77% of the land. In recent decades millions of hungry peasants have drifted into Caracas and other cities, and live in barrios of cardboard shacks and open sewers. Chavez has begun to transfer fields from giant unused or abandoned haciendas to peasant hands, and as landlords have responded with howls of alarm, he has promised further distributions. full article

Long after slavery, inequities remain Miami Herald
LIMA - The cover of the 2004 Lima phone book features a white doctor, a white nurse, a white chef, a white man on the phone, two white men doing home repairs -- and a black bellhop carrying luggage.

Jorge Ramírez winced as he examined the cover.

''This only perpetuates racism in Peru,'' said Ramírez, a self-described Afro-Peruvian who heads a civil rights group in Lima. ``It puts blacks below everyone else.''

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in Peru, and a few determined Afro-Peruvians are using the occasion to tell their countrymen that racism is alive and well here, in ways both similar to and different from racism in the United States.

Their counterparts throughout Latin America tell a similar story as blacks throughout the region are increasingly expressing black pride and creating political movements -- 50 years after the civil rights movement mushroomed in the United States.

Blacks in Latin America report regular acts of racism: that whites sometimes cross the street to avoid them, that waiters at exclusive restaurants ignore them and that security guards often follow them through store aisles while they shop.

Few countries -- Brazil being a major exception -- even keep separate socioeconomic statistics on blacks, which effectively hides their lagging status, said Josefina Stubbs, a World Bank official.

All Latin American presidents are white or brown-skinned, as are the overwhelming majority of their Cabinet ministers and the leading businessmen throughout the region.

But unlike the United States, where anyone with a drop of black blood was once legally considered black, racial distinctions in Latin America are harder to pin down. Also unlike the United States, Latin American governments have not systematically practiced racial segregation or deliberately repressed their black citizens.

''Racism here is more subtle,'' said Rafael Santa Cruz, a black actor who in 1991 portrayed the first successful black professional in a Peruvian soap opera when he played a doctor. ``In Peru, you're black if you look black. The darker you are, the lower you are socially and economically.''
full article