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05/19/2005:

"Uneasily, a Latin Land Looks at Its Own Complexion"

MEXICO CITY, May 18 - Five days after President Vicente Fox provoked a storm of outrage in the United States by saying that Mexican migrants do work that "not even blacks want to do," the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson said in a visit to Mexico on Wednesday that he welcomed the remarks, in a backhand sort of way.

"President Fox has opened a door," Mr. Jackson said in an interview. "Just like the bus driver who put Rosa Parks off the bus. He opened a door for us talk about the system of denial."

By that Mr. Jackson seemed to mean that Mr. Fox's statement, which he characterized as "offensive" and "inaccurate," would force Mexico to give African-Americans a place in its negotiations with the United States on issues of immigration, trade, education and health care. "In late years, we have been locked out of these conversations," said Mr. Jackson, who was here at the invitation of Mr. Fox. "It's been only President Bush and President Fox."

Perhaps the greatest denial, however, has been here in Mexico, where there is usually very little public examination of race, much less racism. Here, too, Mr. Fox seems to have opened a door, and this week the country seems engrossed by it.

Mexicans typically pride themselves on being a colorblind society of mixed-race people, part Spanish, part Indian, and everyone equal. Slavery was abolished here decades before it was in the United States. Mexico never adopted anything like Jim Crow laws, and thousands of African-Americans moved south of the border to escape segregation.

But some commentators said that President Fox inadvertently exposed the disturbing reality beneath the facade and forced Mexico to take a more honest look in the mirror. The truth, said many observers on the radio and in newspaper columns this week, is that Mr. Fox's comments were not uncommon among Mexicans. They would hardly raise an eyebrow at dinner tables and cocktail parties.

A columnist for the Mexico City daily Reforma, Guadalupe Loaeza, wrote Tuesday that President Fox's remarks reflected what she called an "involuntarily" racist attitude. "He was educated like millions of Mexicans, conscious of having been born white, and that it makes him very different from those who are born with dark skin."

Audiences here still get a laugh from performers in black face, or newspaper cartoons that show Africans drawn more like apes.

Mexico's 10 million Indians are not only last in almost every social indicator, including levels of literacy, infant mortality, employment and access to basic services. They still appear on television mostly as maids and gardeners.

Descendants of the African slaves who landed on Mexico's Gulf and Pacific coasts have been all but forgotten by governments and scholars alike.
Full: nytimes.com