World on Fire - Brownstein, Michael [85]
“Ethnicity” and “indigenousness” are often used by political leaders in ways not predicted by idealistic Western democracy and human rights proponents. For example, both the Amerindian movement led by Mallku in Bolivia and the Conaie movement led by Fernando Villavicencio in Ecuador are far more vitriolic, anti-market, and antiwhite than Western NGOs promoting indigenous consciousness would like. Mallku is demanding renationalization of Bolivia’s natural gas reserves and vows to fight to his death both “U.S. gringo imperialism” and “minority rule by Whites and mestizos”; ten people died in the violent protests he spearheaded in 2000. In Chile, which has only a tiny Amerindian population, frustrated Mapuche Indians in southern Chile have been invading white-owned farms in a style similar to that of Zimbabwe’s war veterans. Meanwhile, Venezuela’s pro-pardo, anti-American Hugo Chavez, who “played the ethnic card” to win the presidency in free and fair elections, was never very popular in the United States, not even in left-leaning circles.
In Brazil, where Western NGOs have been particularly active, for the first time in the country’s history and to the growing concern of the largely white establishment, an ethnicized all-black political party has been formed that openly champions Afro-Brazilian empowerment. Also for the first time in Brazilian history—as critics in Brazil and around the world lament—Brazil is enacting a series of “affirmative action” programs for blacks (although who is “black” enough to qualify is not obvious to anyone). Just in the last decade, dozens of emphatically black organizations and magazines have emerged, and T-shirts with slogans like “100% Negro” are suddenly a common sight in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
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There is much about the recent ethnic reawakening in Latin America that is praiseworthy. Latin America’s indigenous movements are often compared to the civil rights struggle of African-Americans in the United States during the 1960s. “[P]eople of Indian blood are fighting,” writes the Washington Post’s Anthony Faiola, “and in many cases, winning, an unprecedented crusade for a louder political voice while celebrating and recapturing their cultural identities as never before.” After centuries in which “whiteness” and Western tastes were idolized, observes Faiola, today “everything from Aztec gods to the earth symbols of Patagonian Indians have emerged as politically charged fashion statements in the T-shirts and tattoos worn by youths of the region.” At the same time, there has been a boom in the publication of poetry, folklore, and textbooks in Quechua, Aymara, and other Indian languages as part of state-funded bilingual education programs. “What you’re seeing is a major indigenous awakening that is having a massive impact on politics, law, and culture,” says Diego Iturralde, an anthropologist based in Quito. “It is overthrowing governments, changing constitutions and generally altering the norms of society in Latin America.”
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But there are of course dangers, too—of ethnic scapegoating and accelerating group hatred. What the future will bring for Latin America’s mixed-blooded countries is impossible to know. If history is any guide, the region’s wealthy, educated, globally-connected market-dominant “whites” will maintain their traditional stranglehold on both politics and the economy. In Ecuador, for example, one year after a popular Indian uprising toppled the pro-market government of President Jamil Mahuad, a new white-dominated pro-market regime is once again in place. The country’s infuriated Amerindian leaders say they “were betrayed” and warn that the country faces “social explosion.”
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In much of Latin America, as in many countries throughout the non-Western world, the two major components of globalization—markets and democracy—are on a collision course. Democratization, to the extent that it actually begins to resemble genuine majority rule, poses a serious threat to the status quo. This is particularly true in countries where most of the people