LATIN AMERICA: Black Population – Still
Largely Invisible
By Raúl Pierri
MONTEVIDEO (IPS) - Making the contributions
by black people to the cultural heritage of
Latin America visible is one big step
towards pulling people of African descent
out of the poverty and marginalisation in
which so many still live, said participants
at a regional seminar in the Uruguayan
capital.
Experts taking part in the seminar on
"Afro-descendant Women and Latin American
Culture: Identity and Development",
sponsored by the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP), stressed the need to raise
awareness about the region's black
population and heritage.
"When you try to find data on the
Afro-descendant population, it's very hard
to do. There are no statistics to help us
find out what is going on, no specific
indicators on infant or maternal mortality
rates, or nutrition, among blacks," UNDP
regional director for Latin America and the
Caribbean Rebeca Grynspan told IPS,
describing the "invisibility" of this
segment of the population in the region.
"The only approach available to us is to
look at specific regions, because many
people of African descent live in fairly
identifiable areas. But that means we can
only gauge the situation indirectly," she
said on the sidelines of the Sept. 27-29
seminar.
But the absence of broken down statistics is
just one aspect, she stressed. "Blacks also
suffer from invisibility with regard to
their contribution to Latin American history
and culture, and with respect to their
movements, and their influence on what we do
or what we sing."
The seminar drew representatives from
Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile,
Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala,
Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama,
Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.
The UNDP is carrying out a series of
projects to boost the visibility of the
black population in the region, especially
by highlighting their influence on Latin
American culture and working to obtain more
information on the situation of the rights
of blacks.
"This is the first step, because if you
don't see something, you're not worried
about it, you don't think about improving
the situation, and you don't believe there
is any problem," said Grynspan.
Despite the "statistical invisibility,"
there is enough information to allow the
UNDP to determine that there is a large gap
between people of African descent in the
region and other population groups in terms
of living conditions and access to health
care and education.
In Colombia, for example, the overall
illiteracy rate stands at six percent,
compared to 31 percent among blacks. And in
Peru, the average number of school years
among blacks is 6.3, while the national
average is 7.3.
The extreme poverty rate is twice as high
among blacks and indigenous people in the
region as among the rest of the population,
according to the U.N. agency.
In Uruguay, the average wage earned by black
men is 70 percent of the average for the
rest of the population.
In Brazil, blacks are hit harder by
unemployment than other segments of the
population, while joblessness among black
women is more than twice as high as among
black men.
Sixty percent of the black population in
Colombia has no access to basic health care,
and 51 percent has no health insurance, the
UNDP reports.
The infant mortality rate in Latin America
is between 40 and 50 percent higher among
people of African descent than among the
rest of the population.
Although she said the current global
economic crisis has also hit that sector of
the population especially hard, Grynspan
stressed that "discrimination is not only a
problem in material terms, but runs deeper
than that…It is a problem of cultural
discrimination, discrimination in terms of
rights, and the institutions reproduce that
discrimination, which undermines our ethical
values of equity," she said.
The participants agreed that culture should
be used as an integrating mechanism.
In Uruguay, for instance, "the broad
popularity of candombe (a drum-based musical
genre with African roots), which is part of
the identity of the entire population, is a
model of a bridge between races, a symbol of
unity and social integration, and thus a
route for the black population to get
ahead," Uruguayan lawmaker Edgardo Ortuño,
of the governing left-wing Broad Front
coalition, told IPS.
"Culture is the big bridge that can bring
about unity among human beings above and
beyond ethnic and racial differences, and it
has the potential to sensitise people and
promote important values of integration,"
added Ortuño, the first – and only – black
legislator in this South American country.
For her part, Silvia García Savino, director
of the UNDP's project on people of African
descent in Latin America, also stressed the
importance of "cultural visibility."
"We agree on the need to highlight the
culture and folk wisdom of the
Afro-descendant population…which are
generally known through music and dance,"
she said at the end of the seminar.
"We want citizens who fully enjoy their
rights, and we believe that the recognition
of cultural rights will have a positive
impact on other rights. That is the route we
should follow," she added.
Barack Obama, as first black president of
the United States, was also mentioned as an
important symbol.
Obama's election "is one of the most
powerful symbolic events in recent times, as
it sends the message that the entire black
community can improve their conditions by
making an effort," said Ortuño. "At the same
time, it is an important sign of the
progress made by (U.S.) society as a whole,
which has put human values above racial
differences.
"Coming from a country with such a strong
history of racism like the United States, a
sign of hope and social integration has been
spread throughout the world – one that we
should pick up on and replicate throughout
Latin America," he said. |
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