“Yo tengo que luchar”: Narratives of Women in the
Afro-Ecuadorian Civil Rights Movement
Rubiahna Leye Vaughn
May 9, 2005
Submitted for Honors in Latin American Studies
Advisor: John Rickford
1
To the women of Despierta Negra for their strength and sisterly
love
2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
4
Preface
5
Introduction
An Overview of Ecuador: General Geography and Ethnographic Information
A Brief Introduction to the African Presence in Ecuador
Primer on the Current Black Rights Movements in Ecuador
Outline of Main Argument
8
8
10
14
17
Chapter 1: Historical and Literary Background
Theoretical Background
Literature Review
19
19
27
Chapter 2: Methodology
Research Methods and Introduction to Interviewees
Setting of Research
Description of Informants
33
33
35
36
Chapter 3: The Power of Naming
The Current Debate on Nomenclature
The Significance of Renaming
44
45
53
Chapter 4: Perceptions of Racism
Racism in Everyday Life
Racism in Schools
Racism in the Workplace
56
57
60
64
Chapter 5: Fighting Sexual Stereotypes
Sexual Stereotyping of Afro-Ecuadorian Women
“Being Undressed With His Eyes”
Black Women’s Groups’ Countermovement
68
68
71
74
Conclusion
78
Appendix
Interview Script
83
83
References
85
3
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the Center for Latin American Studies for providing
continuous support in all stages of this project. Jim Fox, thank you for running around
campus with me to solve my tape crisis, I couldn’t have begun this without you. A special
thanks to Molly Vitorte for her wonderful words of encouragement and her constant
support in all that I do. Thanks to the URO, especially Laura Selznik for her thoughtful
suggestions and guidance. To Hilton Obenzinger, thank you for your thoughtful feedback
on all of my drafts.
Thanks to my advisor, John Rickford, for his support and encouraging emails in
the field. Professor Rickford, I really appreciate all of the time and effort you put into
making this and all of my other projects possible. Thanks to James Gibbs for providing
wonderful writing feedback and putting me in contact with Jacquelyn Bridgeman.
Jacquelyn Bridgeman, thanks for your words of encouragement when I was afraid I
wouldn’t be able to return.
Stan Wanat, I am so grateful that I was able to take your research course. The
work that I began in your class is the bedrock of this project. To Constanza OcampoReader for painstakingly preparing me for the field and to Karen Morris for allowing me
to use her class to explore my topic in greater depth, thank you so much.
Many thanks to Rosalia Wilkins for helping me to get the balling rolling and translating
my materials. To my loving residents, Juan Marin Bear and Juan Pasillas, thank you for
checking over my first emails to Ecuador. Thanks to Dean Eyre and Kay Partelow for
helping me to get all the materials I needed. Thanks to Denise Boulange, the best PWR
teacher ever, Luiz Barcelos, Reid Andrews, Marvin Lewis, Kathleen Morrison, David
Abernathy and Karen.
A very special thanks to Catherine Angulo Chalá for opening up her home and
heart to me. Thank you Catí for all of your love and support, this project wouldn’t have
happened without you. Many thanks to Mamí (Sonia Angulo) and Alé for sharing their
home with me. Much appreciation to Despierta Negra!, Celeste Arboleda, Vita ,Vanty,
Maria Louisa, Paulla, Vanessa, the people at Reina Negra Linda 2004, CODAE, CCA,
Carlos Cabezas Preciado, my new family in Guayaquil, Kelly and Judy Caicedo, Enis
Estupiñan Chalá, Luís Carcelen, Freddy Congo, Sonia of Azucar, Jo Mayra, and the
women of Quilombo.
The most heartfelt thanks goes to all of the beautiful and inspirational women I
had the honor of interviewing. Thank you for introducing me to your world and allowing
me to share your stories here.
Thanks to Ellen and Arcadio Morales for being a constant source of support and
for being parents away from home to me. I’d like to thank all of my friends, especially
Nupur Chaudhury, Jackie Wamalwa, Becky Deboer, and Clara Wilkins for helping me
get through my trip to Ecuador and for seeing me through all of the stresses of thesis
writing. Vikram Fielding-Singh, thank you for not letting me fall, I couldn’t have made it
through the fieldwork without your phone calls and encouraging emails. And, last but not
least, a million thanks, and hugs and kisses to my mother, Sandra Vaughn, for her
tremendous love and her belief that I could go back and face it all.
4
PREFACE
When I left Ecuador two years ago, I promised myself I would never return.
Volunteering at a shelter for street children in Quito, Ecuador the summer after my
freshman year, I had dealt with things I did not want to have to encounter again. For
months after my return, the thought of Ecuador, the sound of Spanish, and the pictures
from my trip evoked painful memories I could not forget.
The children at the shelter where I worked and the people on the street couldn’t
tell from my clothes and mannerisms that I was not Ecuadorian, because they couldn’t
get that far; all they saw was my skin color. To them I was just a black girl, that’s all.
Amidst the vendors and shoppers I passed on my way to work each day, the only other
black women I saw were prostitutes. They were tall, powerful women, stuffed into
miniskirts and tiny tank tops, who shared the same crowded sidewalks with men and
women who looked down upon them because of their color more so than their profession,
or so it seemed. They were the only black women I saw my entire time in Quito.
Consequently, the men I encountered in that neighborhood assumed that I too was
a prostitute and treated me as such. I was catcalled, spat at, chased, pinned against walls
and yelled at by men of all sizes, shapes and colors while walking to work each day.
Some days, of course, were worse than others, and it was on those difficult days, when
my personal safety and integrity were demeaned, that I swore that Ecuador was a place I
would never set foot in again.
Each day the black women and I would stare at each another on the street, equally
interested but muted by too many questions and even more confusion. I longed to speak
5
with someone who would sympathize: a black woman, someone who could understand
what was happening to me. I wish now that I had stopped to talk to one of them, but I was
too afraid. My entire time was spent wondering what women like me, black women in
Ecuador, were doing, where they were living, and how they were experiencing the world
around them.
My fear, confusion and frustration at living in Ecuador were dulled and buried in
my everyday efforts to do as much as I could for the black children whom I befriended in
the shelter. I spent all of my time with the black children at the shelter because they were
the only ones who treated me with respect. The majority of the indigenous and mestizo
street kids at the shelter refused to speak to me or play with me because of my color; they
preferred the blond-haired, blue-eyed volunteers.
Needless to say, I learned a lot about race and racism in Ecuador during those two
months, a lesson I had no earthly idea I would learn in Ecuador, and so brutally at that.
Only now am I starting to realize that I crossed boundaries that I never even knew existed
as an educated, black woman walking down the street with the other Stanford volunteers,
who were white. No one told me about the yelling, the grabbing and the epithets I would
have to ignore. No one could have warned me about the atrocious and overt racism that I
would have to endure as a young black woman in one of the most racially stratified
countries in Latin America. No one told me, because no one knew.
My whole trip I spent panting, gasping for a breath of fresh air that I could not
find. It is only now, two years removed from the most difficult and dangerous
experiences of my life, that I realize the true beauty and power of my experience and that
to not share it would be a shame.
6
Ecuador is an incredibly beautiful and rich country, and like many other places on
Earth it is equally hideous and horrific. Most travelers see only one side of a new
destination, but I got to experience a bit of both. After two years of dealing with the
trauma of my summer in Ecuador, I decided to return. In preparation I spent hours and
hours reading all that I could on Afro-Latinos and Afro-Ecuadorians, of which there was
not much material available. I wanted to know about Afro-Ecuadorian communities and
women in particular and how racism is affecting them. Since the answers to my questions
were not in the literature, I went to Ecuador to ask them myself.
Although I had cried five times on the plane before landing in Quito for the
second time, I was prepared to return because I was armed academically and supported
emotionally by my friends, family and contacts in Ecuador. And what I discovered upon
my second trip was an entirely new Ecuador. It was safe, welcoming, and refreshingly
Afro-centric. The strength of the Afro-Ecuadorian communities was awe-inspiring, and
the energy and momentum of their civil rights movement, which I have detailed here, was
just as inspirational.
7
INTRODUCTION
On the plane to Quito this summer, I sat next to a man who unknowingly
validated my trip and the research I was about to undertake. The man was a native of
Quito who had been living in the United States for work, and was very curious about why
I was going to Ecuador. To satiate his curiosity I gave him a cursory explanation of my
project on black women’s perceptions of racism. His immediate reaction was that white
Americans are much more racist than Ecuadorians and that the United States would have
been a much better place to do this kind of research. He talked about the racism he had
experienced in the United States as an Ecuadorian, and how difficult things must be by
comparison for black Americans. We talked about racism for almost an hour before I
excused myself from the conversation to nap. During our conversation he never
entertained the idea that his own country might be racist as well. My conversation with
this man is demonstrative of the general sentiment of non-black Ecuadorians: Why study
racism in Ecuador? There is no racism here.
An Overview of Ecuador: General Geography and Ethnographic Information
Ecuador is about the size of the state of Oregon with a population of over 13
million people (CIA Factbook). According to official governmental statistics (CIA
Factbook), the majority of the population is mestizo (65%), followed by indigenous
groups (25%), whites (7%), and Afro-Ecuadorians (3%). The country itself can be
divided into three major geographical regions: The Sierra (Andean highlands), the Coast,
and the Amazonian lowlands (Oriente). The Sierra, with a few exceptions, is inhabited
8
mostly by whites, mestizos and indigenous peoples; although, rural to urban migration is
changing this region’s historical ethnic/racial makeup. The southern Coast is a fairly
diverse region of Ecuador, whereas the northern Coast is predominantly AfroEcuadorian, with some significant riverine indigenous communities. Finally, the Oriente
is mostly Amazonian rain forest and is largely inhabited by indigenous groups
interspersed with some Afro-Ecuadorian enclaves. The women interviewed in this study
were from Quito in the Sierra, Esmeraldas on the northern Coast, or Guayaquil on the
southern Coast.
Figure 1. Ecuadorian Maps
Key:
Coast-Blue
Sierra-Yellow
Oriente-Green
9
A Brief Introduction to the African Presence in Ecuador
The Past
The first Africans were brought to Ecuador in 1553 when a Spanish slave ship
was wrecked on the northern coast of Ecuador. The twenty-three slaves on that ship
declared themselves free and started their own palenque1 community on the Pacific
Coast, in what is now the province of Esmeraldas (Robinson 32). The palenque, called
the Zambo Republic, controlled what are today parts of the southern coast of Colombia
and the northern coast of Ecuador well into the 1600s. The community was led by a
powerful black chief and consisted of both blacks and indigenous peoples and their
mixed offspring. The Zambo Republic is just one example of the spirit of self-liberation
and maroonage that was commonplace in Ecuador throughout the entire era of slavery.
Africans were brought into Ecuadorian slavery to work as farm laborers, miners,
servants and soldiers. Slaves were usually owned by white Creoles or wealthy mestizos in
a system of chattel slavery, quite similar to the slavery system found in the United States
during the same time period. Black slavery was widespread in Ecuador but was most
prevalent on the coast in modern day Esmeraldas, the Chota-Mira Valley in the Sierra
and Loja in the south.
Black people were brought to the Chota-Mira Valley between 1550 and 1610.
There the Jesuits ran slave plantations until they were expelled in 1740 (Whitten &
1
Palenque is the Spanish language equivalent to American and Caribbean maroon
communities or Brazilian quilombos.
10
Quiroga 81).2 After the Jesuits left, slave labor continued to be exploited for the
production of sugar cane, drinking alcohol and various fruits and vegetables (Whitten &
Quiroga 81). Smaller numbers of slaves were brought to Loja to work as house servants
and gold miners (Whitten & Quiroga 82). In addition to slave enclaves fueling production
in Esmeraldas, Chota-Mira Valley and Loja, there were other smaller Afro-Ecuadorian
communities and individuals enslaved in other parts of the country. However, these three
locations are home to the vast majority of Ecuador’s Afro-descendants.
The use of African slave labor in Ecuador continued well into the 19th century.
Although there are no exact figures available for the number of Africans brought to
Ecuador over the four centuries of slave trade, in 1825 an estimated 6,804 slaves were
living in Ecuador (Rout 214). The majority of the slaves brought to Ecuador came from
Spain, Portugal, West Africa, Colombia and the Caribbean (Whitten & Quiroga 82). The
diversity of the slave population and the racial mixing that occurred in Ecuador between
blacks, whites, mestizos and indigenous peoples created a sizable population of mixed
peoples that was counted amongst the slave population.
Although there were many attempts to abolish slavery in Ecuador, it was not until
1852 that slaves were completely emancipated by law. In actuality, slaves were
emancipated at different times in different places; for example slavery continued well
into the 1860s in Esmeraldas and into the 1890s in the Chota-Mira Valley (Whitten &
Quiroga 83). At the time of emancipation there were about 8,000 Afro-Ecuadorians
(Klein 251).
2
Many Afro-Ecuadorians have shunned Catholicism, to this day, because of the
connections between Christian institutions and slavery.
11
After emancipation, the plight of the Afro-Ecuadorian community was not greatly
improved. For example, the large majority of Afro-Ecuadorians remained on the coast
where they had once been enslaved, mostly in the province of Esmeraldas. As the
provinces around them advanced, Esmeraldas was left without government support for
development. Even today Esmeraldas lacks the infrastructure of the provinces that
surround it and, with few exceptions, has been left mostly to its own devices.
The Present
As a result of residential segregation, the majority of blacks still reside in the
province of Esmeraldas. In the last thirty years, however, large numbers of AfroEcuadorians have moved to the interior of the country to find better work (Blackness
Rahier 421). Afro-Ecuadorian migration has been problematic because indigenous
peoples and mestizos have historically inhabited the interior of the country. In an article
called “Blackness, the Racial/Spatial Order, Migrations, and Miss Ecuador 1995-96,”
Jean Muteba Rahier discusses in depth the “racial/spatial order” in Ecuador in which
blacks are expected to stay on the Coast (Blackness Rahier 422). Likewise, AfroEcuadorians from the Chota-Mira Valley are discouraged from moving to Ibarra, a city in
the Northern Andes, and Quito. Rahier explains, that when Afro-Ecuadorians move to
certain cities they are treated with hostility, because they are out of the space that has
been historically, socially, and traditionally designated for them. The significance of
geography in Ecuador is therefore incredibly important in understanding the way that the
definitions of race and experiences with racism may vary depending on location.
12
However, regardless of location, there are some clear disparities for AfroEcuadorians in terms of job opportunities and access to education. Most blacks in Quito
and Guayaquil, for example, work as “nannies, cooks, maids, and factory workers
(women), or guardians, drivers, gardeners and construction or factory workers (men)”
(Blackness Rahier 425). There are still others who work in the informal sector selling
goods at street stands, cleaning shoes or working as prostitutes. Furthermore, the
countrywide lack of access to education, especially higher education, is indicative of the
institutionalized racism that keeps most blacks from attaining the advanced educational
levels needed to prepare them for high paying and high status jobs. A number of blacks,
especially in the last two decades, have earned government jobs or matriculated at top
universities, but this it is not without great struggle and adversity. The majority of AfroEcuadorians are poor, illiterate, unemployed and living without adequate health care and
access to education (Robinson 32).
Not only do Afro-Ecuadorians face economic and educational discrimination,
they also deal with a national culture that devalues blackness. According to Robinson,
“stories, incidents and language that demean black and indigenous people are an open
part of Ecuadorian popular culture” (34). Robinson cites examples of a white Ecuadorian
in black face mocking blacks on national television and a prominent Afro-Ecuadorian
being beaten and jailed for driving his own car which police assumed he had stolen (34).
Many advertisements and other elements of popular culture openly demean and
degrade black people. For example, one national restaurant chain, which serves food
from the coast, has a derogatory logo (see Figure 2) of a black person dressed in a
primitive costume.
13
Figure 2: Derogatory Logo
(Quecomoahora.com 2005)
Menestras del Negro, means “Black People’s Vegetable Stew”. Known for its fast but
tasty meals inspired by the popular food of the coast, which is typically Afro-Ecuadorian,
the restaurant can be found in most city centers prominently displaying its logo. The
drawing is vaguely reminiscent of a monkey. In fact, it is quite common among people
from the Sierra to refer to the inhabitants of the coast as monkeys in everyday speech.
One cannot help but see the resemblance of this black caricature to a monkey,
reminiscent of the Sambo figure in American population culture.
Primer on the Current Black Rights Movements in Ecuador
The Afro-Ecuadorian rights movements, like those of other Afro-Latin
communities, have been chiefly characterized by a struggle for visibility (Sarduy and
Stubbs 15; Walsh with García 318). The social and political invisibility of the AfroEcuadorian community is the result of many factors including racism and Ecuador’s
historical exclusion of non- whites/mestizos from positions of power and prestige. For
example, the Ecuadorian constitution did not recognize Afro-Ecuadorians as an ethnic
group until 1998. The fact that Afro-Ecuadorians literally did not exist in the eyes of
Ecuadorian law for almost 500 years since they arrived is absurd considering that the
14
Afro-Ecuadorian presence and their contributions to the creation of modern Ecuador are
undeniable.
Afro-Ecuadorians are an estimated 5 to 10% of the Ecuadorian population
according to various sources within the Afro-Ecuadorian community (Walsh with García
319). Of a total population of about 13 million inhabitants (CIA Factbook: Ecuador),
there are between about 660,000 to 1 million Afro-Ecuadorians according to AfroEcuadorian civil rights activists. They are clearly a sizable minority that cannot be
ignored. The wide range of population estimates for Afro-Ecuadorians is not only due to
the precarious nature of national censuses, especially in Latin America, but also due to
the fact that up until the most recent 2001 census, race data were never collected. The
official figure that the Ecuadorian government uses for its black population is 3%;
however, black activists argue that this number is significantly higher. The highest
estimates are at around 15%, according to some activists.
In efforts to combat invisibility and empower themselves as a community, AfroEcuadorians have fought for civil rights through various Afro-Ecuadorian interest groups
since the 1970s. A few umbrella organizations, such as The Association of Ecuadorian
Blacks, formed in 1998, and The Black Community Process and The Regional Council of
Palenques, formed in 2000, have tried to unite smaller organizations to prevent
redundancy. These organizations are all working to develop a national ethnic identity for
Afro-Ecuadorians and to teach Afro-Ecuadorians about their history. The process of
creating a national black identity in Ecuador has really only gained momentum in the
1990s, motivated by the strong indigenous movement in Ecuador and the 1998
15
recognition of Afro-Ecuadorians in Ecuador’s Political Constitution (Walsh with García
320).
The connections between the indigenous movement and the black movement in
Ecuador are significant. The indigenous population comprises about a quarter of the
Ecuadorian population, and in the 1980s they began a nation-wide movement, which led
to the election of their own representatives into government. Indigenous efforts to bring
national and international attention to the injustices against them since colonial times, and
their demands for more power and control over their destiny were very successful and
much deserved. The Ecuadorian indigenous movement has affected the way that
indigenous groups have fought for their rights all over the Americas. Their struggles and
success have also served as both an inspiration and a crippling force in the case of the
Afro-Ecuadorian movement.
Walsh and García (319) explain how the indigenous movement has affected the
Afro-Ecuadorian movement:
“…los afroecuatorianos son vistos a la
“Afro-Ecuadorians are seen in the
sombra de los indígenas, es decir,
shadow of the indigenous people, that is
siempre en comparación a ellos y desde
to say, always in comparison to them
su marco organizativo, sociopolítico y
and from their organizational
cultural. En esta comparación, los negros
framework, and sociopolitical and
aparecen como débiles y fragmentados,
cultural framework. By comparison,
incapaces de la organización y
blacks appear weak and fragmented,
movilización como también de la
incapable of organization and
producción de un pensamiento propio.”
16
mobilization as well as the production of
their own thought.” –My translation
Indeed the national and international attention on the indigenous movement has made it
more difficult to make room for the Afro-Ecuadorian agenda. Forced to find ways to
establish their own identity in a nation ruled by whites and mestizos, and a larger and
increasingly more powerful indigenous minority, the Afro-Ecuadorian fight for
recognition is not be an easy one.
Outline of Main Argument
The aim of this thesis is to analyze the testimonies on racial identity and racism of
Afro-Ecuadorian women, situating them in the current Afro-Ecuadorian movement.
Using oral histories collected from women in various black rights organizations I explore
common themes in their testimonies, while relating them to the nascent civil rights
movement. One of my main concerns is how women in particular are forced to navigate
through both racism and sexism in order to claim their personal and political autonomy. I
argue that the nascent civil rights and black women’s rights movement has greatly
affected the way that the women interviewed conceive of their struggles against racism
and sexism.
The theoretical background and literature in chapter 2 explore how the
testimonies of women of African descent in Ecuador are unique and significant because
they represent a historically marginalized voice as Afro-Latinas. The third chapter
17
explores how changing racial/ethnic nomenclature is one of the first steps these women
are taking to demonstrate their autonomy within a society that denigrates their identity.
By reclaiming a previously derogatory term, women are re-creating themselves as a way
of throwing off old stereotypes. The fourth chapter details experiences with racism and
the prevalent stereotypes of black people in different parts of society, serving to place
women in the context of their society. Because the accounts come from women involved
in the civil rights movement, they represent a newly empowered, politicized AfroEcuadorian female voice, a voice that is rarely heard. These testimonies demonstrate that
the current civil rights movement is imperative to improving the quality of life for the
Afro-Ecuadorian people. The fifth chapter explores women’s experiences with machismo
and sexism. Reacting against the extreme nature of sexual stereotypes of black women in
Ecuador, Afro-Ecuadorian women are currently finding ways to combat sexism, which is
an everyday element of their lives. These testimonies illuminate the multi-faceted
struggle of Afro-Ecuadorian women, who are asserting their rights not only as black
people, but also as women.
The accounts of everyday life analyzed in the following chapters give validity and
strength to the civil rights movement, of which they are a part. The testimonies of women
are of particular interest because they represent a minority within a minority. These
testimonies render the current Afro-Ecuadorian rights movement all the more necessary
and imperative. Racism affects all aspects of life for these women, and for them it is
invasive and hampering enough to make continued struggle against it obligatory.
18
CHAPTER 1: HISTORICAL AND LITERARY BACKGROUND
Theoretical Background
The concepts of mestizaje,3 blanqueamiento,4 and Jean Muteba Rahier’s theory of
“racial and spatial order” in Ecuador greatly inform my research. I will also explore some
concepts from the wealth of literature from the African Diaspora in the Americas,
nationalism in Latin America, and gender in Latin America. This chapter is an attempt to
situate Afro-Ecuadorian women in the historical and social framework of Ecuador and
ecuatorianidad.5
Afro-Ecuadorians in the African Diaspora
Diaspora comes from the Greek word for “dispersal” and it is most commonly
used to describe the Jewish dispersal throughout the West (Patterson and Kelley 14).
However, this term has also been applied by numerous scholars to refer to the dispersal of
Africans throughout Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Middle East, primarily as a
result of widespread slave trade. Although scholars define diaspora in many different
ways, there is no doubt that Afro-Ecuadorians, and Afro-Latinos as a more general
category, are members of the African Diaspora.
The historical presence of Africans in Latin America is almost exclusively due to
the slave trade from Africa and the Iberian Peninsula, which became a vital part of the
Ibero-American colonies and their economies. From the first slave ships arriving from
3
Racial mixing between Europeans and people indigenous to the Americas
The whitening or lightening of a race
5
Ecuadorian-ness, the quality of being Ecuadorian
4
19
Senegambia, Congo and Angola to Cartagena, Colombia, the slave trade brought millions
of Africans to Latin America. An estimated 200,000 slaves were brought to Colombia,
Ecuador and Panama alone (Pescatillo 40), not to mention the much larger numbers
enslaved in more economically active colonies like Brazil and Cuba where slave labor
was in higher demand. Some estimate that 1,552,000 slaves were brought to Spanish
America (Pescatillo 40), a figure that excludes Brazil, which currently has the largest
population of African descent in the world outside of Africa.
Although it cannot be contested that Afro-Ecuadorians are part of an African
Diaspora, it begs the question of whether they see themselves as members of a diaspora.
Keeping in mind that the “construction of blackness in the United States was not
universally shared around the Afro-Atlantic,” the location of Afro-Latinos in this
conception of the Afro-Atlantic requires its own treatment (Byfield 40). There is little
information on Afro-Latinos in the literature on the African Diaspora in the Americas.
That literature focuses mainly on the Caribbean and North American perspectives.
Although most African Diaspora sources do not explicitly explore the Latin American
dimensions of the Diaspora, their frameworks are still useful. As Byfield explains, “the
notion of an African diaspora for which Africa was the homeland was not a natural
development” (2). But rather, “it had to be socially and historically constituted,
reconstituted, and reproduced” (Byfield 2). In short, calling oneself a member of a
diaspora requires a conscious acknowledgement of a distant homeland and a connection
to others in that diaspora is a social construction, not an inherent quality. Therefore, in
order to situate Afro-Ecuadorians in the diaspora as active members, it must be a notion
20
that they accept and define for themselves. Whether or not Afro-Ecuadorians accept an
identity as a member of the African diaspora may play a role in how they self-identify.
Whitten and Quiroga briefly explore Afro-Ecuadorian connections to the
Diaspora arguing:
Until very recently, black people, who constitute 90% or more of the population
of the Pacific Lowlands of Panama, Colombia, and Ecuador, have emphatically
denied an African Diaspora. They have actively rejected concepts that suggest
that they are lost souls separated from a distant homeland. They have insisted, and
most still insist, that they are possessors of their own homeland. Like maroons in
the interior of Suriname and French Guiana, their self-conscious historicity is
alive with events establishing their communities called palenques, in their own
territory by their own creative volitions (21).
This statement raises questions of how to situate people of a diaspora who do not
recognize themselves as such. This is a problematic factor in the creation of a successful
Afro-Ecuadorian movement.
Mestizaje and Blanqueamiento
From the colonial period of Iberian American history until today the concept of
mestizaje is one that evokes ideals of Latin American nationhood. Mestizo designates
anyone who is of mixed European and Amerindian ancestry, and rarely, if ever, denotes
an African heritage (Stutzman 59). More specifically, in Ecuador “‘mestizo-ness’ does
not suggest that the white is ‘Indianizing’ himself but, on the contrary, that the Indian
‘whitens’ himself racially and culturally” (Blackness Rahier 422).
21
Nested within mestizaje is the concept of blanqueamiento, which indicates a
“whitening” of the indigenous population both in “genetic and cultural senses” (Stutzman
49). The ultimate goal then of mestizaje and blanqueamiento is to create a unified
national identity of mixed peoples with white/European values and aesthetics as opposed
to the values of the indigenous peoples of Latin America. In understanding mestizaje and
blanqueamiento it is important to recognize that these concepts have prevailed since the
very early years of the Iberian colonies and have since then become the cultural bedrock
of most Latin American countries.
During the era of Latin American independence and post-independence, mestizaje
became the foundation of nationhood and citizenship. Since the African element of Latin
American society was for the most part excluded from the mestizaje ideology, AfroLatinos were made “the ultimate Other” (Blackness Rahier 422; Walsh with García 319).
It has been noted that “although indigenous people have been suffering tremendously
from racism throughout history, they nevertheless are included in this ideological biology
of national identity, while blacks aren’t”(Blackness Rahier 422).
Mestizaje is revered, as seen in the rhetoric of many Latin American nationalist
writers such as José Martí and José Vasconcelos, while the African presence has been
marginalized. Mestizaje has been defended by the argument that, “whatever its
drawbacks, mestizo nationalism was much more democratic and inclusive than white
supremacy”(Chasteen, 2001). This statement simplifies the complexity of race relations
in Latin America assuming that mestizo nationalism is better than white supremacy, a
North American concept that is not readily applicable to Latin America. Chasteen’s
statement does not indicate an understanding of how mestizaje has in many ways pushed
22
African contributions to Latin America and black identity to the periphery. Statements
like Chasteen’s beg the question: Aren’t mestizaje and white supremacy equally
discriminatory if you are black?
Race and Nation
The link between race and nation in many Latin American nations, including Brazil
and Ecuador, has created an ideology in which citizens are required to “exchange ethnic
identity for membership of a nation-state”(Stutzman 46). Essentially, citizenship means
putting national identity above an ethnic and racial identity, though ethnicity and race had
a longer historicity than that of nation.
A notable example of national policy placing nation above race is Brazil’s state
policy of “racial democracy” (Skidmore 190). The notion of “racial democracy,” which
came about in the early 20th century, was based on the idea that color and race were
inconsequential (Skidmore 191). The Brazilian elite felt that to place emphasis on race
rather than national identity was un-Brazilian and detrimental to national unity. During
the 1970s, however, people began to re-conceptualize and rethink race. At that time, there
was a small “Black is Beautiful” movement in Rio de Janeiro, which was highly
criticized because the government considered its principles to be unpatriotic. In reaction
to this and other efforts by the government to squelch black pride or contestation of
“racial democracy” in the late 70s, Brazilians of color became more vocal about the fact
23
that “their country’s race relations bore no relations to the idyllic scene praised by the
elite and many foreigners” (Skidmore 196).
There are similar patterns in Ecuador in terms of creating a non-racial national
identity. Since 1972, the leaders of Ecuador’s Revolutionary Nationalist government
“envisioned a movement away from a system of steeply stratified units, defined in racial
and ethnic terms and distributed across the land in complementary, noncompetitive
division of labor, and toward a racially homogenous, open-class system,” (Stutzman 56).
This nationalistic goal of ethnic and racial homogenization is compounded by
continuance of blanqueamiento under which many national leaders have implemented
programs to phase out racial/ethnic diversity amongst Ecuadorians (Stutzman 56). It
seems that in Ecuador where mestizaje and a unified national/racial identity are desired,
being black is a hindrance to national unity.
“Racial/Spatial Order” in Ecuador
Jean Muteba Rahier further expounds upon the salience of race and nation in his
article, “Blackness, the Racial/Spatial Order, Migrations, and Miss Ecuador 1995-96.” He
aims to place Afro-Ecuadorians within the “racial/spatial order” of Ecuador by pointing
out how in recent years the mobility of Afro-Ecuadorians has confounded the traditional
order. Rahier explains further that the different racial/ethnic groups in Ecuador
“traditionally reside in specific places or regions (with particular histories), enjoy
different concentrations of economic and political power, and occupy different positions
on the national social ladder and in the racial order” (Blackness Rahier 422). In general at
lower elevations, such as on the coast, the population is predominately Afro-Ecuadorian;
24
in higher elevations there are mainly mestizos and indigenous communities; in most cities
and towns there is a white and mestizo majority (Stuztman 47). However, when
ethnic/racial groups move out from their traditionally assigned regions and vocations the
racial/spatial order is thrown off exacerbating the existing racism and prejudice. Rahier
explains “the migration of Ecuadorian blacks from the rural areas of the Andean ChotaMira Valley and the coastal provinces of Esmeraldas into the urban centers represents a
threat for white-mestizo Ecuadorian society” (Blackness Rahier 421). As the migration of
Afro-Ecuadorians to cities has continued to shift the “cultural topography” (Blackness
Rahier 422) of Ecuador, racism and prejudice against Afro-Ecuadorians has escalated.
Race in Latin America
Considering the importance of racial homogeneity in Latin American nationhood,
race and racism are two very significant social constructs in Latin America. In Latin
America there are about 120 million people of African descent, which is about 30% of
the total population of Latin America (IAC 2). Furthermore, people of African descent
are “virtually every where, the target of racial discrimination and exclusion, suffering
great economic and social deprivation… and occupying far fewer leadership positions in
society” (IAC 5). Understanding race and racism in the eyes of Afro-descendants in
Ecuador is imperative to beginning the discussion on race and racism in Latin America.
Not until 2001 did Ecuador collect official statistics on the racial or ethnic
composition of the population. The fact that it was so late may lie in Ecuador’s dreams of
mestizaje (Stutzman 48). The government’s lack of comprehensive racial/ethnic data
creates difficulties in trying to study race and ethnicity considering that actual
25
percentages can be an important factor in making discrimination against minority groups
of national and international importance.
Even without numbers there are some clear indicators that Afro-Ecuadorians
experience systematic de facto racism. For example, in Ecuadorian newspapers, “the only
time a racial identifier is mentioned is when the criminal is black and the victims are
nonblacks” (Blackness Rahier 423). Furthermore, on a daily television show called No
Holds Barred, a “white male host appeared in blackface, his makeup designed to make
him look more like a gorilla than a man” and “for this segment, the Afro-Ecuadorians in
the audience were moved to the front row…in an apparent attempt to mock Black people,
yet none in the audience seemed disturbed by it” (Robinson 34). Incidents like these
indicate that there is a marked inequality between Afro-Ecuadorians and other
Ecuadorians that still exists today. We might expect incidents like these to be stories from
a past era. But Epsy Campbell Barr notes that in many Latin American countries overt
racism is common. For example, in Peru, Panama, and Brazil black people are explicitly
barred from entering certain clubs, discos and other establishments (Campbell Barr 28).
Similarly, in Ecuador, blacks are often served last and experience racial aggression in
certain white-mestizo neighborhoods (Blackness Rahier 300).
Gender and Race
In order to contextualize the interviews with Afro-Ecuadorian women, it is
important to understand that both race and gender play important roles in the experiences
they recount. Women’s issues and gender became a part of Latin American academic
discourse in the 1970s and these concepts were based on notions of women and gender in
26
the developed world (Montecino 273). Before the 1970s the Latin American experience
was male-dominated; however, “the birth of life histories, of testimonies, of oral
expression, which … bring to light and reveal feminine life” (Montecino 275) are being
recorded and collected. Not surprisingly, the testimonies and life histories of women of
African descent in Latin America have yet to take a prominent place in understanding of
the feminine experience in Latin America.
The experiences of women of African descent in Latin America are unique
because gender confounds race. Olga Romero Bustos explains that black women have to
deal with a particularly difficult situation because they have two obstacles to overcome:
being a woman, which means they have to do their job just as well as a man, and being
black, which means they have to do their job just as well as any white person, in
particular any white man (73). Bustos feels that it is more stressful to be a black woman
than a black man because men only have to deal with racism whereas women have to
deal with racism and sexism (73).
The concepts presented here are explored in greater detail in the literature that is
reviewed below.
Literature Review
Initially, I was disappointed by the lack of literature directly related to my topic of
inquiry. On the whole there is little available in English or Spanish relating black
women’s voices to the Afro-Ecuadorian movement or how Afro-Latina’s experiences of
racism differs from those of their male counterparts. There have been only a few scholars
both Ecuadorian and foreign who have even scratched the surface of Afro-Ecuadorian
27
history and their contributions to modern Ecuadorian society, let alone written in depth
about the changing world of Afro-Ecuadorian communities at present. However, since
the 1990s the Centro Cultural Afroecuatoriano (CCA), based in Quito, has published a
number of scholarly works by Ecuadorian and American scholars. Many of the books
cited throughout this paper have either been published by the CCA or the authors have
worked closely with CCA. The scholarly works that are included in this brief review of
relevant literature explore mostly articles and some books in both English and Spanish on
the Afro-Ecuadorian rights movements, anti-black racism in Ecuador and, and more
specially Afro-Ecuadorian women’s roles within these two arenas.
Sources on the Afro-Ecuadorian Movement
The recent beginnings of the Afro-Ecuadorian movement may explain the
relatively few works detailing its progress and its effects on Afro-Ecuadorian
communities and Ecuadorian society at large. The movement, which has only gained
momentum in the 1990s, in my opinion, has yet to reach its highest potential. For that
reason it has not been chronicled in depth. However, there are a few short articles that
briefly discuss the movement including, Jean Muteba Rahier’s “Blackness, the
Racial/Spatial Order, Migrations, and Miss Ecuador 1995-96” and Lori S. Robinson’s “A
New Day for Blacks in Ecuador.” These two articles focus on highlighting different
aspects of racism in Ecuadorian society and observe that the Afro-Ecuadorian rights
organizations are helping communities to mobilize. They do not provide information
about the movement’s roots or its future trajectory.
One volume, Blackness in Latin America and the Caribbean, edited by Norman E.
Whitten Jr., and Arlene Torres, is perhaps the definitive text on Afro-Latin history and
28
current issues of modern civil rights movements. Its introduction and a chapter called
“'To Rescue National Dignity’: Blackness as a Quality of Nationalist Creativity in
Ecuador,” by Norman E. Whitten Jr. and Diego Quiroga detail the movement’s
advancements up until 1996. The authors discuss the significance of creating a national
black identity, the recent achievements of the Afro-Ecuadorian movements and the value
of framing racism in Ecuador as a human rights issue. Additionally, they end their
chapter by noting, “Black people say that research into their communities and cultures is
lacking; international attention would be greatly appreciated. But little serious research is
being done, in spite of the collaborative mood between local people of color and
international scholarship that could prevail” (Whitten and Torres 95). The authors insist
that there is a wealth of information to be recorded and shared within these communities
and that scholars should be encouraged to engage with these communities. Needless to
say, this volume was very encouraging.
The most recent and the most valuable article on the Afro-Ecuadorian movement,
“El pensar del emergente movimiento afroecuatoriano: Reflexiones (des)de un proceso”
was written by Catherine Walsh with Juan García. It describes in thoughtful detail the
impetus for the movement and the movement’s implicit heterogeneity, in that groups
from all over the country are collaborating within it. This document discusses the
difficulties and the importance of uniting these smaller regionally based organizations
under a national Afro-Ecuadorian collective in order to gain strength.
On the whole, the literature exploring the Afro-Ecuadorian movement does not
delve into the ways in which Afro-Ecuadorian women’s organizations and their members
have been at the forefront of many of the movement’s largest advancements. Nor does
29
the literature explore the feminine voice within the movement and how its prominent
female leaders and co-organizers affect the movement. My thesis aims not only to show
how women’s narratives of race and racism are exemplary of larger phenomena within
the movement but, also, how their voices add depth to representations of the movement.
Sources on Community Studies
Recent community studies analyzing racism were not easy to find. Afroquiteños
Cuidadanía y Racismo by Carlos de la Torre Espinosa and Racismo y vida cotidiana en
una ciudad de la Sierra ecuatoriana by Ricardo Carrillo N. and Samyr Salgado A. are two
community-based studies on racism that have been done in recent years. Both studies
were completed in 2002 and do an excellent job of describing the nature of racism in two
different locations in the Sierra. In many ways, my analysis parallels the efforts of these
two texts by using personal accounts of racism collected in interviews to highlight certain
patterns in racist attitudes in Ecuador. However, my research is unique in that it details
experiences of racism in different locations, looks at women’s experiences in particular,
and focuses on women who are involved in the Afro-Ecuadorian movement.
Sources on Black Race and Gender
Three sources that treat race and gender in Ecuador have been very helpful in
understanding how gender and race play out in the testimonies that follow. In a short
article entitled “Ecuador: Efecto psicosocial del racismo en la mujer negra,” Norma
Rodríguez and Janeth Preciado discuss the fact that the trying combination of machismo
and racism in Ecuador demands more attention. They posit that because of racism and
30
sexism black women need groups and outlets to deal with both types of discrimination. In
many ways, this article alludes to the important role that black women’s groups play
within and along side of the Afro-Ecuadorian movement because women activists are
crucial in creating spaces for women’s voices to be heard.
Additionally, an article written by Jean Muteba Rahier, “Racist Stereotypes and
the Embodiment of Blackness,”(2003) was helpful in situating my interviews in the
troubling history of the representation of black female bodies in Ecuadorian society.
Using interviews from young black women in Quito, Rahier explores how the women’s
testimonies fit into their stereotypical representations as hypersexual.
A recent significant ethnographic and ethno-historic study called
“Afrodescendencia en el Ecuador: Raza y género desde los tiempos de la colonia,” (2001)
by Paloma Fernández-Rasines, looks at how race and gender have been categorized
throughout Ecuadorian history. Its detail about white-mestizo perceptions of black female
sexuality and gender, and the participation of Afro-Ecuadorian women in politics, make it
perhaps the most relevant in situating the interviews collected.
The articles that deal with racism and sexism do not sufficiently explore how the
Afro-Ecuadorian movement has affected the way that women experience these
phenomena. In my study, by interviewing women in the movement, the revolutionary
vocabulary women in the movement employ elucidates how race and gender can be
politicized and seen in the context of the larger Afro-Ecuadorian movement.
The literature presented here does not in itself illuminate how the personal
accounts of racism of Afro-Ecuadorian women and their experiences are being redefined
and repositioned by their involvement in the Afro-Ecuadorian movement. I draw on these
31
texts as well as others whose focus is not solely Afro-Ecuadorian to augment a North
American understanding of these accounts. I fully recognize that there is a wealth of
material from the United States on black women’s roles in the Civil Rights movement
and how race and gender in the United States and other Western countries are related.
However, I have chosen to refer to that material only when I have felt that it is absolutely
necessary for the readers understanding. I do this because I do not want to equate the
Afro-Ecuadorian movement with the U.S. Civil Rights movement. This thesis is not
meant to be a comparative study or to highlight similarities between the Afro-Ecuadorian
movement and other Diasporic communities; it is meant to share and contextualize the
testimonies of women in a historically unique and significant social movement.
32
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY
Research Methods and Introduction to Interviewees
As noted in the Introduction, during the summer of 2004 I traveled to Ecuador for
6 weeks to conduct interviews with women of African descent. My major research
questions were about how Afro-Ecuadorian women activists define race and how they
experience racism. I interviewed women involved in various civil rights groups in Quito,
Esmeraldas and Guayaquil. Employing a combination of formal and informal interviews
and participant observation, I was able to get to know each interviewee fairly well,
although some better than others. Over 6 weeks I collected 12 interviews of varying
lengths, most of which were recorded on audiotape.
The interview questions that I used in each formal interview setting went from
general to more specific types of questions (Note: The interview script can be found in
the Appendix). Each interview began with a brief introduction of my project. Then I
asked the women to share with me their general biographical information. I then moved
into a set of questions about which racial self-identifiers were common in Ecuador and
which self-identifiers the interviewees preferred. Later, I asked them to recount some of
their experiences with racism. I ended each interview by asking how they felt the racial
climate of Ecuador could be improved. Although I had a clear interview script prepared, I
allowed the women to elaborate as long as they wished on any particular topic and asked
follow-up questions for points of interest or to clarify concepts I didn’t understand in
their narratives. At the very end of each interview I asked the women if they had anything
further to share or if they had any questions for me, which they always did.
33
My formal interviews were in most cases augmented by other more informal
interviews that resulted from my frequent interactions with a number of the interviewees.
I spent the majority of my time, when not conducting formal interviews, attending
meetings of various black organizations in Quito, Guayaquil, and Esmeraldas. Before or
after the meetings there was almost always a meal, which allowed me to interact with the
women more. From my conversations at the meetings I was often invited to the homes of
the women or made appointments to meet with them at a later date. Because of the
frequent meetings of the organizations and the membership overlap I continually ran into
my interviewees, and consequently our relationships deepened.
All of the women interviewed were connected in some way to National
Coordinator of Black Women, the Black Women’s Movement in Quito and/or various
affiliated black rights organizations. Most of the black organizations in Ecuador are wellnetworked and overlap in membership, which allowed me to move effortlessly between
organizations and offices regardless of their location and political focus.
Since the women interviewed were connected either by membership or by
kinship with a member of a black activist organization, their opinions and views may
differ from those of women who are not affiliated with the black movement. Activist
affiliations imply a basic knowledge of the racist politics and policies of Ecuador and a
dedication to the preservation and proliferation of black cultural identity and black rights.
Therefore, the social and political stances of the women interviewed greatly informed
their answers to the interview questions and the vocabulary they used to describe race and
racism. It is probably safe to say that the women’s responses may not be representative of
the opinions of average black women. Instead, their responses may provide insight into
34
how the black movement is affecting their outlook and rhetoric as Afro-Ecuadorian
women.
Setting of Research
Most of the interviews were done in the living room of the interviewees’ home,
although a few were conducted at their workplace or in a restaurant. In addition to the
interview sessions, I informally visited the homes of each of my interviewees and got to
know their families as well. All of my participants lived in majority black neighborhoods,
where most houses were made of concrete and featured similar flower or paisley print
cotton curtains at the window. The furniture set-up in the living room, where I spent most
of my time, was almost exactly the same in each of the houses; it was as if someone
required each house to have the same bulky wooden furniture covered in synthetic
crushed velvet or cotton floral fabric arranged in almost the exact same fashion.
Sometimes though, as a nice change for me to record in my notes, the furniture was
covered in plastic, reminding me of my southern aunties’ homes. I was welcomed into
each home with the same warmth and genuine support. Sometimes I was offered the
chance to sleep over for a night, which provided me an excellent opportunity to learn
more about the women.
My interviews were always a family affair. After my first interview I realized that
I could, in effect, interview more than one woman at a time because the aunts, mothers,
cousins, daughters, grandmothers and neighbors of the interviewee all gathered around
the tape recorder. Sometimes I was able to record whole conversations between
generations of women as they discussed my prompts. This was a researcher’s dream. The
35
women’s circles that formed around my notebook and tape recorder helped the
interviewee to feel at ease with me, as a stranger, and it often helped the interviewee to
recall things of which her family was quick to remind her. In the following chapters, I
have noted as often I could where other women chimed into the interview, changing the
course of the conversation or affecting the thoughts of the interviewee.
It was over cold glasses of soda and heaping plates of cake that I too was
interviewed by the families. At the end of my interviews I was usually asked lots of
questions about my intentions and my own life as a black woman in the United States. By
sharing my own experiences, my interviewees and I were able to draw some similarities
between our experiences. However, I was constantly reminded by my interviewees that
racism and life in general for black communities was much worse in Ecuador because
they have not yet had a civil rights movement like we did in the United States. After all,
black Americans already had a Martin Luther King Jr. and a Malcolm X, they reminded
me.
Description of Informants
Although the informant’s names have been changed, they jumped at the
opportunity to have their pictures included. Below are their photos with description of
their background, current activities and other descriptive information. The interviewees
are grouped by the location I interviewed them in, not necessarily by where they are
from.
36
GUAYAQUIL
Cassandra is a 21-year-old college student from Guayaquil. I
interviewed her the day after she won the Reina Negra Linda
2004 (Pretty Black Queen), a black pride beauty pageant in
Guayaquil. After having served as a judge for the pageant, I
was impressed by her presence, tenacity, and beauty. The final
question for the Reina Negra Linda contestants was, “What
would you do for your community as Reina Negra Linda?” Cassandra answered that she
would tell her people that the only way to fight racism is through education. Her answer
aroused standing ovations in the crowds; she blew the rest of the contestants out of the
water. Cassandra and I had the most to talk about because we were the same age, and our
mutual curiosity lead us to meet up a four times during my stay in Guayaquil. Her
articulateness and knowledge of her community and its current civil rights struggle were
inspiring and hopeful. I see her as one of the future leaders of the black movement.
María is the mother of Cassandra (pictured
above). She is very involved in the black
women’s movement, the black rights
movement and considers herself a Catholic
evangelist. My interviews with María were
impromptu, because each time I sat down to
interview Cassandra, María always chimed in. She is probably the most openly religious
of the women interviewed and may be representative of a large section of the AfroEcuadorian population that is devoutly Catholic. Her thoughtful comments were helpful
37
in showing me the religious element of some Afro-Ecuadorian rights groups. It was in
María’s home that I got my first Marimba dance lesson, which is the Afro-Ecuadorian
dance of the coast.
Irene was perhaps the most informative woman that
I interviewed. Irene was the chair of the Reina Negra
Linda Pageant and is very involved in the black
rights community in Guayaquil. My interviews with
Irene were the longest because she loved to share
with me every little detail, every history of every black town, stories about politicians and
newspaper clippings featuring black communities. You name it, and I’m sure Irene spoke
about it. I met with Irene five times. She is a 46-year-old mother, grandmother and law
student. Her husband is a prominent black civil rights lawyer in Ecuador, and their
upward mobility has allowed her to travel internationally. Irene was a wonderfully sweet
woman and she took me under her wing during my time in Guayaquil, opening up her
home and community to me.
ESMERALDAS
Joana is a 20-year-old mother of one from the
capitol of Esmeraldas. Joana’s mother is a
prominent figure in the black women’s
movement in Ecuador, which is how I got to
38
meet her. I stayed in Joana’s home during my time in Esmeraldas, so I spent an entire
week with her. She is very sweet young woman, who was my youngest interviewee. She
and I were fast friends, traveling all over the coast together. Her life as a mother and a
wife to her 26-year-old husband gave her little time for friends, so she jumped at the
opportunity to show me around. Joana plans to study nursing next year. Her interviews
were marked by her slow talking drawl and thoughtful pauses.
Mariana is a hardworking, 29-year-old, single
mother from Palenque, Esmeraldas. Her parents
are from Tumaco, Colombia but she has lived
most of her life in Esmeraldas. Having only a
primary school education, Mariana supports her
three children by selling fast food to workers
and tourists in Esmeraldas’ downtown area. Throughout the interview she focused on
how poverty has been a constant struggle in her life to provide for her family. She
reminded me as I left her tiny town that I should come back one day and not forget them.
I was able to meet with Mariana on two separate occasions.
Anita is a 32 year-old domestic worker from Palenque,
Esmeraldas. She was a very soft-spoken yet passionate
woman who told me about the discrimination she faced while
working a Guayaquil. Although we only had one interview
session she helped me to understand the racist epithets that
go along with being recognized as someone from the Coast.
39
Anita explains that although she is light skinned (only her father is black), by just being
from Esmeraldas people treated her with little respect.
Dolores was my oldest interviewee at 63 years
of age. I interviewed her only once because she
lived in a small rural community in Esmeraldas
to which it was hard to travel. Although her
muffled voice made it a challenge to understand
her, I was nevertheless able to learn about her
involvement in the women’s movement in her community. As a member of an older
generation of black women, she shared with me that present day racism is much worse
than it was when she was younger.
Emilia was a very serious woman from
Esmeraldas, whom I interviewed only once. She was
the leader of a local black women’s group, which
has a micro-financing system. Emilia went to
university to get her tourism license but explained
that she wasn’t able to find work as a black woman
in the tourist industry. She now sells tamales and other traditional foods from the coast in
the city of Esmeraldas.
40
QUITO
Veronica is a 29-year-old professional who works in
communications for both the Afro-Ecuadorian Culture
Center and National Episcopal Radio. She is a fast-talking
and very funny woman whom I got to know quite well,
having had countless conversations with her during my two
weeks in Quito. She always wore her hair in a ponytail with
a scarf tied around it, reminding my of the 1950’s
bobbysoxers. She is the younger sister of my host in Quito. Veronica is married to a
mestizo man who she met in university and they have one son. She explained that people
still ask her why she married him, especially when her parents didn’t approve. She thinks
interracial marriages are a question of education: those with education realize that it
really doesn’t matter what color the person is. Both Veronica’s older sister and mother
are very involved in the movement.
Karina (on the left), pictured here with her
sister, was always very welcoming and
responsive to me and my project. She is a 24
year-old mother of one son and a college
student. She comes from a prominent black
family in Esmeraldas and has plans to start her
own graphics business on the coast after school. I interviewed her both in Quito where
she studies and also in her home in Esmeraldas, where she hosted me. We had countless
conversations both in person and on the phone. Her willingness to talk about not only the
41
themes brought up in my questions, but also other things she felt I should know was
invaluable.
Catí, whom I met on my first night in Quito, I
got to know her best of all. I saw Catí almost
everyday of my two weeks in Quito. Catí is one
of the most friendly and gregarious women I
met while in Ecuador. Her whole being
emanates warmth; I think it’s because she
always wanted children, but never got married. We became good friends. She is a 36year-old domestic and nanny, whose job has allowed her to work for an
Ecuadorian/Brazilian family living in Angola for the past few years. Her mother is from
Colombia and her father is from Ecuador. For these reasons she is probably the
interviewee with the most international perspective. Having grown up on an all black
island in Colombia and moving to Ecuador, which she finds more overtly racist, her
comments give some Latin American perspective to racism in Ecuador. She speaks with a
low, calming voice and is very, very funny. Once Catí took her brother and me to visit
some museums in downtown Quito, and we stopped into a shop to look for postcards
with pictures of Afro-Ecuadorians. Catí asked the man if he had any postcards with
pictures of blacks. The man was shocked at her question, but quietly retrieved two
postcards of blacks in Ibarra. Catí said to him, smiling, and “Isn’t this a racist place.
Mountains of postcards with indigenous people, but none with blacks. You’ll have to
order more.” We smiled at him, bought our two postcards and left the store.
42
Rosa is a 32 year-old full-time activist. She was my primary
host, and she and her family were a dependable safety net
for me while in Ecuador. Since I lived with Catí in Quito
and traveled with her to the other study locations, I spent the
most time with her. Having headed various Afro-Ecuadorian
women’s movement groups and the black rights movement
groups, Rosa was able to put me in contact with many important Afro-Ecuadorian
community members. Rosa is well versed in just about everything in Afro-Ecuadorian
community life. Rosa noted that if she didn’t have such a dedicated mother to help her
with housework and look after her son, she wouldn’t be able to work so hard for her
community. Rosa stopped university just short of completing her master’s thesis in social
science and gender. Rosa is a driven and inspirational woman who treated me as a
daughter, calling me her wawa (a Quechua term meaning ‘child’ or ‘baby’).
43
CHAPTER 3: THE POWER OF NAMING
Introduction
“Names are the turning point of who shall be master.—There is so much virtue in names that a
nation which produces its own names, haughtily adheres to them, and subordinates others to
them, leads all the rest of the nations of the earth.—I also promulgate that a nation which has not
its own names, but begs them of other nations, has no identity, marches not in front but behind.” Walt Whitman (Whitman 34)
The act of naming is the starting point for this discourse. The history of European
exploration and colonization of the Americas began an entire discourse of the naming and
renaming of ideas, places and people. The act of naming an individual or a group has
historically conferred an unequal power dynamic between the name-er and the named. In
reaction to their given names, many ethnic and racial groups all over the Americas have
named or re-named themselves at different points in history. The act of naming oneself,
as opposed to being named by another is not only representative of a linguistic change
but also symbolic of a greater change or shift in the historically conferred power
dynamic.
The concept of blackness only became a category or name with the forced
migration of Africans to the Americas, beginning in the 16th century (Wright 1). At this
point in history a diversity of peoples was amalgamated by European nomenclature under
one name and its variations: “black”. The meaning and use of the term black and its
modern translations or alternatives differ from region to region in the African Diaspora in
the Americas. However, this chapter will look at how one small subset of the AfroEcuadorian population is re-negotiating the term black or negro. Exploring how women
of African descent in Ecuador are involved in the nascent black civil rights movement in
44
Ecuador will illustrate some of the debates and conversations that have arisen during the
process of their re-naming themselves and their community. Focusing on how AfroEcuadorian women identify and dis-identify with the terms negra and morena, it will
become clearer that the semantics of racial and/or ethnic signifiers represent an ongoing
discourse in Ecuador between Afro-Ecuadorian in-group members and the society at
large.
The Current Debate on Nomenclature
Among the women quoted in this chapter and the larger Afro-Ecuadorian
community there is debate about the use, meaning and interchangeability of the terms
morena and negra. The following extracts from interviews serve to illuminate some of
the dynamics of that current debate on Afro-Ecuadorian nomenclature. In order to situate
the current discourse on the use of these two terms, I begin with an anecdote.
In the summer of 2002, I worked in Quito, Ecuador with some classmates from
my university at a shelter for street children. Two of my classmates, both white, were
named Katie, and to distinguish between the two, they asked people to call them “Katie
Morena” and “Katie Rubia,” or “Brunette Katie” and “Blond Katie,” respectively.
However, our Ecuadorian co-workers, quickly explained that we couldn’t call “Brunette
Katie” “Katie Morena” because she was not morena, she was white. If you consult a
modern Spanish-English dictionary you will find that moreno/a refers to someone who is
brunette; in Ecuador, however, the term moreno/a refers only to people with dark skin
(Whitten and Quiroga 83; Blackness Rahier 429).
45
The term moreno comes from the Spanish word moro (Diccionario de la Lengua
Española 341), which is derived from the Latin diminutive of maurus (Whitten and
Quiroga, 85). The Latin maurus means “of or belonging to the Mauri, Moorish,
Moroccan, Mauritanian” (OED 304). Similarly, the Spanish word moro meant an
inhabitant of Mauritania, all Muslims and pagans. The term was also used to describe
dark colored animals and eventually became a descriptor of people in 12th century Spain.
From moro, eventually came the term moreno/a, among others, which in most Spanish
speaking countries today, refers to someone with dark hair, dark eyes, brown skin, and/or
a swarthy complexion, though not necessarily black (Diccionario Crítico Etimológia de la
Lengue Castellana 443).
In Ecuador, moreno/a refers only to people of African descent (Whitten and
Quiroga 85) and its use denotes the social and racial status of both the named and the
name-er. In fact, referring to someone as moreno infers that that person is “of lesser
status than the speaker” (Whitten and Quiroga 85). In most regions of Ecuador where
blacks live, the terms gente morena (“black people”), moreno, or raza morenita (“black
race” in the diminutive) are thought to be polite ways to refer to blacks, while the term
negro is considered impolite and insulting (Whitten and Quiroga 85).
Negro is almost always a pejorative term when used by non-blacks in Ecuador
(Stutzman 79; Whitten and Quiroga 85; Schubert 572). In Spanish negro and its cognates
all refer to negative things:
for example, the verb negrear (to blacken) is used socially to confer less status.
To say that someone’s life is negreando can mean the person is drifting toward
crime, is becoming poorer or is heading toward states pejoratively associated with
46
black people: Lazy, dirty or ugly (Whitten and Quiroga 85).
Herein, lies the debate among Afro-Ecuadorians: Afro-Ecuadorians involved in the civil
rights movement proudly refer to themselves as negro/a while other Afro-Ecuadorians
reject this word, preferring to call themselves moreno/a. As we will see, the self-identifier
one chooses as an Afro-Ecuadorian usually indicates level of political activity or
awareness.
Many Afro-Ecuadorians accept the term moreno/a and use it as a self-identifier,
whereas others (the majority of my interviewees) feel that the term is inadequate for
various reasons and prefer to call themselves negra. These arguments, given by the
women involved in the civil rights movement, are a part of the act of re-naming and
asserting a newly defined identity.
Interviews
Now that I given some context to the terms morena and negra, I turn to the
interviews for further illumination. Joana, an eighteen year-old mother of one child from
Esmeraldas explains why she personally prefers the term morena to negra.
[RLV: What word do you prefer?]
JOANA: Morena, because here the people who say negra say it insultingly. ‘Essa
negra,’(translation: that black woman) they say, like an insult. They don’t say it
in a good manner, but as an insult.
Indeed, the insulting manner that Joana describes was a common theme throughout all of
the answers to this question in the interviews. Women of all ages and regions disliked
being referred to as “essa negra”(that black woman), “la Negra”(the Black woman),
47
“negrita” (little black woman), instead of their proper name or as “senorita” if the
person didn’t know their name. Furthermore, Joana disliked “the manner” (la manera) in
which negra was said. Likewise, each of the women interviewed complained of the
manner or tone of voice that others called them negra, indicating the negativity
associated with the word. Joana’s statement introduces some of the obstacles of
appropriating negra as opposed to morena.
Karina
Several issues arise in the implementation of negro/a as a self-identifier because
of its negative connotations, including the way in which the word is said. Karina is a
twenty-four year old university student studying graphic design in Quito whose qualms
about the term negra seem to be representative of the interview sample. Karina, who is
originally from Esmeraldas, emphasized throughout her interviews the differences in the
way that she was treated in Quito as opposed to Esmeraldas, which is a common
observation of blacks from the coast who move to big cities. Having spent the majority
of her life in an all black setting on the coast, Karina admits that she didn’t know much
about the black movement until she moved to Quito. She offers that she never thought
about race much, but because racism is so common in Quito it has become a much more
salient issue.
KARINA:
For example, you go to a place and instead of calling you what they call the
others, ‘la señorita,’ or calling you by your name they call you ‘la negra.’ I know
that I’m black but it’s a little, how do you say it? What’s the word? They are
trying to minimize you. It’s the way that they say it….Most blacks live on the
coast so they call us monkeys because we’re from the coast….I know that I’m
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black and that doesn’t bother me at all, but they way they say it makes me
bitter….I want them to call us like all other women, if it’s Señora [call her]
Señora, if they don’t know her name call her Señora. But they say ‘Hey Negra
come here!’ No! [Say to her]Señora excuse me.
Both Karina and Joana dislike “the way they say” negra though Karina prefers being
called negra and Joana prefers morena. For both, they oppose the insulting tone with
which the word is said rather than opposing the word itself.
Catí
Likewise, Catí, a thirty-six year old nanny and domestic worker, imitates the
difference in the way they say negra by altering the tones in her voice to differentiate
when being called negra is empowering and when being called negra is an epithet. When
asked what term she prefers being called, she answers:
…‘Black woman’ with care/affection because it depends on the way you say it.
Because many times they say Negra (note: she imitates their mean tone, by
placing emphasis on the first syllable) as an insult….I prefer they call me Negra
(note: her tone is friendly and the word is pronounced mellifluously).
Use of the term black in the United States had similar negative connotations up
until the 1960s and 1970s when the Black Power movement and black consciousness
movements reconceived the word black, rendering it positive and empowering (Lake 11).
Catí, who is very gregarious, elaborates on how being called Negra can be empowering.
She says with gusto:
It’s a blessing to be black….I’ve always been proud to be black. It’s pretty to be
black. (I chuckle at her ardor and elaborate hand motions mirroring her body’s
49
shape) You don’t believe me? It’s pretty to be black. It’s nice to be with your
people. We have a beautiful skin color, we have pretty hair, we have beautiful
hips, and spiritually we are women who love God a lot. So, I think, yes, it’s
beautiful, it’s a blessing from God. I love my negritude.
Cati’s statement is rich in detail, giving insight into the re-conception of the term negra
that is taking place all over Ecuador, especially among those involved in the black
women’s movement and the black rights movement as a whole. Her statement echoes the
mantras of the 60s and 70s of the United States and the Caribbean of “Black is Beautiful”
and “I’m Black and I’m proud” (Lake 11).
Catí’s use of negra, and the pride which it confers, is indicative of the fact that
the way Catí uses negra sharply contrasts with the insulting way that it is used by others.
Not only the way the word is said is important but also what it represents: a pride in
blackness and a love for negritude, a term that connotes awareness of a pan-African
identity. Catí, like many of the other women interviewed, is well versed in the vocabulary
and politics of the black consciousness movement and pan-African cultural and political
history demonstrated by her use of the word negritude. Negritude, a term coined by Aimé
Césaire in Cahier d’un retour au pay natal, refers loosely to “the total consciousness of
belonging to the black race, as well as an awareness of the objective historical and
sociological implications of that fact” (Irele 72). That is to say, Catí and her comrades in
the Afro-Ecuadorian civil rights movement are asserting their blackness in a pan-African
context, recognizing that their movement is framed by a long historical tradition of black
struggle and liberation.
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Catí elaborates on her feelings about the Afro-Ecuadorians who prefer not to be
called negro saying:
There are people who don’t have their identity defined…they don’t define
themselves as black and so they allow people to treat them badly…because they
don’t know, because they haven’t defined anything. They think that negro is an
insult. So, they don’t accept it. And so the majority of them react in violence
[when they are called negro]. They prefer [to be called] morenos.
Her comment is reminiscent of the distinctions that “were made between ‘Negroes’
unable or unwilling to divest themselves of old slave mentality and ‘blacks’ or AfroAmericans proud of their African past and of being black” that happened in the U.S.
(Lake 2003). Catí has made a clear distinction between those who have accepted their
negritude and those who have not.
Catí seems to think that if an individual has defined their own identity as black
then they would not take offense at being called negro. For those who define themselves
as black, being called negro would be a point of pride rather than a term to illicit
violence. Catí says later that, “If you have your identity well defined you won’t feel bad.
I don’t feel bad about anything.” It seems that if she is confident in her blackness and
quite proud of that fact, when people do call her negra in an insulting way, she won’t feel
bad about it, she’ll just keep on going.
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María
Many of the women interviewed have made a conscious choice to reject the term
morena and only refer to themselves as negra. For example, María, a 45-year-old
evangelist and black community leader living in Guayaquil had this to say:
…We don’t want this name morena because here Morena is a last name. We don’t
want this name morena. If someone calls us morena we stop and tell them don’t
call us morena, it’s better to call us negra. We say there is nothing good in what
you’re doing. So, there’s been a lot of conflict over this. And now we are learning
to love our color. This is important. So, it doesn’t offend us if they call us negra.
María’s comment highlights the fact that “conflict” between those who prefer Morena
and those who prefer negra is taking place in many regions of the country. As she puts it,
many Afro-Ecuadorians “are learning to love their color” and for that reason the term
negra is indicative of a changing image of self and community. Identifying as negra
indicates that one is identifying with a wider community of Afro-Ecuadorians. “Learning
to love their color” it seems means much more than loving the term, but loving a history,
a culture and a people.
Emilia
Emilia, a young woman running her own fast food business in the capital of
Esmeraldas, explains that referring to herself as negra means so much more to her than
the color it refers. When asked what term she uses to refer to herself, she answers:
…As black…My mom and dad are light skinned (claros), but my grandparents
are [black]. But, I always say that the blood running in my veins is black. I love
52
when I hear my marimba;6 I feel a lot of emotion. I have a lot of black [roots]. I
am black. My color is black.
Emilia, though her family is considered light skinned, associates herself with black
people because of her black grandparents and because she feels pride in black history and
culture. For Emilia, claiming the name negra is in effect claiming a proud history and
identity that is not connoted by the term morena.
The Significance of Renaming
As expressed by the comments of Catí, María, and Emilía, referring to oneself as
black demonstrates a conscious acceptance and pride in their community. For these
women, the power wielded in the term Negra stems from the fact that it links these
women to a larger national group of women involved in the black women’s movement
and to an even larger group of Afro-Latinos who are re-naming themselves and fighting
for equal rights all over the continent.
Social identity theory asserts that, “an individual’s social identity is a result of the
knowledge he or she has of belonging to a group and the value, positive or negative, he or
she attaches to being a member of that group”(Allen 87). Furthermore, “if the dominant
group looks down upon an ethnic group with low esteem, the potential exists for
members of that ethnic group to have a negative social identity”(Allen 88). However, one
of the ways to deal with this negative social identity is to engender pride in the group by
re-defining the elements of the identity that are considered of lesser value (Allen 88),
which is what these women seem to be doing. By reclaiming the term negra they are
6
Marimba is the traditional folk music and dance of the Ecuadorian and Columbian
Coast.
53
converting their color and its negative connotations into a positive by attributing pride
and value to the term.
The act of renaming a community and a people is not an uncommon element of
black consciousness in the African Diaspora. As we have seen in the United States and
the Caribbean, renaming indicates significant change in the fabric of a society. Philogene
offers:
To the extent that names structure our reality and make it communicable,
changing the name of an object marks the beginning of re-creating that reality. As
with any other name substitution, changing one’s group designation for another
indicates significant changes in the social condition of a group, crystallized by the
switch in name. These transformations, real or imagined, impact not only on the
group claiming the new name, but also on the other social actors interacting with
them. In fact the underlying purpose of renaming a group is to change
perceptions, cognitions, attitudes, and opinions about it by transforming its social
representation (75).
By renaming themselves these women are not only impacting their community but those
around them. For example, Veronica, a twenty-nine year old professional who works at a
national radio station, has changed the attitudes of her non-black co-workers about the
term negra. A native of Quito, she identifies with the term negra and hoped that her nonblack colleagues would also feel comfortable referring to her that way. She explains:
For me it’s been a success. For example, people [at work] ask if they can say I’m
black because they don’t want to offend me. At work, in general, they say oh
54
‘you’re morenita’ or ‘you’re not very black’ or things like that…but now they call
me black, they know that I’m black and very proud.
The women interviewed here represent a small sample of the attitudes and
perceptions among women in the civil rights movement. Their opinions however
represent a powerful voice within the Afro-Ecuadorian community. By starting a trend in
re-naming themselves they are beginning the process of re-naming their community.
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CHAPTER 4: EXPERIENCES WITH RACISM
“We consider it essential for all countries in the region of the Americas and all other
areas of the African Diaspora to recognize the existence of their population of African descent
and the cultural, economic, political and scientific contributions made by that population, and
recognize the persistence of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance
that specifically affect them, and recognize that, in many countries, their long-standing inequality
in terms of access to, inter alia, education, health care and housing has been a profound cause of
the socio-economic disparities that affect them.”
-Declaration of the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and
Related Intolerance. Durban, South Africa -2001, Paragraph #33
Introduction
The civil rights movement currently taking place in Ecuador is not one based on
lofty ideals of pride, unity and pan-African connections. It is not a movement merely
taking place in the heads and writings of prominent scholars and philosophers. The AfroEcuadorian movement is the result of ordinary people being dissatisfied and exasperated
with long unquestioned inequalities and everyday racism. It is a reaction to a reality that
has continued for far too long. Although the plight of the Afro-Ecuadorian people, and
their counterparts in Latin America, has been recognized by such institutions as the
United Nations, recognition by the Ecuadorian government and the everyday citizen is
not yet a reality.
The personal testimonies that follow illustrate and legitimize the AfroEcuadorian struggle for recognition and equality. These accounts of racism are harrowing
and indicative of the strength and perseverance necessary to found and lead such a
movement. Among the women interviewed, their experiences with racism, prejudice, and
exclusion explore three main sectors of society: school, work and everyday life. These
accounts are a necessary part of this study because they give a context for what it means
56
to be a black woman in Ecuador. The stories detailed in this chapter are representative of
similar stories recounted by other women in the interview sample.
Racism in Everyday Life
In order to understand the way that Afro-Ecuadorian women are situated in their
societies, we begin with their accounts of racism in the public sector. These accounts are
valuable because they indicate that the racist climate of their societies is inescapable and
omnipresent.
Veronica
Veronica is 29-year-old professional with a degree in communication. She works
part time at the Afro-Ecuadorian Cultural Center and part time at the National Catholic
Radio Station in Quito. When asked whether people are treated differently because of
their color, she answered:
Because Ecuador is a racist country, yes, there are differences in the way they
treat people…. They treat blacks like inferior people, the mestizos do. As blacks,
at least once in our lives we have experienced racism. Two stories come to mind
that are very related. The first happened one time when my brother was fighting
with his wife. So, his wife took off somewhere and he ran after her to talk to her.
Then, the police saw him running [after her] and arrested him. They thought that
he was a thief…. [The police thought]: he’s a black man; he’s coming from
robbing someone…. The other story was when we went to the department store,
The Chimborazo Department Store over there. So, we went in to find me a bag.
We went in to find this bag and…the whole time the attending person was behind
57
us…. [This was] something that they weren’t doing to the rest of the people [in
the store]…. And so they said to us, “Want do you want? Are you going to take
something?” They thought we were going to steal things, not buy them. These are
two strong examples of what we deal with now.
Both of Veronica’s accounts demonstrate a very important stereotype of blacks in
Ecuador: blacks are criminals. The Ecuadorian stereotype of associating blacks with
criminality is widely noted phenomenon (Robinson 34; Blackness Rahier 423).
Furthermore, assumptions of criminality plague blacks at all levels of society.
Veronica and her family represent average working and middle class AfroEcuadorians. However, upper-class and even famous Afro-Ecuadorians are also subject
to the same abuse. In March of 2002, José Caicedo, a government bureaucrat being
driven by a chauffeur in a government car, was stopped by police. The police officers
who did not believe that Caicedo was a bureaucrat, beat him and then jailed him for five
days (Robinson, 34). The association between Afro-Ecuadorians and criminality is also
common in the Ecuadorian press. In an article called “The Racial/ Spatial Order in
Ecuador,” Jean Muteba Rahier notes that in Ecuadorian newspapers, “the only time a
racial identification is mentioned is when the criminals are black and the victims are nonblacks” (Blackness Rahier, 423). This prevailing stereotype brings to mind racial
profiling in the United States.
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Irene
Irene is a 46-year-old mother, law student and community organizer from
Guayaquil. The following account of everyday racism from Irene was not prompted by
one of my questions; Irene simply offered the following anecdote:
I have experienced lots of racism. I’ll tell you about one time when I was
traveling to Quito from Guayaquil. I love to sit in the front seat while I’m
traveling by bus. I came to the bus to buy my front seat and I got off the bus
[later] at the city of Santo Domingo to buy myself a fruit. And when I came back
to my seat there was a señor (this is the word Irene uses), who wasn’t black (Irene
uses the word no Afro instead of no negro), dressed very elegantly and he was
sitting in my seat. I approached him carefully and asked him to get up because I
had already paid for this seat and I wanted to keep traveling there. The señor told
me that, no, I should sit in the back because he wanted to sit there. We began a
discussion…I asked him respectfully to leave my seat. Since I didn’t receive a
favorable response from the señor, I went to the official, the controller. I told him
“Please, this is my seat that I have been traveling in,” and that the señor was
sitting there, and that I’d asked him to please leave but that he didn’t want to.
However, the controller told me that it was not a problem, and that I could sit in
whatever seat I wanted to and that all the seats were equal. It bothered me because
I felt that it was a racist attitude [that the controller had] because if the señor was
traveling [in my seat] first he would not have permitted me to sit there. So, I
declared my rights and told him “If you don’t get up, I will sit on your lap.” So,
59
the controversy began and it finished with me asserting my rights. At times when
I know my rights, I claim them and I demand them…
Although there were never any rules or laws in Ecuador about where Afro-Ecuadorians
should sit on buses, it has been noted that historically there were certain expectations of
where certain people should sit. According to Constance García-Barrio, “buses in
highland Ecuador are a symbolic representation of the status differentials accorded to the
various ethnic categories: ‘whites’ sit in the very first row; a variety of mestizo types are
found up toward the front, middle and back; and Indians and Negroes occupy the last row
of seats (Garcia-Barrio 556). Irene’s story took place quite recently, though GarcíaBarrio’s field work was done in the 70s, but they still hark upon the same point: there are
unwritten rules about how Afro-Ecuadorians should expect to be treated by society. The
fact that Irene was expected to give up her seat to another traveler who was white
indicated that her right to sit in the seat she paid for should be subordinated to the wishes
of the white traveler.
Racism in Schools
For women across all ages interviewed, experiencing racism in schools at some
point in their academic career was a major issue. Whether young women and girls
experienced it from their peers or professors, or women comforted their children as a
result of it, their experiences in schools were amongst their first dealings with racism.
Joana
Joana, a young mother from Esmeraldas recounts how she was treated in grade
school:
60
I studied at a paid school. The majority of the students there were white. A few
[students] were blacks and sometimes we were discriminated against…. They
were always making jokes about our color…. There were some who said, “I’m
not going to play with this black girl.” They yelled like this a lot and that comes
from their families…. The teachers too, they preferred the white students.
Joana later qualified her comments above by explaining that she did play and make
friends with her white classmates, but that her color was always a joke or a reason to
tease her. She defended the children who treated her this way by saying that they were
just children and children are always teasing one another. Although children do tease
their peers and can be quite mean to one another, children tease and joke based upon
ideas or principles that they have learned somewhere. Presumably the white children at
Joana’s school were playing out the attitudes they learned from their parents and adults
around them who allowed them to believe that making fun of someone’s skin color was
permissible.
A similar account comes from Cassandra, a young college student from
Guayaquil:
[RLV: Have you ever experienced racism?]
CASSANDRA:
Ayyyy! A lot of it! I was beginning school, it was the first day of school and
none of the kids wanted to talk to me because I was black. And listen, it was a
religious school! And none of them wanted to play with me because someone had
told them that if they played with me they would become black too, or that blacks
are not well educated, and that they don’t have very good manners, and things like
61
that. And, so I came home and I didn’t want to go back to school anymore….
Later in high school, I think it was the worst that ever happened to me. It was
when I decided to be candidate for queen of the school. When they brought out all
of the candidates, from all of the classes, I was the only black one. My own
classmates said, “With Kelly we won’t win. Look at her hair. Look at how black
she is.”
This account mirrors Joana’s story in many ways. However, Kelly’s comments about
how her classmates felt that she couldn’t win because of her blackness elucidate a
common attitude toward blackness, beauty and representation. The claim that Kelly was
not pretty enough to win the school pageant seem outrageous considering that Kelly’s
physical beauty, dedication to community service and articulateness won her the title of
Reina Negra Linda 2004. Kelly was crowned a black beauty pageant among some of the
most attractive and well rounded young black ladies in Guayaquil. But, her classmates’
disapproval of her hair and skin color demonstrate the prevailing attitudes that non-blacks
in Ecuador hold about the blackness, beauty and worth.
In 1995 when Monica Chalá, an Afro-Ecuadorian young woman, won the Miss
Ecuador pageant there were strong negative responses (Blackness Rahier, 428).
Apparently Chalá was chosen because the subsequent Miss Universe contest was to be
held in South Africa and the jury felt that having a black Miss Ecuador would augment
Ecuador’s chances of winning (Blackness Rahier 427). Until 1995 only white women had
won the Miss Ecuador pageant. The problematic nature of having a black woman
represent Ecuadorian beauty is indicative of the racist order that exists in Ecuador.
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Irene
Irene a mother and law student shared a story about her law school professor. I
had heard her share this story with some friends during dinner earlier and asked her to
retell the story for my recorder during our interview and she obliged:
With great pleasure, because professors like this one really don’t deserve to be
giving a course. I think there exist professors and maestros, no? A maestro has
that training that is really made to educate, and professors are those who do it only
for money. I have a professor called Cabrera and he teaches me constitutional law
at the university. Last week in his class he said that those that have rights to land
are the indigenous people because it was they who founded this country and he
said that not even them, he was referring to the mestizos, have the right [to land]
because they are invaders. And, the worst is the Afro-Ecuadorians, [he said]
because they don’t have any rights here, they have to go and claim their rights in
Africa. As for me, I thought his comments were the product of ignorance and
disregard but also there was something more. It was [the product of] deeply
rooted racism….Then [later] someone asked about the Afro-Ecuadorians and the
professor said that, no, we don’t have rights because we are a small race and that
we are a minority group…. And so, I was shocked because he referred to us as a
race (raza) and [therefore] we aren’t a nation or a community or a people, we are
nothing because we are a minority. I told him that he was confusing me because
there is only one race, the human race, because we are the product of one creation.
And besides, Afro-Ecuadorians, we are an ethnic group, and it’s better to speak of
people as ethnic groups….I think this bothered him a little bit….I explained to
63
him, according to the first article of the constitution that the country is multiethnic (multiétnico) and pluricultural (pluricultural)….He insisted that it was a binational country, bi-national recognizing the indigenous people and themselves,
[mestizos], of course, because there is only space for two….It’s dangerous when a
professor of law is the first violator of the rights that are included in the
constitution and of human rights. So this bothered me a lot that a person with this
opinion could have a professorship in a university teaching a subject of such great
importance as the constitution.
Irene’s lengthy account is a powerful testament to the way that education, even at the
higher education level does not recognize the contributions, history, rights or even the
existence of the Afro-Ecuadorian population. The fact that Irene had to tell her own
professor what the Ecuadorian constitution actually said, as opposed to his one-sided
interpretation shows just how rigid the legal structure and academic debate surrounding
Afro-Ecuadorians rights is.
Racism in the Workplace
It is important to begin with noting that there are very few Afro-Ecuadorian
professionals in Ecuador. The most common professional careers for Afro-Ecuadorians to
undertake, especially men, is that of law. Although there are quite a few Afro-Ecuadorian
lawyers, relatively speaking, very few of them have steady work considering that whites
rarely hire them and further that black clients cannot afford their services. The story
seems to be the same for many professions. Even though one has made it through
education and training, finding a job is another struggle altogether.
64
Rosa, a 32 year-old leader of the Black Women’s Movement in Quito, told me a
story about a friend of hers who had spent five years in Cuba to get his masters. When he
returned to Ecuador he was offered a job at Universidad de San Francisco in Quito, but
they would not give him an office or a computer, as they had done with all of their other
new hires. Everyday he went in to work he had to show his identification card to the
guards to let him through the gate, when the other professors weren’t asked to do so.
They didn’t treat other professors with foreign degrees that way. Rosa then said, “You
don’t have a sign on your head that says Masters or PhD, you only have a black face.”
Joana
When I asked Joana what kind of good jobs an Afro-Ecuadorian woman about my
age and qualifications could get she told me:
For example, in the banks here, the majority of those who work at the registers are
white women. When a black girl goes in with her folder they give her a mean face
(le ponen mal la cara). They tell her “No, no, no, there’s nothing,” when she goes
in to look for work. They say, “No, no, no.” If it’s a poor black girl, no, they don’t
give her a job even with her qualifications and her schooling….It’s only because
of her color that they don’t accept her. They think she is a negra, no more, only
the laundrywoman or the cook. That’s the way it always is.
According to Joana’s account, no matter how qualified you are, the jobs are not within
reach for many Afro-Ecuadorians.
65
Irene
Irene points out that even before an Afro-Ecuadorian woman might walk in the
door for an interview she has already been denied. Irene explained:
They publish the [job] vacancies in the newspapers….and they ask that you have
a good presence (bonita presencia) and for them a good presence doesn’t mean
that you must have a pretty face, that you have a pretty body and that you have
pretty clothes, but it means that you don’t have the color of Afro-Ecuadorians. For
them, they sincerely mean that having a good presence means that you’re not
Afro-Ecuadorian. This has happened to me and I believe generally it happens to
all Afros (blacks) in this country. For this reason they don’t give us space [to
work] in places of power, in places where we are making decisions.
As a result of the racist nature of the job market most Afro-Ecuadorian women in the
cities work as cooks, maids, nannies, factory workers, while men work as guards,
construction workers and factory workers. However, in Esmeraldas mostly, but also in
Quito some Afro-Ecuadorians have started their own small businesses, or moved up the
ranks in civil service, or earned state jobs. In fact, I had the chance to meet the wealthiest
Afro-Ecuadorian man who owned an advertising graphics company, which did the
signage for some of the largest banks in Ecuador.
This chapter begins to illustrate how racism manifests itself in Ecuador and how it
is perceived by Afro-Ecuadorian women. From my literature review and my
conversations with many different Afro-Ecuadorians, I am of the opinion that the
accounts presented here are commonplace and by no means the worst or most upsetting
accounts. Because the large majority of the women interviewed here live relatively
66
comfortable lives, with regular employment and no unmet basic needs, their stories are
representative of racism facing working class, middle class, and educated AfroEcuadorian individuals. However, I am certain that, were these questions asked to lower
class, migrant and/or homeless Afro-Ecuadorian women, the accounts of racism would be
more extreme in nature.
These testimonies are significant because they show that the movement is fighting
against de facto racism, which I argue requires a different kind of strategy than the
successful overturn of de jure racism of the United States and of South Africa. Since
there are no laws barring Afro-Ecuadorians from access to education and work, changing
racist societal norms requires a sustained and dedicated effort to change perceptions of
the Afro-Ecuadorian population. This is no easy task, and the multifaceted nature of
racism and prejudice in Ecuador is the main challenge of the women interviewed in this
study.
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CHAPTER 5: FIGHTING SEXUAL STEREOTYPES
“There is a white-mestiza at work to whom I have said a thousand times to stop touching my
buttocks. One day I asked her if she liked women. And she responded no, that she is married, that
my buttocks just amaze her….When I dress with pants, she comes and asks me if I put some
cushions to augment the volume of my buttocks. Finally, I told her that if she wants to do so she
can admire them, but from afar, without touching them. One day, she even told me that if she had
a body like mine she would have a lot of men at her feet. I responded that a woman is much more
than just a pair of buttocks. But then, she said that the first thing men look at is that, the body.
And there, she’s right.” –Saída (Racist Stereotypes Rahier 316)
“Usually, when I wait for the bus in the street, it doesn’t matter if I have a skirt that goes from
the belt down to my shoes, white and white-mestizo men approach me and ask how much I charge
for sexual services. They think that all black women are prostitutes or potential prostitutes.” –
Salomé (Racist Stereotypes Rahier 304)
Sexual Stereotyping of Afro-Ecuadorian Women
These excerpts from interviews with Afro-Ecuadorian women in Quito highlight
the powerful connections between sexuality and power, gender and race, and black
female representation in Ecuador. Both Saída and Salomé are hyperaware of the fact that
their bodies epitomize an innate sexuality that arouses desire in both white and mestizo
men and women. The black female body is envied by non-black women for its sex
appeal, and is desired by non-black men for its exoticism and perceived vulnerability.
The low social rank of Afro-Ecuadorians within the Ecuadorian hierarchies of race, color
and socio-economic status compounded with the low rank of women in a machista
society render Afro-Ecuadorian women as triply discriminated against because of their
race, gender and class.
Ecuadorian stereotypes of black women are almost always related to their bodies
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as sexual objects.7 As one Afro-Ecuadorian writer explains:
…la sociedad blanco-mestiza asume que
…The white-mestizo society assumes that
la mujer negra no puede acceder con
the black woman cannot successfully
éxito a la esfera pública y privada, y que
access the public and private sphere, and
por tanto, descuida las actividades del
for the most part, overlooks her activities
ámbito privado. El acceso constante al
in the private sphere. The constant access
espacio público le confiere una mayor
to public space gives her more freedom
libertad y por ésto, se la considera como
and for that reason she is considered a
un ser peligroso, tentador, promiscuo,
dangerous being, a temptress,
cuya sexualidad es ilimitada y sin
promiscuous, someone whose sexuality is
restricciones. Estos estereotipos,
limitless and without restrictions. These
naturalmente son errados.
stereotypes, naturally are wrong. (Guerron
109, My translation).
According to this stereotype black women are pigeon holed into only being public
beings; the fact they live have lives and obligations outside of their so-called
promiscuous behavior in the public sphere is unthinkable to white-mestizo society. These
erroneous stereotypes translate into black women being approached by men for sexual
favors on the street or being mistaken for prostitutes quite often, especially in cities.
Black women are portrayed as hypersexual and naturally promiscuous in popular culture,
and therefore deserving of less respect (Torre 62). The other qualities associated with
sexuality even verge on ridiculous; for example, it is popularly believed that having sex
7
The discourse does not include Afro-Ecuadorian male perspectives of the black female
body. The stereotypes described here are those which the women interviewed and other
outside sources have recognized as being engendered by white or mestizo males.
69
with black women will cure disease, especially bad kidneys (Racist Stereotypes Rahier
308).
The similarities between the representations of black women in Ecuador and in
the United States in the 20th century are astounding. In a collection of interviews on
sexuality with black women from the United States, Tricia Rose finds that “black
women’s sexual lives are pinned between the powerful uses of distorted myths about
black sexuality to fuel racist, demeaning stories about black men and women and the
sexuality myths used to maintain the subordination of women as a whole” (Rose 5). In
other words, negative perceptions of black women originate from stereotypes about black
people and from stereotypes about women. For example, during the black migration to
U.S. cities in the mid 20th century in the U.S. single black women were depicted as being
“‘loose in the city,’ ‘wreaking havoc’ in black and white communities (as ‘enticing’ livein maids, neighbors and coworkers)” (Rose 392). Portrayed as “Welfare Queens” with an
unbridled sexual appetite, American black women are still considered a problem for the
welfare system of this country (Rose 392).
Likewise, in Ecuador women feel especially bound by these “sexuality myths” of
being assumed to be oversexed, lazy, and available for sexual exploitation. As Veronica,
a middle class professional explains:
They think that black women are easy, that we’re whores (putas), no? Good for
dates and sex. What else can I say? They say that we have great bodies. One time
a doctor told me this…. They say that we are easy or good for dancing or good in
bed and things like that. They don’t think about us in terms of other things we can
do.
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Veronica’s last comment that society doesn’t see black women as being anything other
than sexual beings is a frustration that was commonly expressed throughout the
interviews.
“Being Undressed With His Eyes”
There is always the possibility that you will be mistaken for a prostitute in Quito
as a black woman. Dressed in office uniforms and casual attire, ten women from the
Movimiento de mujeres negras de Quito8 (Black Women’s Movement of Quito) and
myself, were waiting outside of an old building in dimly lit neighborhood in central
Quito. We were moving into the new office of the Movimiento de mujeres negras de
Quito (MMNQ) after the rent for the old office had grown to be a financial burden. With
little funding, the MMNQ was forced to move their office to a cheaper, but dangerous
part of town. The “suite” that MMNQ was renting was a shabby run down set of three
meeting rooms and a tiny kitchen with threadbare puke green carpet that ran throughout.
As we settled in, organizing our chairs in the circle, the landlord came in to introduce
himself and to go over the rules of the space. He was a tall white man with a huge nose
and a Charlie Chaplain style mustache. As he spoke I could feel his eyes moving over my
body, over all of our bodies.
As soon as we got into the car after the meeting, everyone started to complain
about how the landlord had treated us. They complained that he never looked at their
faces during his entire talk with them. He looked at them with sexual intentions, they
said. Later on, a woman in MMNQ said that they were initially opposed to moving into
8
Movimiento de mujeres negras de Quito is one of the black women’s rights groups I
worked with in Ecuador.
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the new neighborhood because of its reputation for prostitution. The hotels and hostels in
that neighborhood were known for their prostitutes, who were mostly black. She said that
this man’s behavior was to be expected, but nevertheless upsetting. She guessed that he
thought that we were prostitutes, wanting to start our own business. If a group of modest,
well-dressed and well-educated women were assumed to be prostitutes, the standards in
the white-mestizo Ecuadorian mindset for delineating between sex workers and non-sex
workers are questionable.
The interview excerpts and anecdotes in this section are unique in that they come
from responses that were not prompted by my set of questions. It was not my original
intention to explore the sexual representations of black women in Ecuadorian society or
the sexual stereotypes that are so prevalent there. These responses are included because
although none of the women interviewed were sex workers, or ever had been, to my
knowledge, the issue of being mistaken for a prostitute came up in all of the interviews.
This indicated that for the women involved in the movement, their struggle was not just
about racism, it was about sexism and combating everyday life in a chauvinist society. In
many ways, the observations in this chapter validate the importance of having black
women’s movements, as opposed to only an all-encompassing, anti-racism/pro-rights
movement in Ecuador. The racism and sexism that black women face means that they are
simultaneously confronting and finding ways to cope amidst these conditions (Romero
2002).
It is important to note that according to the interviews, the racist assumptions that
black women are prostitutes are location specific. In every interview it was explained that
people in the Sierra commonly made that supposition. For example Catí explains, “In
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Quito, the mestizos think that black women are only to be prostitutes and are only for the
bed.” And, Emilia broadens the geographical qualification by adding that, “The Serranos
(people from the Sierra) think we are going to rob or they think we are prostitutes.”
Indeed, the women interviewed, regardless of their own location, indicated that these
disrespectful attitudes were most common in Quito, and in the Sierra in general. It seems,
then, that black female bodies are more likely to be objectified by people in the Sierra,
which probably has to do with the fact that in the Sierra, Afro-Ecuadorians are more
likely to interact with whites and mestizos, who are generally the propagators of these
stereotypes. It is interesting to note the women from the Coast did not say that their
integrity as black women was ever demeaned on the Coast, despite the increase in white
and mestizo vacationers engaging in the sex trade there (Fernández-Rasines 132).
Each interviewee expressed in her own way her frustration with the stereotypical
images of black women in Ecuador as prostitutes. Many of the women recounted a
similar story of how so many young black women, especially in Quito, become
prostitutes. Here Rosa explains:
There are many black prostitutes in Quito, the majority come from Esmeraldas
and Guayaquil. When they leave their homes for the first time they come and
work as domestics. Usually they have a bad experience being raped, asked for
sexual favors by men in the family or they are accused of robbing. They never
want to do this work again and they have to find some other kind of work so they
turn to prostitution because they don’t have education. But, there are other lucky
ones who find work in stores and shops.
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The stereotype is therefore rooted in some degree of truth, although I was unable to find
out the ethnic breakdown of the prostitute population in Ecuador.
Black Women’s Groups’ Countermovement
In response to this kind of treatment, among other things, black women’s groups
all over Ecuador are reconstructing the negative stereotypes of black women when and
where they can. Whether they are hosting weekly dinners where women can teach one
another about Afro-Ecuadorian history and the proud legacy of many Afro-Ecuadorian
women who came before them, or whether they are raising money to help women start
their own community businesses, these groups are finding new ways to create positive
images of black women. Black women’s rights groups are working to provide a
community of women, outside of immediate families, to create a support network for
black women all over Ecuador.
The women’s groups also work to combat the racist society around them by
protesting and continually documenting the abuses against them. Afro-Ecuadorian
women are often portrayed in popular culture as sex objects, as seen in the ads for Ron
Negrita (Little Black Rum), which feature the backside of a naked black woman (Rahier
2003), and the undulating black washerwoman in the ads for laundry products called
Deja.
The spokeswoman for Deja, whose likeness is depicted in television commercials,
on billboards and printed ads, is a plump black woman seen washing or ironing white
clothes. The first series of Deja commercials showed the woman shaking her hips as she
cleaned. However, demeaned by the sexual and overtly offensive nature of the ad, black
74
women’s community groups in Quito protested and demanded that the company
withdraw the ad. The company responded by changing the commercials to show the same
black woman dropping off her son at school. In the new commercial the woman’s clothes
are very white and clean and she assures a white woman also dropping off her son that
her clothes could be as white if she used Deja. This is a definite improvement from the
first commercial and the change is indicative of the effective organization and growing
clout of black women’s rights groups in Ecuador.
As members of these groups, women are creating not only a newly empowered
identity for themselves but also a group identity that propels them even farther. One of
the initiatives that women’s groups like the MMNQ have taken up is supporting their
younger members in gaining higher education. Many black women migrate from all over
Ecuador to the Sierra to attend large universities. In this new environment, without the
security of their families, having the support of a women’s group is helpful. As one
young student, Karina, notes, “There are many black women who are trying to leave to
study and prepare…Before there weren’t many, before they came to work and sell, but
now there are lots of young women coming to study.” Having a group of older black
women to help buffer the racism and sexism inherent in city life presumably helps these
women not to fall through the cracks. Anita explains that “we are now improving
ourselves to be important people and to be seen not only as black women, but as women.”
Women’s groups are also emphasizing the bonds amongst women as one of their
defining characteristics, providing an alternative to the popular perceptions of black
women. For example when I asked Karina what was the best thing about being a black
woman in Ecuador she answered:
75
[She laughs] Lots of hips (Mucha cadera)! No, no. What is the best thing? What
can I say, maybe yes it’s their joy, the way that they share, the enthusiasm that
they have. They are open and spontaneous [Her aunt agrees in the background],
they are friendly and comforting and welcoming…. It’s difficult to find a black
woman who would leave her children and just sits in the house. She is a fighter
(luchadora); she is always trying to carry on. [Her aunt chimes in] If her friend
has been kicked out, she gives a hand to her. She likes to take in children, and if
there is a child without a mother she takes him in as her own.
At first Karina jokes that the best part of being a black woman is her hips, but changes to
a more serious tone when she explains that sense of community and kinships that black
women show one another.
Irene, a prominent member of a black women’s organization in Guayaquil
explains when I ask her what the best thing about being a black woman in Ecuador is:
[Being a black woman in Ecuador] is a real blessing because we have unique
characteristics. The Afro-Ecuadorian women, we are characterized as being
voluptuous (amplias), being pretty. We have perfect bodies. And obviously I’m a
little fat, but this is not the norm (she laughs)…. Being Afro-Ecuadorian is a
blessing…the color of the skin is not an accident or a casualty, it is a blessing.
Using the same stereotype that black women’s bodies are voluptuous and appealing,
Irene explains that this is a blessing. By showing pride in her unique characteristics Irene
feels that her features, which are seen as innately sexual, are instead, or more importantly,
pretty. Irene feels that being a woman and being black are both blessings.
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As opposed to only being portrayed as dancing, undulating, promiscuous women,
women’s groups are trying to change the images of black women, showing them as
students, activists, thinkers and leaders. The community classes teaching women
leadership and entrepreneurial skills, cultural and fashion shows, and numerous
publications are all ways in which the groups are working to shatter stereotypes and
change perceptions of Afro-Ecuadorian women. Their task, however, is part of a much
larger goal of equal rights and the self-liberation of the Afro-Ecuadorian community. The
success of Afro-Ecuadorian women’s groups to promote black women’s rights is directly
related to their relationship and leadership within the larger Afro-Ecuadorian rights
struggle. Without more black women in leadership positions in the larger movement, the
overarching goal of recognition and equality for Afro-Ecuadorians will not be fully
realized.
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CONCLUSION
“The curious thing is that many have been convinced that such discrimination does not exist in
Ecuadorian society…It’s not even uncommon that some Ecuadorians adopt an air of superiority
at the discussion of the terrible situations of racial discrimination against Blacks in the United
States, South Africa, Rhodesia or against Hindus in Uganda and Bangladesh or other ethnic
groups in other regions of the world, pointing out that they not forget the nightmare of Nazi
extermination of the Jews. These compatriots sincerely believe that in the country there is no
racial discrimination of any type, incomparable to these cited cases…”
- El Comercio (Ecuadorian newspaper), January 31, 1979
I return to the introductory anecdote I about the Ecuadorian man who sat next to
me on my flight to Quito this past summer in order to characterize the adversarial
positions that impede the progress of the Afro-Ecuadorian movement. This man is a
prime of example of the Ecuadorian “compatriot” who sincerely denies the existence of
racism in his own country. By denying racism, he is in effect, ignoring the existence of
ethnic groups whose priorities and concerns differ from his own. The prevailing attitude
of the Ecuadorian majority is one that depreciates the Afro-Ecuadorian community by not
recognizing its existence as a distinctly marginalized group. Generally speaking, the
Ecuadorian majority has played a central role in the invisibility and marginalization of its
black population. It is a society that, on the whole, has denied its slaveholding past, its
African roots, its Afro-Ecuadorian communities and its widespread racist attitudes.
Ironically, Ecuadorians recognize the injustices of racial discrimination all over the world
but neglect to see themselves as perpetrators of similar injustices.
The aim of this thesis was to examine one element of the multiculturalism with
which Ecuadorian society has not yet come to terms: a strong and burgeoning AfroEcuadorian community of activists that is objecting to its omission from Ecuador’s
history and its future. Within my exploration of the Afro-Ecuadorian movement, I
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explore the further marginalized element of the female voice. The aspect of Ecuadorian
multiculturalism that I examine looks at, on a broader level, the anti-black racism that has
fueled the movement. On another level I analyze the way that black women in particular
negotiate that racism. By looking at black women’s reactionary and revolutionary
reclamation of self-identifiers in Chapter 3, their politicized perceptions of racism in
Chapter 4 and their constructive reactions to racism and sexism in Chapter 5, I have
magnified some of the voices of one essential part of the Afro-Ecuadorian movement.
Contextualizing the Movement
The history of most black movements in Latin America, exceptions being those in
Columbia and Brazil, have followed a similar trajectory in that the movements
successfully raise awareness about anti-black racism, but have little efficacy in creating
policy that protects and improves black communities (Andrews 188). Afro-Latin
movements have also been internally criticized because, “women were seldom admitted
to positions of authority or influence, nor, charged many female activists, did the
movement seriously address issues of the most immediate concern to black women:
gender inequalities and power relations within black families; the pressing needs of single
mothers and their children; women’s health issues; and most important, the devastating
‘triple discrimination’—class, gender, and race” (Andrews 189). Only time will tell if the
trajectory of the Afro-Ecuadorian movement will follow in the footsteps of other AfroLatin rights struggles.
The Afro-Ecuadorian struggle against marginalization is a multifaceted struggle
against de facto racism and against divisions within the black community. In addition to
79
the racist attitudes of the mestizo majority, which have been detailed in this study, there is
a large contingency of the black population that does not identify with the movement.
This lack of black support may be class based, as the following excerpt aptly explains:
Throughout Afro-Latin America, the black activists tended to be either of
middle-class background themselves or upwardly mobile individuals who had
acquired high school and, in some cases, university education. Their target
constituencies were overwhelmingly poor and working-class. The prejudice and
discrimination that middle-class activists felt on an almost daily basis were much
less salient in the lives of lower-class blacks and browns, for whom immediate
issues of survival—food, work, medical care, crime, transportation, housing,
water, and electricity—were far more pressing. Abstract talk about the need to
combat racism by embracing black identities was of little use or interest to poor
blacks (Andrews 189).
Indeed, many of the women interviewed here were either middle-class or part of
upwardly mobile families, which might explain their strong support of the movement. In
addition to class, many of the women interviewed, especially those whose testimonies
appear in the chapter on sexism explained that most of their experience with racist sexism
occurred in the Sierra. This might explain why many blacks are not as concerned with
racism; the majority of Afro-Ecuadorians live in majority black communities which are
not in the Sierra. The reasons for lack of interest in the Afro-Ecuadorian movement
within the black community is a salient aspect of the movement’s success in the future
and needs more research and attention.
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The task of uniting the very diverse black communities requires a charismatic
and intelligent leader who can help to create and define a national black identity. As
many different activists explained to me, there is a need to demonstrate to AfroEcuadorian communities that much of their poverty and lack of access stems from
prejudice, racism and the historical invisibility of their communities. Unification will
make appeals to the Ecuadorian government all the more powerful and convincing and
make it easier to gain international attention.
Additionally, increased research in virtually every aspect of Afro-Ecuadorian
history, culture and current political situation is needed to bring serious scholarly
attention to Afro-Ecuadorian contributions. By creating a body of literature on this
community more people will take interest and become aware of the injustices they face.
With increased international support and scholarly attention it will be easier to make a
better case for serious civil and human rights intervention campaigns in Ecuador.
However, only when the movement has become strongly supported by the local
communities can it reach its full potential. And, only when men and women make an
equal partnership in the movement will it be truly representative. There are few
leadership roles held by Afro-Ecuadorian women within the movement. But women’s
groups continue to have strong impacts on their communities. This movement is part of a
long tradition of black liberation struggles in Latin America forcing their societies to
acknowledge and face up to their racism.
This study is a portrait of black women activists and their current struggles. The
ideas expressed in the interviews are part of a process to assert black presence and fight
81
marginalization. The ideas expressed by the interviewees are only the first whispers of a
long and arduous journey to self-liberation.
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APPENDIX
Interview Script
Date:
Time:
Participant #:
Location:
General Background Information Questions
1. Where do you live?
2. How old are you?
3. Where are you from? Where were you born?
4. What work do your parents do?
5. Where are your parents from?
6. Do you have siblings? (ages and their occupation)
7. What was it like growing up?
8. What was the house you grew up in like?
9. Did you go to school?
10. Did you have a job as a child?
11. Are you married? (husband’s age and occupation)
12. Do you have children?(ages and school/work)
13. What kind of work do you do/did you do?
14. What do you do for fun?
15. Have you ever traveled to another community/country? Why? How long?
Self Definition Questions
16. What words do people use to describe black women in Ecuador?
17. Which term is the most polite?
18. Which term is the most impolite?
19. Which term do you prefer?
20. Which of these words are the most frequently used?
21. Is there another word that would better describe you?
22. What do you feel your strongest allegiances are?
23. What are the best and worst things about being an Afro-Ecuadorian woman?
Personal Experience Questions
24. What are the differences between how blacks are treated and how other people are
treated?
24a. How do you deal with the way that people treat you?
25. Have you ever experienced racism in your hometown or anywhere else?
26. When I used to term racism what did that mean?
27. Do you think that races exist in Ecuador? What races are there?
‰ If so, do you think racism exists in Ecuador?
28. How big a problem is racism in your life and why is that?
83
29. Are there any times that you can remember when people were treating you differently
because you are black? Or because you are a woman?
30. What are the most common jobs for black people?
31. What if any are the differences between black neighborhoods and other
neighborhoods? In what ways are they similar?
32. Where would you prefer to live and why?
33. What are the main differences between (your city) and (other research locations?
34. What do you think of blacks from different parts of the country?
35. Tell me about education for Afro-Ecuadorians?
36. Tell me about work opportunities for Afro-Ecuadorians?
37. Do you believe that black people are treated the same as other groups or differently
from other groups?
38. You have mentioned some of the problems that you face in society. How do you cope
with these problems?
39. What do you think is the solution to these problems?
40. What can be done to change things?
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Nation in Modern Latin America. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina
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Azopardo, Ildefonso Gutierrez. La poblacion negra en America: Geografía, historia y
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