Blanqueamiento#Cuba

File:BMVB - anònim - "3 De Español y Castiza, Española" - 1079 (cropped).jpg from 1799, according to which the offspring of a Spaniard and a castiza are deemed to be "Spanish", i.e., White Latin Americans (criollos).]]

Peter Wade argues that blanqueamiento is a historical process that can be linked to nationalism. When thinking about nationalism, the ideologies behind it stem from national identity, which according to Wade is "a construction of the past and the future",Wade, Peter. (1993) Blackness and Race Mixture: The Dynamics of Racial Identity in Colombia. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Series in Atlantic History and Culture where the past is understood as being more traditional and backwards. For example, past demographics of Puerto Rico were heavily black and Indian-influenced because the country partook in the slave trade and was simultaneously home to many indigenous groups. Therefore, understanding blanqueamiento as it relates to modernization, modernization is then understood as a guidance in the direction away from black and indigenous roots. Modernization then happened as described by Wade as "the increasing integration of blacks and Indians into modern society, where they will mix in and eventually disappear, taking their primitive culture with them". This type of implementation of blanqueamiento takes place in societies that have historically always been led by 'white' people whose guidance would carry "the country away from its past, which began in Indianness and slavery" with hopes of promoting the intermixing of bodies to develop a predominantly white-skinned society.

The formation of mestizaje emerged in the shift of Latin America towards multiculturalist perspectives and policies.Chavez, M., and M. Zambrano. (2006) From blanqueamiento to reindigenizacion: Paradoxes of mestizaje and multiculturalism in contemporary Colombia. European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 80, 5-23. Mestizaje has been considered problematic by many scholars because it sustains racial hierarchies and celebrates blanqueamiento. For example, Swanson argues that although mestizaje is not a physical embodiment of whitening, it is "not so much about mixing, as it about a progressive whitening of the population".{{cite journal|author=Swanson, K.|year=2007|title=Revanchist Urbanism Heads South: The Regulation of Indigenous Beggers and Street Vendors in Ecuador|journal=Antipode|volume=39|issue=4|doi=10.1111/j.1467-8330.2007.00548.x|pages=708–728|url=http://polired.upm.es/index.php/ciur/article/view/2951|url-access=subscription}}

Another possibility when considering mestizaje as it relates to blanqueamiento is by understanding mestizaje as a concept that encourages mixedness, but differs from the concept of blanqueamiento on the basis of the end goal for mestizaje. As Peter Wade states, "it celebrates the idea of difference in a democratic, non-hierarchical form. Rather than envisioning a gradual whitening, it holds up the general image of the mestizo in which racial, regional, and even class differences are submerged into a common identification with mixedness." On the same coin, when thinking about blanqueamiento, the future goal takes up the same theme of mixing. The difference between them is that while mestizaje glorifies the mixing of all people to reach an end goal of having a brown population, blanqueamiento has the end goal of whiteness. The outcome of mestizaje mixing would lead to "the predominance of the mestizo" and is not "construed necessarily as (a) whitened mestizo". Most importantly, both of these ideologies link emerging nationhood with the predominance of the mestizo or the whitened population.

In the early Republican era of Brazil, miscegenation as a form of whitening was looked down upon, as it was thought that the mestiço population retained the inferior qualities of the Indigenous and Afro-Brazilians.{{Cite book |last=Blake |first=Stanley E. |title=The vigorous core of our nationality: race and regional identity in northeastern Brazil |date=2011 |publisher=University of Pittsburgh Press |isbn=978-0-8229-6133-8 |series=Pitt Latin American series |location=Pittsburgh, Pa}} It was for this reason that immigration as a form of whitening was preferred rather than through interracial relations. Theorists such as Raimundo Nina Rodrigues believed that education could improve the state of certain groups, such as Muslim Africans, however Indigenous and Afro-Brazilians were excluded from this.

Blanqueamiento was enacted in national policies of many Latin American countries at the turn of the 20th century. In most cases, these policies promoted European immigration as a means to whiten the population.Andrews, G.R. Afro-Latin America 1800-2000. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

{{main|Racial whitening}}

{{lang|pt-BR|Branqueamento}} was circulated in national policy throughout Brazil in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.{{cite book|author=Agier, M|title=Racism, Culture, and Black Identity in Brazil|publisher=Bulletin of Latin American Research|volume=14|number=3 |year=1995|pages= 245–264}}{{cite book|author=Telles, E.E.|title=Race in Another America: The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil| location=Princeton, NJ/Oxford|publisher=Princeton University Press|year=2006|page=324|isbn=9780691127927|edition=Paperback}} {{lang|pt-BR|Branqueamento}} policies emerged in the aftermath of the abolition of slavery and the beginning of Brazil's first republic (1888–1889). To dilute the black race, the Brazilian government took measures to increase European immigration. More than 1 million Europeans arrived in São Paulo between 1890 and 1914. State and federal governments funded and subsidized immigrant travels from Portugal, Spain, Italy, Russia, Germany, Austria, France, and the Netherlands.{{cite journal|author=Loveman, M|title=The Race to Progress: Census Taking and Nation Making in Brazil (1870-1920)|journal=Hispanic American Historical Review|volume=89|issue=3|year=2009|doi=10.1215/00182168-2009-002|pages=435–470}} Claims that white blood would eventually eliminate black blood were found in accounts of immigration statistics. Created in the late 19th century, Brazil's {{lang|pt-BR|Directoria Geral de Estatística (DGE)}} has conducted demographic censuses and managed to measure the progress of whitening as successful in Brazil.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Cuban government created immigration laws that invested more than $1 million into recruiting Europeans into Cuba to whiten the state.{{cite episode|title=Cuba: The next revolution |medium=Web series episode| year=2011|series=In Black in Latin America|network=Public Broadcasting Service|url=https://www.pbs.org/video/black-in-latin-america-cuba-the-next-revolution/}} High participation of blacks in independence movements threatened white elitist power and when the 1899 census showed that more than {{frac|1|3}} of Cuba's population was colored, white migration started to gain support.{{cite journal|author=de la Fuente, A.|title=Race, National Discourse, Politics in Cuba: An Overview|journal=Latin American Perspectives|volume=25|number=3|year=1998|pages=43–69|doi=10.1177/0094582x9802500303|jstor=2634166|s2cid=220912969 }} Political blanqueamiento began in 1902 after the U.S. occupation, where migration of "undesirables" (i.e. blacks) became prohibited in Cuba. Immigration policies supported the migration of entire families. Between 1902 and 1907, nearly 128,000 Spaniards entered Cuba, and officially in 1906, Cuba created its immigration law that funded white migrants. However, many European immigrants did not stay in Cuba and came solely for the sugar harvest, returning to their homes during the off seasons. Although some 780,000 Spaniards migrated between 1902–1931, only 250,000 stayed. By the 1920s, blanqueamiento through national policy had effectively failed.

Blanqueamiento is also associated with food consumption. For example, in Osorno, a Chilean city with a strong German heritage, consumption of desserts, marmalades and kuchens "whitens" the inhabitants of the city.{{cite journal |last=Montecino |first=Sonia |date=2009 |title=Conjunciones y disyunciones del gusto en el sur de Chile |url=http://repositorio.uchile.cl/bitstream/handle/2250/121774/Montecino_RI_003_2010.pdf?sequence=1 |journal=Historia, Antropología y Fuentes Orales |pages=169–176 |language=es |access-date=2 November 2015}}

Blanqueamiento can also be accomplished through economic achievement. Many scholars have argued that money has the ability to whiten, where wealthier individuals are more likely to be classified as white, regardless of phenotypic appearance.{{cite book|author=Duany, J.|title=Neither Black nor White: The Politics of Race and Ethnicity among Puerto Ricans on the Island and in the U.S. Mainland|publisher=Brown University|location=Providence, Rhode Island|year=2000}}{{cite book|author=Degler, C.N. |title=Neither Black nor White: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil and the United States|url=https://archive.org/details/neitherblacknorw0000degl_a8p4 |url-access=registration |location=New York|publisher=Macmillan|year=1971|isbn=9780023282003 }} It is by this changing of social status that blacks achieve blanqueamiento.{{cite journal |author=Golash-Boza |first=T. |author-link=Tanya Golash Boza |year=2010 |title=Does Whitening Happen? Distinguishing between Race and Color Labels in an African Descended Community in Peru |journal=Social Problems |volume=57 |issue=1 |pages=138–156 |doi=10.1525/sp.2010.57.1.138 |s2cid=16274803 |hdl-access=free |hdl=1808/7588}} In his study, Marcus Eugenio Oliveira Lima showed that groups of Brazilians succeeded more when whitened.{{cite journal|author=Lima, M.E.O.|title=Review Essay: Race Relations and Racism in Brazil|journal=Culture and Psychology|volume=13|issue=4|year=2007|pages=461–473|doi=10.1177/1354067X07082805|s2cid=146389827 }}

Blanqueamiento has also been seen as a way to better the economy. In the case of Brazil, immigration policies that would help whiten the nation were seen as progressive ways to modernize and achieve capitalism.{{cite journal|author=Jones-de Oliveira, K.F.|title=The Politics of Culture or the Culture of Politics: Afro-Brazilian Mobilization, 1920-1968|journal=Journal of Third World Studies|volume=20|issue=1|year=2003|pages=103–120}} In Cuba, blanqueamiento policies limited economic opportunities for African descendants, resulting in their reduced upward mobility in education, property, and employment sectors.{{cite journal|author=Chomsky, A. |title='Barbados or Canada?' Race, Immigration, and Nation in Early-Twentieth-Century Cuba|journal=Hispanic American Historical Review|volume=80|issue=3|year=2000|pages=415–462|doi=10.1215/00182168-80-3-415|s2cid=145451194 }}

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• Acculturation
• Colonial mentality
• Coloniality of power
• Creole peoples
• Discrimination based on skin color
• Gente de razón
• Hispanic eugenics
• Limpieza de sangre
• Hispanidad
• History of eugenics
• Race and ethnicity in Latin America
• Racial passing
• Racism in South America
• Skin whitening
• Stolen Generations and White Australia policy– conceptually similar approach in Australia
• Westernization

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{{Reflist}}

{{White people}}

Category:Anti-black racism

Category:Anti-Indigenous racism in the Americas

Category:Cultural assimilation

Category:Latin American caste system

Category:Multiracial affairs in Brazil

Category:History of eugenics

Category:White supremacy in South America

Category:Light skin