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Mexican
President Vicente Fox and most of Mexico's past presidents,
top officials, business leaders, educators, and government
leaders, for instance, are light skinned or Castellan
Spanish. They routinely boast that they can trace their
bloodlines to Spain (Fox's mother is from Spain).
During one of my stays in Mexico, I lived with a well-to-do
Mexican family. Family members routinely asked if my
son was into gangs and drugs (He was a university senior
at the time). I chalked their insensitivity in part
up to the one-dimensional depiction of blacks in the
global media world, and in part to negative racial attitudes
in the country.
And Blacks in Mexico suffer from those attitudes. They
make up about two percent of the population, and that's
only a rough estimate. The Mexican government propagates
the myth of a color-blind society and has never designated
any racial categories. There is no formal ban in Mexico
on employment discrimination. Classified ads in magazine
and newspapers are filled with requests for job applicants
who are young and beautiful, and though its unstated,
the lighter and more fair skinned the better.
In recent years, the guerrilla war in Chiapas, and land
battles between Indian groups and government officials
in other parts of the country have drawn national and
international attention. This has forced the government
to make minimal reforms to deal with the economic and
racial ill treatment of the Indians. But the government
has not shown the same level of sensitivity and enlightenment
toward its black population. They remain invisible,
and the lowest of the low on the country's social and
economic totem pole. They are crammed into enclaves
in the states of Guerrero, Oaxaca, and Veracruz, where
the schools are underserved, the roads and public services
are poor, and they are subject to harassment by police.
Then there's Pinguin. An entire generation of Mexican
school children (and many adults) has grown up delighting
in the zany frolics of the popular comic hero. Pinguin
has grossly distorted monkey like features, a baldhead
and big ears. His mother is a grotesquely fat, bandanna-wearing
mammy. The black mammy domestic was the stock racist
image of black women in countless 1930s and 1940s American
movies. But Pinguin's mother isn't a domestic. She routinely
wears her bandanna around their house, and it's a ramshackle
house in a poor barrio.
The Pinguin series ran in Mexican newspapers and magazines
during the 1960s and 1970s. It was created by Sixto
Valencia Burgos, one of Mexico's top creative artists.
In 1998, Burgos became president of the Mexican National
Association of Comic Artists. The Pinguin series is
so popular that decades after Burgos discontinued the
series, fan clubs still sprout up on both sides of the
border. The comic books are still wildly popular collector's
items in Mexico, and other parts of Latin America, and
continue to be much discussed and much read.
Gilberto Rincon, President of the National Council to
Prevent Discrimination, noted that a report on racism
in Mexico was released prior to Fox's racially loaded
quip in May about blacks and immigrant jobs. That was
a small sign that top Mexican officials grudgingly realize
that race does matter in Mexican affairs. Now Mexican
officials can take another small step and dump the Pinguin
stamp. Then they can take the bigger step and fully
come clean on the country's racism and do something
about it.
Earl
Ofari Hutchinson is a columnist for BlackNews.com,
an author and political analyst.
For
media interviews, contact:
Mr. Hutchinson at 323-296-6331 or hutchinsonreport@aol.com
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