Quijano, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America” by Ana Hidalgo
I enjoyed the Quijano reading because it explained in detail how race and labor came to be intertwined to give hegemonic power to Europe over Latin America. I found it interesting that in both cases (race and labor) European colonizers were focused on creating hierarchy of the races and a dichotomy between the conquerors and the conquered people. (Quijano 533). This shows how through creating divisions based on social, political and economic power, a permanent and powerful system of control emerged that is reproduced to this day. Therefore, in society and in our own lives, we should be wary of people trying to put others in strict categories, such as when people ask an Afro-Latinx person if they are black or Latinx. These categories have been formed through a violent system of control that has been reinforcing itself through racist practices for generations. In order to begin to decolonize ourselves and the places we inhabit we need to acknowledge that these categories exist and that they were created in order to create a global capitalist system with the purpose to exploit poor black and brown people throughout the world.
While reading about the tie between race with labor I found it fiting that Quijano said that the two worked with each other but one was not necessary in order to make the other to exist (Quijano 537). Based on what I have read in other classes and my own personal experiences with race in Latin America, I believe that the classification of the races was crucial in order to make black and indigenous people, and everything about them such as their culture, skin color, and language subordinate to the West. A quote from the reading that best expresses this is, “Europe’s hegemony over the new model of global power concentrated all forms of the control of subjectivity…under its hegemony” (Quijano 540). I strongly agree with this statement because in the western world as a whole, and specifically in Latin America, the rules and social spaces that people inhabit have been constructed in a way that directly benefit those who are closer to whiteness and Europe’s hegemonic culture.
This reading allowed me to draw many connections between the reading and my own personal experiences. Even though I have rarely faced discrimination due to my white privilege, I have seen the way that other people are racialized in this hierarchical system since I was a child. For example, in Ecuador, where my family and I are from, I remember hearing the derogatory terms used to describe black and indigenous people and saw how when we went to the beach, the people that had the lower income jobs were always darker Ecuadorians or Afro-Ecuadorians. Even as a child I remember feeling uncomfortable as I saw the gross amount of inequality between people of different races. I could see that among family members and Ecuadorians in general there was a disdain for people that were darker and my parents simply stated that this was an unfortunate reality that could not easily be changed.
The most striking memory I have from my childhood that showed the power of European cultural hegemony was when I casually mentioned to my dad that Ecuadorians like all Latin Americans our family had a mix of black, indigenous and European ancestry. My dad was quick to remind me that I should never mention that to my grandmother, as she would deny it and be very upset by that comment, even though it was the truth. This is because Ecuadorians like most Latinx people are anti-black because they see whiteness as a way to better/whiten their race and be able to acknowledge their European ancestry more heavily, which they see as a source of pride and superiority. In the moment I felt confused and angry that there were people in my family that felt this way towards non-white people. It was a startling example for me at a young age that after 400 years, whiteness was still seen as something to aspire to because it guaranteed a level of superiority socially and economically.
Lastly, I found the discussion about the creation of a global world market crucial to understanding the creation of race as a means of advancing European economic interests. The way that these identities were directly associated to the type of labor was something that I had not read about before. In addition, I found it interesting how earning wages was seen as something that people were only deserving of if they were white (Quijano 539). It reminded me about how even to this day white people, especially white men, make so much more money than people of color in Latin America and the United States. That is because to this day the notion that white people deserve more money for their labor is still a crucial part of the global capitalist system. Without exploiting and underpaying people of color, the system that allowed for European hegemony to thrive could not exist.
Sources:
Quijano, Aníbal. “Coloniality of Power and Eurocentrism in Latin America.” International Sociology, vol. 15, no. 2, 2000, pp. 533–542.
Afro-Latinx Literature 