It is in the United States more than in Brazil that liberalism, or slavery, is a “misplaced idea.” Here the official national ideology was much more strongly liberal, and slavery was harder to buy one’s way out of. That is why the United States had to develop a much more hard-line form of racism in the 19th and then the 20th century; slavery had to be justified to a degree it did not in Latin America.
The repression in the United States led to a civil rights movement much stronger than anything that had been able to happen in Latin America.
The Latin American racial continuum made for flexibility and racial mobility, but also fragmented persons of color as they had different rights and positions depending upon shade.
I must remember, I keep forgetting, that identity is a key word in my project: Villaverde’s “ojo conocedor,” the eye that can see fine racial distinctions, is what makes one quintessentially American.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 