Reflections on Dr. Henry Louis Gates' Jr. "Mexico and Pero: The Black Grandma in the Closet"

    Black in Latin America, E03, "Mexico and Pero: The Black Grandma in the Closet"   

Building from Ch. 2 “Harvest of Empire,” Gonzales’ argument that the Spanish colonies at one time looked to the English-American colonies as influential, social movements taking place back and forth between the southern and northern hemispheres of the Americas are very surprising. By the 15^th century, the two settler cultures, England and Spain, had come west to violate, and reap resources from, a plethora of Indigenous cultures with no favorable terms of agreement or trade. What Dr. Gates’ documentary shows us is that even as each dominant settler culture grew and became derivatives of a European desire to conquer and remove Indigenous nations, histories in the South American countries are actually more complex and volatile than the English colonies in the north.

            Post-1492, where Gates’ doc ultimately begins is already at time where Indigenous populations have shrunk from unfair warfare and diseases unknown to that region of the world before. Each settler colonial culture sharing slavery as a means of production is eye-opening, however. The slave trade was much larger and somehow more brutal in South America, as Spanish forces invaded to force trading and supplant a greed that would change everything. On the one hand, again in Gonzales’ earlier argument, he states that once countries in Latin America began to liberate themselves from Spanish-colonial rule, they denounced slavery much quicker and the populations were less worried in their society about mixing of ethnicities. Dr. Gates can only point to so many countries, however, so how were/are things different among each nation? How do the countries of Cuba or, for example, Puerto Rico play/ed a role, staying under closer colonial rule, influence the region? For the most part, while Dr. Gates does point to the pseudo-scientific reasons used to justify slavery among shareholders and businesses alike, the Catholic Church seemed open to the mixing of ethnicities in South American countries. The rising up of people against the slave/caste system seems often driven by priests a passionate congregations; what role might the nuns of the church played in this? Certainly their histories are not visible above the patriarchy. Lastly, with this acceptance and mixture of people on the ground, there was some hope that the Spanish settlers would not flaunt, or commodify, phenotypes, but ultimately forces at play eventually made a social construct of ‘black’ and ‘pure’ within some South American countries.

            After viewing Dr. Gates doc, my mind goes to diaspora and the general grand scale that peoples were made to flee, spread out, shift, and generally move in the 16-18^th century. If everyone isn’t helping in the work to put the stories, narratives, and histories back together pre-1492 than continually, over and over, a very narrow vision of what happened post-1492 will prevail. Gates is showing viewers a portrayal of how cultures were melding and coming together in a particular way despite the Spanish influence and within this groups often seem to find themselves fighting over what the term “nationalism” really means; who stands for which country? As the United States colonial settler comes into play more and more, even after Latino countries gained independence from Spanish, the greed and ill-treatment was too great from the U.S., and, again, we have a sweeping up of cultures into “easily identifiable” categories. But, the histories don’t have to end here, and each person has to accept what has been done, observe the structures of how whiteness/Christian churches worked to upend the Catholic possibly. But, mainly there is work to do in putting back together what we are learning was undone by these discriminating, falsifying, and formidable forces of settler colonialism.