Venezuela, Book 6
Café con Leche: Race, Class, and National Image in Venezuela
We had so much fun exploring the city together – hiking,
dining, going to an opera, and often just "chilling." One of my favorite days in
Berlin was a day in June when she, her husband, and I ventured out to the “Open
Embassy Day” together for an entire day of different languages, foreign foods,
and interesting conversations. The first embassy on our agenda? Venezuela.
Needless to say, the Venezuelan embassy was an interesting
experience and was located inside a big building. When we walked into the
lobby, there was a man seated in full military uniform. (Note: Venezuela was
the only embassy we attended with somebody present in full military uniform.)
He stamped our “Tag der offenen Tür in Botschaften” (Open Embassy Day)
passports with great seriousness and signaled for us to get into the elevator.
When the elevator doors opened, we were welcomed by a full wall mural of the
recently deceased Hugo Chavez –with a broad smile, bright eyes, and an optimistic
gaze into the future. My friends, who knew I was dating an anti-Chavista,
started chuckling and quickly scrambled to get a photograph of me in front of
the mural to send him before an embassy official appeared.
We entered into the open room, which featured different
tables elaborately decorated and manned by Venezuelans. Each table focused
on a different aspect of the culture. Although I was surprised how many tables
were dedicated to religion, the table which interested me the most was the one that
looked as if it were a shrine to a portrait with three different women – a
European woman, a woman native to the Americas, and a woman of African descent.
It was a very interesting portrait: each woman dressed in her respective
culture’s dress according to the 18th or 19th century. I
turned to the woman standing at the table to inquire more. She began to
describe to me that this portrait represented the beauty of Venezuela’s people
– that it was a society made up of all three types and how each and every
Venezuelan recognized that his or her culture was based in this special mix of
culture and ethnicity.
I found her discourse extremely interesting and somewhat
contradictory to my own experience in Latin America. Early in my undergraduate
studies, I had spent about six weeks in Chile for a language and culture
program. While encountering people out on the street, I was witness to some of
the most appalling conversations I had ever heard about race. While I never saw
any outright acts of racism, I was surprised by the people who felt comfortable
making racist remarks in my presence – solely based on me looking “German.” (If
you have never seen me angry, you should have seen me in those instances!) It was with this thought in mind that I bought Café con Leche: Race, Class, and National Image in Venezuela, written by Winthrop R. Wright and
first published in 1990 by the University of Texas Press.
For anyone who has taken an introductory Spanish course or
has been to a Spanish-speaking country, the title must seem a bit odd: coffee
with milk - to talk about race relations? The author introduces this concept in
the first chapter, explaining that “In 1944, the poet-politician Andrés Eloy
Blanco wrote a column in the partisan El País in which he likened the racial
composition of Venezuela to café con leche… Venezuelans, after all, had already
achieved racial balance through centuries of racial mixing.” (page 1)
The author, a United States professor who arrived in
Venezuela to teach, initially found the environment stimulating – especially in
contrast to the environment of Birmingham, Alabama in the 1960s. He noted that
“Culturally as well as physically, Venezuela society manifested the combining
of African, Indian, and European elements. For that reason, most Venezuelans
rightfully considered themselves members of a hybridized race.” (page 8)
However, after spending more and more time in Venezuela, he began to notice a
great deal of undertones in society based on race. This short book basically
offers a brief history of Venezuelan racial relations – from Spain’s colonial
legacy, the shipment of slaves from Africa to work on plantations, Bolivar’s
Pan-Americanism, and the subsequent Federal War of Venezuela (a civil war in
Venezuela, lasting from 1859 to 1863 and leading to a great deal of hardship.)
All of the information in these sections is noteworthy and, for those of my
readers who are Spanish-speakers, I would suggest taking a look at this summary
(in Spanish.)
At the end of the book, however, the author notes that race
still plays an important role in Venezuelan society. He summarizes his ideas in
the last paragraph: “Venezuela’s pardos [a person of mixed
African, European, and Indian ancestry] comprise a majority and operate
openly in a society that accepts them as they appear. Their multiracial origins
do not hold them back… As for whites, they have an option. They can retreat to
exclusive clubs and cliques and ignore the gains of other racial groups or they
can acknowledge their belief that they live in a racial democracy, secure that
in any case they set the norms for cultural advancement. Only blacks realize
the full implications of the lingering prejudice that operates below the
surface. They, probably more than any other racial group in Venezuela, realize
that Venezuelans want only a little café with their leche.” (page 131)
Please feel free to comment on these
topics or note something interesting from the book. I look forward to hearing
your opinions!
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