How Internal Racism Affected My Life
And how I overcame it.
According to Lexico.com, Mestizaje is “Interbreeding and cultural intermixing of Spanish and American Indian people (originally in Mexico, and subsequently also in other parts of Latin America); miscegenation, racial and cultural intermixing.”
Mestizaje is a controversial topic in Latin America. Many people deny the abuse of native women, and when mestizaje is brought up, they think only of consensual relationships. Moreover, many mestizos have fabricated fictitious stories to explain European blood in their families.
While it’s true that many indigenous peoples willfully engaged — and still do — in relationships with Europeans in recent years, it was not so common in the early stages of colonization. When Europeans arrived in America, the objective was to subdue the natives, exploit them and take their land.
“This piece of land might in two days be cut off to make an island, although I do not see this to be necessary since these people are very naive about weapons, as Your Highnesses will see from seven that I caused to be taken in order to carry them away to you and to learn our language and to return them. Except that, whenever Your Highnesses may command, all of them can be taken to Castile or held captive in this same island; because with 50 men all of them could be held in subjection and can be made to do whatever one might wish.” Christopher Columbus.
The goal was not only to enslave Native Americans for labor. European colonizers sexually exploited Native American women and children.
“A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand,” Christopher Columbus.
For the European conquistadors and settlers, everything in America was for the taking. After all, they believed that the ultimate God of war was on their side. They had no reason to fear. They saw Indigenous peoples as sun and earth worshipping pagans that deserved all manner of punishment to abandon their devil-worshipping habits.
From those days onward, hate towards indigenous lifestyle, cultures, languages, and skin color began to fervently grow in the hearts of indigenous peoples themselves because to be indigenous was to be pagan.
Nicknaming children was widespread in Nicaragua when I grew up. In fact, nicknames were so prevalent that many people never used their given names. Everyone in my family has nicknames. They are usually given based on the way we look.
I was nicknamed chela [white] because I am light-skinned. On the other hand, a cousin of mine was nicknamed negra [black] because she is brown. We were born in the same month and year. We were also given the same first name. Therefore our nicknames were key elements to distinguish the two of us.
Skin color was a big deal in Nicaragua. We were taught — although indirectly — that white skin was better, a symbol of finesse and beauty. That said, brown skin was perceived as dirty and ugly. It was common for children to put their arms side by side to compare their skin color. And the one who turned out to be the most brown was always made fun of, often being called pijul [crow].
Let’s examine Nicaragua’s ethnic groups; according to study.com, 69% are mestizos, 17% are white, 9% are black, and 5% are indigenous. Based on these numbers, 83% of the population is non-white.
One must wonder, then why is being brown bad in a society full of brown people?
I didn’t always know the true history of mestizaje, and for a long time, I was confused about why brown skin was frowned upon. With the arrival of a new baby in the family, understanding came to me. I witnessed how we were taught to hate brown skin from the moment we were born.
A little brown girl was born, and her skin color was a disappointment to the family. Of course, this was not the first time this had happened. Most children are born brown, but I realized that it was always a disappointing surprise no matter how many times it happened. The biggest fear for many parents-to-be in Nicaragua was to have a brown child.
Watching how this child was treated since birth and by her own relatives made me feel uncomfortable. She was often unhappy and angry from a very early age. “Because I am black, you do not love me,” she’d often say to her mother. Now she was given everything she needed and was also shown love and affection, but that did not change the fact that she had to hear hurtful things about her skin color daily.
A few years later, another child was born. Only this time, it was a “white” child.
A dream come true.
The child became the center of praise and attention. It was the topic of the day for months. All the while, the brown child always had to hear negative comments about her skin color— people in Nicaragua are very unwary and will often make hurtful comments thoughtlessly.
The same thing had happened when I was born. To the misfortune of my siblings, I was the “pretty” child; the one everyone praised; meanwhile, my siblings lived in the shadows of my “whiteness.”
Many children in Nicaragua grow with insecurities because of their brown skin. Nicknames such as negro/a are very common; my own father is nicknamed el negro [the black one] because he is much too brown. This nickname is a constant reminder of the trauma brown children experience since birth.
This idea that brown skin is inferior drives many people to look for partners with “white” skin. Many of my relatives have engaged in relationships seeking not love but “white” children. Often, however, children are born brown regardless, which leads to unhappiness for the parents and the children.
Mestizaje is often talked about as though it was a positive thing for Latin America’s indigenous peoples. However, mestizaje is a weapon used against indigenous identity and bloodline every day all over the Americas and is mostly children who suffer the consequences.
Initially, mestizaje required the mixing of blood, but after Latin America’s independence from Spain, mestizaje took a different meaning. Mestizaje today is used to kill the American Indian in Latin America by having him deny his roots and identify as mestizo instead.
And so, because most people are now considered mestizos regardless if they are mixed or not, the hope of “white” children is always there. We always expect our children to look like “the Spanish grandfathers” that many don’t have.
Jeffrey L. Gould, in his book, “To Die in this Way Nicaraguan Indians and the Myth of Mestizaje 1880–1965,” wrote —
Census reports have played an important role in justifying the view that the Indians disappeared around the turn of the century. The 1920 Nicaraguan census, for example, showed that the indigenous population had dropped precipitously from 30–40 percent to under 4 percent between 1906 and 1920. These statistics are profoundly misleading, however, for the census recorded no Indians (listed as cobrizos, or “copper-colored”) in the semiurban communities of Sutiaba and Masaya, which had highly visible indigenous populations. The misconduct did not stop there: not a single cobrizo is listed in eleven out of the remaining thirteen Comunidades Indigenas. Finally, by omission, the census assumed that some 30,000 to 40,000 indios bravos had become ladinoized overnight.
A few years after I had moved to the United States, I moved to a white majority town. It was then that I began to experience racism for the first time. I was, on many occasions, forbidden to speak Spanish around white people in my job. I was perplexed, particularly because the Spanish language in Latin America symbolizes that one is less of an American Indian. Spanish is a European language, after all.
While I was chela in Nicaragua, in the United States, I was just another unwanted brown Spanish-speaking Central American immigrant. I began to develop insecurities about myself and my culture, and for many years I lived wishing I was someone else.
I wanted to be white, and in my ignorance, I thought I could achieve that. I avoided the sun at all costs, hoping that would somehow help. I wanted to be blond, and I began to bleach my hair— because my hair is so dark, I had to apply bleach several times, damaging it to the point of no return.
Nothing worked, of course. The problem was not my outward appearance. It was inner feelings of insecurities and low self-esteem. It didn’t matter how blond my hair looked because it was damaged; it made me feel worse. And avoiding the sun just made me a little less tan but tan nonetheless.
It was then that I began to think of all the brown relatives back home and how they must have felt every day of their lives. I remembered my cousin, who was nicknamed negra. I love her so much that I felt terrible thinking about what she must have gone through her whole life. I didn’t like how brown children were treated, but I had no idea what internal racism felt like before.
As I ponder upon these things, I realized that I would never be white no matter what I did. And fooling myself made me no different from all the people who believed that only white skin makes people better.
A few years later, I became interested in history, and I learned about mestizaje, how it happened; finally, everything made sense. We saw whiteness as the sacred, the path to god; meanwhile, brown was a synonym of evil. The disdain for brown skin was a colonial point of view, and we had to be beaten to forget all that we once were.
I focused on learning about pre-colonial America; I was fascinated. I began to embrace my American Indian blood more than ever and began to appreciate my intimate connection with this land: America.
I finally began to feel pride in my Maribios ancestors. Carrying the blood of ancient American Indian warriors in my veins was a privilege to me. I wanted to honor their memory. I comprehended that the only way I could honor them was by living the life they were denied. Finally, I accepted who I was with honor and pride.
Learning the history of my people was pivotal in understanding why we feel bad about who we are and why we develop internal racism. Although we are no longer under Spain’s dominion, our colonial days are far from over. We are still deeply affected by outdated views on race and culture.
The world I have experienced is extremely racist. Howbeit, life is worth living, and happiness is the only thing that matters. Worrying about my skin color and race in a world filled with so much beauty is nonsense. I cannot change the minds of those who place skin color above all things. I can only do what’s best for me, and what’s best for me is to be happy and live my life as best I can.
People can still be racist towards me for what they think I am, but only I know who I really am. I choose to be happy and enjoy this beautiful life; I owe it to my ancestors.