Wade (2001) argues in his article that ideas are now advanced about how and why ideologies of race, nation and related concepts including those of gender and sexuality interrelate. These interrelationships can, according to Wade, result in tensions associated with sameness between race or differences, including those associated with national identities. The author focuses on Columbian popular music, and its use as a cultural form of nationalist expression in Latin America, and how this helps create an ideology of race, nation and related concepts. Wade begins by suggesting that early in history, in Europe classes including the bourgeoisies tried to repress sexuality to help manage the nations; such actions also worked to purify the national population and segregate or prevent contamination of the races. This defined the nation at the time, considering certain classes to be outsiders, as people were defined as both racially impure and sexually deviant that fell outside of the bourgeoisie category.
Wade suggests that post-war societies were later categorized by decay and poverty with problems associated by inner city minorities. Wade moves on to explore the culture of Columbia with specific reference to the music of the land, which is associated with reference to the indigenous people. This music offers a representation of “happiness, tropicality, blackness and sexual freedom” which is very much the opposite of what many indigenous black populations have been represented as in the past. It represents much of what the Colombian elite’s have “self-represented as a whitened and Europhile” image so that the image of the indigenous population is whitened, yet still indigenous and still representative of the tropical identity of the culture. While some felt the music was vulgar and inappropriate, many others felt the happiness portrayed was appropriately “black” in nature, that served the purposes of the indigenous people and may have been associated with relevance to the national identity which included integration.
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Many individuals felt that it was important to include the dancing which may felt was raw aggression and sexuality, because it was a symbol of the transformation of the culture, and encouraged greater integration of both the European culture and the indigenous population that now existed, heping to ease racial tensions that existe in the past.
Ramos (2001) similarly presses the concept of indigenism. In her article the author suggests in Latin American countries the term “indigenismo” refers to organizing against nationa pressures. The author suggests that indigenism is more than this. English, meaning the English vocabulary according to the author, does not have such a term, likely because there is no need for it. The author seeks to understand the many representations that people of Latin America and the Brazilian nation have made over hundreds of years of itself, as an enterprise. Meaning, the people of this country have represented themselves in various ways, to Westerners, and to outsiders except as their indigenous an native self. This is interesting, given Wade’s suggestion that the music of the Columbian people appears to outsiders as “happy” and appears to some as vulgar or as expressing raw sexuality, or as “black” but may be simply as normal or natural to the people themselves. Or it may be to the people that they are not truly representing their full indigenous nature, but appearing as white-washed, as expressed by Wade, or this is how the European would like to appear, as they become more modern and capable of accepting a more indigenous culture.
Ramos (2001) discusses many superstitions, including Whiteman’s unconscious beliefs about the luck or unluckiness of wearing a headdress, and how many public figures have either gladly accepted or rebuffed being crowned with such a headdress in public, for fear that it would bring bad luck. Whether this is valid or not is of no regard, because the mass media has brought with it the stigmatization that such a thing may be true. This demonstrates the strength the media has given to the Indian, and to the idea that there is bad luck associated with certain indigenous practices. Further, Ramos suggests that Indians have become “specialists in the art of losing” with the media also suggesting that headdresses may be associated with bringing suffering to a race that is already facing extinction, thus by wearing this object there may be occult powers associated with it. Thus, this has wrought futher fear in the hearts of individuals that are engaged with it, or those that may be associated with it. This may ever have been the case with the indigenous people, rather such may be the effect of a white man’s curse on the native people’s or the indigenous people. This is the power that legends and mysteries may have, or the effect of whiteness on the indigenous people. This is also akin to the power that whiteness may have, as Wade suggests, on the indigenous people, including the power to destroy or unduly influence and indigenous people.
Ramos (2001) also points to the sense of entitlement that the white men have, noting that during a ritual to open a museum to honor the local indigenous peoples, a Shaman noted that museums are things that Whitemen own and that Indian’s shouldn’t fight over things that have always belonged to the White men. Similarly, titles and associations are something that many indigenous peoples tend to feel that elitist Europeans and others will always cling to, which is perhaps why the music of the indigenous Columbian people according to Wade, appears “happy” when perhaps it is merely an expression of life rather than classifying people into a category.
- Wade, P. (2001). “Racial Identity and Nationalism: A Theoretical View from Latin America”. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 24(5): 845-865.
- Ramos, A.R. (2003). “Pulp Fictions of Indigenism”. In, Race, Nature and the Politics of Difference. Edited by Donald S. Moore, Jake Kosek and Anand Pandian, 256-370. Durham: Duke University Press.
