Black Pride Is on Rise in Latin America

On Sunday nights, the drummers of Barrio Sur assemble by firelight at an intersection in the historic black neighborhood in a tranquil corner of South America.

Flames dance in a gutter bonfire lighted to tone the hides of the drums. Bottles of red wine change hands. Children cavort. Rows of drummers pound down the street in a blur of muscle, sweat and sound, filling the night with an African-derived rhythm known as candombe.

“The drummers live here, or they used to live here--and on Sundays they come back,” says Ruben Rada, a heavyset musician and television personality who watches with the reserve of an elder statesman. “James Brown is different than Chuck Berry, right? Well, it’s the same with the drums. Every neighborhood has a different beat.”

The street-corner ritual is part of a neglected chapter of the African diaspora. The drums tell a story of the profound impact that African culture has had in Uruguay and elsewhere in Latin America. In fact, Afro-Uruguayans celebrate an often-ignored piece of history: The tango, a dance that was born in Uruguay and neighboring Argentina and is a centerpiece of South American culture, is believed to have African roots.

Throughout Latin America, black communities are asserting themselves after years of marginalization and seeming invisibility. In Brazil, where black and mixed-race people make up more than half the population, two breakthroughs are symptomatic: the election last year of the first black mayor of Sao Paulo and the appointment of Pele, the beloved former soccer star, as minister of sports.

Blacks in other nations are making their presence felt. Voters in Colombia recently elected to Congress politicians who emphasize their African heritage rather than deny it, as in the past. Blacks from Costa Rica to Peru to Uruguay are increasingly active in politics and new organizations that promote black culture.

“There is a reemerging Afro-Latin consciousness,” said James Early, director of cultural studies and communication at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. “Past movements were based mainly on identity politics, a kind of archeology of identity. Now there is more of a move toward political and educational access, protest of racism, access to capital.”

The rise in activism results partly from economic and political stability, which allows societies to concern themselves with the disadvantaged and the disadvantaged to press their demands. The progress of African Americans in the United States also has exerted an influence on Afro-Latins via the mass media, Early said.

“There is so much from U.S. music, sociological images, e-mail, fax, CNN. There is a movement toward knowing each other,” he said.

In one of the few regional studies of its kind, the Inter-American Development Bank published a report in 1996 estimating that as many as 150 million Latin Americans, about a third of the region’s population, are descendants of African slaves. Other estimates are lower because many people of mixed race do not define themselves as black, according to the report.

Influence Is Strong in Cuba and Brazil

Beginning in the 1500s, the slave trade brought as many as 6 million Africans to Latin America. After the abolishment of slavery in the 19th century, African cultural influence remained especially strong in countries such as Cuba and Brazil.

But many nations have yet to acknowledge the plight and contributions of blacks in the way they have recognized oppressed indigenous cultures.

“While the [500th anniversary] of Columbus’ encounter resuscitated the Indian as mythic, there has been marked silence on the issue of blacks,” the 1996 study concluded. “The silence on black communities in Latin America is reflected in the disappearance of blacks from the pages of history in virtually every Latin American nation.”

That void exists in Uruguay and Argentina, nations so similar that Uruguay has been described as a province of its larger neighbor to the west and south. The populations of both countries are descended mostly from Southern European, Jewish and Middle Eastern immigrants and once included considerable numbers of Africans.

Argentina’s black population all but disappeared, decimated in the 1800s by yellow fever, intermarriage and massive military recruitment of blacks, who then died in wars. In Uruguay, people of African descent accounted for about half the population two centuries ago; they now number about 189,000 in a nation of 3.2 million.

Awakening Interest in Recent Years

Traditionally, Afro-Uruguayan culture received little attention--inside or outside the country--except during Carnaval, the festival this month when costumed candombe drummers and dancers take to the streets.

Recent years, however, have brought an awakening. Books and academic conferences on racial themes proliferate. An outspoken black leader--a former maid who has become a writer and activist--ran for Congress in 1996 on the ruling Colorado Party ticket. This year, Rada, a musician and television star who still hangs out with the drummers in Barrio Sur, became the first black actor in memory with a prominent role in a prime-time television series here.

And in a gesture of recognition, Montevideo, the capital, erected a waterfront statue of Yemanja, the goddess of the sea in the African-based Umbanda religion, which has adherents from across the ethnic spectrum.

“There are more and more institutions devoted to African culture, some younger and with international connections and others that are more traditional and conservative,” said Ruben Galloza, 71, a painter and candombe composer in Barrio Sur. “They are not always united--they pull in different directions.”

Organizations such as Afro-Mundo, in which Galloza is active, have established bonds with other black communities in Latin America and the United States. In turn, the region has become a fertile field of study for U.S. experts on African American culture. Although many Americans know very little about Uruguay, African American scholars have shown a keen interest, organizing academic conferences and specializing in themes such as the work of Afro-Uruguayan literary figures.

In contrast to Argentina, where dark-skinned people often are referred to insultingly as negros (blacks), little Uruguay--known as the Switzerland of South America--prides itself on a history of prosperity, social welfare and tolerance. Unlike its conservatively Roman Catholic and class-stratified neighbors, Uruguay legalized divorce long ago, welcomes political refugees and offers accessible quality education to all.

That atmosphere has kept race conflict to a minimum. Many Afro-Uruguayans see no need for racial politics or alliances. A U.S. diplomat who organized a luncheon here for black female professionals, a minority within a minority, discovered to her surprise that many had never met.

But there are few black university graduates or government officials in Uruguay. Poor health, housing and job conditions are the result of paternalistic racism, according to Galloza.

‘We Allow Ourselves to Be Dominated’

“The racism is not direct like it was in the United States, where black people, upon being rejected, organized and became strong,” Galloza said. “Blacks in the United States fought and demanded. In contrast, in Uruguay, we don’t demand. We are dominated and allow ourselves to be dominated.”

African slaves and their descendants figured prominently in the founding of Uruguay and Argentina. In the late 1700s, Montevideo became a major arrival port for slaves, most brought from Portuguese colonies of Africa and bound for Spanish colonies of the New World: the mines of Peru and Bolivia and the fields and cities of Argentina and Uruguay.

In the 1800s, when Uruguay joined other colonies in fighting for independence from Spain, Uruguayan national hero Jose Artigas led an elite division of black troops against the colonists. One of his top advisors was Joaquin Lezina, known as Ansina, a freed slave who composed musical odes about his commander’s exploits and is regarded by Afro-Uruguayans as an unheralded father of the nation.

By 1834, when Uruguay abolished slavery, documents described African dance rituals in Montevideo and the countryside known as tangos, with the accent on the second syllable. The word referred variously to the drums, the dances and the places where the religious rituals were held. Therein lies an intriguing musicological tale about the obscure origins of the tango, one of the best-known Latin American musical genres.

The tango developed simultaneously in Montevideo and Buenos Aires. Although typically regarded as the creation of Italian and Spanish immigrants, the tango’s music and the dance movements associated with it were deeply influenced by African dance and music, according to experts.

The modern tango is an offshoot of African dances, the experts say. The new form shed the drums in favor of the guitar and the bandonion, a type of accordion, and melded with immigrant musical influences: habaneras brought by Cuban sailors; Andalusian melodies from Spain; and nostalgic Italian folk songs. The sound and lyrics of the hybrid product combine driving rhythms and blues-like lament.

The beat and the roots remain African, according to Galloza and others.

“The rhythm of the tango, more than the tango itself, was, is and will be black,” Galloza said. “It evolved with the lyrics and everything, but the base is black.”

Despite the lack of definitive documentation, most Argentine scholars agree on the African origins of the word and the fundamental role of African dances. In the Buenos Aires of the late 19th century, African-derived dances survived in the remnants of black communities in old port neighborhoods. Curious new immigrants from Europe and gauchos from the countryside frequented the dances. Later, they simultaneously imitated and mocked the black dancers, creating a style of their own in waterfront dives and music halls.

“In the brothels, they imitated the dances they had seen,” said Eduardo Rafael, a Buenos Aires journalist who is an authority on the tango. “The form of the dance has a very strong African influence.”

Nonetheless, the emphasis by white and black Uruguayan connoisseurs on the tango’s African aspects has caused a spirited dispute in Montevideo’s cultural circles. Galloza accuses critics of trying to “whiten” history.

“There is a lot of debate about this issue of the tango. There are those who say it’s reverse racism,” he said. “But let those who disagree tell me where it’s from. The word is black. It’s like saying that the word ‘tarantella’ is not Italian.”

When Galloza was born, in 1926, Uruguay was flourishing economically thanks to wheat and beef exports, and politically thanks to Jose Batlle y Ordonez, a visionary president who constructed an orderly welfare-state democracy inspired by the Swiss model.

Blacks benefited along with everyone else, but they were relegated largely to domestic and menial jobs. As a young man, Galloza endured incidents of discrimination, such as being turned away from movie theaters. He says his 18-year-old son and his friends have trouble getting job interviews.

Art Flowers in Heart of Two Tenements

The heart of Galloza’s community was once two tenements that are abandoned ruins today: Ansina (named after the historical figure) and Medio Mundo. The tenements were squalid but vibrant, a center for candombe performances known as llamadas (drum calls)--a direct offshoot of the slave dances.

Another artist, Carlos Paez Vilaro, produced his first paintings in the 1950s when he rented a room in Medio Mundo and depicted scenes of tenement life. Paez, a jet-setting Uruguayan of European descent, has concentrated on African themes ever since and is now Uruguay’s best-known visual artist.

Unlike Paez, Galloza lived in the neighborhood because of necessity. The son of a black domestic servant and an Italian father whom he never met, Galloza worked as a golf caddy, messenger and museum guard while pursuing a career as a self-taught painter.

Today, he makes a living from his art, which has been promoted by the Uruguayan Foreign Ministry and exhibited in Germany, Spain, South Africa, Brazil and Argentina. The engaging, stocky artist paints scenes of Afro-Uruguayan culture that are bright and exuberant but tinged with melancholy--Barrio Sur, candombe and tango musicians, Carnaval characters such as the granillero, a kind of shaman.

“I am doing pretty well now,” Galloza said. “But it took a lot of effort. I have painted for 40 years, but I had to demand my place. I don’t wait to be called--I go. Because internationally, many people do not even know that there are blacks in Uruguay.”