A new day for Blacks in Ecuador

New Crisis, The, Nov/Dec 2002 by Robinson, Lori S

When 23 Africans aboard a wrecked Spanish slave ship liberated themselves and created a palenque, a free Black community, in October 1553, they set a standard of resistance and empowerment that would in spire their descendants hundreds of years later. Today, Black Ecuadorians honor their ancestors by celebrating the National Day of Black People the first Sunday of October. This year, festivities included sports competitins, music concerts and an Afrocentric Catholic mass.

Those courageous Africans might be disappointed with their commemoration, however. There are few celbrations and ceremonies. In fact, says might Brine disappointed not a national holiday and it their comnot even well known. News about it is spread only within Black communities." Declared in a resoulution by Eucador's National Congress in 1997 after intense lobbying by Black organizations, the National Day of Black People is nevertheless considered a significant triumph. Considering the political and social environment in which Black Ecuadorians live, it is no surprise that this resolution is a very big deal.

Today in Ecuador, a South American nation of 12.1 million people with a land area about the size of Colorado, employers advertise for job applicants with a "good appearance," a euphemism for White or European characteristics. Landlords openly reject applications from Blacks looking for housing in middle-class areas. In Ecuador, you can see Whites in blackface on television and logos of major companies featuring caricatures of Blacks designed to look more like monkeys than humans.

In rural Black areas, lack of government investment is evident. In the province of Esmeraldas, which has the highest concentration of Afro-Ecuadorians, entire towns are without electricity, schools and other basic services and infrastructure. Many communities that live off the land there are being forced out as lumber, oil, mining and shrimp-farm companies (many of them U.S.-owned) exploit the natural habitat.

The percentage of Ecuadorians living below the poverty line jumped from 34 percent in 1995 to 56 percent by the end of the decade. The poverty rate grew fastest over the last decade in the coastal region of the country, where there is a higher concentration of Blacks.

Many Blacks are fleeing to major cities, but even the capital city, Quito, and the largest city, Guayaquil, offer them few modern amenities. "The urban [Black] community lives on the periphery of the city. There are no basic services, insufficient electricity, housing of very poor material. And there are few schools to attend," explains Ibsen Hemandez, president of Afroamerica XXI, a civic group in Guayaquil. "They don't tell you that you can't study, but subtly they are saying that you can't."

"Marginalized, exploited, excluded from national development," is how Oscar Chala describes the daily reality of Ecuador's African descendants. An anthropologist in Chota, the northern valley region with a significant Black population descended from enslaved Africans, he says, "We are terribly vulnerable. We are the greatest mass of poor people in the country."

"The majority [of Blacks live] in misery. The majority is very poor. They are illiterate, unemployed, without health care, education," says Josefina Orovio, a federal official.

Tenacious racism and overwhelming poverty paint a grim portrait of Black life in Ecuador. Add to that a citizenry devoid of racial consciousness and it's easy to understand why Black oppression seems so intractable. But a bustling movement of activists is stirring up change, spurred by the triumphs of the bold political movement of Ecuador's indigenous people and inspired by Black activism throughout the Americas.

"There's this fervor to organize," says Sheila S. Walker, who holds the Cosby Endowed Chair for the Humanities at Spelman College. Walker has visited every South American country except Guyana, as well as much of Central America and the Caribbean. As a guest of the U.S. Embassy in February, she made her first sojourn to Ecuador, where she gave Black History Month lectures around the country. "As compared to every place else I was, there were more [Black] organizations in Ecuador."

Blacks Don't Count

Known for eco-tourism, Ecuador boasts the world's highest active volcano (located in the Andes Mountains), a tropical Pacific coast and part of the Amazon rainforest. Ecological diversity is a source of national pride. Human diversity is another story.

In Ecuador, where African slavery lasted from 1534 to 1854, Spanish colonizers sought to forge a homogenous population through blanqueamiento, a policy of "whitening" or making the population as visibly and culturally European as possible through race-mixing. Today, most Ecuadorians are considered mestizos, a Spanish-indigenous mix, although many identify themselves as White.

"Race-mixing, the center of national identity, involved indigenous people and Whites. Although indigenous people have been suffering tremendously from racism throughout history, they nevertheless are included in this ideological biology of national identity, while Blacks aren't," explains Jean Muteba Rapier, an anthropology professor at Florida International University in Miami.