For dark-skinned Mexicans, taint of discrimination lingers |
For dark-skinned Mexicans, taint of discrimination lingers
McClatchy DC: Watching Washington and the World
2013-08-22
Tim Johnson, McClatchy Foreign Staff
MEXICO CITY — Flip through the print publications exalting the activities of Mexico’s high society and there’s one thing you rarely find: dark-skinned people.
No matter that nearly two-thirds of Mexicans consider themselves moreno, the Spanish word for dark.
Mexico has strong laws barring discrimination based on skin color or ethnicity, but the practices of public relations firms and news media lag behind, promoting the perception that light skin is desirable and dark skin unappealing.
The issue came to the fore this month when a casting call for a television spot for Mexico’s largest airline stated flatly that it wanted “no one dark,” sparking outrage on social media and, ultimately, embarrassed apologies.
“I’d never seen anything that aggressive and that clear, all in capital letters: ‘NO ONE DARK,’” said Tamara de Anda, a magazine editor. “I decided to go with it.”…
…But the distance between legalities and practice is substantial, said Mario Arriagada Cuadriello, a doctoral candidate in comparative politics at the London School of Economics. He is an editor at Nexos, a leading cultural and political magazine.
When Arriagada published an article in this month’s issue about widespread discrimination in Mexico, he received a flurry of responses.
“People wrote to say that if you are light-skinned, you get better treatment in restaurants,” he said. One person told him that in an exclusive area of the capital, residents ask that their dark-skinned domestic servants not walk in the common gardens “because it is anti-aesthetic and makes the areas ugly.”
One of Mexico’s most prominent intellectuals from the early 20th century, Jose Vasconcelos, held up the mestizo, or person of mixed Indian and European blood, as part of a superior “cosmic race” with greater spiritual values…
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Tags: Afro-Mexicans, Afromexicans, Mario Arriagada Cuadriello, McClatchy DC, McClatchy DC: Watching Washington and the World, Tim Johnson