Brazil will not allow U.S. use its territory to invade Venezuela - vice president

[Judi Lynn]

38. Small excerpt from Wikipedia:

Venezuela
When the Venezuelan War of Independence started, the Spanish enlisted the Llaneros, playing on their dislike of the criollos of the independence movement. José Tomás Boves led an army of llaneros which routinely killed white Venezuelans. After several more years of war, which killed half of Venezuela's white population, the country achieved independence from Spain in 1821.[13][14]

In Venezuela, like other South American countries, economic inequality often breaks along ethnic and racial lines.[15] A 2013 Swedish academic study stated that Venezuela was the most racist country in the Americas,[15] followed by the Dominican Republic.[15]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_South_America

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Venezuela’s long history of racism is coming back to haunt it
August 16, 2017 4.30am EDT

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The ugly truth
Before Hugo Chávez was elected in 1998, Venezuela attracted little international attention. It was seen as exceptionally stable by Latin American standards, and was best known for its beauty queens and its oil. Those national icons represent the racial and cultural politics that are driving today’s unrest.

Let’s start with the beauty queens. While a majority of Venezuelans identify as black, indigenous or mestizo (mixed-race), the country’s beauty queens invariably conform to white beauty ideals. The organiser of the country’s most important beauty pageant has stated that black women are not pretty because their noses are “too wide” and their lips “too thick”. Afro hair is commonly referred to as pelo malo – “bad hair”.

These aesthetic values have political, cultural and economic counterparts. In the mid-19th century, several Latin American governments implemented “whitening” policies along the ideological lines laid out in books such as Facundo: Civilisation and Barbarism. Large scale European migration was promoted for the “improvement” of “the race”. In Venezuela, these policies continued until the 1940s.

This belief in the natural superiority of Europeans was also evident in the economically crucial, foreign-owned oil sector. Professionals and middle managers were white Venezuelans, but labourers were recruited from black and mixed-race sectors. By the time oil was nationalised in 1976, the Venezuelan middle class it helped to create had come to identify with US-style political, cultural and consumer patterns. For these Venezuelans, dubbed “miameros” because of their frequent shopping trips to Miami, oil symbolised civilisation, while the black and mixed-race masses represented the perceived barbarism of the past.

But Venezuela’s apparent “exceptionalism” was an illusion. In the 1960s and 1970s, the “common sense” ideas of progress and modernity promulgated by the oil industry and backed by the government ran into trouble. Social tensions developed around the unequal access to oil profits, and strong currents of barrio and grassroots activism began to surge. The situation worsened in the 1980s as oil prices dropped and the bolívar currency was devalued.

In February 1989, the Caracazo uprisings broke out in anger at newly-imposed, right wing economic reforms. An ensuing military crackdown claimed the lives of more than 400 people, mainly from the barrios. To this day, poorer Venezuelans remember this state violence as an act carried out to protect the interests of the wealthy middle classes and their foreign allies. As a woman from the 22 de Enero barrio told me in 2008: “You never saw anybody on the right protesting against the shooting of us; [they] … never cried when we were shot.”

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Maduro’s popularity has fallen significantly this year, but many who have withdrawn their support for him feel alienated by the opposition’s anti-poor discourse. They fear that a return to the political right would reverse the gains made under Chavismo, and worse. Their fears are not theoretical; as observed by Gabriel Hetland of the State University of New York at Albany, the opposition has carried out “brutal attacks” directed at “black and brown men … and other people who look Chavista”.

The crisis in Venezuela is not simply a matter of left wing versus right wing political and economic systems. It is also rooted in competing ideas about racial and cultural worth. The ugly truth is that for some, it is still a matter of civilisation versus barbarism.

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http://theconversation.com/venezuelas-long-history-of-racism-is-coming-back-to-haunt-it-82199

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‘Pigmentocracy’ a Major Factor in Brazil, Venezuela Turmoil
BY RAY LEGENDRE ON AUGUST 11, 2016

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To Brazil’s north, Venezuela is a nation struggling with food and money shortages as grim as its neighbor’s opening ceremonies were glitzy. Generally, in Latin America, the roots of economic disequilibrium are found in race, Hernández noted. Venezuela is no exception. To speak of poor Venezuelans is to speak of Venezuelans of African ancestry, the professor added.

In the past decade, presidents for of both Venezuela and Brazil have championed racially inclusive programs, breaking a long-held taboo in Latin American politics. They introduced wealth redistribution policies and incorporated more African descendents into positions of governmental power than ever before. The leaders responsible for these changes, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil and the late Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, no longer hold power.

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Mass protests have packed major cities across both countries. However, who is protesting and why is not always as it appears from a distance. Observed up close, protests in both countries revolve around lighter-skinned elites’ desire to retake control and squelch reform efforts, Hernández said.

Ultimately, ascertaining who stands to suffer the most in both countries remains sadly predictable. The economic hardships present in Venezuela belie the fact that the food shortage does not exist in equal opportunity for the elites, the professor explained. Nor is corruption, a political virus in both countries, a dynamic that cuts across class.

“Corruption hits hardest for those viewed as most expendable,” Hernández said. “Unfortunately social expendability in Latin America and these two countries aligns on a race spectrum, a pigment spectrum.”

More:
http://news.law.fordham.edu/blog/2016/08/11/pigmentocracy-a-major-factor-in-brazil-venezuela-turmoil/

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