Pigmentocracy in Latin America life in Latin America. Bonilla-Silva states that whilst race mixing is actively encouraged in Latin America, this is only a strategy for whitening the population and there are strict rules under which it is permitted. Sexual unions are only encouraged between white men and black or Indian women and the men involved are usually poor or working class. The whitening of the population is the ultimate goal, not to promote racial harmony. For this reason: ‘racial mixing…in no way challenged white supremacy in colonial or postcolonial Latin America.’5 Another consequence of the tri-racial racial system is that dark skinned members of the population are driven to trade their blackness, their very humanity, for social mobility by marrying lighter, thereby weakening the collective strength and identity of black people. By buying into to the colour hierarchy system, instead of seeking to disable and dismantle it, those who trade on colour are helping to maintain and reinforce the system of white supremacy. In a lecture given at UCLA in May 2003, Dr Carlos Moore, an Afro-descendant born in Cuba argued that whilst on the surface Latin America may appear to be comprised of colourless societies, in reality race and colour are the most pervasive and dominant features of life. According to Dr Moore, Latin America’s pigmentocracy has its origins in the Arab invasion of the Iberian Peninsula (modern Spain and Portugal) in 711 CE. Dr Moore lived in Egypt for a year at the age of 21 and was astonished at the striking similarities with Cuba in terms of the role that colour played in the social and political spheres and the attitude towards dark-skinned people. Following this revelation he began to study race relations in Arab countries. He has written two books Castro, the Blacks and Africa (1989) and African Presence in the Americas (1996) According to
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