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Race in Latin America: the concept of ‘raza’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Julian Pitt-Rivers
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Extract

It is well known that the attitudes of the Latin Americans towards race are not the same as those of the inhabitants of Europe and the United States. This observation led scholars as distinguished as Gilberto Freire and Arnold Toynbee to put forward the view that there is no ‘race prejudice’ in Latin America, a view that has been criticised by more recent writers. In Latin America distinctions of ‘race’ are indeed made, but not on the basis of the same premisses as in North America and, though raza and race are the same word, they do not bear the same connotations in Spanish-speaking as in Englishspeaking countries—outside scientific circles, perhaps. ‘Race’ is a system of classifying individuals and, as such, part of each culture, and therefore liable to vary from one to another. But what science has done with the word is another matter.

Type
Research Article
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , June 1973 , pp. 3 - 31
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1973

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References

(1) George Stocking The Nineteenth Century Concept of Race (in press). See also his Race, Culture and Evolution: essays in the history of anthropology (New York 1968)Google Scholar.

(2) Wagley, Charles, The Concept of Social Race in the Americas, Adas del XXXIII Congreso International de Americanistas [José, San, Rica, Costa], I (1959), 403–417Google Scholar, reproduced in Wagley, , The Latin American Tradition (New York, Columbia University Press, 1968)Google Scholar.

(3) The skill with which a recent author has defended the unity of the traditional disparate usages—and the confusion inherent in them—cannot but excite the admiration of the scholarly. Viz. Banton, Michael, Race Relations (London 1967)Google Scholar. See also Pitt-Rivers, J., Race Relations as a Science: a critique of Michael Banton's Race Relations, Race, XI (1969–1970), 335–342Google Scholar.

(4) Cf. Hertz, Robert, Mélanges de sociologie religieuse et de folklore (Paris 1928), p. 99Google Scholar: “Toute hiérarchie sociale se prétend fondée sur la nature des choses […] par lá, elle s'octroie l'éternité […]”.

(5) Levi-Strauss, Claude, The Savage Mind (London 1966), p. 3Google Scholar.

(6) Kubler, George, The Indian Caste of Peru, 1795–1940 (Washington 1950)Google Scholar.

(7) Beltrán, Gonzalo Aguirre, El Proceso de Aculturación (Mexico 1957)Google Scholar.

(8) Tax, Sol (ed.). Heritage of Conquest (Glencoe 1952)Google Scholar.

(9) Whetten, Nathan, Guatemala, the Land and the People (New Haven 1961)Google Scholar.

(10) Adams, Richard N., Cultural Surveys of Panama, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador (Washington 1957)Google Scholar.

(11) Pitt-Rivers, Julian, Who are the Indians?, Encounter, XXV (1965), 41–49Google Scholar.

(12) Bourricaud, François, Changements à Puno (Paris 1962), p. 216Google Scholar.

(13) Colby, Benjamin and Van den Berghe, Pierre, Ethnic Relations in Southeastern Mexico, American Anthropologist, LXIII (1961), 772–792CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goldkind, Victor, Ethnic Relations in Southeastern Mexico: a methodological note, American Anthropologist, LXV (1963), 394–399CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Colby, Benjamin and Berghe, Pierre Van den, Reply to Gold-kind's “Critique of Ethnic Relations in Southeastern Mexico”, American Anthropologist, LXVI (1964), 417–418CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Borah, Woodrow, a historian well aware of cultural anthropology, nevertheless preferred a sociological explanation: Race and Class in Mexico, The Pacific Historical Review, XXIII (1954), n° 4Google Scholar.

(14) For a more detailed account of the etymology of the word, see Pitt-Rivers, J., On the word ‘caste’, in Beidelman, T. O. (ed.), The Translation of Culture. Essays in honour of Evans-Pritchard (London, Tavistock Press, 1971)Google Scholar.

(15) Adams, op. cit.

(16) The common usage of the term owes much to Tumin, Melvin, Caste in a Peasant Society; a case-study in the dynamics of caste (Princeton 1952)Google Scholar.