cuaprer a4 Racist Stereotypes and the Embodiment of Blackness Some Narratives of Female Sexuality in Quito JEAN MUTEBA RAHIER Negra, negra bullanguera, eee Tuboca anoche me supo ‘Aun mate de agua surumba, (Negra, negra bullanguera, (Negra, juyunga, cuscunga, Hacé callé tu cadera, Defé tranguila mi vida, ‘Negra, negra bullanguera, Negra, juyunga, cuscunga, Enlacalle cu cadera Se cimbra como escalera, Negra, negra bullanguera, Negra, juyunga, cuscunga, De caderas de pantera, ‘Te voy a hace esta propuesta, Por rebelde y altanera ‘Tengamos los dos un hijo Pa’ que cuando yo me muera ‘Sus putios color de brea Conduzean nuestra bandera. Nelson Estupifin Bass, “Canto Negro para la Luz”* In this chapter, I focus on the way sexuality, a fundamental aspect of iden- tities, has been negotiated and renegotiated by Afro-Ecuadorian women Black woman, loud black woman, Black woman, juyunga, dari woman, ‘Last night your mouth had the caste (Of a surumba herb tea, Black woman, loud black woman, Black woman, juyunga, dark woman, Keep your hips quiet, Allow me tranguillty, Black woman, loud black woman, Black woman, juyunga, dark woman, In the street your hips Stick out ike a stairway. Black woman, loud black woman, Black woman, juyunga, dark woman, With panther hips, Ym gonna make you this proposition ‘Because you're a rebel with pride: Let's you and Ihave a son, Sothat when I die, ls dark fists will hold our flag, thin what I call the Ecuadorian *raca-spatial order" fom the perspective ofthe particular local context of Quito atthe end ofthe rop0s. The premise {that identities are multiple, multifaceted, and nonessential; they are per formed and performed anew within evolving socioeconomic an politcal sit tations following personal or individual preferences and decisions. This requites us t view blackness in terms of personal, socal cultural, poi Cal, and economic processes embedded in particular time-space context, which are constituted within local, regional, national, and transnational dimensions ‘My approach s twofold, First, | examine the reproduction of stereotypical sepresentations of black females as hypersexualized beingsin Ecuadorian o- ciety orn what could be called the Ecuadorian common sense Secon, lan- alse the narratives of sexual ie history tht four Affo-Reuadorian women residing in Quito shared with me between 1997 and 2091, during long con- ‘etsations held in a variety of locations. This examination provies not only the opportunity to appreciate the affects that these racist, stereotypical rep- resentations have halon te lives of these women, it ls allows ws to un- ‘cover the way these four women, as sociopolitical and sexual agents, have developed different strategies for pleasures and positive selFconstruction ‘within a particular racist society. The focus is onthe interface berween the personal and the structural o societal, between self presentation and inter pellation Indesd, the research reveals that dierent individuals o agents Submited to the same socioeconomic and political reality make different choices, which always express an original combination of both resscance and accommodation or adaptation to this realty (See Foucault 1975, 1978; Butler:997), “This research follows the work of various scholars who consider the con- nections between power and sexuality fmporeant because the relation that ‘wehave with ourselves as sexual beings isa fundamental component of mod- «rm identty. Giddens (1992215), for example, wrote, ‘Somehow... sexual ity functions asa malleable feature of lf, prime connecting point between body, selidentity, and social norms.” And before that, Foucsult (978103) Ind already stated that “sexuality isnot she most itractable element in power relations, but rather one of those endowed with the greatest instru ‘mentality, useful forthe greatest aumber of maneuvers and capable of serv ingasa point of suppor, a linckpin, forthe most vated strategies.” ‘The work of Franz Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks (1967), although problematic because of its characteristic peripheral treatment of black ‘women (Bergner 1993), hasbeen conceptually fundamental to chisresearch. For Fanon, sexand sexuality ae not exclusively about personal oringividual pleasures and desits. He approached sexual desires and sexual practies or Racist Stereoypes andthe Embodimentof Blackness = 297performances as highly responsive to social and historical circumstances, Where other intellectuals such as Freud (e.g., Fuss 1995; Lévi-Strauss 1962; Merieau-Ponty 1962) had theorized about the body in such a way as to stan dardize the wisite male body into the norm with which all other bodies had to be evaluated and imagined, Fanon powerfully introduced the notion of the (nonwhite male) racialized body, the black body, whichis, he asserts, in colonial and “posteolonial” (neocolonial) contexts, an ontological impossi bility (see also Mohanram 1999). Although the former reproduced the West cera tradition that includes “disembodying” the white male by standardizing. his body, Fanon insisted on the opposite: the “embodiment of blackness,” or the fact that blackness is nothing but body. Stereotypes about Black Bodies and Black Sexuality, Stereotypes about blackness, black bodies, and black sexuality in particular abound in Ecuador. These stereotypes share many similarities with compa- rable representations of blackness in other national contexts or in the trans- national scene. ‘The expansion of Europe into non-European spaces came along with the COtherization of non-European peoples and their transformation, from a Eu rocentric perspective, into “inferior races." Indeed, since the beginning ofthe eighteenth century, European imperialist discourses of Otherization of non- European people very often used sexuality as a trope. In these discourses, ‘sexuality is manipulated in two different ways, which are related to one an- other. References to sexuality serve to construct brown and black people as savagelike individuals whose characteris denoted by “immoral,” “abnor- ‘mal," and “obsessive” sexual practices or, by contrast, sexuality appears as the very metaphor ofthe imperial enterprises by which white males conquer foreign and faraway lands that are symbolized by available brown and black {female bodies waiting to be penetrated (Schick 1999). As Foucaule(1978:32) ‘wrote, “discourses on sex did not multiply apart from or against power, but inthe very space and as the means ots exercise.” Black and brown women's bodies and sexuality have been construed as directly opposed to the way in which white European women's bodies and sexuality were imagined or reported, idealized and standardized as norms for proper female bodily characteristics and behaviors, For instance, one can recall here the work of Sander Gilman (19852, 198sb) on the tragedy of Sarah Baartman, the so- called Hottentot Venus, and the obsession of Ruropean medical doctors of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with her vagina lips—and espe- cially with her so-called vaginal apron —and with her buttocks, which were ‘compared to the same body parts of Italian prostitutes (abnormal or patho- 298: JM Rabie logical white women), before reaching conclusions about the naturally enor- ‘mous sexual appetite of black women in general Blackness and Ecuadorian National Identity “The previous statements briefly present known information about crans- rational, Eurocentric, racist, stereorypic representations of black women's bodies and sexuality: Although many ofthe representations under scrutiny here do share similarities with representations reproduced in other national contexts —at least inthe Americas and in Europe —every national context does present a series of circumstantial particularities related to specific socioeconomic an politcal processes and histories that make of ech one of them and its atendant railized oppressons a singular story that needs tobe approached with respect for its originalities (see Wade 199721; Hall 1992:12-19) ‘To comprehend the situation of Ecuador, one must keepin mind that black ‘women's femininity and sexuality have ben imagined and ideologically con- sxructed in direct elation, if not definitive opposition, tothe femininity and sexuality of two other categories of females: white females (including 50 called white-mestizo females) and indigenous females. For the purpose of this discussion, I could limit the ideological landscape of Ecuadorian femi- ninities to simplified situation in which there ae, without mentioning mas- cline for now, chree fundamental actors: white (and white-mestizo) fe males, indigenous females, and black or Afro-Bcuadorian females. Jn Ecuador, in other Latin American contexts, white and w _tban and national elites have imagined the national identity arou tion of mestisaje (race mixing). These ideology of national ss hat proclaim Despite this hegemonte attempt at racial and ethnic homogenization, the eandovinWcoloy of atonal ent real in rast map of natal modernity, and url areas are considered paces of iil inferior olence, backwardness, savagery, and cultural deprivation. These areas, Foy inhabited by nonwhites or nonwhite mestins, have been viewed by the elites as representing major challenges tothe fal ational development toward the deals of modernity For Ecuador, mestane, as Norman Whiten asi Stereoryper and the Embodiment of Blchness.: 299explains, does not mean that whites “indianize” themselves, but that, on the ary; Indians whiten themselves “racially and culturally: the offal national ident “fis| an ideology of blanaquea- of mestzae™ Qwhiten, personal In this official imagination of ecuatorianidad ("Ecuadorian-ness"), there is logically no place for blacks: they mustremain peripheral. Afro-Eeuadorians, ‘who represent between § percent and ro percent of the national population, ate the ultimate Other, some sort ofa historical aecident, a noise in the ideo- logical system of nationality, a pollution in the Ecuadorian genetic pool. ‘The best example of noncitizenship, “they are not part of mestizaje,” unlike indigenous peoples (Muratorio 1994). In the logic of the national racial. spatial order, the two traditional regions of blackness (both developed dur- ing the colonial period), the Province of Esmeraldas and the Chote-Mira Val ley, are looked down on by whites and white-mestizos; this is what Peter Wade (1993) calls “cultural topography.” ‘The ideological outsiderness of blacks in the biclogy of national identity is denoted in the discourse about black women's bodies and sexuality. Emma Cervone (2000) has written on the characteristic masculinity of the Ecuador- fan elites’ voice and imagination of mestizaje. The latter logically leads to the conception of (blond and blue-eyed) white and white-mestizo females and their sexuality as aesthetically and morally ideal. These ideals constitute more or less violent standards that every woman should try to attain at all, costs. This standardization and its attendant construction of Other bodies hhave been encrypted in various aspects ofthe Ecuadorian landscape: every- day vocabulary and conversations, written and visual representations in the ‘media, texts of songs and popular culture, and literature, Elsewhere, Ihave written on the place of blackness in national and other Keuadorian beauty contests, in which black beauty queens altered the color of their eyes as well as the color and consistency of their hair to approximate these standards (Rahier 1998, 19999). In August 1999, on the plane from Miami to Quito, I met an Ecuadorian ‘white-mestize man, an acquaintance of mine whom [had not seen for years. He is an architect who was working atthe time in the office of Quito’ mayor. He explained that he had been traveling in the United States with some of his colleagues to look for funding for one of the mayor’ construction projects. Tewas an evening flight, the plane was half empty, and we had been drinking ‘wine with our dinner. After requesting some more wine from the flight at- tendant, he asked me why was going to Ecuador this time. I responded that [as working on a new research project. He wanted more details and 1 be- ‘gan to explain thatthe project focused on black women's sexuality in Quito, 300: AMLRahier ‘as well as on the ways the racial order was, or was not, # major factor in the shaping of black people's, and inthis specific case, black women’s sexuality. 1 wanted to go further in my explanation when he suddenly Interrupted ‘me to shave his views on the matter. Making an abstraction of my own black ‘ness, he went on to theorize that unlike white people and “Indians,” he said, black people wherever they are found, fail to repress their sexuality; they hhad a mitch freer rapport with their bodies; cheir sexuality and their natural sensuality were important and normal parts oftheir daily ives. That is why they dance the way they dance, with lascivious body movements. “Even the ‘way they walk,” he said, “even the way they walk.” From watching the facial ‘expression he had at that precise moment, his wine glass in his hand, his eyes Jost on the ceiling of the plane's cabin, T wondered if he was daydream- ing about one of his phantasms. For him, ths "sexual permissiveness," as he seemed to suggest, explained the particularity of many of black people's daily behaviors. His authoritative monologue was beginning to irritate me just when one of his colleagues asked him to join his group a few rows away. ‘The relatively quiet violence of his “commonsensical comments" goes to the heart of what I try co accomplish in this chapter. It is notable that just as it has been the case in other Latin American con- texts, ewentieth-century writers from regions associated with blackness have reproduced these stereotypes about black women’s bodies and sexvality in their pooms. That is the case of the Esmeraldian writer, Nelson Estupifién ‘Bass, in the epigraph of this chapter? From the perspective of modern, urban, Ecuadorian society, indige- rows of “Indian” femele bodies and sexuality have been construed as if they exist off to one side of the fundamental opposition described between ‘white women and black women (see Rahier 19998: 108~10). Ifin many ways {indigenous females do unequivocally enter in the category of “women” with the black females, unlike the later, they do not appear in the same position when references to physical attractiveness and exotic sexuality are made. In faet, in the popular iconography, as well as in written texts, indige- nous women very often appear as nonsexual beings who supposedly smell bad; who submissively work all the time to raise their children, work the Fields, and sellin the markets; and who often beg at traffic lights with their most recently born child tied to their backs. Their bodies are usually repre- sented as unattractively small and deprived of the curves that characterize black women’s bodies in the popular imaginary. (An exception should be made here concerning indigenous women from Otavalo and their changing, representations.)* ‘This relative “attractiveness” of black women witen compared with the similar processes of imagination and cultural construction of indigenous fe- Racist Stereotype andthe Embodiment of Blackness + 301