The Americanistas

(Image: eCMetrics)

I think it’s one of the first quantitative pieces of evidence showing the extent to which Afrodescendant populations in Latin America are viewing Obama’s election as a huge shift in the hemisphere’s racial history.

It’s in a poll that hasn’t received much attention. U.S.-based consulting company eCMetrics surveyed 1600 Latin American Internet surfers in the first two weeks of 2009 on their expectations regarding Barack Obama’s government. Besides revealing a predictable surge of optimism as they looked beyond the unpopular government of President Bush, it did serve up some interesting results.

For one, Brazilians, and especially mixed-race Brazilians, tended to view Obama’s racial background as more important than the fact that he was elected with a huge surge of voter participation.

Overall, 65% of Brazilians said the election was most significant because of the election of an African-American candidate. But among those Brazilians who identified themselves as being of African descent, that number was 72%.

In contrast, in Argentina and Mexico, countries with smaller Afrodescendant populations, the more significant result turned out to be not Obama’s breaking of racial barriers, but his election amidst unprecedented voter turnout (47% and 55% respectively).

A full rundown of the poll can be found here in Portuguese.

Gustavo Faverón takes on Aldo Mariátegui, director of Peruvian newspaper Correo, accusing him of stoking prejudice against bilingual Peruvians who speak Quechua as their first language.

In a bit of sensationalistic “gotcha!” journalism, Correo published a front-page article showing how congresswoman Hilaria Supa included misspellings and grammatical errors in her notes during a recent legislative session.

Faverón takes Mariátegui to task here and here, in Spanish, and explains why it’s not just a tabloidy low blow, but “a transparent example of how the mind of a racist operates.”