|
|
meaning from a percipient's (i.e., author's) point of view. Still, when accepting an author's claim for the ethnoracial perspective of his or her country as predominantly black, somewhat black, or not black at all, published demographical statistics can be misleading in all of Latin America, precisely because of another observation that Romero makes and asserts with a quote by a fellow observer of race: “Any study of the Negro in Spanish America encounters the initial difficulty of determining who is a Negro” (375). Quite unexpectedly, this perception of Latin America's carefully guarded psychological misgiving about the ethnic and racial image it would be comfortable projecting becomes the subtext of the article that originally was proposed by Romero as a historical investigation (369). It would appear that his concerns for evidence of a declared racial connection, as well as the failure of this to be as forthcoming as anticipated, impeded his approach to obtain facts and truths:
Thus, in his discussion of Peru and its census figures, Romero determined that:
It was not without reason that Susana Baca, a contemporary black Peruvian singer, would assert that even though she grew up surrounded by black music, she could find no mention of Afro Peruvians in the history books of Peru (see Essay I).
Therefore, since most Latin American countries vacillate in recognizing wholeheartedly the African-descendant population in their midst