Lopez Obrador's New Acronym: Playing Race and Class Cards in Mexico? Laura Randall - Mexidata.info
go to original January 31, 2013

Is the often-running presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador trying to lead Mexican politics down the path of President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and President Evo Morales in Bolivia?

On September 9, 2012, AMLO told a crowd in the Zócalo in Mexico City that he would resign from the Democratic Revolution Party, the PRD, and that he would form a new party from the Movement for National Regeneration.[i] In Spanish, the "Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional."

The movimiento's acronym is MORENA. What does MORENA mean?

Definitions vary: In Portugal, it means a brunette; in Brazil, it means people who are of mixed race or who have a brown skin; and in Mexico, "moreno" means someone with dark skin and hair. Sometimes, in all of these countries, it refers to songs and stories about sexy women.

The different meanings in these nations result from the history of each nation. Portugal has a largely white population; Brazil has more than half of its population as non-white, few of whom are indigenes; Mexico has few Afro-Mexicans, and many of mixed indigenous and other "races."

The selection of the words and acronym MORENA at first glance is puzzling, since the most frequently encountered mixed "race" non-white group in Mexico is "mestizo," a group that comprises a large part of the "MORENA" group.

It is hard to specify how many of each "racial" group are in Mexico: the Mexican government does not collect data on race or skin color, but does provide data on 41 indigenous groups.

The official government line is that racism does not exist in Mexico, although indigenous groups, who are not officially identified by skin color, have suffered and now have special status under the "usos y costumbres" legislation in Mexico.

The indigenous groups have been easier to identify and organize than the less well-defined "morenos." The Zapatistas are the best publicized of the rebellious indigenous groups.

Can the fuzzily defined brown-skinned population of Mexico be organized?

Data from surveys that are not those of the Mexican government help to answer this question.

They indicate that white skinned Mexicans have more favorable conditions than light brown Mexicans, who in turn are more favorably treated than dark brown Mexicans. The reported skin color of Mexicans changes from white to light brown, to brown, starting with the north, going to the center, and ending in the south.

Discrimination is more severe against those who identify themselves as indigenous or speak with an indigenous accent. Put a little differently, discrimination is greater according to "class accent" than according to skin color.[ii]

An article by Andrés Villarreal, based on a 2007 study, shows that "Respondents who are light brown have 29.5 percent lower odds of having a college education or more compared to those who are white, while those who are dark brown have 57.6 percent lower odds.

The difference in occupational status between light-brown and white respondents, and especially between dark-brown and white respondents, is substantially reduced once education level is introduced as a predictor. In other words, the disparity in access to education among respondents in different color categories may explain a large part, but not all, of the observed differences in occupational status.

Respondents in the lowest occupational categories, such as domestic workers, manual workers, drivers and security guards, are much more likely to be in the dark-brown category and less likely to be in the white category than are respondents in the highest status occupations, such as office supervisors, professional workers and employers. Only 9.4 percent of manual workers are considered white, compared with 28.4 percent of professionals. Light-brown workers have 25.2 percent lower odds of being a professional worker than whites, while a dark-brown respondent has 35.9 percent lower odds of being in the top two occupational categories than a white respondent.

"These differences in socioeconomic outcomes are, of course, insufficient to demonstrate the persistence of discriminatory practices against individuals based on the color of their skin," Villarreal says. "However, the fact that differences in occupational status across skin color categories cannot be fully explained by other factors, suggests that Mexicans with darker skin tones may in fact face discrimination in the labor market." There is greater consensus about who is white than who is light brown or who is dark brown. And ejidatarios are better off than other agricultural workers.

Moreover, skin color is a greater obstacle than poverty to being perceived as a member of the upper classes. "Color differences may matter more in the higher end of the socioeconomic spectrum than among the lower socioeconomic strata where the boundary between indigenas and mestizos is located. In other words, while a darker skin tone may not distinguish indigenas from lower class mestizos, a darker skin tone may be a greater barrier for entry into the middle and upper classes. (...)Discrimination may take place without well-defined boundaries." (p. 671)[iii]

The white-skinned presidential candidate, AMLO, is in the process of organizing a political party based on MORENA, by organizing 251 municipal political committees in Quintana Roo, Yucatan, Campeche, Chiapas, and Veracruz, with the objective of obtaining 1.5 million signatures, more than the number required by the Federal Election Institute to form a new political party.[iv] As well, MORENA expects to expand its activities to Mexican communities in the U.S.

AMLO is known for his opposition to what he perceives as the unchanging status quo. For analysis of the number of people he hopes to attract to the proposed new political party, the specifics of his platform may be more important. These, so far, have been what used to be called "political moral rearmament," and an objection to increases in taxes and "selling out oil to national and foreign private interests." Perhaps a detailed platform
will result from the many meetings of the municipal councils of MORENA.

In the long run, there should be some statements about the success, failure, impact of previous governments' housing policies, assistance to rural areas, other transfer programs, and even Mexico's ability to somewhat withstand the recent U.S. recession.

Regarding discrimination in Mexico according to skin color, and also the partly overlapping category of class, effective platform planks might also address access to and quality of education, specifically addressing the role and
governance of the teachers' union, which is especially important because teachers can choose to ignore the government rules about educational content and teacher' showing up at schools and their performance when they are there; as well as access to semi-skilled and skilled labor unions and jobs.

Until the specifics of its platform are known, MORENA is nothing to sing about.
---
[i] http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2012/09/20129102361062341.html
[ii] "Discrimination by Color or Class in Mexico?" MexiData.info, October 15, 2007.
[iii] Andrés Villarreal, "Stratification by Skin Color in Contemporary Mexico," American Sociological Review, Vol. 75, No. 5 (October 2010), pp. 652-678.
[iv] For a summary of MORENA activities as of January 19, 2013, see Kent Paterson, "Two Times Loser of Mexican Presidency, AMLO Forms His Own Party," MexiData.info, Monday, January 20, 2013. This useful article does not directly address the issue of color and class, or the meaning of the acronym.
---
Laura Randall is editor of Changing Structure of Mexico: Political, Social and Economic Prospects, Second Edition (Spanish version: Reinventar México). She can be reached at laurarr.randall@gmail.com.

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!