A young Brazilian who works at Air France in Sao Paulo was breaking down the code on color in Brazil for us.
She herself is a fascinating mixture. On her father’s side, she’s African-Italian-Spanish-Portuguese.
On her mother’s side she’s fully Portuguese. Her skin color and features are European but her family members are both dark and fair skinned.
My Guyanese friend (who is also mixed – black, Native Indian, East Indian, Portuguese) wanted to know whether Brazilians were easy-going about race. Yes, said the Brazilian, but they are very conscious about color.
Then she told us the different terms for skin colors:
Branco – white
Mestizo – white mixed with Native Indian
Mamulengo – black with native Indian
Mulatto – black mixed with white
Moreno – any unidentifiable non-white, darker-skinned person
I would fall under morena..
My Guyanese friend would be a mulatta
Update: According to information posted on this blog, moreno in other Latin cultures refers to a dark person with some European ancestry..or European features..
Which, as far as I know, I don’t have. I do have a little Chinese blood on one side..
I know that Nina Simone has a very powerful song about color codes among American blacks. I imagine moreno/a is like “high yellow”….to which Simone refers in the song.
I was a big fan of the TV series “City of Men” possibly one of the best series you would ever watch. The series dealt with the interesting race issues among the favela kids of Rio de Janeiro, very insightful if you want to understand the race and other issues of Brazil.
Thanks…I’ll check it out..
I rather think Brazilian attitudes to color and race may be like Indian..
Within India, it’s more about color than race although color can act as a stand-in for race
Outside India, it’s also about race.
That is, I think Indian attitudes toward other Indians is more color oriented – except in the case of Dalits..where it has the overtones of race..
and in the case of blacks (Africans) where it’s also racial
I think the foreigners who get hassled in India are being hassled for a buck more than because they are of a different race.
There’s a lot of eve-teasing (ie sexual harassment) but it’s equally directed toward Indians and foreigners
Lucky morena!! I always wanted to move to Brazil. From my extensive research into the people and culture, it’s almost exactly like the US — at least the major centers like São Paolo. (Except their corruption is more explicit and open and thus *appears* greater, and their economy is still developing.) But, in terms of history (rampant slavery in both countries) and economy (somehow it’s immune from the socialist bug infecting all it’s spanish neighbours :P), it’s USA’s big sister.
Hi Denis =
Your points are insightful
I think Brazil is a bit like India..extremes, a lot of racial sensitivity and color consciousness, great dynamism, color, corruption
But in the last 15 years, I’ve come to think that the corruption in the US is more dangerous – it’s at a higher level, hidden for the most part..and thus more insidious
Various color codes are common not just in brazil but in latin america generally.
In mexico indicans (the majority) are well called indios or more derogatorily “nacos” and are also called “prietos” which means dark ones.
The morenos are the mestizos which are indian with varying degrees of Spanish forebears and some european features.
Gueros or “fair ones” refers to mexicans of predominantly european background.
There is also similar coding of the indain peoples the northern are taller and have sharper features–southern (maya background) shorter and darker with rounder features–the latter have lower social status.
Bravo for the Brazilians as they are known to have a better attitude about these things than their spanish speaking neighbors….
Hmmm..
I wonder why the Brazilian woman said I would be classified as Morena
I would have thought I’d be called mestizo
the shorter status for southern people exists also in India..
Oddly enough, the chances are it was the shorter darker Dravidians who created the bronze age Harappan culture India is proud of