Yeah, can you believe the Times said that?
I had always heard that Brazil, although it has a rigid class system, really didn’t have “a color line”. Maybe that was never true.
All of Latin America countries have a similar problem. They were settled by people from countries who had no history of human rights or democracy. The men were there for generations before they brought over their carefully segregated women. In those early generations a lot of “mestizos” were generated making a middle class of people who were descended from the indigenous people but always the color was important - who had the lightest skin etc. I had a long conversation (he speaking what he called Castiliano with me understanding about 10% of it) with my sister in law’s former father in law in Peru. One of the most openly racist people I have ever met. But he so obviously had a lot a Indian in him with a profile like a pre-columbian Inca pot. Short and dark. His wife was tall and light skinned but her ancestors were from northern Italy, not SA. In the settling of North America, our ancestors for the most part brought both their women and their values from northern Europe. I have a couple of native american women ancestors but for the most part they were all European and I’m looking back to the 17th century. This probably sounds racist but that’s was I have observed both living briefly in SA and learning from my SIL who lived there for probably 20 years.
MOST of Brasil does not have a color line......because 95% of all Brasileiro’s are mulatto and a mixture of native indian, black and European.
BUT, there is a hard color line in the top levels of business and government, where only Europeans (mostly Portuguese, Italians and Germans) rule - and that like is harder than anywhere in the USA.
I have yet to meet a Brasileiro who knows this (I used to spend a lot of time there all over the country and was fluent enough that they thought I was Brazillian), but there is a reason for most Brazillian’s being mulatto.
The Portuguese enslaved the native indians and killed most of them. They then began importing blacks from Africa as slaves. Brazil imported 5 times as many blacks as America did. And they too were killed by horrible slavery.
The king of Portugal and the Pope were horrified at this, and got together to come up with an idea to stop the killing.
They came up with an incredible idea: to pay a huge amount of money to Europeans in Brasil who would intermarry with the indians and blacks. To a large extent it worked, and the result is nation that is a mulatto people of mixed races...this is why Brazillians are different from all other South American peoples, who are mostly native indian in blood.
I studied the history of Brasil before I went there ......