Disrupting the silence: whiteness, power, and national imaginaries in Latin America

Abstract

Taken together, the three books under review take great strides in extending many of the key insights from Whiteness Studies (a field that originated in Northern America) and from Latin American Studies. In particular, they challenge the widespread invisibility of whiteness in Latin America – both in everyday social relations and as an analytical category. While recognizing that whiteness is a complex and shifting category, these three authors interrupt the dominant silence that surrounds it and which is in itself one of the most powerful mechanisms whereby its naturalization and normalization preserve privilege. But rather than simply denounce silence as a strategy of power, the three books give substantive content to whiteness by grounding its meanings in each of the contexts they analyze in depth: the 19 th Century Colombian Andes; the neoliberal crisis in Argentina; and the contemporary moment in the Zona Norte of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Each of these works put the lived experiences and perspectives of white people under their analytical lens, thereby shaking their status as ordinary and bringing to the fore the historical and social construction of whiteness in all its intricacies. Their purpose is not to produce data about dominant subjects and their worlds per se , but rather, to contribute to our understanding of the mechanisms that produce and perpetuate racism. Because, as Ramos-Zayas reminds us, ‘the lives and mental worlds of people racialized as white provide important social maps to larger institutional, governmental, and capitalist relations’ (Ramos-Zayas 2020, 2). Mercedes