Under colonialism, a series of social structures evolved that guided daily life—standard ways of organizing the family, community, and economy. They included rules for gender roles, race relations, and religious observance. While these traditional social structures are now changing in response to a variety of forces discussed earlier in this chapter, much continuity with the past is also apparent. Here we look at the region’s cultural diversity, family and gender roles, the impact of the Internet, and religion.

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The region of Middle and South America is culturally complex because many distinct indigenous groups were already present when the Europeans arrived, and then many cultures were introduced during and after the colonial period. From 1500 to the early 1800s, some 10 million people from many different parts of Africa were brought to plantations on the islands and in the coastal zones of Middle and South America. After the emancipation of African slaves in the British-controlled Caribbean islands in the 1830s, more than half a million Asians were brought there from India, Pakistan, and China as indentured agricultural workers. Their cultural impact remains most visible in Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and the Guianas. In some parts of Mexico, Central America, the Amazon Basin, and the Andean Highlands, indigenous people have remained numerous. To the unpracticed eye, they may appear little affected by colonization, but this is not the case.

In the Caribbean and along the east coast of Central America as well as the Atlantic coast of Brazil, mestizos (people who have a mixture of African, European, and some indigenous ancestry) make up the majority of the population. Some of the most colorful festivals in the Americas, such as versions of Mardi Gras, known here as Carnival, are based on a melding of cultural practices from these three heritages (Figure 3.26A). In some areas, such as Argentina, Chile, and southern Brazil, people of Central European descent are also numerous. The Japanese, though a tiny minority everywhere in the region, increasingly influence agriculture and industry, especially in Brazil, the Caribbean, and Peru. Alberto Fujimori, a Peruvian of Japanese descent, campaigned on his ethnic “outsider” status to become president of Peru during a time of political upheaval.

In some ways, diversity is increasing as the media and trade introduce new influences from abroad. At the same time, the processes of acculturation and assimilation are also accelerating, thus erasing diversity to some extent as people adopt new ways. This is especially true in the biggest cities, where people of widely different backgrounds live in close proximity to one another.

Race and the Social Significance of Skin Color People from Middle and South America, especially those from Brazil, often proudly claim that race and color are of less consequence in this region than in North America. They are only partially right. In all of the Americas, skin color is now less associated with status than in the past. By acquiring an education, a good job, a substantial income, the right accent, and a high-status mate, a person of any skin color may become recognized as upper class.

Nevertheless, the ability to reduce the significance of skin color through one’s actions is not quite the same as race having no significance at all. Overall, those who are poor, less educated, and of lower social standing tend to have darker skin than those who are educated and wealthy. And while there are poor people of European descent throughout the region, most light-skinned people are middle and upper class. Indeed, race and skin color have not disappeared as social factors in the region. In some countries—Cuba, for example, where overt racist comments are socially unacceptable—it is common for a speaker to use a gesture (tapping his or her forearm with two fingers) to indicate that the person referred to in the conversation is of African descent.

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The basic social institution in the region is the extended family, which may include cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and more distant relatives. It is generally accepted that the individual should sacrifice many of his or her personal interests to those of the extended family and community and that individual well-being is best secured by doing so.

The arrangement of domestic spaces and patterns of socializing illustrate these strong family ties. Families of adult siblings, their mates and children, and their elderly parents frequently live together in domestic compounds of several houses surrounded by walls or hedges. Social groups in public spaces are most likely to be family members of several generations rather than unrelated groups of single young adults or married couples, as would be the case in Europe or the United States. A woman’s best friends are likely to be her female relatives. A man’s social or business circles will include male family members or long-standing family friends.

Gender roles in the region have been strongly influenced by the Roman Catholic Church. The Virgin Mary is held up as the model for women to follow through a set of values known as marianismo, which emphasizes chastity, motherhood, and service to the family. In this still-widespread tradition, the ideal woman is the day-to-day manager of the house and of the family’s well-being. She trains her sons to enter the wider world and her daughters to serve within the home. Over the course of her life, a woman’s power increases as her skills and sacrifices for the good of all are recognized and enshrined in family lore.

Her husband, the official head of the family, is expected to work and to give most of his income to his family. Still, men have much more autonomy and freedom to shape their lives than women because they are expected to move about the larger community and establish relationships, both economic and personal. A man’s social network is considered just as essential to the family’s prosperity and status in the community as is his work.

There are very different sexual standards for males and females. While all expect strict fidelity from a wife to a husband in mind and body, a man is much freer to associate with the opposite sex. Males measure themselves by the model of machismo, in which manliness is considered to consist of honor, respectability, fatherhood, household leadership, attractiveness to women, and the ability to be a charming storyteller. Traditionally, the ability to acquire money was secondary to other symbols of maleness. Increasingly, however, a new, market-oriented culture prizes visible affluence as a desirable male attribute.

While a general inclination to keep all kinds of sexual relationships “in the closet” persists, over the last decade attitudes have begun to change, due in part to television dramas (known as telenovelas) that have explored many formerly taboo sexual issues, especially homosexuality. Respect for the rights of gays and lesbians has grown significantly in recent years; Argentina and Mexico City legalized same-sex marriage in 2010, and Brazil and Uruguay did so in 2013.

Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and indigenous beliefs are found across the region, but the majority of the people are at least nominal Christians, most of them Roman Catholic. While the Roman Catholic Church remains highly influential and relevant to the lives of believers, it has had to contend with popular efforts to reform it, as well as with increasing competition from other religious movements. From the beginning of the colonial era, the church was the major partner of the Spanish and Portuguese colonial governments. It received extensive lands and resources from colonial governments, and in return built massive cathedrals and churches throughout the region, sending thousands of missionary priests to convert indigenous people. The Roman Catholic Church encouraged these people to accept their low status in colonial society, to obey authority, and to postpone rewards for their hard work until heaven.

People throughout the region converted to the faith, some willingly and some only after the threats, intimidation, and torture of the Spanish Inquisition were brought to the Americas. Many indigenous people put their own spin on Catholicism, creating multiple folk versions of the Mass with folk music, more participation by women in worship services, and interpretations of Scripture that vary greatly from European versions. A range of African-based belief systems (Candomblé, Umbanda, Santería, Obeah, and Voodoo) combined with Catholic beliefs can be found in Brazil, northern South America, Middle America, and the Caribbean—wherever the descendants of Africans have settled. These African-based religions have attracted adherents of European or indigenous backgrounds as well, especially in urban areas.

The power of the Roman Catholic Church began to erode in the nineteenth century in places such as Mexico. Populist movements, aimed at addressing the needs of the poor masses, seized and redistributed some church lands. They also canceled the high fees the clergy had been charging for simple rites of passage such as baptisms, weddings, and funerals. Over the years, the Catholic Church became less obviously connected to the elite and more attentive to the needs of poor and non-European people. By the mid-twentieth century, the church was abandoning many of its earlier racist policies and ordaining clergy of African and indigenous descent. Women were also given more of a role in religious ceremonies.

In the 1970s, a Catholic movement known as liberation theology was begun by a small group of priests and activists. They were working to reform the church into an institution that could combat the extreme inequalities in wealth and power common in the region. The movement portrayed Jesus Christ as a social revolutionary who symbolically spoke out for the redistribution of wealth when he divided the loaves and fish among the multitude. The perpetuation of gross economic inequality and political repression was viewed as sinful, and social reform as liberation from evil.

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The legacy of liberation theology is now fading. At its height in the 1970s and early 1980s, liberation theology was the most articulate movement for region-wide social change. It had more than 3 million adherents in Brazil alone. But the Vatican objected to this popularized version of Catholicism, and today its influence is diminished. In countries such as Guatemala and El Salvador, governments targeted liberation theology participants, vilifying them as communist collaborators; hundreds were tortured and assassinated. Liberation theology has also had to compete with newly emerging evangelical Protestant movements. 79. POPE OPENS TOUR OF LATIN AMERICA IN BRAZIL

Evangelical Protestantism has spread from North America into Middle and South America, and is now the region’s fastest-growing religious movement. About 10 percent of the population, or at least 50 million people, are adherents. The movement is growing rapidly in Brazil, Chile, the Caribbean, Mexico, and Middle America, especially among poor and middle classes in both rural and urban settings. It does not, however, share liberation theology’s emphasis on combating the region’s extreme inequalities in wealth and power. Some evangelical Protestants teach a “gospel of success,” stressing that those true believers who give themselves to a new life of hard work and clean living will experience prosperity of the body (wealth) as well as of the soul.

The movement is charismatic, meaning that it focuses on personal salvation and empowerment of the individual through miraculous healing and psychological transformation. Evangelical Protestantism is not hierarchical in the same way as the Roman Catholic Church, and there is usually no central authority; rather, there are a host of small, independent congregations led by entrepreneurial individuals who may be either male or female.

Perhaps two of the most important contributions of evangelical Protestantism are the focus (as in Umbanda and other African-based religions) on helping people, especially urban migrants, cope with modern life; and the emphasis placed on involving women in leadership roles in church activities and services.