Blacks in Latin America see hope in Obama's victory

BELMOPAN, Belize - Dean Barrow doesn't look like the faces on his country's dollar bills. Nor does he resemble its previous leaders. He is this Central American nation's first black prime minister.

By winning the post in February, Barrow broke through a glass ceiling that has existed in the Americas since the slave trade first brought people from Africa five centuries ago.

The sad reality in countries with large black populations, such as Brazil, and those with tiny communities, such as Mexico, is that Afro-Latinos have typically been relegated to the sidelines of politics and high finance.

But when it comes to race relations, the United States is once again casting its shadow on the Americas - this time in a positive way, politicians and experts in the region say, with the election of Barack Obama as president.

"It has to mean there will be a great opening up of minds and opening up of opportunities," Barrow said in an interview in Belize's lush capital. "It will make any sense of 'the other' much less pronounced. How can there appear to be anything strange about somebody of color making great strides politically in Latin America when a person of color is the president of the most powerful country on Earth?"

The history of blacks in the Americas is not quite the same as in the United States. Slaves came about the same time, often to work in sugar-cane fields in Cuba and rubber plantations in Brazil.

The subsequent years were mixed: Brazil freed its slaves 23 years after the United States did, but the region did not have a formalized system of segregation as in the United States.

Still, it is hard to miss the inequality that has become ingrained since then. White Brazilians earn nearly three times what black Brazilians earn. In Ecuador, black citizens are nearly twice as likely as the national average to be living in poverty, according to the Inter-American Development Bank.

And although the United States has had two black secretaries of state during the Bush administration, Paola Moreno last year became the first Afro-Colombian cabinet member in five decades. Brazil named its first black Supreme Court justice in 2003, 36 years after the United States achieved that milestone.

Tanya Hernandez, an expert on black politics in Latin America, said Obama's election is likely to lead to soul-searching in the region.

"The absence of the Jim Crow segregationism is what permitted Latin America to ignore racism for so long," said Hernandez, a professor at George Washington University Law School. "The notion was that if you want racism, you go to the United States.

"Yet who beats everyone to have the first black president but the United States? It pierces the veil to this convenient comparison to the U.S."

In Belize, a former British colony known for its coral reefs and Mayan ruins, Queen Elizabeth II's picture still graces the currency. Those of British descent governed here, even after official independence in 1981.

The diverse nation even had a prime minister of Palestinian descent for 10 years, but never a black leader.

Many experts say a breakthrough for black Latin Americans was the first World Conference Against Racism in 2001 in South Africa that brought their issues to the forefront. Since then, Colombia has set aside congressional seats to ensure black representation, for example.

Politicians in Latin America recently founded the Black Parliament, an unofficial body designed to promote coordination among Afro-Latino lawmakers across national borders. Likewise, black lawmakers from the United States and Colombia have met regularly for years.

But some Afro-Colombian activists worry that U.S. lawmakers are hearing only from Colombians who favor a controversial trade deal backed by the Bush administration. A Republican-leaning group, International Republican Institute, recently facilitated a meeting between black Democrats and their Colombian counterparts, leading to criticism that it had ulterior motives to push the trade deal.

"We welcome support from the Black Caucus. Unfortunately, we have to struggle to make sure they are not receiving misinformation," said Eunice Escobar, an Afro-Colombian activist in Chicago.

The institute said that was not the meeting's goal.

Escobar said Afro-Colombian leaders in Chicago met with aides to Obama, before he ran for president, to make their case that the trade deal would disproportionately harm Afro-Colombians. They are optimistic because Obama has since expressed misgivings about the proposal.

In Belize, the issues of black citizens have likewise become entwined with larger policy challenges.

Belize has the third-highest rate of HIV/AIDS in the hemisphere, and the hardest-hit community has been the black population along the Atlantic coast known as the Garifuna, Barrow said.

But Barrow is wary of casting policy challenges as "black issues."

"These are national problems any leader would have to tackle," he said.