Latin American Apartheid states....

Rockingham

Banned
That thread about a British Mexico and Peru, and the possibility of it evolving into a class system, got me thinking....

WI one of Britains campaigns against Latin America is succesfull, and its siezes...say central America, including Panama, from Spain. Assume that they gain it at the congress, but don't recieve the Cape Colony, or Ceylon, which is returned to the Dutch in excange for their Carribean colonies. Or something like that. Anyway, bottom line-Britain sends their OTL Cape settlers to Central America.

But the rest of the world is largely irrelevant to this post. OTL, this region has a large Amerindian population, as well as a large white population, and Mestizos dominate. Along with Brtish immigration (perhaps not so much because of the climate), the European population would recieve a boost-but I think it would be unlikely to reach higher then 30% or 40 %.
So could this region become one of the Commonwealths, around that era, and install an Apartheid system similar to South Africa? It would have a larger percentage white population which would make it easier. The presence of Afrikanners, and their pre-eminence among the White population during the Apartheid, also shows the Spanishness of the commonwealth need not be a problem. So could an Apartheid regime establish itself? Would it be ASB for it to last at least as long as South Africa's, due to being next to the USA?

One way may be to manage this maybe to have a CSA victory, if the civil war itself isn't butterflied (please don't turn this into an endless debate about the civil war or CSA support by the way. Its not critical).

One thought-the class/apartheid system is likely far more intricate, given the variations in race in the region:

Population wise:
Mestizos dominant
Whites and Amerindians important minorities
Blacks a rather small minority

Also theirs much variation in the make up depending on the region of Central America.

Discuss this horrible Central American Dystopia:D

Edit:Oh, and would it be more likely to fragment or survive as a single state? Perhaps Apartheid and non-Apartheid central-American states at war?
 
Actually, I'd say such a system would tend to assume OTL's Latin American discriminatory system, where it's realistically run

white > mestizo -> black

from Conquest to present, starting with horror in Spanish times, and gradually becoming less unfair as time passes.

If the British takeover predated 1848 or so, that'd change the dynamic of American settlement of what used to be Mexico. You wouldn't see the OTL conflict between liberty-oriented Anglo settlers and the monarchic/dictatorial Spanish and then Mexicans. The American SW might belong to the UK ITTL. Or we might've seen a third war with Britain instead of the OTL Mexican War. Or maybe Britain would've struck a deal to prune down the huge indefensible area.
 
^Not to mention that in New Spain OTL, the "white" bit was divided into peninsulares (those people born in Spain) and creoles (those people born in the colonies). Not to mention that mulattos, the natives, and the blacks were all treated pretty badly.
 

Rockingham

Banned
By central america I was kind of reffering to the territory in between Mexico and Columbia, but I suppose it doesn't matter where....
 
Actually it really does matter where this colonony is. Bolivia population make up would be very different from Uruguay's or another nation, and therefore the systems would be different. And it would also matter if their are large tribes still needing to be conquered, because that would push thingsto have Indians be really discriminated agianst. And if this nation had a large sugar industry (or another plantation one) Britian would likely bring in Indian-Indians to make things more complicated. And certain classifications were not found in one colonial administration, as cholo was only in the viceroyalty of Peru and meant being the child of a mestizo and a criollo or peninsulare. Coyote served that term in the viceroyalty of Mexico, and in certain central american parts cholo meant big.
 
So could this region become one of the Commonwealths, around that era, and install an Apartheid system similar to South Africa?
Remembre the Apartheid system was installed in 1948, after the Afrikanner won the '48 election [thro there was extensive discrimination before]

Part of the problems in Cuba 1870~1890's, was the Spanish Admistrators, tightening up the Class system, and pushing out the Native born Spainish.
So all you need here is a continuation of Spainish control, [Collaspe of Independence movements]
Perhaps the Spainish Admistrators belive that the Mexican revolution 1811~1821 was due to a too lenient an attitude toward the Crillios, and Mexitos. and set out to ensure everyone stays in their place .
 
Want apartheid in the Americas? Read about the black population in Argentina from the Rosas regime to the War of the Triple Alliance. You'll understand then why there is hardly one Afro-Argentinian today. Policies towards Indians weren't good either, especially when them dealed with the unconquered tribes from the south. And the inmigration policies in the second half of the 19th century were as discriminative as the US ones if not more.
 

Rockingham

Banned
Actually it really does matter where this colonony is. Bolivia population make up would be very different from Uruguay's or another nation, and therefore the systems would be different. And it would also matter if their are large tribes still needing to be conquered, because that would push thingsto have Indians be really discriminated agianst. And if this nation had a large sugar industry (or another plantation one) Britian would likely bring in Indian-Indians to make things more complicated. And certain classifications were not found in one colonial administration, as cholo was only in the viceroyalty of Peru and meant being the child of a mestizo and a criollo or peninsulare. Coyote served that term in the viceroyalty of Mexico, and in certain central american parts cholo meant big.
I know, I just meant it didn't have to be in Central America specifically....

However, as I did specify, I wanted the colony to be British before its independance....

If the class sytem in the Americas went White>Mestizo>Black, where do Native Americans fit on the list? And where would an actual Indian from India fit?
 
I know, I just meant it didn't have to be in Central America specifically....

However, as I did specify, I wanted the colony to be British before its independance....

If the class sytem in the Americas went White>Mestizo>Black, where do Native Americans fit on the list? And where would an actual Indian from India fit?
Historically Native Americans come last. I have no idea where Indians would fit. Maybe like this:
White>Mestizo>Indian>Black>Native American
 

Vault-Scope

Banned
I thought about that, POD in the later half of the 1600s to the earlier half of the 1700s.

Britain seized and colonise large portions of South America (probably due to failures in North America).
Technologies advances faster. During the first Global war of the eraly 20th century(which ends when both sides have the atomic bombe), all of South America becomes an unified dominion, but that required militarisation of white society.

Then cames the Second Global War, several major nuclear attack hits britain istelf. South america is hit too but only against a few major cities, an alternate-socialist movement leads a mestizo-black-mulatto revolution resulting in a bloody civil war(ending any idea of racial equality).
Survivors in ex-britain leaves their radioactive island to South American, South African and West Australian
While SGW raged on, turning europe to a nuclear wasteland, the military seized all powers.
A new army-inspired ideology unites the white populations that was divided between Englishs, Scotts, Irishs and Colonials and lead a war of reconquest.
Althought the revolution was crushed, non-whites are sparred, as the new governement sticks to the colonial idea of "the white man´s burden" and want to reconstruct as fast as possible (Humanist-ruled North America and cosmopolitan South Africa becomes increasingly threatening).


In the following decades, South America become simply known as The Empire.
Althought increasingly dissatisfied of white dominance and restrictions, mestizo community thrived relatively well and became the majority in the decades following the SGW.
 
I know this is a bit off topic (and long, sorry!!!:eek:), but, answering this post:

Want apartheid in the Americas? Read about the black population in Argentina from the Rosas regime to the War of the Triple Alliance. You'll understand then why there is hardly one Afro-Argentinian today. Policies towards Indians weren't good either, especially when them dealed with the unconquered tribes from the south. And the inmigration policies in the second half of the 19th century were as discriminative as the US ones if not more.

Well, it is true that the treatment of Amerindians who had managed to remain independent till the 1870’s was rather cruel. But I don’t think you can call XIX century’s Argentina an apartheid state at all. And not only because those who were "affected" here were a minority. For other reasons.

As sad as this may sound, I don’t think that the Amerindians could have kept living the way they did past the XIX century. Nomad peoples were being submitted everywhere, and this was not the exception (hadn’t Argentina done this, Chile, Britain or France would have).

The Indians who lived in the pampas kept crossing the “frontera” in order to get cattle, to sell in Chile. If necessary, they would kill those who dared opposed them, and take some women as captives (cautivas). Of course, they themselves saw things differently. For them, all this was their land (mapu). The Huincas (Christians) had come from the other side of the “Big water” centuries ago, in order to enslave them and robbed them. Everything they took was nothing compared to what had been taken to them in the past. (I’ve got a short moving speech in which an Indian cacique expresses some of these views)

But, you know, that situation couldn’t last long. As soon as the state gained force, this situation was seen as intolerable. The frontier was moved gradually West and Southwards, and, in 1879, a military campaign was conducted in order to “submit” the Indians.

Even if an action of this sort was somehow inevitable historically, I don’t think it was justified at all. Specially taken into consideration the treatment the Indians were given immediately after they surrendered. For example, some were taken as involuntary workers in Chaco’s forests, far far North, for a very modest salary. And even those who were placed over a certain land, away from were they used to lived (they were moved to present day Chubut), they never legally received the land. So, they had actually no incentive to work them, as they could theoretically be moved at any time.. Not to mention the Mapuche who escaped to Chile and found their land had been occupied when they returned.

On other places, such as in Tierra del Fuego or Santa Cruz, it were the colonists (practically all of them Europeans), not he army who actually killed the natives, because they stole their sheep. However, the government did nothing to protect them, and is thus responsible.

However, in all these cases, the problem was the natives lived in a way which was thought to be “incompatible” with modernity. Once the stopped being that way (or, more precisely, once they had been violently forced to stop being that way), they weren’t discriminated any longer. I mean, not racially discriminated. (Of course, you can argue that not teaching their language at school was in fact a form of discrimination; but that doesn’t make it an apartheid system, I think).

Concerning the Argentine-Blacks, I don’t thing there had been any sort of “genocide”. It is true that the leaders of the time had imported many racist ideas which were à la mode in those days. But what they actually did was mainly encouraging immigration (in very huge numbers), which, due to intermarriage, led to the gradual disappearance of a visible black population (which was never large in absolute numbers). And even this didn’t go exactly as planned, because, instead of Northern Europeans, they received mainly Italians, Spanish, Russian Jews, and Poles. But even when they realized things weren’t going exactly as planned, they didn’t do much to stop this immigration.

I know that some say they were somehow “voluntary” killed by means of sending them to fight the Paraguayan war. But, in fact, all sorts of people were recruited (criollos, mestizos, blacks, European immigrants). All suffered the same hazards (War was something really hard back then). “Recruitment” was racial blinded in those days,. It went like this, according to Martin Fierro: soldiers would arrive to a “pulpería” (sort of bar in the middle of the countryside), and “recruit” as many men as they could. Blacks, criollos, and even “gringos”, would be taken. The book (which is fictional) tells there was an Englishman who protested, but was taken to serve anyway. These people had just one thingin common: being poor.

It is also probably true that some Black-Argentinians died during the yellow fever epidemic during Sarmiento's presidency. But this wasn’t a biological attempt of ethnic genocide. All the population living in the South of Buenos Aires City was affected. As always, the rich were able to move elsewhere, while the poor (Blcaks, but also Criollos and Genoan immigrants) couldn’t do it so easily. The government is to be blame for not having prevented this epidemic through proper sanitation measures. But that isn’t the same as saying he had planned this on purpose.
 
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