Latin America battles ills of colonial past
By Rick Vecchio
LIMA, Peru (AP): Even after five centuries, historian Juan Jose Vega resents the Spanish conquistadors who tricked and killed Inca ruler Atahualpa and shipped a fortune in Inca gold and silver back to Spain.
From Peru's Inca capital, Cuzco, to the seat of Aztec power in Mexico City, Spanish colonizers grafted cathedrals onto the foundations of razed Indian temples and superimposed Christianity on ancient religious beliefs.
"They tossed 10,000 years of accumulated culture from this land onto a garbage heap. They told us that it was worthless and that they represented humanity," Vega said of the Spanish plunderers, who made Peru the center of Spain's South American empire.
As the turn of the millennium, many of the wounds from that brutal colonial past have yet to heal. Latin Americans still contend with racism, authoritarian regimes and a tradition of corruption and oppressive government red tape.
A legacy of racism by European-descended elites continues against Indian and mixed-race majorities in countries like Mexico, Guatemala and the Andean nations.
In Peru, soap operas feature fair-skinned stars, and blue- eyed, blond-haired models are the norm in advertisements. Mixed- race women frequently resort to bleached hair, makeup and plastic surgery to appear more "European."
Quechua-speaking Indians and people of mixed blood, who make up 80 percent of Peru's population, "have been infected with a tremendous inferiority complex," said historian Maria Rostworowski.
Political power for Peru's Indian-descended majority remains elusive. The number of Andean legislators has increased under President Alberto Fujimori, a political outsider who is the son of Japanese immigrants, but most have little influence and do not vote as a bloc.
In Guatemala, the heavily Mayan Indian population is still struggling for national recognition after centuries of being forced to change indigenous names and having Indian languages and traditional dress forbidden in schools.
Mayan Indian leaders blamed poverty, weak political organization and divisions left by 36 years of civil war for the defeat of a referendum in May that would have granted them official recognition.
Ecuador's Indians, ignored in Congress and corporate board rooms, regularly paralyze the nation's transportation system with roadblocks to demand attention from officials.
Some two million Indians blocked all roads around Quito, Ecuador's capital, for three days in 1990 -- in the biggest Indian demonstration in a half century -- to protest their treatment by authorities and merchants.
Burgeoning democratic institutions in Latin America have sparked hope for equal protection under the law. But centuries of authoritarian governments have created a tolerance of heavy- handed leaders who trample democratic checks and balances in the name of maintaining order.
"In general, democratic principles do not exist in Latin America," said political scientist Fernando Rospigliosi. "There are deep-rooted authoritarian values."
Fujimori had broad support in 1992 when he suspended Peru's constitution and abolished Congress in a bloodless "self-coup" backed by the military. He accused legislators of blocking his efforts to defeat leftist guerrillas and end economic chaos.
That same year, a Venezuelan paratrooper, Lt. Col. Hugo Chavez, made a failed coup attempt against that country's democratically elected government, accusing it and its predecessors of corruption and disregard for the needs of the poor.
Today, after nine months as Venezuela's new president, Chavez is inspiring comparisons to Fujimori.
With overwhelming public support, he has used his power to impose a radical overhaul of the country's courts and legislature. He says his aims are to reverse the steady decay of public institutions and re-establish order.
Another legacy of colonial administrators is a bureaucratic system that encourages corruption while stifling free enterprise and hindering economic development.
"In Peru, we found out the time it takes to record a land title is about 17 years of red tape," said Hernando de Soto, an economist who studies land ownership.