(I apologize, this post ended up being a tad long)
Musú
“Musiú” is a generic name which Venezuelans apply to all foreigners. It is a corruption of the honorary title monsieur and has been in use since the late eighteenth century.
The definition is almost right. But its fails to mention that it is derogatory just like the Japanese use of Gaijin (Foreigner/Barbarian). And here is the shocker: It is applied to White People mostly and not only the foreigners but their children.
I was a Musiú and I reckon I still am.
So I see this idiocy in J Kb’s post, I had to laugh. She knows shit about Latinos, no matter how much she said she studied us.
Old time readers have endured my explanations about Latinos/Hispanics before. For their own reason, the Left has tried to portray the “Brown Peoples” as a pure lineage that tracks directly to the indigenous tribes prior to the arrival of Columbus while in reality Latin/Hispanics are a creation of the need for nookie. Allow me to explain again.
After the Americas were discovered, Spain began what we know as La Conquista (The Conquering) which was done by male Spaniards almost exclusively. Central and South America were not even remotely a suburban patch of land but a huge jungle populated by highly aggressive and in some cases, cannibalistic indians who were not very happy with the Spaniards searching for gold, silver and precious jewels. As you can imagine, this was not a “Let’s get the wife and kids in the family truckster and drive leisurely to Buenos Aires” vacation trip but a damned dangerous enterprise, so there was one important element missing in the Americas during La Conquista: Spaniard women.
So the solution for the Conquistadores was to take on comely natives to be their partners and eventually their wives with the blessings of the Spanish Crown and the Church who hated the concept of bastard children. By the time La Colonia (Colonization) begins, we already have a substantial amount of mixed-blood descendants which will come to be know as Hispanics/Latinos and who basically start managing for the Spanish Crown the lands their parents conquered.
So, the concept of “Whitness” as the Left loves to wave around, simply did not apply in Central and South America. Let’s begin with the fact that the Anglo-Saxon immigration south of the Rio Grande was almost non-existing and also the fact that 700 years of Islamic oppression in Iberic lands was bound to leave an important amount of North African DNA in the Spanish genealogy. Oh yeah, they don’t mention that save for some provinces in Northern Spain, (Galicia, Cataluña and Vascongadas) the rest of the country was enslaved and dutifully used by the Muslims for 7 centuries.
And here is the other tidbit of information they fail to pass to you. Same as with the British Colonies in North America, the Hispanic/Latinos had to bring slaves from Africa. I read somewhere that up to 80 of the slaves brought to the New World ended up in the Spanish and Portuguese domains. But this time, there was no intermingling of races to create a new race. Black Slaves remained mostly separate from the mainstream society even after Slavery was abolished. Good and proper Latinos simply did not mix with the Negros. That disdain still permeates ever so subtly to this day throughout L:atin America. Just check how many black presidents there has been in all the countries or how many blacks have risen to positions of power in either the public or private sector. Get a comfy chair while you do
So when I see Black people trying to cuddle with Latinos here in the US as if they both had suffered under the Evil White Gringos in lands near and far, I have to laugh. And I get real loud with the laughter when the same Black politicos demanding reparations are standing next to a Latino whose ancestors may have owned slaves in Latin America.
This is getting long, even for me but I have to add something else on the Musiú thing. Many years ago when I was a college student here in the US, I had the official argument with a fellow black collegian about being the target of racism. He said I simply could not understand what being a minority was and what came with it. I asked him if it was like being targeted every day at school, beat up by racist bullies, spit upon, made lewd fun of your mother because of her race, have teachers look at you and grade you as you were a low-level moron, not to be chosen for clubs or outings or sport teams, never to be invited to parties because of who you were, having the derogatory name used against you anytime you had an argument with somebody, assume that what you owned was not legally obtained with the sweat of your brow but that you stole it. I asked him if it was anything like that. He was smart enough to recognize he had screwed up and the discussion ended.
Oh yeah, I grew up feeling and enjoying all the perks White Privilege and oppressing the poor Latinos around me.
Great Article! I also want to add that the made up term Latinx is used by the progressives to lump us together, and I have to explain to many that I have nothing in common with other latins save the Spanish heritage. A Cuban is not the same as a Venezuelan, or a Puerto Rican, or a Columbian etc. Our cultures are quite a bit different as is our use of the Spanish language, as there are many colloquialism that have me scratching my head asking what did you just say?
Sounds like the word has similar connotations as the Cantonese ‘gwailo’ as well.
Central/South America, from the little I’ve read/heard, has some very weird issues with bloodlines, skin color, etc. Possibly derived from the original Spanish conquistadors (‘limpieza’ is a Spanish origin word, after all).
https://youtu.be/SKo-_Xxfywk
My lady brought that video to my attention a while ago. Don’t know if slate was the source. And I wish they continued the slave traffic analysis past that point.
The truth of the horrible conditions of slavery in the United States is that any black person sold on the blocks in the Caribbean was praying that they were being sold to a slaver that would take them to the United States. As harsh as slave life was in the South, you lived. Most of the slaves that ended up in the Caribbean or south America died. They were worked to death. It was cheaper to replace a slave than it was to care for a slave.
Because the United States was passing laws that restricted bringing in new slaves, the south started breeding slaves.
All of this is horrible, but it is easy to see from the above video that slave ships went north to Europe but most slaves arrived via land routes with horrible death rates.
I think you’re way, way too sophisticated for Little Miss Twit-for-brains.
Her only perspective is that by using the term “Latino” she puts you in a little box with expected behaviors, and if you dare to think independently, you’re a non-person. She doesn’t give jack shit about any of those details; to her way of thinking, anyone who speaks Spanish automatically gets put in that little box.
I don’t know that anybody really fits the stereotypes she has embedded in that little box, but I’m gathering that what they mean by “Latino” is closest to the illegal Mexican immigrants.
One item that is not (or rarely) mentioned is that, in most of history, every culture had slaves, some were the same ” race” as their owners. The Muslim nations were the world champions of African slavery, but they castrated the men and killed any babies born to African women. I have seen estimates in the millions, of African slaves imported to Muslim countries. All died, one way or another. The Chinese also brought in slaves from Africa, but only castrated men.
Fake history is dominant with the left.
Nikole Hannah-Jones would go on to say in a follow up tweet (apologies, I can’t figure out how to share a screenshot of it):
“Also, whiteness is not static and is expandable when necessary. A lot of folks we don’t think of as white think of themselves as white because the lines have never been entirely clear — it is extremely adaptable.”
She like this close to becoming conscious of the fact that “race” is a bullshit fictional concept with no objective, empirical, and falsifiable definition. There is no such thing as “white” nor “black” nor “brown” amongst H. sapiens. We’re all a great big melange of All of The Above.
Serious question, to what if any extent is there any population of pure colonial era Spanish in Central or South America or is everyone some degree of Mestizo apart from recent immigrants and isolated native populations?
I’m asking because limpieza is a thing and there are families in the Southwest US who claim descent from Conquistadors.
By the way, the Japanese word “gaijin” (外人) literally means “outside person”, i.e., “outsider”, “not one of us”.