Mexican morenos face skin color bias
Casting call reveals discrimination
MEXICO CITY — Flip through the print publications exalting the activities of Mexico’s high society and there’s one thing you rarely find: dark-skinned people.
No matter that nearly two-thirds of Mexicans consider themselves moreno, the Spanish word for dark.
Mexico has strong laws barring discrimination based on skin color or ethnicity, but the practices of public relations firms and news media lag behind, promoting the perception that light skin is desirable and dark skin unappealing.
The issue came to the fore this month when a casting call for a television spot for Mexico’s largest airline stated flatly that it wanted “no one dark,” sparking outrage on social media and, ultimately, embarrassed apologies.
“I’d never seen anything that aggressive and that clear, all in capital letters: ‘NO ONE DARK,’ “said Tamara de Anda, a magazine editor. “I decided to go with it.”
Her tweets elicited apologies both from Aeromexico and from the Catatonia public relations firm, which blamed a modeling agency that issued the casting call.
“We offer a heartfelt apology and reiterate our respect for all people without regard to gender, language, religion or skin color,” Aeromexico said on its official Twitter account.
De Anda wrote up her feelings on her popular blog, Crisis of the 30s, saying the incident was part of a phenomenon of marginalization of a majority of the population.
“I’ve been swallowing Mexican advertising for 30 years of my life, 11,000 days,” she wrote. Apart from government pronouncements and “folkloric” tourism campaigns, she said, it’s as if “darkskinned people don’t exist.”
It might seem like a harsh judgment. After all, Mexican tourism campaigns promote the nation’s multicultural heritage and its heritage as a home of the Aztec and Mayan empires.The nation of 118 million people includes 15.7 million who consider themselves indigenous. Moreover, an estimated 450,000 Afro-Mexicans live mostly along the coasts.
Mexico amended its constitution in 2001 to bar all forms of discrimination.