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Rethinking Mestizaje: Ideology and Lived Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 May 2005

PETER WADE
PETER WADE
Affiliation:
Department of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester
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Abstract

The ideology of mestizaje (mixture) in Latin America has frequently been seen as involving a process of national homogenisation and of hiding a reality of racist exclusion behind a mask of inclusiveness. This view is challenged here through the argument that mestizaje inherently implies a permanent dimension of national differentiation and that, while exclusion undoubtedly exists in practice, inclusion is more than simply a mask. Case studies drawn from Colombian popular music, Venezuelan popular religion and Brazilian popular Christianity are used to illustrate these arguments, wherein inclusion is understood as a process linked to embodied identities and kinship relations. In a coda, approaches to hybridity that highlight its potential for destabilising essentialisms are analysed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , May 2005 , pp. 239 - 257
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

The author would like to thank Jon Beasley-Murray, Susan Brook, Natalie Zacek and Patience Schell for their comments on an earlier draft of this article, and also the anonymous JLAS readers.