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Ethnicity and Economy in Rural Mexico: A Critique of the Indigenista Approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

Scott Cook  and
Jong-Taick Joo
Scott Cook
Affiliation:
University of Connecticut
Jong-Taick Joo
Affiliation:
University of Connecticut
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The ethnic question has been central to the historical process of nation-state building or “nationalization” in Mexico (Adams 1967). To a significant degree, this process has been a criollo and a mestizo project (Aguirre Beltrán 1976; compare Anderson 1983, 1988). Accordingly, indígena identity has been imposed on the non-criollo and non-mestizo population by the Mexican state, with the identification process historically displaying arbitrariness and inconsistency across a range of biological identifiers (especially phenotype) or cultural identifiers (especially language) or both (Marino Flores 1967). Following colonial precedents and in step with the evolving structure of political economy and society, the process of ethnic identification in postcolonial Mexico associated Hispanicity (via white skin color or Spanish descent or Spanish language) with the more valued locations higher in the ethno-class hierarchy and indígena identity with the lower, less-valued locations. In postrevolutionary Mexico, thanks to the contribution of anthropologist Manuel Gamio, the concept of mestizaje was stripped of biological content and culturized.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , 1995 , pp. 33 - 59
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

∗

This article has undergone several revisions, thanks to a battery of anonymous reviewers. We are especially grateful for the many thoughtful and constructive reviewer comments and suggestions that led to the present version and hope that we have done justice to them

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