Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T10:19:17.490Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Mestizo State: Colonization and Indianization in Liberal Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Joshua Lund
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay explores the limits of the liberal critique of racism by focusing on the dynamic interaction among race, space, and modes of production. My context is a national-historical moment when the confluence of these themes was being debated with intensity: Mexico's 1880s project of colonization (colonización). Enabling my analysis is a critical reading—the first ever, to my knowledge—of a daring argument set forth by an advocate of the colonization policy, the newspaper editor and political activist Luis Alva. The idea is that if liberalism, whether neo or classical, relates to space, it does so through its tenacious drive to make space productive in the capitalist sense, enlisting the state (the government and its armed forces) in this task. People, of course, usually get in the way. In the modern world, this conflict often articulates to processes of racialization. Alva deals with this in a provocative, forward-looking, and ultimately unsustainable way.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 123 , Issue 5: Special Topic Comparative Racialization , October 2008 , pp. 1418 - 1433
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 by The Modern Language Association of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1998.Google Scholar
Alva, Luis. “La colonización extranjera y la raza indígena.” La libertad 7 June 1882: 2; 10 June 1882: 2; 14 June 1882: 2; 17 June 1882: 2; 21 June 1882: 2; 24 June 1882: 2; 28 June 1882: 2; 1 July 1882: 2; 5 July 1882: 2; 8 July 1882: 2; 13 July 1882: 2; 16 July 1882: 2; 20 July 1882: 2.Google Scholar
Anaya Pérez, Marco Antonio. Rebelión y revolución en Chalco-Amecameca, Estado de México, 1821–1921. 2 vols. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Estudios Históricos de la Revolución Mexicana, 1997.Google Scholar
Barreda, Gabino. Estudios. Mexico City: UNAM, 1941.Google Scholar
Basave-Benítez, Agustín. México mestizo: Análisis del nacionalismo mexicano en torno a la mestizofilia de Andrés Molina Enríquez. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1992.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. “Critique of Violence.” Trans. Edmond Jephcott. Selected Writings: Volume I, 1913–1926. Ed. Bullock, Marcus and Jennings, Michael W. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1996. 236–52.Google Scholar
Certeau, Michel de. “The Politics of Silence: The Long March of the Indians.” Trans. Brian Massumi. Heterologies: Discourse on the Other. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1986. 225–36.Google Scholar
Falcón, Romana. México descalzo: Estrategias de sobrevivencia frente a la modernidad liberal. Mexico City: Plaza, 2002.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the College de France, 1975–1976. Trans. David Macey. New York: Picador, 2003.Google Scholar
Fox, Vicente. “Vicente Fox durante la ceremonia de firma del decreto por el que se expide la Ley que crea la Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas.” Actividades. Presidencia de la República. 19 May 2003. 29 June 2008 <http://fox.presidencia.gob.mx/actividades/?contenido=5291>..>Google Scholar
Frías, Heriberto. Tomochic. Mexico City: Porrúa, 1989.Google Scholar
“Gacetilla: La policía.” La patria 31 May 1881: 4.Google Scholar
Gamio, Manuel. Forjando patria: Pro-nacionalismo. Mexico City: Porrúa, 1916.Google Scholar
García Canclini, Néstor. Culturas híbridas: Estrategias para entrar y salir de la modernidad. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1992.Google Scholar
González Navarro, Moisés. La colonización en México, 1877–1910. Mexico City: Estampillas y Valores, 1960.Google Scholar
Hale, Charles. The Transformation of Liberalism in Late-Nineteenth-Century Mexico. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1989.Google Scholar
Hegel, Hegel Georg Wilhelm. Hegel's Philosophy of Mind: Being Part Three of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences. Trans. W. Wallace and A. V. Miller. Oxford: Clarendon, 1971.Google Scholar
Katz, Friedrich. “The Liberal Republic and the Porfiriato, 1867–1910.” Mexico since Independence. Ed. Bethell, Leslie. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991. 49–125.10.1017/CBO9780511626050.003CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knight, Alan. “Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo: Mexico, 1910–1940.” The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870–1940. Ed. Graham, Richard. Austin: U of Texas P, 1990. 71–114.Google Scholar
Laclau, Ernesto. “Feudalism and Capitalism in Latin America.” New Left Review 67 (1971): 19–38.Google Scholar
Marcos, Subcomandante Insurgente. “Ni el centro, ni la periferia.” Primer Coloquio Internacional in Memoriam Andrés Aubry. 16 Dec. 2007. 21 Apr. 2008 <http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx>..>Google Scholar
Mariátegui, José Carlos. Siete ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana. Lima: Amauta, 1952.Google Scholar
Martínez Montiel, Luz María, ed. Presencia africana en México. Mexico City: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1994.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Vol. 1. Trans. Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling. New York: Intl., 1961.Google Scholar
Melgarejo, María del Pilar. “El discurso de la lengua nacional en Freyre y Bello.” Gilberto Freyre e os estudos latino-americanos. Ed. Lund, Joshua and McNee, Malcolm. Pittsburgh: Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, 2006. 181–202.Google Scholar
Mora, José María Luis. “Carta dirigida al Gobierno de México, Londres, julio 31 de 1849.” Obra diplomática. Mexico City: Instituto Mora, 1994. 277–78. Vol. 7 of Obras completas.Google Scholar
Ortiz, Fernando. Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar. Trans. Harriet de Onís. Durham: Duke UP, 1995.Google Scholar
Pérez-Torres, Rafael. Mestizaje: Critical Uses of Race in Chicano Culture. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2006.Google Scholar
Pimentel, Francisco. Memoria sobre las causas que han originado la situación actual de la raza indígena de México, y medios de remediarla. Mexico City: Andrade y Escalante, 1864.Google Scholar
Powell, T. G. “Mexican Intellectuals and the Indian Question, 1876–1911.” Hispanic American Historical Review 48.1 (1864): 19–36.Google Scholar
Ramírez, Ignacio. “Los habitantes primitivos del continente americano: Discurso leído en la Sociedad de Geografía y Estadística.” 1872. Obras de Ignacio Ramírez. Vol. 1. Mexico City: Nacional, 1960. 199–209.Google Scholar
Reina, Leticia. Las rebeliones campesinas en México, 1819–1906. Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno, 1988.Google Scholar
Leticia, Reina, and Velasco, Cuauhtémoc. Introduction. La reindianización de América, siglo XIX. Ed. Reina, . Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno, 1997. 15–25.Google Scholar
Riva Palacio, Vicente. México a través de los siglos. Vol. 2. Mexico City, 1889.Google Scholar
Schwarz, Roberto. Misplaced Ideas: Essays on Brazilian Culture. London: Verso, 1992.Google Scholar
Sierra, Justo. Apuntes para un libro: México social y politico. 1885. Mexico City: Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público, 1960.Google Scholar
Stabb, Martin. “Indigenism and Racism in Mexican Thought, 1857–1911.” Journal of Inter-American Studies 1 (1959): 405–23.10.2307/165117CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tarica, Estelle. The Inner Life of Mestizo Nationalism. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2008.Google Scholar
Tutino, John. From Insurrection to Revolution in Mexico: Social Bases of Agrarian Violence, 1750–1940. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1986.Google Scholar
Vanderwood, Paul. The Power of God against the Guns of Government: Religious Upheaval in Mexico at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1998.Google Scholar
Vasconcelos, José. The Cosmic Race / La raza cósmica. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1979.Google Scholar
Villoro, Luis. Los grandes momentos del indigenismo en México. Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1950.Google Scholar
Wolf, Eric. Europe and the People without History. Berkeley: U of California P, 1982.Google Scholar