Rethinking Indigenous Politics in the Era of the ‘Indio Permitido’ NACLA Report on the Americas. Sept.-Oct. pp. 16-21 (original) (raw)

Mestizaje-Indigenismo and Racism in the Mexican State's Ideology of National Integration

For more than the last one hundred years, and especially after the Mexican 1910 revolution, anthropologists, historians interested in political and cultural history, politicians, writers and thinkers have abundantly written about the importance of mestizaje and indigenismo in the postrevolutionary Mexican state's ideology or Mexican state's project of national integration. Among the politicians, thinkers and writers who have expressed their opinions about these two closely linked subjects, we find most o f Mexican Presidents and Ministers of Education, and important names like José María Luis Mora, one of the pioneers of liberal Mexican thought towards the third decade of the XIX Century; Francisco Pimentel and Vicente Riva Palacio during the liberal era p revious to porfiriato; Andrés Molina Enríquez and Justo Sierra during the porfiriato; José Vasconcelos the creator of the idea of the " raza cósmica"; Luis Cabrera the oppositionist and democrat par excellence ...

Social and Cultural Policies Toward Indigenous Peoples: Perspectives from Latin America

2005

Throughout the twentieth century, social and cultural policies toward indigenous peoples in Latin America have been closely related to indigenismo, an ideological movement that denounced the exploitation of aboriginal groups and strove for the cultural unity and the extension of citizenship through social integration and " ac-culturation. " This review traces the colonial and nineteenth-century roots of indigenismo and places it in the context of the populist tendencies in most Latin American states from the 1920s to the 1970s, which favored economic protectionism and used agrarian reform and the provision of services as tools for governance and legitimacy. Also examined is the role of anthropological research in its relation to state hegemony as well as the denunciation of indigenista policies by ethnic intellectuals and organizations. In recent decades, the dismantling of populist policies has given rise to a new official " neoliberal " discourse that extols multiculturalism. However, the widespread demand for multicultural policies is also seen as the outcome of the fight by militant indigenous organizations for a new type of citizenship. 717

Indigenous Politics and the State

This article examines the emergence of indigenous movements in contemporary Latin America, focusing on the Andean countries. It is argued that we can understand the dynamics of these movements only if we see them in the historical context of the interaction between indigenous populations and the emerging Andean states in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The article reaches two important conclusions. First, this interaction was not purely antagonistic. Indigenous leaders used state legislation to achieve goals and often obtained support from state offi cials and sympathetic intellectuals (often called indigenistas). Second, it is clear that indigenous movements cannot automatically be considered progressive or emancipatory. They are just as often enacted in pursuit of backward-looking and even conservative objectives.

Contemporary Indigenous Social and Political Thought in Latin America (1960-2020)

OXFORD BIBLIOGRAPHIES, 2021

Introduction The contemporary continental emergence of a significant number of indigenous intellectuals who have been trained in the academic fields of social sciences (history, anthropology, sociology, linguistics, law, education, etc.) and have continued to be engaged with the social struggles of their ethnic communities of origin is a major sociocultural phenomenon not so well known in Latin America. Beginning in the 1960s, but with a stronger sociopolitical visibility in the 1980s and 1990s, indigenous intellectuals’ production of knowledge has become the backbone of many indigenous movements and proposals in the continent. Just like the booming appearance of modern indigenous literary writers (see Oxford Bibliographies article in Latin American Studies “Indigenous Voices in Literature”), the contemporary rise of indigenous intellectuals has reconceptualized indigenous communitarian worldviews and contributed to the study of their own social realities from their specific needs, cultural perspectives, and native languages. Indigenous intellectuals and scholars have flourished in the early 21st century, transforming knowledge and academic discourses into tools of indigenous cultural self-recognition; criticism of neocolonial forms of subordination and exploitation; and new conceptual ways of understanding history, democracy, communal life, political participation, cultural representation, and our human relationship with nature (Mother Earth). The purpose of this bibliographical essay is to offer an interdisciplinary and continental comprehensive view about these critical reflections, research studies, reports, interviews, essays, testimonies, manifests, discourses, and other conceptual contributions of Latin American indigenous intellectuals and communitarian leaders from the 1960s to the present. I have limited this vast and complex intellectual production to three fundamental indigenous debates: first, the criticism against neocolonialism, racism, and discrimination; second, self-defense of indigenous human rights and pluricultural laws; and, third, the development of judicial systems to protect the rights of Mother Earth—all of which lead to constructing new societies based on universal principles of ethnic diversity, respect for social equality and reciprocity, and living together in harmony. There are many other areas of indigenous sociopolitical production that are not considered here. That is why this study is a modest and preliminary tribute to a long and much more complex indigenous intellectual production that emerges based on exclusion, discrimination, and other forms of social inequality still suffered by many indigenous peoples in Latin America. This essay, thematically organized, provides an inclusive selection of a very heterogeneous spectrum of contemporary Latin American indigenous intellectuals, academics, activists and communitarian leaders, in conjuction with others who have been inspired or influenced by them. The purpose here then is to visibilize these contemporary indigenous authors, thinkers, and activists, even if their ideas, studies, and social reflections can be related to precolonial or colonial times. The strong presence of social leaders such as Berta Cáceres in Honduras, Isildo Beldenegro in Mexico, or José Tendetza in Ecuador, and many many others—some of whom have been killed, tortured, and criminalized— cannot be separated from the concepts and critical studies produced by indigenous intellectuals. I want to thank Agustín Grijalva and Maria Warren for their invaluable help. https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199766581/obo-9780199766581-0245.xml?q=Grijalva%20&fbclid=IwAR02XRk8o66fbQrslTmGUsa1wHJcwXo09D\_sBbht1cw3qOiTVamwQ273ul0#firstMatch