Colin M. MacLachlan.Imperialism and the Origins of Mexican Culture.

Abstract

First, it is important to note what this book is not: it is not a deeply researched monograph or an up-to-date historiographical exploration of Mexican history and culture. Rather, its scope is different: it is macro, overarching, and “interpretive” (32). It embodies the author’s decades’ long reflections on the history and meetings of empires. According to Colin M. MacLachlan, “Hispano-Indo Mexico became an heir to a lengthy historical process including early Iberian tribalism, Rome, the Visigoths, Spanish Islam, Judaism and Western Civilization in general” (29–30). Imperialism and the Origins of Mexican Culture traces specifically how these civilizations might have contributed to shape the history of Mexico. MacLachlan does not focus solely on the “hybridization that took place,” the “mestizo culture,” but also delineates “a continuum” that located “Indo-Mexico, Europe and Spain on the same road to modernity” (32). There are a number of preconceptions—Indo-Mexico, mestizo, continuum, and modernity—that needed more explanation at the start. Why introduce the term Indo-Mexico and never define it or justify its practice? The elaboration of “New Spain’s mestizo culture” also falls short (249). The proffered definition recognizes “mestizo” as “both a biological and cultural term,” given that “one could be a cultural mestizo by adopting elements of European culture” including “language” while “retaining religious fragments, words, customs and food from the indigenous side” (23). Yet such interpretation fails to engage with a cohort of research post A. Magnus Morner (R. Douglas Cope, Matthew Restall, Pilar Gonzalbo Aizpuru, and Joanne Rappaport) that has fruitfully complicated shifting constructions of socio-racial identity while also including African contributions to the postconquest Mexican mix.