Memorias del mestizaje: Cultura política en Centroamérica de 1920 al presente

Abstract

The study of mestizaje is currently in academic fashion, and several books and dozens of articles on the topic have been published in recent years. In many ways, the current research on mestizaje has replaced the cultural-hybridity debates of the 1990s. Unlike the hybridity theories, however, mestizaje has a longer, more politically charged history that many current mestizaje proponents ignore. By contrast, the contributors to Memorias del mestizaje pay particular attention to how mestizaje has changed over time.Memorias del mestizaje presents a collection of well-researched, ethnographically and historically based case studies. The most comprehensive discussion of mestizaje in Central America, the introductions by Hale and Gould, critical comments, and final reflections by Carol A. Smith bracket 15 individual studies covering Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. Curiously, the book offers no case studies for Costa Rica, although several contributors make cross-cultural and historical comparisons with it. As Smith notes in her commentary, “Mestizaje is the maximum expression of nationalist ideology in Latin America” (p. 579). Although this may be the case, the research here suggests that the ways mestizaje actually played out in local, subaltern discourses and practices differed significantly from discourses produced by elites and the state.Overall, the contributors orient their arguments around several key issues: mestizaje as a state-based agenda, mestizaje as part of contemporary identity politics, and the place of indigenous people in relation to policies of mestizaje. As the word memorias in the title suggests, mestizaje as political agenda is a relic of earlier nation-building strategies that have come undone in the wake of political and economic neoliberalism. Their analyses show the shift from mestizaje to multiculturalism in government ideologies and platforms, which has opened new political spaces.The authors illustrate that mestizaje ultimately failed as a state-oriented agenda for nation building. Using the concept of “myths of mestizaje” that he developed in an earlier work, Gould and several of the authors in the volume reconceptualize state policies and elite agendas from the perspectives of subalterns as situated within mestizaje and multicultural ideologies. This allows the authors to construct alternate histories and memories, effectively illustrating that the new cultural identity movements have a historical basis. This is an especially important point in Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, where the myth of mestizaje is strongest.There is general agreement among the contributors that the Guatemalan case is distinct, differing from other countries in Central America and the rest of Latin America. In part, the difference lies in how Guatemala dealt with its indigenous population, including how it was positioned in relation to ladinos (those defined as not indigenous on the basis of cultural identity and practice). Guatemala’s nation-building discourse made no celebration of indigenous heritage, in contrast with Mexican discourses of mestizaje; there is only a denial of it. Assumedly, two separate nations — indigenous and ladino — formed. What is revealed, however, is that mestizaje as a homogenizing force among nonindigenous Guatemalans was far from effective. As Arturo Taracena Arriola argues, Guatemalan political and business elites favored policies that maintained ethnic distinctions, particularly differentiating indigenous Mayas from criollos and ladinos. How Guatemalans practice their political and cultural identities, as well as how much they actually prescribe or conform to mestizaje agendas, varies widely. Furthermore, in the current neoliberal political climate, Guatemalans reposition their cultural identities in ways that do not always conform to the traditional categories of ladino, Maya, and white.By comparison, the chapters dealing with other Central American countries show how indigenous people were silenced, ignored by, or incorporated into the mestizo state. In the official discourse of elite institutions and actors, indigenous people, including Garífunas, disappeared, and the state was presented as a homogenous mestizo nation. The authors illustrate, however, that subaltern oral histories and memories in Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua show cultural mestizaje to have been far from uniform or complete. As an incomplete project, it is possible to understand how indigenous and black Central Americans positioned themselves within the specific politics that impacted them.What is at stake for these subalterns is not clear. Less well understood are the ways that indigenous and black Central Americans use their identities instrumentally. What do these people — especially in Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador — accomplish by embracing and promoting their nonmestizo identities: more political representation, better jobs, improved safety? Do the traditional elite white oligarchy and the military shape the cultural identities and practices of subalterns in this period of multiculturalism? Some of these questions most likely could be answered by incorporating an economic approach, which has largely been ignored. By and large, the contributors chronicle the historical and political events around the demise of state mestizaje projects and the rise of indigenous and negritude movements, making the volume of great use to scholars of Latin American political and cultural identity.