The Politics of Blood:

Abstract

In The Rag Doll Plagues ( 1992), Alejandro Morales employs the epidemic as a metaphor for sociocultural transformations initiated with the conquest of the Americas and continuing into the twenty-first century. The present essay centers on the trope of blood-in terms of the representation of plagues and the possibilities ofmiscegenation- in order to show how The Rag Doll Plagues highlights the fear of intercultural contact and the shortcomings of concepts such as mestizaje to resolve social inequalities, advocating instead a multicultural agenda able to address the socioeconomic complexities of contemporary society. Morales’s assessment of different forms of transculturation is germane to current debates on cultural hybridity, issues of race and class, and the use of science and technology as forms of social control.