NACLA Report on the Americas

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Reconstructing Race: Racism, Culture and

Mestizaje in Latin America

Marisol De La Cadena

To cite this article: Marisol De La Cadena (2001) Reconstructing Race: Racism, Culture
and Mestizaje in Latin America, NACLA Report on the Americas, 34:6, 16-23, DOI:
10.1080/10714839.2001.11722585

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Published online: 31 May 2016.

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 REPORT ON RACE

RECONSTRUCTING RACE
Racism, Culture and Mestizaje in Latin America

Culturalist definitions
of race have been
central to the
invention of Latin
American nations.
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Key to those
definitions has been
the concept of racial
mixture-mestizaje--
which remains a
highly contested
concept.

C uzquehos celebrating the feast day of the Lord of Miracles in October 2000.

BY MARISOL DE LA CADENA

One nomena that the non-native visitor confronts

of traveling
while the most inpuzzling, disconcerting
Latin America phe-
is the relative
ease with which pervasive and very visible discrimina-
is not important in Latin America, our foreign friend
would also be told; it is ethnicity that matters.
These responses, far from whimsical or innocuous
social conventions, are at the crux of Latin American
tory practices coexist with the denial of racism. racial formations. These modem practices that acquit
Although, of late, new social movements have chal- discriminatory practices of racism, and legitimize
lenged the "normality" of this practice, it has not sub- them by appealing to culture, are expressions of the
sided. The usual local explanation our traveler might intellectual and political history through which, in
receive-whether in metropolitan centers like Lima, most of Latin America, "culture" has been racialized
Bogotd or Santiago, or in provincial cities like Cuzco, and thus enabled to mark differences. Moreover, with-
Cali or Temuco-is that the discriminatory behavior, in this culturalist definition, race could be biology, but
practiced both by the elite and the dispossessed, is not it could also be the soul of the people, their culture,
racism because it is based on cultural differences and their spirit and their language. Thus, within the Latin
not on skin color or any other biological marker. Race American racial field, phenotype (skin, hair, and eye
color as well as facial features) could be subordinated
to "culture" as a marker of difference. If our fellow
Marisolde la Cadena is assistant professsorof anthropology at traveler ignores this background, she will be puzzled 0
UNC-Chapel Hill and Member of the Board of Directors of the 0a
Instituto de Estudios Peruanos (Lima, Peru). Her latest book is upon the realization that brown-skinned individuals O

Indigenous Mestizos: The Politics of Race and Culture in Cuzco, can be white and Indian-looking fellows do not self-
Peru (Duke University Press, 2000). identify as Indians.
REPORT ON THE AMERICAS
16NACIA
16 NACILA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS
 REPORT ON RACE

To help our imaginary traveler understand the mod-

em history of race in Latin America, I would invite Manuel Gonzales Prada: Whenever the Indian receives instruc-
tion in schools or becomes educated simply through contact
her to start by reading the following dialogue (recreat-
with civilized individuals, he acquires the same moral and cul-
ed by myself) between the French Anglophile Gustav tural level as the descendants of Spaniards.
3
Le Bon and the Mexican thinker Jos6 Vasconcelos.
For the French thinker, racial essences were inalter-
Gustav Le Bon: The influence of race in the destiny of peoples
able, fixed and determined by heredity; thus education
appears plainly in the history of the perpetual revolutions of
could only polish external appearances. Most Peru-
the Spanish republics in South America. Composed of individ- vians, whether anarchists or conservatives, could not
uals whose diverse heredities have dissociated their ancestral have disagreed more. "Thanks to education, man can
characteristics, these populations have no national soul and today transform the physical milieu and even the race.
therefore no stability. A people of half-castes is often It is his most glorious triumph," asserted the Peruvian
ungovernable. aristocrat Javier Prado, thus coinciding with his politi-
cal rival, the radical Gonzales Prada. And these beliefs
Jos` Vasconcelos: Hidalgo, Morelos, Bolfvar, Petion the Haitian, could become state policies. 4
the Argentines in Tucumdn, Sucre all were concerned with the
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liberation of slaves, with the declaration of equality of all men ulturalist definitions of race, which endowed
by natural right, and with the civil and social equality of
Whites, Blacks and Indians. In a moment of historical crisis,
education with almost eugenic might, were cen-
they formulated the transcendental mission assigned to that tral to the invention and legislation of Latin
region of the globe: the mission of fusing all peoples ethnically American nations. They were supported by ubiquitous
and spiritually.l images in which erratic combinations of heredity,
nature, climate, culture, and history resulted in distinc-
tively identifiable spirits or souls of the races that peo-
Similar discussions were at the core of the creation pled the world. In Peru, the case I know best through
of the scientific definition of race in the late nineteenth personal experience and academic analyses, the cultur-
century. Although race was not questioned then, and alist tendencies of racial thought were reaffirmed and
disputes were not aimed at subverting its existence, Le sharpened by indigenismo. At the turn of the century
Bon and Vasconcelos could not have disagreed more this was a nationalist doctrine that anchored the Peru-
on their views of mestizaje. While North Atlantic vian nation in its pre-Hispanic past, and most specifi-
thinkers, like Le Bon, imagined Latin Americans as cally in the Inca legacy. Artists, literary writers, and
hybrids and thus potentially-if not actually-degen- politicians, indigenistas are usually identified only
erates, Latin American intellectuals tended to praise after their pro-Indian leanings. Yet they were especial-
the benefits of racial mixture, and proposed "construc- ly explicit in defining race through culture. Luis
tive miscegenation." 2 They thus reversed anti-hybrid Eduardo Valcircel, a Cuzco resident historian and
arguments and, as illustrated in Vasconcelos' quote, lawyer, and the undisputed intellectual leader of this
placed the "spirit" at the center of their projects. Yet, nationalist movement, was exceptionally clear in this
since racial markers could include some biological respect. Valcdrcel believed that the essential peculiari-
aspects, physical characteristics were not canceled out. ties of a people were determined by what he called
Rather, they were subordinated to the superior might their history. In his view, culture was the imprecise
of morality, which although innate, was perceived as concept, yet powerful force, that determined races:
susceptible of being improved through education. This
brings me to a second invented dialogue-and intrin- The universal relationship between human beings and the nat-
sic discrepancy-this time between Le Bon and the ural world is resolved through culture. We are the offspring,
Limefio anarchist Manuel Gonzales Prada. that is, the heirs, of a being that has been shaped by the inter-
action of Nature and Culture. We repudiate the idea that spon-
Gustav Le Bon: A Negro or a Japanese may easily take a univer- taneous generation, mutation, or any form of biological life
5
sity degree or become a lawyer; the sort of varnish he thus determine history because they lack history.
acquires is however quite superficial and has no influence in Referring to the interconnectedness of race and cul-
his mental constitution. What no education can give him,
ture, the historian of anthropology George Stocking
because they are created by heredity alone, are the forms of
thought, the logic, and above all the character of the Western remarked that U.S. academics, used "race" as "a
man. Our Negro or our Japanese may accumulate all possible catchall that could be applied to various human groups
certificates without ever attaining to the level of the average whose sensible similarities of appearance, of manner,
European.... It is only in appearance that a people suddenly and of speech persisted over time, and therefore were
transforms its language, its constitution, its beliefs or its arts. to them, evidently hereditary." There was, he said "no
clear line between cultural and physical elements or
VOL XXXIV, No 6 MAY/JUNE 2001 17
 REPORT ON RACE
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Townspeople of Maras, Cuzco dress as Inca warriorsduring the feast of Moray Raimi, a November ritual that gives thanks to the
Earth.

between social and biological heredity." 6 Peruvians knowledge of literature, or my understanding of the
therefore were not exceptional in conflating race and quantum theory." 8 In Peru instead, triguefio whiteness
elements of what we now consider "culture." Neither provided racial sanctuary to the mostly brown-skinned
were they the only ones to postulate the eugenic might elites across the country. Yet, obviously, the sanctuary
of education to improve the races. In fact, this was was not class-blind. Rather, it was couched in the ide-
common to other racial projects that optimistically ology of decency, a racialized class practice, accord-
rejected the dominance of heredity in determining ing to which an individual's skin color marked him or
race. What I find peculiar about Peruvian racial her depending on the moral standards reflected by
thought and racial relations during this period, is that his/her level of education. Mestizos started where
there existed a tendency to subordinate manifest phe- decency ended; they were called "cholos"and were
notypic markers to allegedly invisible racial character- considered immoral and corrupted. Anti-mestizo daily
istics such as "intelligence" and "morality." This atti- life feelings were academically authorized by
tude, in turn, was expressed through a certain indigenistas, who borrowed from North Atlantic
dismissal of whiteness. For example, discarding Euro- thinkers (those that they had otherwise contested) the
pean forms of whiteness as marks of racial status, the idea that races degenerated if they were moved from
conservative writer Manuel Atanasio Fuentes report- their proper geographical places. "Every personality,
ed: "In Lima, even those men who immediately every group is born within a culture and can only live
descend from the European race have a trigueiiocolor within it," wrote Valcdrcel, who finished his sentence:
[literally 'like wheat,' light brown] which is pale and "the mixing of races only produces deformities." From
yellowed." 7 this view, mestizos were ex-Indians who had aban-
Indeed, the Latin American academic ambivalence doned their proper natural/cultural environment-the
towards whiteness represented a significant difference countryside-and migrated to the cities. There, Val-
with the experience of, for example, Franz Fanon, circel claimed, they degenerated morally. The same
whose intellectual sophistication, he declared, did not author claimed: "The impure Indian woman finds
remove the derogatory fact of his black skin: "No refuge in the city. Flesh of the whorehouse, one day
exception was made for my refined manners, or my she will die in the hospital." 9
NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS
18 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS
 REPORT ON RACE

Thus, while opposing terminal racial hierarchies, the agriculturalists, yet to offer them the benefits of civi-
culturalist definition of race had room for discrimina- lization through bilingual Quechua and Spanish litera-
tion flowing from purist racial-cultural views and their cy programs, agricultural training, and hygiene
dictum of sexual morality. Mestizaje was the impure lessons. While these policies might have prevented
consequence of rape or female sexual deviance. It had mestizaje from becoming official nationalist rhetoric,
resulted in mestizos: sexually irrepressible, culturally they did not invalidate it. Valcdrcel's project could
chaotic, and therefore immoral social beings. Hence, have been ambiguous enough as to bring consensus
cholos represented not biological, but moral degenera- into the assortment of ideas proposed by the politically
tion, stirred by the alteration of the original order, by heterogeneous and even antagonistic champions of
an inappropriate cultural environment, and furthered mestizaje.
by a deficient education. The elite, regardless of skin In the years to come, and under such ambiguous slo-
color and of cultural mixture, were sheltered from the gans as "unity in diversity" the state promoted purist
stains of mestizaje. They were educated, occupied manifestations of indigenous folklore, emphatically
their racial proper discouraging those consid-
places-both geographi- ered "inauthentic" or
"Decency" inspi r ed people to fall
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cally and socially-and "mestizo," while at the

thus lived within the dic- same time "modernizing"
tum of moral order. They in love withouIt crossing racial the countryside through
were gente decente, decent boundaries. Se) ial disorder was development programs. In
people, people of worth. not normal amo n g gente decente; the meantime, intellectuals
Men were gentlemen, their faithful to the teachings of
women were ladies, and as it was the attlriIbute of urban Valcircel-most of them
such they displayed appro- commoners, t he mestizos. anthropologists-contin-
priate sexual behavior. ued to blacklist pro-mesti-
Caballeros were responsi- Being mestiz in Peru was a zaje efforts. For example,
ble patriarchs and damas racialized fact, 1 alving as much to as late as 1965, in a confer-
virtuous women, but more do with educa ence entitled "Ideas and
importantly decencia It Processes of Mestizaje in
inspired them to fall in Peru," the founder of the
'^"" ""'" """" ^'""' '""" '~"""""
LILUI
^' """^~ """
UIt f - ruvIan U tu -
IUVe wIIl
w elverI,
cII I IUs

preventing the transgres- ies, Jos6 Matos Mar,

sion of racial boundaries. Sexual disorder was not nor- defined mestizaje as "an imposition from the colonial
mal among gente decente; it was the attribute of urban past, an idea replete with racist prejudices, aimed at
commoners, the mestizos. Being mestizo in Peru was the extinction of indigenous cultures." 10 In the same
a racialized class fact, where class was not only conference, the celebrated Quechua writer Jose Maria
judged in terms of income but of education and origin. Arguedas-who had worked with ValcArcel in the
None of the above means that mestizaje lacked sup- Ministry of Education-presented for the first time in
porters in Peru. On the contrary, it was championed by public a version of what Peruvian anthropologists call
a broad array of politicians, from reactionary partisans "the myth of Inkarri," a story predicting the return of
of General Francisco Franco to anti-imperialist sup- the Incas.11 Three years later, in 1968, when the mili-
porters of C6sar Augusto Sandino. Yet it never tary regime issued the Agrarian Reform, they used the
became an official, state-led, nation-building project. label "Inkarri" to name a major annual event.
This might have been the result of its exclusionary
class nature, according to which only commoners n relative contrast, and during the same period,
were mestizos. But it could have also been one of the Mexico, Bolivia, Guatemala, and Ecuador imple-
hidden legacies of indigenismo. Valcircel became mented "assimilationist" policies that promoted
Minister of Education in the 1940s, and since then, Spanish literacy and explicitly or implicitly fostered
either overtly or surreptitiously, indigenismo has the elimination of vernacular languages and indige-
inspired significant official educational policies. Key nous cultures. Obviously, I do not think the Peruvian
to indigenista success and relative consensus might state represented the Latin American pro-Indian van-
have been Valcircel's idea of "unity in diversity" guard. Nevertheless, I want to link this Peruvian idio-
which he presented as the context for his rural educa- syncrasy, to another one: While in the countries that I
tion program in a 1946 speech to the national Con- have just mentioned powerful ethnic social move-
gress. Through this program, the Minister of Educa- ments have emerged since the late 1970s, similar
tion expressed his desire to preserve Indians as efforts in Peru are still very marginal.
VoL XXXIV, No 6 MAY/JUNE 2001 19
 REPORT ON RACE

Some analysts have interpreted the absence of "eth- the scope of Indianness. I know this sounds strange,
nic social movements" in present-day Peru to reflect but I will tell you what I mean and how I learned
indigenous "assimilation" and cultural loss. Accord- about it.
ing to this perspective, Peruvian Indians are either From the 1950s to the mid 1970s, indigenous peas-
behind in terms of ethnic consciousness or have ant leaders from all over the country, but most specifi-
yielded to dominant mestizaje projects. This perspec- cally from Cuzco, led a long political insurrection
tive places indigenous Peruvians within the bounds of against the traditional hacienda system. The conflict,
"an ethnic group," and forgets that ethnicity is only organized in alliance with leftist parties and waged
one among the host of social relations-race, gender, under the colors of class struggle, destabilized the
class, geography, generation (to name common- political order and eventually forced a military coup
places)-that organize (and disorganize) indigenous and a radical Agrarian Reform in 1968. Blinded by the
and nonindigenous life processes. But, most impor- success of class rhetoric, leftist social scientists have
tantly it disregards that "indigenous culture" exceeds ignored the indigenous cultural aspects of the struggle,

The Marketing of El Cholo Toledo

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Inpresident
1990, the now infamous Alberto Fujimori ran for
against the renowned writer Mario Vargas
Cholo" has also been labeled Pachacutec, allegedly the
most important Inca.
Llosa calling upon "chinitos" (an allusion to himself) and
"cho/itos" (working class Peruvians) to join forces
against "blanquitos" ( Vargas Losa and the elite circles
surrounding him). El Chino, as he came to be known, views of mestizaje-those that, for example, see
promised a government that would promote "technolo- Quechua and vernacular Andean practices as compati-
gy, honesty, and work." Once in power, he implement- ble, even coming to fruition, with a university degree
ed a neoliberal economic plan and requested that the and economic success. However, and notwithstanding
chinos and cholos forget their collective battles and the candidate's reverberant claims to a working class
instead struggle individually against poverty by becom- cholo identity, he also connects with elite views of mes-
ing micro-entrepreneurs. The 2000 electoral campaign, tizaje. His university degree, his "studies abroad," (and
the first act in the year-long drama that finally drove the of course his marriage to a foreign white woman) loom
increasingly corrupt and dictatorial Fujimori from office, large, and thus "Alejandro"-as his elite peers familiarly
pitted him against Alejandro Toledo, a Peruvian of call him-represents an "ironed" choloness, one that
working class origins, whose campaign evoked the com- has been tamed by education and is a useful political
plexity of Peruvian mestizajes. strategy. Alvaro Vargas Llosa-the writer's son-praised
Migration and education, like in most stories of mesti- Toledo's "cool calculating mind of a Stanford and Har-
zaje, play a crucial role in Toledo's public life story. This vard academic" and his ability to "understand life from
emphasizes his poor origins in an Andean village and his a viewpoint rooted in analytic rigor and scientific infor-
success in earning a Ph.D. from Stanford University. mation." Coinciding with his son's opinion, Mario Var-
However, rather than using education to silence his ori- gas Llosa, expressed his support of Toledo by describing
gins, like the ideology of decency would have indicated, him as a "modern Indian, a cholo without grudges or
throughout his electoral campaigns, Toledo loudly inferiority complexes."
claimed cholo identity. Yet, this identity is not simple. But Toledo's mestizo identities aside, and considering
On the contrary, "e/ Cholo Toledo" is multifaceted; the the historical trajectory of race (and racism) in Peru, a
images he uses to fashion his electoral persona draw- question remains: What happened at the end of the
perhaps independently of his intentions-from the his- twentieth century that allowed for the profusion of
torical rhetoric of Peruvian mestizaje and its multiple racial images in a country used to silencing the racial
meanings. identity of public figures and to the denial of racism?
At the most obvious level, Toledo's electoral cam- Attributing this effect to Alberto Fujimori would be too
paign connects with the Incanist, anti-mestizo tradition simple, and would have probably disappeared with the
promoted by ValcArcel's indigenismo. As the symbol of now fugitive ex-President. That this has not been the
his political party he chose the "Chakana," described as case obliges further explanation.
an Inka symbol that signaled the dawn of a new era. In 1998, in my annual summer visit to Peru, I was sur-
Within the same script, very important political gather- prised by the outpouring of denunciations against
ings have been held in Cuzco, where the candidate racism set off when the employees of four separate
opened the demonstrations with a ritual salute to the night clubs and a coffee house in Lima barred entry to
Andean deities that surround the city, and Eliane Karp, several persons seemingly because they perceived them
(his anthropologist wife) addressed the crowds in to be nonwhite. The anti-racist saga was complex: The
Quechua, the indigenous language. Not surprisingly, "el Institute for the Defense of the Consumer had taken on

20 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS

 which were abundant. Ardent insurrectional speeches sent the loss of indigenous culture, but was rather a
were delivered in Quechua, and the massive demon- strategy towards its empowerment. The huge peasant
strations in the Plaza de Annas of Cuzco were attend- meetings in the Plaza de Annas, and the struggle for
ed by peasants wearing ponchos and woolen caps- land that they were part of, expressed a political prac-
chullos--clothes that express indigenous identity and tice that was not an eitherlor choice between ethnicity
which were specially and symbolically worn for those and class. Instead it coupled both. Don Mariano
occasions. Turpo's personal experience illustrates this. He is a
I would not have paid attention to the significance of paqo-an Andean ritual specialist, somewhat like a
these symbols without the help of Mariano Turpo, a diviner. During the years of the struggle, this role was
self-identified indigenous leader, active since the crucial in his capacity as a regional politician. In his
1930s, who took part in the 1960s-1980s struggle for own words: "They did not follow anybody but me;
land. From him I learned that indigenous utilization of they accepted me because I was the only one that
class rhetoric was a political option that did not repre- knew. I consulted the Apu Ausangate [the regional
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the denunciations and had leveled fines against the story tells us, can become the President of Peru, and
businesses accused of discrimination. Revealing that the even if he does not, he lives a comfortable life. Thus,
state is not monolithic (and also makinq visible the cor- Toledo also plays into the heqemony of neoliberalism,
ruption that affects its practices) sever4 -and its promchon of a consumer who
judges were bribed ~ n t orevoking the can come from any background, provid-
Institute's sanctions. Against this back- ed that helshe can buy and sell. The
drop, another state Institution, the economic identity that neoliberalism
Human Rights Commission of the requires, and the social success it offers,
National Congress, organized a public is not measured by the "refinement"
audience to discuss the pros and cons of standards imposed by "decency,"
penalizing "racism" constitutionally. because with globalization as one of its
Throughout the process, I could not but premises, ident~tlescan be multicultural.
think: Why denounce racism now? And Obviously, I do not thmk neoliberal-
the crucial response came from man ism needs to raise anti-discriminatory
named Alejandro Falla, a lawyer from banners, or to generalize the advocacy
the sanctioning Institute: of multiculturalism. Yet I do think that
"People belleve that the free market in countries like Peru, neoliberalism has
has no laws. But let me tell you, the free a certain amount of seductive room for
market has one law, and that law is that selective class-blind multiculturalisms.
Alejandro Toledo's "market economy
market does not tolerate an" form of dis- with a human face" can also come with
crimination against consumers. Every individual, regard- a cholo face. Thus, it potentially decouples the dominant
less of gender, religion, ethnic, or racial ~dentity,has the identification of popular classes with immorality and
right to participate in the free market." perennial marginality. In so doing, it connects with popu-
And a law was passed unanimously in 1999 to legally lar mestizaje projects and promises an historically unprece-
sanction discriminatory actions for the first time in Peru- dented possibility for the inclusion of the "unrefined"
vian history. The hegemony of Peruvian racism-its mute members of the "popular classes" in official politics.
reign-was apparently over, and although this did not Undoubtedly, the markers of indigenous mestizaje that
mean it would disappear, it did mean that it could be Toledo used throughout both his campaigns represent
publicly censured. Racism's silent rule, however, was an unprecedented public challenge to "decency," and
being challenged by the potential hegemony of neoliber- this has provoked the explicit revulsion of the upper
alism and its embrace of the excluded as consumers, classes. Thus, while neoliberalism may appropriate multi-
regardless of their self-identity. culturalism, the practices of indigenous mestlzaje are not
Indeed, the cholo image that Toledo casts is highly for its consumption only. Insofar as they connote images
compat~blewith the persona that neoliberalism requires: that defy exclusion, they can be used by the new soc~al
a solitary achiever, able to succeed without the interven- movements to resignify the traditional cultural politics of
tion of the state. The public version of the candidate's race and class in Peru. Whether this resignification serves

-
life story describes him as a micro-entrepreneur slnce his the market or the people is a historical matter. And by
y childhood, working as a shoe shiner, a soda and popsicle history I do not mean the past. I mean present-day peo-
vendor during Sunday soccer games, and a door-to-door ple acting politically.
peddler of the tamales his mother cooked. This boy, the -MdlC

VOLXXXIV, No 6 MAYIJUNE
2001
 REPORT ON RACE
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Girls from the Huayrurocommunity leaving school in the Valley of Urumbamba in Pisac, Cuzco.
Andean deity] before going on any strike, before sign- nous culture. On the contrary it meant empowering it,
ing any document." l 2 and thus pushing it beyond the scope of disenfran-
Don Mariano, who speaks Quechua and Spanish, chised Indianness.
has signed many documents. In one of them, written After my lessons with Don Mariano, it was impossi-
while imprisoned under the charges of being a Com- ble for me to assume that "the loss of indigenous cul-
munist, he urged his compafieros to "learn how to read ture" explained the lack of ethnic movements in Peru.
and write, as being illiterate, makes us more Indian, Don Mariano helped me realize that the absence of
easy preys of the hacendados and their lawyers. We overt culturalist (or ethnic) political slogans during
have to stop being Indians to defend ourselves." that period may have resulted instead from the need to
Indeed, I was surprised at this call for de-Indianiza- distance the movement from state-sponsored indi-
tion. Yet, I gradually learned from Don Mariano-and genismo and its allegedly pro-Indian, and highly anti-
from many other indigenous Cuzqueiios-that "not mestizo language. I thus returned to the notion of mes-
being Indians" did not mean shedding indigenous cul- tizaje and found that it had had more than one
ture. Rather de-Indianization implied shedding a social trajectory, and more than one meaning. Indigenous
condition entailing absolute denial of civil rights. This Cuzquefios have appropriated the mestizo identity and
definition of Indianness was reinforced when, in the given it an alternative meaning: They use it to identify
midst of the struggle for land, and while state cultural literate and economically successful people who share
activists were busy promoting indigenous folklore, indigenous cultural practices yet do not perceive them-
other state representatives-the police-used the label selves as miserable, a condition that they consider 0
"Indian" to deny peasant leaders their rights to public "Indian." Far from equating "indigenous culture" with
speech while torturing people like Don Mariano. De- "being Indian"-a colonial label that carries an histor- 0

Indianization meant-as Don Mariano had urged in ical stigma of inferiority-they perceive Indianness as
his letter-becoming literate, being able to live a social condition that reflects an individual's failure
beyond the hacienda territory, in general obtaining to achieve educational improvement. As a result of
civil rights. And none of this meant shedding indige- this redefinition, "indigenous Andean culture" exceeds
NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS
22 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS
 REPORT ON RACE

the scope of Indianness; it broadly includes Cuzquefio Although used to promote mestizaje, Vargas
commoners who claim indigenous cultural heritage, Llosa's words illustrate the survival of earlier indi-
yet refuse to be labeled Indians. They proudly call genista culturalist rhetoric, this time dressed in the
themselves "mestizo," without, however, agreeing to evolutionary ethnic lexicon to which Peruvian anthro-
disappear in the cultural national homogeneity that the pology resorted when race was evicted from scientific
current dominant definition of discourse. Within this new frame-
mestizo conveys. work, Indians were an ethnic
Thus, despised by prominent Indigenous mestizaje is group that represented an earlier
intellectuals, and lacking an overt stage of development and were
official life, mestizaje was not me ant to be culturally different from mestizos.
embraced by the working classes resolved in "either Indian This allegedly nonracial yet evo-
as an empowering identity project. or mestizo"
Yet, adding to its multiple mean- evolutionary lutionary lexicon, which allows
for images of "indigenous
ings, mestizaje in its popular ver- choices iiposed by improvement" and speaks of hier-
sion-what I have called "indige- modern concepts. archies of reason, is facilitated by
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nous mestizaje"-may correspond the "culture talk" provided by

to some of the demands for multi- certain notions of ethnicity. It also
culturalism leveled by the Maya gives a nonracist allure to images
or Aymara social movements in like those produced by Vargas
Guatemala and Bolivia respectively. Indigenous mes- Llosa, and leads to the current denials of racism in
tizos in Peru use their vernacular languages along Peru.
with Spanish; they combine formal education and A 1947 remark by the Argentine populist dictator
indigenous practices; and they commute between city Juan Domingo Per6n prompts some final thoughts:
and countryside, and are versed in both ways of life.
Most importantly, these grassroots forms of mestizaje For us race is not a biological concept. For us, it is something
cancel the immorality imputed to cholos, and they spiritual. It constitutes a sum of the imponderables that make
stress instead their proud endurance of, and struggle us what we are and impel us to be what we should be, through
against poverty and adverse social conditions. Indige- our origins and through our destiny. It is what dissuades us
from falling into the imitation of other communities whose
nous mestizaje is not meant to be resolved in "either
natures are foreign to us. For us, race constitutes our personal
Indian or mestizo" evolutionary choices imposed by seal, indefinable, and irrefutable.14
modern concepts. Rather, as lived experiences, they
distance themselves from conceptual abstractions and
present alternatives that at first sight may seem oxy- Culturalist visions of race have been pervasive
moronic to modern minds. "People can be different among Latin American thinkers, and their efforts have
and similar at the same time. I practice indigenous not necessarily been aimed at separating race from
culture but I am not an Indian," an indigenous culture. As the quote from Per6n makes clear, the
woman in Cuzco told me. And many others echoed Latin American political contribution has consisted in

Obviously,
her.
dominant definitions of mestizaje,
emphasizing the "spiritual" aspects of race, and in
privileging "culture" over "biology" as its defining
essence. When the international scientific community
and the evolutionary racial-cultural projects rejected race as biology, it did not question the dis-
those definitions entail, have not disappeared criminatory potential of culture, let alone its power to
from the national political scene. They have remained naturalize difference. The Latin American tendency to
latent both among leftist and conservative ideologues. explain and legitimate racial hierarchies through cul-
The celebrated writer Mario Vargas Llosa revived ture preserved its authority as a rhetoric of exclusion,
them when he said: discrimination and dominance framed in the apparent
egalitarianism of culture talk. Unveiling the discrimi-
Indian peasants live in such a primitive way that communica- natory potential of "culture" and its historical embed-
tion is practically impossible. It is only when they move to the dedness in racial thought is important; it can shed light
cities that they have the opportunity to mingle with the other on Latin American culturalist forms of racism which
Peru. The price they must pay for integration is high-renunci-
are neither exclusive to rightist politicians nor limited
ation of their culture, their language, their beliefs, their tradi-
tions, and customs, and the adoption of the culture of their
to academia. This understanding goes a long way
ancient masters. After one generation they become mestizos. towards explaining the puzzle-racism accompanied
They are no longer Indians.t
3 by its denial--confronted by our innocent traveler in
the Americas. M
VOLXXXIV, No 6
VOL XXXIV, No6 MAY/JUNE
MAY/JUNE 200123
2001 23