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To Die in This Way: Nicaraguan Indians and the Myth of Mestizaje, 1880‐1965
Abstract
To Die In This Way: Nicaraguan Indians and the Myth of Mestizaje, 1880-1965. Jeffrey L. Gould. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998. xiv. 305 pp., bibliography, Index.
... In a move to " christianize " indigenous and peasant Catholics during the 1940s and 1950s, priests seized images formerly controlled by communities in many areas of Nicaragua . Jeffrey L. Gould (1998) mentions that a priest took an image away from a rural community in Matagalpa that had been circulating from house to house in the late 1940s, and Richard Adams (1976) mentions similar incidents in the 1950s in the Nicaraguan highlands. We can infer, then, that the removal of the " original " image of Jesús del Rescate from Popoyuapa may have been an attempt to stamp out popular religious practices by a former priest who objected to them. ...
This article examines the growth of an eight-day
wagon pilgrimage to the festival of Jesus the Rescuer in Rivas,
Nicaragua. Pilgrims' nostalgic desire converges with Parish priests'
successful marketing of the religious image to create a "renewal"
that is consonant with government assertions that Nicaragua is
a Catholic nation. Yet the meaning of the event for wagon pilgrims
remains rooted in their sense of indigenous difference, and their own
practices continue to reflect a commitment to the popular Catholicism of
the mayordomía system, upon which their indigenous
identity is partly based. The different meanings that organizers,
participants, and observers attribute to the pilgrimage demonstrate that
such popular enactments are multivocal phenomena, neither inherently
conservative nor automatically resistant to the social and cultural
establishment.
In recent decades the number of indigenous Amazonian people living in cities has grown exponentially. This new phenomenon implies the revision and modification of ancestral practices and brings with it the immediate consequence of the question about the source of indigenous societies. In the present article some of the progress is presented of an ongoing project of investigation on indigenous Amazonian peoples of Peru and their relation with the cities and urban life. The form in which anthropology on the Amazon has dealt with the theme of modernization and urbanization in relation to cultural identity of indigenous communities is discussed. In addition, some of the preliminary results on the case of cities of Iquitos and Puerto Maldonado are presented, as is the urban experience of the Shipibo-Conibo and Ashninka. Finally, the role of the indigenous youth is highlighted as the decisive factor in determining the future of the Amazonian peoples of the 21st century.
Latin American Research Review 40.1 (2005) 251-267
As truth commission reports from both the United Nations (UN) and the Catholic church show, nowhere in Central America was the intensity and duration of civil war as devastating as in Guatemala, where 200,000 (predominantly Maya) people were killed and one million displaced. Rachel May's erudite Terror in the Countryside looks at how two cycles of political violence (1958-1972 and 1972-1985) spawned (and then nearly eradicated) rural organizations in Guatemala and how these organizations adapted to these threats. She convincingly argues that ideologies became more radical, resilient, and indigenous; organizational structures became more democratic, flexible, participatory, and Mayan; and mobilization strategies became more concerned with protecting, educating, and empowering members. For these reasons, May posits, "The lessons learned during the worst periods of political violence uniquely qualify these organizations, these representatives of Guatemalan civil society, to take a leading role in the democratization process" (145).
The verve and composure with which indigenous, women's, labor, and other grassroots movements have emerged from violence and civil war in Central America are nothing short of heroic. These groups do not represent monolithic homogenous populations or demands. Often divisions emanating from ethnicity, geography, class, goals, and ideology sowed dissension and opposition, but at times the common condition of exploitation forged national and transnational alliances with the capacity to challenge hegemonic political and economic forces. Efforts to understand the development and impact of civil society unite these books.
May's study ends in 1985, the first time in fifteen years that nonmilitary presidential candidates competed in relatively fair (if not representative) elections. Globalization on the Ground edited by Christopher Chase-Dunn et al. picks up where May leaves off, affirming her assertions. A number of the authors in this volume attest that civil society was not only crucial to democratization in Guatemala, but also to the peace process. Recent works including Susanne Jonas's authoritative Of Centaurs and Doves (2000) and Rachel Sieder's (ed.) Guatemala after the Peace Accords (1998) adeptly examine the Guatemalan peace process. But the scholarship being reviewed here (including three articles by Jonas) both expands on that analysis and moves beyond it by exploring such issues as the long-term effects of neoliberal economic policies and the legacy of violence (caused in large part by economic and political injustice) in Central America. In her article "Pan-Mayanism and the Guatemalan Peace Process" (Chase-Dunn et al. 2001), Kay Warren identifies the popular left and Mayanist organizations as central to the process because they were among the "best organized groups" (156). Despite their restricted access to negotiations, Mayan groups developed strategies for implementing the 1996 Peace Accords before they were even signed and contributed to "new modes of political organizing and community building" (162). Because Mayan leaders addressed Guatemala's central crises, the dialogue that emerged was radical. For example, in an effort to bridge ethnic divisions, some Maya argued that addressing Ladino poverty should be a top priority since it fueled the racism of poor Ladinos. In Terror in the Countryside May deftly illustrates that a "Maya renaissance" emerged in the early 1970s and later spawned "Maya nationalism" (121), and the Comité de Unidad Campesina (CUC) began to unite Maya and Ladinos under a banner of equality during the 1970s and 1980s—important precedents for deconstructing racism in the 1990s. As Mayan intellectual and activist José Serech points out in his article "Development of Globalization in the Mayan Population of Guatemala," (Chase-Dunn et al. 2001) these approaches contribute to a Mayan vision of "constructing a future for our past" (171).
Globalization on the Ground and Repression, Resistance, and Democratic Transition in Central America (edited by Thomas Walker and Ariel Armony), are especially valuable because they eschew minimalist definitions of democracy. For example, the authors argue that elections and military subordination to civilian rule are not adequate measures of democracy. In addition to the considerable attention dedicated to civil society, these scholars—especially Nelson Amaro in "Decentralization, Local Government, and Citizen Participation" (Chase Dunn et al. 2001) and...
This study examines the relationship between labour and nation in nineteenth-century Nicaragua by exploring how the state's institutional efforts to control labour coincided with a prevailing discourse of nation that idealised farmers (agricultores) and wage labourers (jornaleros and operarios) at opposite ends of the spectrum of national citizenship. The article focuses on the towns of the ethnically diverse region of the Prefecture of Granada, an area that included the present-day departments of Granada, Carazo and Masaya, and where coffee production first boomed in Nicaragua. It is argued that labour coercion rested not simply on the building of national, regional and municipal institutions of labour control, but also on defining the political and social role of labourers within the national community. At the same time, subaltern communities, especially indigenous ones, contested these efforts not merely through evasion and subterfuge, but by engaging the discourse of nation-state to claim citizenship as farmers and assert independence from landlords.
Historical Background
Race and Culture in Latin AmericaMestizaje, Difference, Multiculturalism, and GlobalizationReferences
This article focuses on the recent Mexican controversy about the legal status of the indigenous population and the nature of nationalism, which is linked to recent constitutional amendments and new policy strategies. Changes in legislation and policy are examined in the context of a widespread economic and political crisis of the populist regime after 1982, which radically affected the previous indigenist discourse; but they are also seen as having been motivated by Indian demands and mobilisations against the official vision of citizenship as a function of cultural homogeneity and mestizaje. The article analyses the implications of the new constitutional amendments and the heated debates that they have provoked among different political actors, including indigenous organisations. In particular, it examines two areas of disagreement. The first concerns the multiple meanings of multiculturalism – as a threat of fragmentation and fundamentalism, a new form of state control or a strategy for indigenous national participation and empowerment. The second concerns the definition and levels of implementation of indigenous political autonomy. Negotiation over such disagreements, leading to inclusive citizenship, constitute a great challenge for ethnic intellectuals and theoreticians of Mexican nationalism.
RESUMEN
En las escuelas federales abiertas en el oriente de Valladolid ent e 1928 y 1935, se suponía que las comunidades Mayas rechazaron a los maest os en defensa de su cultura e identitad. De hecho, la esistencia cont a las escuelas fue por ot as causas: el apoyo económico exigido por las escuelas a las comunidades, el echazo de la coeducación, y la envidia de los políticos. Vista desde esta perspectiva, es necesario modificar substancialmente la idea de resistencia étnica de los Maya.
RESUMEN
Durante las primeras décadas del siglo XX, las atenciones de varios grupos reformistas yucatecos y mexicanos se fijaron en la educación indígena en Yucatán, situando a ese estado en la vanguardia de la educación indígena en México. Las propuestas de los hacendados yucatecos reformistas, y de los gobiernos constitucionalistas y socialistas del período revolucionario, evidenciaban marcadas diferencias teóricas y prácticas en questiones educativas, conforme a sus distintas políticas e ideologías. Pero a pesar de las diferencias, muchas de las propuestas para la educación de las poblaciones mayas de Yucatán se basaban en un racismo utópico, según el cual las poblaciones indígenas se consideraban como poblaciones degeneradas, primitivas, y atrasadas, o sea por herencia biológica, o por formación cultural o linguística. Sólo a través de un proceso educativo que “liberara” a los “indios” de su idioma, costumbres, y cultura, se podrían asimilar a la patria mexicana como ciudadanos leales y productivos. Los diversos reformistas, en proyectos llevados a la práctica, se proponían eradicar toda manifestación de diferencia étnica, para inculcar en su lugar una conciencia de mexicanidad y de modernidad. Este proceso fue concebido—tanto por hacendados, reformistas, revolucionarios, y socialistas—en términos espirituales, como un proceso de redención.
This article aims to explore the ways in which the tensions involved in nation-building and state consolidation during the half-century following the Liberal Revolution of 1895 in Ecuador were refracted through the locus of race and the manipulation of racial ideologies. It centres the state as the primary motor of nation-building and racialisation, arguing that nation-building and state formation in Ecuador operated in close conjunction, and that race was central to each. Through case studies of citizenship, education and the integration of territory and resources, it explores how state discourse and policy shaped the racial boundaries of national inclusion, and how these were negotiated and contested by subalterns at the level of the state.
Este artículo examina el papel de la eugenesia en la creación de programas de higiene en la costa Caribe colombiana a comienzos del siglo XX. Las ideas eugenésicas sobre el decaimiento racial, en especial sobre el lugar de las poblaciones negras en ese supuesto proceso, inspiraron proyectos que buscaban promover la salud y la limpieza de la gente de la Costa para eliminar lo que se percibía como su contaminación biológica y cultural. El deseo de mejorar racialmente al Caribe, tanto en la Costa misma como en el bajo río Magdalena, surgió en gran parte por la posición de la región como salida del país al mundo (y a sus mercados). La meta eugenésica de la renovación racial también tuvo una naturaleza moral, y el movimiento higiénico en la Costa se enfocó en mejorar las condiciones y la productividad de la población trabajadora de la región. Aunque los programas de salud e higiene aparentemente se diseñaron para dar mayor unidad a Colombia después de los desórdenes y el malestar resultantes de la Guerra de los Mil Días y de la separación de Panamá, las motivaciones raciales y morales de esos programas reforzaron las divisiones culturales que existían previamente en el país.
El artículo sostiene que las garantías constitucionales alcanzadas tras la Constitución de 1991 por las comunidades indígenas son el resultado de una larga tradición de negociación, en la que sobresale el papel de los indígenas del Cauca, con el Estado colombiano, en relación con sus tierras y el estatus de su identidad dentro de la República. Se explora la forma como los indígenas desafiaron las nociones elitistas y racistas de ciudadanía propuestas por la clase gobernante y se examinan las posiciones que asumieron frente a los conflictos derivados de la lucha partidista entre liberales y conservadores.
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