Indigenous Mestizos: The Politics of Race and Culture in Cuzco, Peru, 1919–1991 (Latin America Otherwise) - Hardcover

De La Cadena, Marisol

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0822323850 ISBN 13: 9780822323853

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 2000

Synopsis

In the early twentieth century, Peruvian intellectuals, unlike their European counterparts, rejected biological categories of race as a basis for discrimination. But this did not eliminate social hierarchies; instead, it redefined racial categories as cultural differences, such as differences in education or manners. In Indigenous Mestizos Marisol de la Cadena traces the history of the notion of race from this turn-of-the-century definition to a hegemony of racism in Peru.

De la Cadena’s ethnographically and historically rich study examines how indigenous citizens of the city of Cuzco have been conceived by others as well as how they have viewed themselves and places these conceptions within the struggle for political identity and representation. Demonstrating that the terms Indian and mestizo are complex, ambivalent, and influenced by social, legal, and political changes, she provides close readings of everyday concepts such as marketplace identity, religious ritual, grassroots dance, and popular culture, as well as of such common terms as respect, decency, and education. She shows how Indian has come to mean an indigenous person without economic and educational means—one who is illiterate, impoverished, and rural. Mestizo, on the other hand, has come to refer to an urban, usually literate, and economically successful person claiming indigenous heritage and participating in indigenous cultural practices. De la Cadena argues that this version of de-Indianization—which, rather than assimilation, is a complex political negotiation for a dignified identity—does not cancel the economic and political equalities of racism in Peru, although it has made room for some people to reclaim a decolonized Andean cultural heritage.

This highly original synthesis of diverse theoretical arguments brought to bear on a series of case studies will be of interest to scholars of cultural anthropology, postcolonialism, race and ethnicity, gender studies, and history, in addition to Latin Americanists.

About this title

From the Publisher:

“Eloquent, engaging, and highly readable. With its synthetic treatment of ethnographic and historical materials this book makes a welcome and highly innovative contribution to both the specialist field of Andean studies and the general fields of cultural anthropology, Latin American studies, and racial and ethnic studies.”—Deborah Poole, New School for Social Research

“A magnificent study. This is a model of closely interwoven ethnographic and archival research, among the most significant contributions to contemporary Andean history and anthropology in many years.”—Brooke Larson, State University of New York at Stony Brook

From the Back Cover:

"A magnificent study. This is a model of closely interwoven ethnographic and archival research, among the most significant contributions to contemporary Andean history and anthropology in many years."--Brooke Larson, State University of New York at Stony Brook

About this edition

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0822323850
• ISBN 13: 9780822323853
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 424