Space is a boundary marker of ethnoracial identity in Mexico. The South and the rural are coded as “Indian,” whereas the North and the urban are coded as “Mexican.”
—A. M. Alonso (2004, p. 469)
Abstract
This article analyzes the use of the “Indian” in three Chicana texts involved in romantic couplings that point to what I term as a “mestizaje” naturalized in the Southwest that necessitates a "metamestizaje" reading. A naturalized mestizaje allows the writers to interpellate Indian characters or racialized others from the south into the larger Latino family. I argue that by doing so, the novelists unwittingly erase Indigenous autonomy, language, and cultural histories, privileging a US brand of mestizo identity popularized in political discourse and cultural productions. Indeed, I conclude that, ultimately, these novels are about Chicano and Latino disenfranchisement and not about solidarity and horizontal relationships with Indigenous communities in the south.
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Notes
My thinking of metamestizaje is inspired by H. White’s Metahistory (1975), F. Jameson’s “Metacommentary” (1971), and E. Brooks-Higginbotham's "African-American Women’s History and the Metalanguage of Race." (1992). I reference Claudia Milian’s observation that the Global South “can speak to the negotiation of political identities—and the passages of political families—across borders, (2013, p. 34).
In the Yucatán Peninsula for instance, “mestizo” is used to refer to a Maya speaker.
Interestingly when the Zapatistas erupted into national political scene, former president Ernesto Zedillo claimed the rebels were actually Central Americans. Of course, it must be noted that, historically, Chiapas was part of the Central American Confederacy before l823 (the date Central America separated from its two-year union with Mexico and the year Chiapas was incorporated into Mexico).
Of course, there are various tendencies under this umbrella term, but as it relates to literature, please see the work, Hermenéutica y praxis del indigenismo: la novela indigenista desde Clorinda Matto a José María Arguedas by Julio Rodríguez-Luis.
Originally published in 1978, the poem is anthologized by Rebolledo y Rivero (1993) in Infinite Divisions: Anthology of Chicana Literature (Tucson: University of Arizona Press), 84–87.
Although Alberto Moreiras in The Exhaustion of Difference refers to the “poetics of solidarity” in the context of the testimonio and the limits of solidarity, since in and of itself the testimonist does not automatically offer access to the other’s knowledge and runs the risk of being fetishized by Latin Americanist critics; in my mind, it resonates with the kind of absorption the others from the south undergo in these novels.
Of course, it is important to note that many Chicana feminists have critiqued Paz’s condemnation of La Malinche or la Chingada (e.g., Norma Alarcón).
I am not negating the real effects of being racialized as Indian, however.
See “Epithet that divides Mexicans is banned by Oxnard School District,” Los Angeles Times, 28 May 2012.
I was part of the Native American student group in high school. There were five of us. The Indigenous nations represented were Diné, Cherokee, Tohono O’odham, and Chicana. Although my mother’s side of the family identifies as campesino, my father’s side of the family came from the aldea, Pie del Cerro, a land communally owned by Maya Ch’orti’ Indians.
My family is from an area called el Trifinio, where Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala meet. In terms of nation-state citizenship, my father had roots in the aldea, Pie del Cerro, a border area shared by Guatemala and Honduras, whereas my mother has roots in La Palma, a border area between El Salvador and Honduras. I point out the border status because they are zones of both confluence and conflict, guided by nationalisms on all sides. Many people maintain double citizenship. Historically and culturally, this area is Maya Ch’orti’ and their descendants are recognized by both the nation-states of Honduras and Guatemala. In 1932, the Ch’orti’ were divided again by Guatemala and Honduras, making many families binational. In the Trifinio part of El Salvador, Indigenous peoples are not recognized as Ch’orti’ because they do not have external cultural markers or speak Ch’orti’, nor is there a collective identity outside the campesino one. Another issue is that the Indigenous peoples movement in El Salvador has been criticized for assuming a Maya identity when in fact the overwhelming majority is Nahuat and Lenca (see Tilley 2005). Not to mention that the nation-state of El Salvador officially acknowledged only three Indigenous nations in its constitution as recently as 2014. Brent E. Metz (2009) has conducted important contemporary work on the Maya Ch’orti’ in the Trifinio area and speaks more to the differences.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Maylei Blackwell, Luis Urrieta, and the anonymous readers for their insights in strengthening the article. I would also like to thank Kirsten Gruesz for offering me the opportunity to share an earlier version of this paper as part of a talk for Latino Literary Cultures at UCSC. I would like to thank Deb Vargas, Max Parra, Stephanie Jed, and Rosaura Sánchez for their encouragement and feedback.
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Chacón, G.E. Metamestizaje and the narration of political movements from the south. Lat Stud 15, 182–200 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-017-0062-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-017-0062-2