Naming Ourselves: Recognising Racism and Mestizaje in Mexico

Abstract

Mestiza/o is a racial category that emerged as a key component of the ideological myth of formation of the Mexican nation, namely mestizaje, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In such a project of state formation, Mexican is equivalent to Mestiza. It refers to those who represent Mexicanness and therefore those who are closer to the model of the ideal subjects of the Mexican Mestiza nation. Mestizaje, as this ideological framework, boosts an implied rhetoric of inclusive-ness while concealing processes of exclusion and racism ‘based on the idea of the inferiority of blacks and indigenous peoples and, in practice, of discrimination against them’ (Wade 2001: 849). Mestiza is then seen as a term both relatively ‘neutral’ (i.e. all Mexicans are Mestizas/os) but also as highly ‘loaded’ (implying possibilities of inclusion and exclusion to the national myth).

Yes, I would say I’m indígena [indigenous], maybe because of all these ideas about nationalism … and the education system in Mexico that makes you recognise yourself as such, but when, for example, you’re out, and you run to cross the street [instead of just walking], and somebody shouts at you, ‘oh, you’re an Indio’. You say: ‘no, don’t call me an Indio because I’m not an Indio’. There is like a problem to acknowledge it … we don’t know how to recognise if we are indígenas, or if we are mestizos, or if we are Spaniards and descend from the Spaniards

(Montserrat, 29, Mexico City)