Indigenous cultures and the nation: denial or appreciation? The Indian image built by the mexican post-revolutionary indigenism in the first half of the twentieth century

• Autor(a) principal: Gil, Antonio Carlos Amador
• Data de Publicação: 2012
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Anos 90 (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://seer.ufrgs.br/index.php/anos90/article/view/24056
• topic: Índios; Indigenismo; México; Século XX; Identidade Nacional.; História; Identidade Nacional; indigenismo; Indians; Indigenism; Mexico; XX century; national identity.

This article examines the process of consolidation of indigenism politics in post-revolutionary Mexico in the first half of the twentieth century. Besides the work and thought of Manuel Gamio who had an important role in this process, we demonstrate that the Mexican indigenism politics, directed to the Indians but not run by the Indians, in his first moments assumed an assimilationist attitude of incorporation that was challenged in 1920’s and 1930’s. During this period, there were dissenting voices that highlighted the positive indigenous elements to the formation of the Mexican nation. The Mexican Communist Party, for example, argued in the 1930s the theory of oppressed nationalities and the defense of the autonomy of indigenous peoples. Governmental Indigenism, at the end and after the government of Lázaro Cárdenas, minimize the strength of these dissenting voices and lead an integrationist approach that became hegemonic since the 1940’s with the consolidation of the indigenist governmental institutions.