Mestizo Nations

by Castro, Juan E. De

• ISBN13: 9780816521920
• ISBN10: 0816521921
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-08-01
• Publisher: Univ of Arizona Pr

Summary

Nationality in Latin Americahas long been entwined with questions of racial identity. Just as American-born colonial elites grounded their struggle for independence from Spain and Portugal in the history of Amerindian resistance, constructions of nationality were based on the notion of the fusion of populations heterogeneous in culture, race, and language. But this rhetorical celebration of difference was framed by a real-life pressure to assimilate into cultures always defined by Iberian American elites. In Mestizo Nations,Juan De Castro explores the construction of nationality in Latin American and Chicano literature and thought during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Focusing on the discourse of mestizaje--which proposes the creation of a homogenous culture out of American Indian, black, and Iberian elements--he examines a selection of texts that represent the entire history and regional landscape of Latin American culture in its Western, indigenous, and neo-African traditions from Independence to the present. Through them, he delineates some of the ambiguities and contradictions that have beset this discourse. Among texts considered are the Indianist novel Iracemaby the nineteenth-century Brazilian author Jose de Alencar; the Tradiciones peruanas,Peruvian Ricardo Palma's fictionalizations of national difference; and historical and sociological essays by the Peruvian Marxist Jose Carlos Mariategui and the Brazilian intellectual Gilberto Freyre. And because questions raised by this discourse are equally relevant to postmodern concerns with national and transnational heterogeneity, De Castro also analyzes such recent examples as the Cuban dance band Los Van Van's use of Afrocentric lyrics; Richard Rodriguez's interpretations of North American reality; and points of contact and divergence between Jose Maria Arguedas's novel The Fox from Up Above and the Fox from Down Belowand writings of Gloria Anzaldua and Julia Kristeva. By updating the concept of mestizaje as a critical tool for analyzing literary text and cultural trends--incorporating not only race, culture, and nationality but also gender, language, and politics--De Castro shows the implications of this Latin American discursive tradition for current critical debates in cultural and area studies. Mestizo Nations contains important insights for all Latin Americanists as a tool for understanding racial relations and cultural hybridization, creating not only an important commentary on Latin America but also a critique of American life in the age of multiculturalism.

Author Biography

Juan E. De Castro is Assistant Professor in Comparative Literature at the Colorado School of Mines.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	xi
The Semantic Space of the Nation: Mestizaje, Hybridity, Transculturation, Borderlands	3	(8)
Latin America and the Discourse of Mestizaje: Culture, Race, and Conformity	11	(16)
Ricardo Palma's Tradiciones peruanas: The Limits of the Discourse of Mestizaje	27	(16)
Jose de Alencar's Iracema: Mestizaje and the Fictional Foundation of Brazil	43	(12)
Gilberto Freyre's Casa-Grande e Senzala: Mestizaje as a Family Affair	55	(18)
Jose Carlos Mariategui: Marxist Mestizaje	73	(20)
The Black Song of Los Van Van: Afrocentrism, the Discourse of Mestizaje, and Postrevolutionary Cuban Identity	93	(8)
Richard Rodriguez in ``Borderland'': The Relocation of the Discourse of Mestizaje	101	(18)
From Mestizaje to Multiculturalism: On Jose Maria Arguedas, New Mestizas, Demons, and the Uncanny	119	(10)
Notes	129	(20)
Works Cited	149	(8)
Index	157