From Indian to mestizo: Racial discourses in the dispute over Mexican national identity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Abstract

This article examines the political dimension of mestizaje theories in Mexico and their role in the construction of national projects between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Through a historicaldiscursive analysis, with selective support from conceptual history, it studies continuities and ruptures in the ideological configuration of mestizaje, the “indigenous problem”, and the categories of race, homeland, and nation. To this end, it analyzes texts by Francisco Pimentel, Vicente Riva Palacio, Justo Sierra, Andrés Molina Enríquez, Manuel Gamio, and José Vasconcelos. The article argues that mestizaje operated not only as an integrative narrative, but also as a political device of cultural and racial homogenization. It also shows that nineteenth-century racial theories continued to shape post-revolutionary indigenist policies, although through distinct scientific, cultural, and institutional registers. Overall, the study highlights the persistence of a colonial matrix in discourses on national identity and problematizes indigenous exclusion within Mexican nationalism.