Based on a 2009 conference panel, this book is very uneven. Although the topic is mestizaje, the focus is predominantly on the indigenous experience, and less on Afro-descendants (one of 13 chapters explores affirmative action in Brazilian university admissions, while another looks at candomblé) or even mestizos themselves (eight chapters concentrate on indigenous peoples). In their introduction, the editors foreground indigenous agency and identify it as a counterbalance to mestizaje, but this is nothing new: indigenous (and black) re-readings of, and resistance to, national narratives of mixture and homogenisation have been explored for over 20 years. Approaches to mestizaje have recently tried to move beyond a simple opposition between dominant and subaltern understandings of the process by focusing on those who self-identify (albeit with a bit of prodding) as mestizos.
The other word in the title, globalisation, hardly contributes anything new to the discussion either: Sabine Kradolfer's chapter on ‘Indigenous Peoples as a New Category of Transnational Social Actors’, for instance, covers the well-trodden territory of the international processes that spurred and supported indigenous mobilisations, which makes the word ‘new’ sound anachronistic (albeit she examines this for the Mapuche in Argentina, which is a lesser-known example). In a potentially interesting tactic, some aspects of US history are included within the compass of mestizaje: the United States is commonly contrasted to Latin American in this respect. Jennifer Whiteman traces processes of conquest, assimilation and resistance among the Cheyenne. But ‘mestizaje’ in this context acts as a synonym for ‘syncretism’ or even ‘cultural change’, so the tactic does not gain much traction as a way of re-framing US history in a hemispheric context.
There are, however, some interesting highlights in the volume. One is political scientist Rex Wirth's chapter, a bit of an outlier in theme and content. He aims to explain why mestizaje does not figure in standard political science typologies of state governance, which identify pluralism, corporatism, statism, and other categories. Rather than supplying an answer, Wirth argues that Mexican mestizaje shares with France a history of Latinisation, based on Roman traditions and papal Christianity, leading to concepts of the state as a kind of monarchical or imperial power overseeing a citizenship regime of equality for all and national homogenisation. This contrasts with US-style pluralism, based on individualism and non-conformist religious freedom, which produced a form of anti-statism. Wirth's argument perhaps underestimates a common adherence to principles of liberalism, but it helps to understand how liberalism operated differently in Latin America and the United States.
Jorge Legoas and Fabrizio Arenas Barchi's chapter on aid and development programmes in the Peruvian Andes is a useful critique of state, NGO and UNICEF projects of citizenly participation, showing how they end up reproducing existing relations of domination and dependence. A state conditional cash transfer programme for poverty-stricken people was designed as a participatory project to improve human capital and break the cycle of poverty. In fact the state chose beneficiaries on basis of objective criteria of poverty, thus reducing participation, while the means for people to improve their skills and resources were not actually available in the programme. An NGO programme to enhance citizen participation in reality merely encouraged people to be ‘vigilant’ over government transparency and probity, thus severely circumscribing the range of citizenly action. A UNICEF programme to support municipal development in children's health and education was supposed to allow local people to define objectives and actions, while UNICEF provided infrastructure and advice. But the UNICEF agent who presented the project gave detailed ‘suggestions’ for aims and processes (in line with UNICEF's priorities), leaving little room for community participation. These initiatives, argue the authors, were framed by global neoliberal processes, which apparently promoted participation, while reducing it to controlled poverty amelioration; in Peru this was reinforced by a dominant vision of a mestizo-led nation in which Andean communities were poverty-stricken, backward and needed to be assimilated to more modern ways of living. The argument is not unfamiliar, but it is convincingly illustrated with detailed data that link mestizaje to globalisation in an interesting way.
Indigeneity in urban contexts has attracted increasing attention from anthropologists and indigenous activists who challenge the continued power of stereotypes linking indigeneity to rurality and cultural alterity. Kathleen Fine-Dare's chapter on Quito traces increasingly familiar conjunctures of identity in which intense ambiguity over what and who counts as indigenous is inflected by multiple influences, including syncretic semi-urban popular culture (which already constitute ‘tradition’ for some, as in the example of St Sebastian being claimed as a patron saint by urban indigenous dancers); the ideologies of indigenous social movements; and New-Age influenced globalised cultural trends adopted by middle-class non-indigenous people (who identify openly and articulately with indigeneity, often construed in terms of Pachamama and semi-shamanic practices).
Comparative analysis is useful for understanding mestizaje, which is still often understood as a regional model, hiding heterogeneity. Víctor Bretón Solo de Zaldívar and Mónica Martínez Mauri interestingly compare Ecuador's CONAIE, a national indigenous organisation, with a pyramidal structure that articulates local and regional levels, giving it power to act on the national political stage, with Panama's separate ethnic-group organisations (e.g. the Kuna General Congress), which have minimal national-level coordination. The difference is due mainly to the way the indigenous population historically related to the state: in Ecuador, indigenous communities were integral to the peasant labour force that supported the national economy; they were affected by agrarian reform, rural unionisation, state development programmes, and so on, and thus have long been organised in dialogue with the state. The Church and NGOs helped this process, which played a role in forming an educated indigenous leadership, and also created a sense of being a national subaltern indigenous class vis-à-vis the white-mestizo majority. This analysis, however, gives little space to different modalities of mestizaje (as opposed to indigenous organisation).
Despite these highlights, the book overall felt under-whelming in its treatment of familiar themes.
