Editing Mestizo (section)

==''Mestizaje'' in Latin America==
{{Further|Race and ethnicity in Latin America}}
[[File:JoseVasconcelosStatueDF.JPG|thumb|upright|Statue of [[José Vasconcelos]] in Mexico City]]

'''''{{lang|es|Mestizaje}}''''' ({{IPA|es|mes.tiˈsa.xe|}}) is a term that came into usage in twentieth-century Latin America for racial mixing, not a colonial-era term.<ref name="Rappaport, Joanne p. 247"/> In the modern era, it is used to denote the positive unity of race mixtures in modern Latin America. This ideological stance is in contrast to the term ''[[miscegenation]]'', which usually has negative connotations.<ref name="Lewis 1997 Mestizaje">{{cite book |last1=Lewis |first1=Stephen |chapter=Mestizaje |pages=840–841 |editor1-last=Werner |editor1-first=Michael S. |title=Encyclopedia of Mexico: M-Z |date=1997 |publisher=Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers |isbn=978-1-884964-31-2 }}</ref> The main ideological advocate of ''mestizaje'' was [[José Vasconcelos]] (1882–1959), the Mexican Minister of Education in the 1920s. The term was in circulation in Mexico in the late nineteenth century, along with similar terms, ''cruzamiento'' ("crossing") and ''mestización'' (process of "mestizo-izing"). In Spanish America, the colonial-era system of castas sought to differentiate between individuals and groups on the basis of a hierarchical classification by ancestry, skin color, and status (''calidad''), giving separate labels to the perceived categorical differences and privileging whiteness. In contrast, the idea of modern ''mestizaje'' is the positive unity of a nation's citizenry based on racial mixture. "Mestizaje placed greater emphasis [than the casta system] on commonality and hybridity to engineer order and unity... [it] operated within the context of the nation-state and sought to derive meaning from Latin America's own internal experiences rather than the dictates and necessities of empire... ultimately [it] embraced racial mixture."<ref>Vinson, Ben III. ''Before Mestizaje''. New York: Cambridge University Press 2018, pp. 61-2.</ref>

===In post-revolution Mexico===
At independence in Mexico, the casta classifications were abolished, but discrimination based on skin color and socioeconomic status continued. Liberal intellectuals grappled with the "Indian Problem", that is, the Amerindians' lack of cultural assimilation to Mexican national life as citizens of the nation, rather than members of their Indigenous communities. Urban elites spurned mixed-race urban plebeians and Amerindians along with their traditional popular culture. In the late nineteenth century during the [[Porfiriato|rule of Porfirio Díaz]], elites sought to be, act, and look like modern Europeans, that is, different from the majority of the Mexican population. Díaz was mixed-race himself, but powdered his dark skin to hide his Mixtec Indigenous ancestry. At the end of the nineteenth century, however, as social and economic tensions increased in Mexico, two major works by Mexican intellectuals sought to rehabilitate the assessment of the mestizo. Díaz's Minister of Education, [[Justo Sierra]] published ''The Political Evolution of the Mexican People'' (1902), which situated Mexican identity in the mixing of European whites and Amerindians. Mexicans are "the sons of two peoples, of two races. [This fact] dominates our whole history; to this we owe our soul."<ref>Sierra, Justo. ''The Political Evolution of the Mexican People''. Trans. Charles Ramsdell. Austin: University of Texas Press. P. xvii.</ref> Intellectual [[Andrés Molina Enríquez]] also took a revisionist stance on Mestizos in his work ''Los grandes problemas nacionales'' (The Great National Problems) (1909).

The Mexican state after the [[Mexican Revolution]] (1910–20) embraced the ideology of mestizaje as a nation-building tool, aimed at integrating Amerindians culturally and politically in the construction of national identity. As such it has meant a systematic effort to eliminate Indigenous culture, in the name of integrating them into a supposedly inclusive mestizo identity. For [[Afro-Mexicans]], the ideology has denied their historical contributions to Mexico and their current place in Mexican political life. Mexican politicians and reformers such as José Vasconcelos and [[Manuel Gamio]] were instrumental in building a Mexican national identity on the concept of "mestizaje" (the process of ethnic homogenization).<ref>{{cite book |last=Wade |first=Peter |year=1997 |title=Race and Ethnicity in Latin America |location=Chicago |publisher=Pluto Press |isbn=978-0-7453-0987-3 |page=3}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Knight |first=Alan |year=1990 |chapter=Racism, Revolution and ''indigenismo'': Mexico 1910–1940 |title=The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870–1940 |editor-first=Richard |editor-last=Graham |pages=[https://archive.org/details/ideaofraceinlat000grah/page/78 78–85] |location=Austin |publisher=University of Texas Press |isbn=978-0-292-73856-0 |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/ideaofraceinlat000grah/page/78}}</ref>

Cultural policies in early post-revolutionary Mexico were paternalistic towards the Indigenous people, with efforts designed to "help" Indigenous peoples achieve the same level of progress as the mestizo society, eventually assimilating Indigenous peoples completely to mainstream Mexican culture, working toward the goal of eventually solving the "Indian problem" by transforming Indigenous communities into mestizo communities.<ref name="auto"/>

In recent years, Mestizos' sole claim to Mexican national identity has begun to erode, at least rhetorically."<ref name="Lewis 1997 Mestizaje"/> A constitutional changes to Article 4 that now says that the "Mexican Nation has a pluricultural composition, originally based on its Indigenous peoples. The law will protect and promote the development of their languages, cultures, uses, customs, resources, and specific forms of social organization and will guarantee their members effective access to the jurisdiction of the State."

===Elsewhere in Latin America===
There has been considerable academic work on race and race mixture in various parts of Latin America in recent years. Including South America;<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hale |first1=Charles R. |author-link1=Charles R. Hale (anthropologist) |title=Mestizaje, Hybridity, and the Cultural Politics of Difference in Post-Revolutionary Central America |journal=Journal of Latin American Anthropology |date=28 June 2008 |volume=2 |issue=1 |pages=34–61 |doi=10.1525/jlca.1996.2.1.34 }}</ref> Venezuela<ref>Winthrop Wright, Cafe ́Con Leche: Race, Class and National Image in Venezuela. Austin: University of Texas Press 1990</ref> Brazil,<ref>Sueann Caulfield, 'Interracial Courtship in the Rio de Janeiro Courts, 1918–1940,' in Nancy P. Appelbaum, Anne S. Macpherson and Karin A. Rosemblatt (eds.) in ''Race and Nation in Modern Latin America''. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003</ref> Peru<ref>Marisol de la Cadena,''Indigenous Mestizos: The Politics of Race and Culture in Cuzco, 1919–1991''. Durham: Duke University Press 2000</ref> and Colombia.<ref>Wade, Peter, ''Blackness and Race Mixture: The Dynamics of Racial Identity in Colombia''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1993</ref>