SC286
Week Three Session
Anthropology of Latin America
Session 2: Ethnic and Racial Identities I
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Introduction
The Question of Class and Culture
Friedlander and Allen
‘Official’ definitions
Aims:
 To begin to explore indian/indigenous identity.
 To consider how indian identity differs from class identity.
Introduction
The Question of Class and Culture
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Some terms: Spanish people talk of mestizos, indians and whites but, more often, they substitute
other terms.
There is an almost infinitely variable local vocabulary to denote social/ethnic distinction
Notables
commoners
Vecinos (literarally ‘neighbours’
peasants
Gente decente (decent folk)
peasants/indians
Townfolk
Rural folk
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What is ethnicity and what is class?
Judith Friedlander Being Indian in Hueyapan: A Study of Forced Identity in Contemporary
Mexico
Read Being Indian in Hueyapan pp. xv & 190-191
The Hueyapeños' indigenous culture is in ruins and has been for centuries.
Nevertheless, the villagers are acutely aware of still being Indians, for they are
continuously so designated by outsiders. Few pre-Spanish customs actually
survive in Hueyapan today. What is more, most of those that do lost their
prehispanic significance long ago and display only the merest traces of the
past...Thus from the perspective of "culture," the villagers are virtually
indistinguishable from non-Indian Mexicans. Where they do differ is in their social
status within the larger society.
I suggest that the Hueyapeños' so-called Indian identity relates far more
precisely to their low socioeconomic position in the national stratification system
than it does to their culture. Since early colonial times the villagers have served as
a source of cheap labour for the upper classes. As they worked the colonisers'
lands, their Indian blood was diluted and their culture dramatically altered...I hope
to demonstrate that their Indian-ness is not a distinct cultural entity but, rather, a
reflection of the culture of a highly stratified society (p. xv)
Although I agree that there are visible difference between traditions found
in so-called indigenous communities like Hueyapan and those encountered in
Mexico City, I maintain that the distinctions reflect the same social and cultural
systems. Since many other anthropologists have been making the same point, why
have we been holding on to a term that suggests that a certain group in Mexico
continues to have a unique racial, cultural and historical identity? The concept of
the Indian in all its various guises was created by the Spaniards, and by adopting
the Iberian terminology, we anthropologists have also incorporated into our
thinking the hispanic perception of the problem. Thus, even though we have
modified the definitions, we have helped to preserve the “Indian” category,
together with its long hispanic cultural tradition and negative connotation.
(pp.190-1)
Questions
 What makes Hueyapeños “Indians”?
 Friedlander makes a very good case that much of Hueyapeño culture can be traced to Spanish
colonial culture. The same case can be made for Andean indian culture. Evaluate this in terms
of her overall argument that indian culture is ‘cast-off’ elite culture.
 Hueyeapeños quite clearly do not want to be indian; yet many anthropologists seek out indian
or indigenous culture. Do anthropologists conspire then in a (neo) colonial fantasy of Indians
and Spaniard, the ‘myth of conquest’ mentioned earlier?
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Catherine Allen The Hold Life Has: Coca and Cultural Identity in an Andean Community.
Reading Assignment Questions:
1. What is the web of reciprocity?
2. In what ways are gender relations complementary?
3. What distinguishes Sonqo runakuna from their non-indigenous neighbours; that is, in what
does runakuna identity consist?
4. What does uxorilocal mean?
Discussion
Allen and Friedlander present different perspectives on indigenous identity.
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How are they different?
Does Allen exoticise indians to their detriment as Friedlander might suggest?
Which one do you find most persuasive?
Are they mutually incompatible?
‘Official’ Definitions
Look at the following three definitions from some key international organisations.
 What do the definitions have in common?
 What are some of the differences you can see?
 Are there any problems with these definitions?
International Labour Organisation:
Convention 169 concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples
1. This Convention applies to:
(b) Peoples in independent countries who are regarded as indigenous on account of their descent
from the populations which inhabited the country, or a geographical region to which the country
belongs, at the time of conquest or colonisation or the establishment of present State boundaries
and who, irrespective of their legal status, retain some or all of their own social, economic, cultural
and political institutions.
2. Self-identification as indigenous or tribal shall be regarded as a fundamental criterion for
determining the groups to which the provisions of this Convention apply.
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United Nations:
According to the Martinéz Cobo Report to the UN Sub-Commission on the Prevention of
Discrimination of Minorities (1986), indigenous peoples may be identified as follows
Indigenous communities, peoples and nations are those which, having a historical
continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider
themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing in those territories, or parts of
them. They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve,
develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the
basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social
institutions and legal systems.
World Bank Operational Directive OD 4.20 September 1991
5. Because of the varied and changing contexts in which indigenous peoples are found, no single
definition can capture their diversity. Indigenous people are commonly among the poorest
segments of a population. They engage in economic activities that range from shifting agriculture
in or near forests to wage labor or even small-scale market-oriented activities. Indigenous peoples
can be identified in particular geographical areas by the presence in varying degrees of the
following characteristics:
(a) a close attachment to ancestral territories and to the natural resources in these areas;
(b) self-identification and identification by others as members of a distinct cultural group;
(c) an indigenous language, often different from the national language;
(d) presence of customary social and political institutions; and
(e) primarily subsistence-oriented production.
Point to Ponder:
Catherine Allen The Hold Life Has 1988 pp220-1
...It was out of [the] historical situation -- the colonial holocaust of disease, taxation, forced labour, and
forced religious conversion -- that the cultural identity of the Runakuna took shape, and that coca use
came to signify indianness. Indigenous culture was stubbornly retained after the conquest, but in a
context that transformed it.
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