From Indigenismo to Zapatismo: Theory and Practice in Mexican Anthropology

Human Organization, Summer 2004 by Gonzalez, Roberto J

Artists also embarked in new directions. Murals by Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros, and Jose Clemente Orozco were revolutionary in how they depicted the exploitation of Mexican campesinos and factory workers at the hands of elites and foreigners. Like the novelists, much of their work depicted violence. The murals were innovative in other ways. For example, they often included magnificent scenes of Indian village life (typically ignored in art of the Porfiro Diaz period) and were frequently located on buildings for public viewing. The grand scale and open placement of the murals contrasted dramatically with the portrait art of the 19th century, often created for wealthy sponsors. In short, literature, art, music, and other expressions became part of an emerging Mexican nationalist ideology from the 1910s through the 1940s, essential for the creation of a collective conscience.

Among the first anthropologists to play a part in the construction of Mexican nationalism was Manuel Gamio, trained at Columbia University under the tutelage of Franz Boas, the founder of academic anthropology in the United States. Gamio is considered by many to be the father of Mexican anthropology, and in 1916 he wrote a provocative book titled Forjando patria (Forging a Nation) which anticipated much of the period's ideological production. He explicitly spelled out the role anthropologists might play (quoted in de la Fuente 1960:1):

Anthropology in its true and widest conception should be basic knowledge for the carrying out of good government because through anthropology one knows the population which is to be governed and for whom the government exists.... [In Latin America] a minority made up of people belonging to the white race, and whose civilization is derived from Europe, has been concerned only with its own progress, leaving aside the majority of indigenous race and culture.... The obvious ignorance (even on the part of those who have wished to better the situation of the majority culturally and economically) is due to the fact that the indigenous population has not been studied in a sensible manner.

Although Gamio's words clearly articulate the indigenista position, it is important to note that there are links between such ideas and earlier forms of nationalism based on the concept of mestizaje (racial mixture) at the level of "deep structures." For example, the 19th century idea of "race" was central to nationalist formulations (notions of "white" and "indigenous" races in particular).2 In any event, Gamio's early work reveals that Mexican anthropology was initially viewed as knowledge for application to social issues-as an applied social science to be used for nation building.

Mexican archaeology played an important part in nation building as well. Nationalist ideologies were boosted by archaeological work by Gamio (1922) at Teotihuacan (near Mexico City) and Alfonso Caso (1939) at Monte Alban, Oaxaca. The pre-Columbian sites served an important function for the postrevolutionary governments, especially the Party of the Mexican Revolution (or PRM, soon to become the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI). They served to glorify Mexico's indigenous past-characterized by a tradition of highly centralized, bureaucratic cities-and, ultimately, to portray the PRI-PRM as the rightful heir to the country.3 In short, postrevolutionary administrations tapped Mexico's pre-Columbian roots for their own purposes by evoking vivid images and symbols of advanced urban civilizations in the popular consciousness, and then claiming them as their own. Not surprisingly, the Mexican government funded a great deal of archeological research in the 1920s and 1930s (Drucker-Brown 1982). It departed from the Europeanized Mexico that Porfirio Diaz attempted to fashion in the decades immediately prior to the Revolution.