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BOOK REVIEWS
Mestizaje and globalization: Transformations of identity and power. Wickstrom, Stefanie,
& Young, Philip D. (Eds). (2014). Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press. 284 pp. ISBN:
978-8165-3090-8.
Defined broadly as racial and cultural miscegenation, mestizaje is nonetheless an ambiguous
term invoking mixed connotations of identity
and power depending upon the historical context. While mestizaje served Spanish hegemony
as the basis for social hierarchy during the
colonial era, the term was equated primarily
with mongrelization in the 19th century and
viewed as an obstruction to Latin American
progress. By the early 20th century, mestizaje
took on new connotations as Latin Americans
widely rejected externally imposed expectations
of modernity and instead embraced mestizo
nationalism and indigenismo. By mid- 20th
century, Latin American states promoted mestizaje in this form through the implementation
of paternalistic indigenist programs seeking to
redress past injustices and provide for the social
needs of indigenous populations while assimilating them into the fold of the mestizo nation.
This conception of mestizaje remained hegemonic into the 1970s when engaged scholars and
pan-Indian activists began challenging the idea
of mestizaje as a melting pot and advocating
instead ethnic and cultural difference as the
basis for internationally recognized indigenous
and minority rights. Since then, multiculturalism has supplanted mestizaje in the political
and scholarly discourse on ethnicity and race
in the Americas. Mestizaje and Globalization,
therefore, represents a shift toward a postmulticultural era as it returns mestizaje to the
forefront of scholarly analysis by re-evaluating
its meaning in the age of globalization.
Mestizaje and Globalization is an anthology representing the perspectives of a truly
international cadre of anthropologists, sociologists, and policy specialists. The collection
is organized into three sections: “Constructing
Mestizaje,” “Barriers to Empowerment through
Identity,” and “Empowerment.” Essays in each
section examine the influence of economic,
cultural, political, and technological aspects of
globalization on American identities.
Articles in the first section give a sense of
changing interpretations of mestizaje over time.
The opening chapter by Rex Wirth, for example, presents a Eurocentric recounting of the
origins of Mexican mestizaje and reminds the
reader of the dominant nature of Western influence within this hybridized conception. In the
second chapter, Sofía Irene Velarde Cruz also
draws on a Mexican example but one within
the realm of religious art. This chapter focuses
on the colonial period but her call for greater
valuation of indigenous contributions within
the genre reflects a 20th-century embrace of
the indigenous component of mestizaje as celebrated through indigenismo. The third chapter
of the same section presents the history of La
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BOOK REVIEWS
Chaya, an indigenous tradition acculturated
into Spanish celebrations of Carnival in northern Chile. Iván Pizarro Díaz posits that the
popularity of La Chaya as practiced in the late
19th and early 20th centuries belies popular
portrayals of Chile as a country without mestizaje. La Chaya is abandoned by mid-century,
but as the author suggests, it succumbs not to
punitive restrictions imposed by the dominant
society opposed to its practice, but to the forces
of mid-20th century globalization as outmigration of inhabitants of rural areas, where La
Chaya was most popular, led to a decline in
participation.
The second section, entitled “Barriers to
Empowerment through Identity,” further
bears out the lopsided emphasis that mestizaje places on European heritage. In “Born
Indigenous, Growing up Mestizos,” Mariella
Arredondo surveys Peruvian girls at elite high
schools in Arequipa and finds that within this
group indigenous identity is still seen in largely
19th-century terms. Resonating Sarmiento’s
dichotomy of civilization and barbarism, this
account suggests that while indigeneity survives in the Peruvian countryside, it remains
suppressed in the urban environment where
well-to-do mestizos from Arequipa, threatened
by a vast migration of people from the highlands
to the city, acknowledge mestizaje as a hybrid
between different cultures but only “as long as
the urban Indigenous component of this hybridization does not stand out” (p. 89). A similar
characterization of mestizaje is presented in
Chapter 5 in a discussion of contemporary policies of affirmative action within Brazil’s higher
institutions of public education. According to
Paulo Alberto Dos Santos Viera, the nature of
the debate and the widespread acceptance of
affirmative action policies lay bare the myth
of mestizaje as racial democracy and suggest
that in Brazil the “alleged cultural synthesis
of mestizaje [is] no longer accepted by broad
consensus” (p. 99). Legislation like the Racial
Equality statute of 2010 instead recognizes
racial difference and rectifies discrimination
ALTER NATIVE
by ensuring seats for blacks at schools and by
promoting new curricular content designed to
move not from “an ethnocentric focus markedly European in origin toward an African one
in education, but [toward] a broadening of the
focus of school curricula to promote Brazilian
cultural, racial, social, and economic diversity”
(p. 104).
The final section on empowerment is refreshing in its reassertion of the perseverance and
indeed transcendence of indigenous identity in
the face of global forces and the assimilative
qualities of mestizaje. Kathleen Fine-Dare’s article, for example, demonstrates how Ecuador’s
recent efforts to “generate real and symbolic
capital derived from eco- and cultural tourism”
have contributed “materially and symbolically
to a focus on indigeneity as the most highly
marked component of a ‘mestizaje’” (p. 146).
In this chapter, indigenous people of Cotocollao
disassociate the Yumbada dance from the
Catholic celebration of Corpus Christi, to
which it had become attached, and reconstitute
it as a pan-Andean “dance of the mountains”
(p. 150). Identity reformulation as presented
here reveals acculturation taking place “through
its original sense, which denotes not assimilation and loss but the sharing and accrual of
elements in rich, often dialectical, fashion”
(p. 157). It is in this respect that Mestizaje and
Globalization redeems the concept of mestizaje
in its final section. No longer associated primarily with assimilation or the suppression of the
indigenous component, mestizaje in the global
era allows for new expressions of indigenous
identity that are more inclusive and beyond
the ahistorical realm of folklore and tradition.
Mestizaje and Globalization is illuminating.
Readers will especially appreciate the definitions and evolution of terms presented in the
editors’ introductory essay. Some may be put
off by the first chapter’s anachronistic characterizations, but in the end readers will come
away with a thorough understanding of mestizaje over time and its meaning in the era of
globalization.
VOLUME 11, ISSUE 2, 2015
BOOK REVIEWS
Review author
Eric Rodrigo Meringer, Assistant Professor, History
Department, State University of New York at Fredonia,
New York, United States. Email: meringer@fredonia.
edu
A nation rising: Hawaiian movements for life, land and sovereignty. Goodyear-Ka‘öpua, Noelani,
Hussey, Ikaika, & Wright, Erin Kahunawaika’ala (Eds.). 2014. Durham, NC: Duke University
Press. 399 pp. ISBN: 978-0-8223-5695-0.
A Nation Rising: Hawaiian Movements for
Life, Land and Sovereignty is an edited volume
of essays written by Kanaka Maoli (indigenous Hawaiian) scholar-activists, community
organizers, leaders and visual artists that deals
with today’s most pressing questions. How do
we maintain a sense of responsibility for the
health and wellbeing of land, water, plants,
animals and human communities in an age of
globalization marked by egregious forms of
environmental destruction, capitalist exploitation and neoliberalism? Throughout history,
indigenous peoples have developed highly
sophisticated ecological, political and philosophical traditions to live in harmony with their
social, physical and metaphysical surroundings.
This timely collection of essays depicts the indispensable contributions of these valued systems
and their continuing importance in movements
for transformative political engagement.
A Nation Rising samples the stories of
Kanaka Maoli scholar-activists, leaders and
supporters from a variety of resistance activities. These individuals challenge ongoing settler
colonialism in Hawai’i, refuting the idea that
indigenous people and their traditional ecological practices have and/or should be disappeared.
In centering Hawaiian movements, this book is
not only about resistance (i.e., fighting against
imperial forces and erasure) but is also about
resurgence and alterNative ethical practices
for health and wellbeing in a time of profound
suffering. However critical of American political and military hegemony, the writings and
images in this book emphasize the multiplicity
ALTER NATIVE
of strategies and goals that constitute Hawaiian
movements as they operate within, across and
beyond state-centered ideologies. As co-editor
Noelani Goodyear-Ka‘öpua writes in her
introduction,
Through battles waged in courtrooms, on
the streets, at the capitol building, in front
of landowners’ and developers’ homes and
offices, on bombed-out sacred lands, in classrooms and from tents on the beaches, Kanaka
Maoli pushed against the ongoing forces of
U.S. occupation and settler colonialism that
still work to eliminate or assimilate us. (p. 1)
Goodyear-Ka‘öpua effectively brings together
this collection of essays about contemporary
Hawaiian social movements. An associate professor of political science at the University of
Hawai’i at Manoa and leading scholar-activist
of Kanaka Maoli politics, she challenges
the prevailing idea that Hawaiians passively
resigned their national claims for life, land and
sovereignty when the United States annexed
Hawai’i in 1898, which was followed by statehood in 1959. She writes, “Stories of Hawaiian
resistance to American takeover were hidden,
overwritten by American historical narratives
fabricated to make people believe there was a
legal merger between the Hawaiian Kingdom
and the United States” (p. 5).
This book begins to unravel these often hidden forms of Hawaiian resistance. Perhaps
Anne Keala Kelly’s opening essay about two
houseless Kanaka Maoli, Annie Pau and Marie
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