Latin America and mixed heritagePosted in Caribbean/Latin America, Media Archive, Social Science, United Kingdom on 2012-09-05 16:01Z by Steven |
Latin America and mixed heritage
The Prisma: The Multicultural Newspaper
Westwood Hill, London, United Kingdom
2012-08-27
Claudio Chipana (Translated by Viv Griffiths)
“…we are neither Indian, nor European, but a species lying somewhere in between the legitimate owners of the land and the Spanish usurpers…” Simon Bolivar (Letter from Jamaica).
People of mixed heritage, mestizos, are a challenge to racial purity and the idea of a monolithic nation. The mixing of race is a cultural as well as racial process that began from the moment the Conquistadors arrived in the Americas in the 16th Century. The historian, Inca Garcilazo de la Vega, is considered to be the first Peruvian of mestizo. But, why Garcilazo and not the Indian historian Guaman Poma?
Mestizos are neither Hispanic nor indigenous and have been viewed both negatively and positively depending on their social class and ideology. Over time, being mestizo has developed into a form of identity for those living on the Latin American continent, and a way of staking a claim for themselves and forging ahead in the process of transculturation…
…It is still common for Latin Americans to identify themselves as being mestizo. This raises the question, if a person considers themselves mestizo, does this exclude them from identifying themselves as Latin American? At the same time, it should be acknowledged that there is a significant indigenous population resistant to any kind of homogenisation…
Read the entire article here.