{"id":40179,"date":"2015-03-01T02:50:42","date_gmt":"2015-03-01T02:50:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=40179"},"modified":"2015-11-19T01:05:48","modified_gmt":"2015-11-19T01:05:48","slug":"mestizaje-and-public-opinion-in-latin-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=40179","title":{"rendered":"Mestizaje and Public Opinion in Latin America"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mestizaje<\/strong>\u00a0and Public Opinion in Latin America<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Latin American Research Review<\/a>
\nVolume 48, Number 3<\/a> (2013)
\npages 130-152
\nDOI: 10.1353\/lar.2013.0045<\/a><\/p>\n

Edward Telles<\/strong><\/a>, Professor of Sociology
\nPrinceton University<\/em><\/p>\n

Denia Garcia<\/strong><\/a>
\nDepartment of Sociology
\nPrinceton University<\/em><\/p>\n

Latin American elites authored and disseminated ideologies of <\/em>mestizaje<\/a> or race mixture, but does the general population value them today? Using the 2010 Americas Barometer<\/a>, we examined public opinion about mestizaje in\u00a0Bolivia<\/a>, Brazil<\/a>, Colombia<\/a>, Dominican Republic<\/a>, Ecuador<\/a>, Guatemala<\/a>, Mexico<\/a> and\u00a0Peru<\/a>\u00a0using survey questions that modeled mestizaje both as a principle of national development and as tolerance for intermarriage with black or indigenous people. We found that most Latin Americans support mestizaje, although support varies by country and ethnicity. Across countries, we find partial evidence that the strength of earlier nation-making mestizaje ideas is related to support for mestizaje today, and that strong multicultural policies may have actually strengthened such support. Ethnoracial minorities showed particular support for the national principle of mestizaje. Finally, we discovered that the national principle of mestizaje is associated with more tolerant attitudes about intermarriage, especially in countries with large Afro-descendant populations.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ideas of mestizaje<\/em>, or race mixture, are central to the formation of many Latin\u00a0American nations and are assumed to predominate in much of the region today\u00a0(Hale 2006; Holt 2003; Telles 2004; Wade 1993). Concepts of mestizaje stress racial\u00a0fusion and the inclusion of diverse racial elements as essential to the nation;\u00a0hence mestizos, or mixed-race people, are considered the prototypical citizens.\u00a0Although racial hierarchies characterize Latin American socioeconomic structures\u00a0(Telles, Flores, and Urrea-Giraldo 2010), ideas of mestizaje have stood in\u00a0contrast to ideas of white racial purity and anti-miscegenation historically held\u00a0in the United States (Bost 2003; Holt 2003; Sollors 2000). While ideas of mestizaje\u00a0emerged as Latin American state projects in the early twentieth century, they are\u00a0often hailed as widely shared ideologies that are central to Latin Americans\u2019 understanding\u00a0of race and race relations (Knight 1990; Mallon 1996; Whitten 2003).<\/p>\n

Despite Latin America\u2019s diverse racial composition and the fact that an estimated\u00a0133 million Afro-descendant and 34 million indigenous people reside\u00a0there, according to recent data\u2014numbers far higher than in the United States\u00a0(Telles, forthcoming)\u2014racial attitudes in Latin America have, surprisingly, been\u00a0understudied. Despite clues from ethnographic research, we lack nationally representative\u00a0evidence on the general population\u2019s feelings about mestizaje. In this\u00a0article, we examine support for mestizaje and its variations across nation and ethnicity in eight Latin American countries with large nonwhite populations: Bolivia,\u00a0Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, and\u00a0Peru. These countries represent more than 70 percent of Latin America\u2019s population\u00a0and are home to the vast majority of both Afro-descendants and indigenous\u00a0people in the region. We focused on two dimensions of the mestizaje ideology: as\u00a0a national development principle and an individual intermarriage principle. The\u00a0first, which is closely related to the national narratives developed by elites during\u00a0nation making, maintains that race mixture is good for the nation. The second\u00a0addresses tolerance for intermarriage in one\u2019s family\u2014often considered the ultimate\u00a0marker of racial and ethnic integration (Alba and Nee 2003; Gordon 1964).<\/p>\n

Our examination of eight Latin American countries provides new contexts for\u00a0thinking about racial attitudes, beyond the large literature that is dominated by\u00a0the case of the United States. Since racial meanings are context dependent, the\u00a0study of Latin America may complicate social science understandings of racial attitudes\u00a0more generally. As Krysan (2000, 161) wrote, \u201cThis complexity forces those\u00a0who have developed their theories in an American context to take care not to rely\u00a0too heavily on uniquely American values, principles, politics, and racial histories.\u201d\u00a0Latin America differs from the United States in that nothing like mestizaje\u00a0ideology exists in the United States. Moreover, understanding racial attitudes\u00a0is important because they may guide behaviors, even though attitudes are often\u00a0more liberal than actual behaviors (Schuman et al. 1997). In particular, the degree\u00a0to which the public embraces mestizaje may be important for understanding\u00a0whether the ideology has implications for racial and national identity and democratic\u00a0politics in Latin America, including whether the population would support\u00a0or resist measures to combat racial discrimination and inequality…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mestizaje\u00a0and Public Opinion in Latin America Latin American Research Review Volume 48, Number 3 (2013) pages 130-152 DOI: 10.1353\/lar.2013.0045 Edward Telles, Professor of Sociology Princeton University Denia Garcia Department of Sociology Princeton University Latin American elites authored and disseminated ideologies of mestizaje or race mixture, but does the general population value them today? Using the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,83,21,8,103,394],"tags":[1642,1865,19455,3468,675,1893,1489,11583,674],"class_list":["post-40179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-brazil","category-latincarib","category-media-archive","category-mexico","category-socialscience","tag-bolivia","tag-colombia","tag-denia-garcia","tag-dominican-republic","tag-ecuador","tag-edward-telles","tag-guatemala","tag-latin-american-research-review","tag-peru"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40179"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43775,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40179\/revisions\/43775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}