Mestizaje/mestiçagem: between science, visual culture, and subjective experience

Sarah Abel

At different times and in different places, mixture been presented as biological and/or cultural fact, founding myth, eugenic ideology, anti-racist programme, and mechanism for the reproduction of racial inequalities and exclusions in Latin American societies.

In this session, we will examine the origins and evolution of discourses of “racial” mixture (mestizaje/mestiçagem) their centrality to myths of national identity, and their relationship to structural and systemic forms of racism, focusing on the biological sciences and visual arts as key areas of cultural production. In particular, we will analyse the role of genetic population studies in reinvigorating biological conceptions of admixture, exploring how these “genomic portraits” have been used in recent years to reproduce and/or challenge traditional concepts of “race” and collective identity. In addition, we will discuss how these “objective” scientific viewpoints can be reconciled with ethnographic and autobiographical accounts of the social construction of mestizo/a identities, which tend to be rooted in cultural norms and strategic practices, rather than considerations of genetic mixture.

Key issues:

• Origins and evolution of mestizaje/mestiçagem discourses in Latin American societies
• Relationships between national ideologies of mixture, racist thought and politics of exclusion
• Roles of education, science, and art in producing collective imaginaries of mixture
• Emergence of cultural, biological, and biocultural conceptions of “race”
• Subjective experiences of mestizo/a identity

Required reading:

• Freyre, Gilberto. 1946. The Masters and the Slaves. New York: Alfred A. Knopff. “Preface to the English edition”, pp. xi–xvii, , and “The Negro Slave in the Sexual and Family Life of the Brazilian” (read from p. 278 to halfway down p. 287).
• Moreno Figueroa, Mónica G. “Naming Ourselves. Recognising Racism and Mestizaje in Mexico.” In Contesting Recognition, edited by J. McLaughlin, P. Phillimore, and D. Richardson, 122–43. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011. 
• Wade, Peter. Degrees of Mixture, Degrees of Freedom. Genomics, Multiculturalism, and Race in Latin America. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2017. “Introduction: Mixture as a Biopolitical Process”, pp. 1–23. 

In addition:

• Visit the website “Mosaico genético: una mirada desde las artes”. Read the project description (see “El Proyecto”), and then browse the artworks created for the project (see “Galería”). Choose one artwork or text from the page that you find interesting, and write some brief notes about how the piece relates to themes of mestizaje and identity (we will discuss the artworks further in the seminar).

Further reading:

• Abel, Sarah. “Lo que los ojos no alcanzan a ver: Genómica, color, y cuotas ‘raciales’ en Brasil.” In Educaciones y racismos. Casos y reflexiones, edited by Saúl Velasco Cruz, María de los Ángeles Gómez Gallegos, and Diego Francisco Morales Esquivel, 280–316. Colotlán: Universidad de Guadalajara, Centro Universitario del Norte, Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, 2021.
• Abel, Sarah. “Rethinking the ‘Prejudice of Mark’: Concepts of Race, Ancestry, and Genetics among Brazilian DNA Test-Takers.” ODEERE 5, no. 10 (2020): 186–221.
• Cadena, Marisol de la. Indigenous Mestizos. The Politics of Race and Culture in Cuzco, Peru, 1919-1991. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000. “Past Dialogues about Race: An Introduction to the Present”, pp. 1–43.
• Costa, Alexandre Emboaba da. “The (Un)Happy Objects of Affective Community.” Cultural Studies 30, no. 1 (2016): 24–46. 
• Katzew, Ilona. Casta Painting: Images of Race in Eighteenth-Century Mexico. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2004.
• Kent, Michael, Vivette García-Deister, Carlos López-Beltrán, Ricardo Ventura Santos, Ernesto Schwartz-Marín, and Peter Wade. “Building the Genomic Nation: ‘Homo Brasilis’ and the ‘Genoma Mexicano’ in Comparative Cultural Perspective.” Social Studies of Science 45, no. 6 (2015): 839–61. 
• Moreno Figueroa, Mónica G., and Emiko Saldívar Tanaka. “‘We Are Not Racists, We Are Mexicans’: Privilege, Nationalism and Post-Race Ideology in Mexico.” Critical Sociology 42, no. 4–5 (2016): 515–33.
• Nieves Delgado, Abigail, Vivette García Deister, and Carlos López Beltrán. “¿De qué me ves cara?: Narrativas de herencia, genética e identidad inscritas en la apariencia.” Revista de Antropología Iberoamericana 12, no. 3 (2017): 313–37.
• Poole, Deborah. “Mestizaje as Ethical Disposition: Indigenous Rights in the Neoliberal State.” Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies 11, no. 3 (2016): 287–304. 
• Radcliffe, Sarah A. “Embodying National Identities: Mestizo Men and White Women in Ecuadorian Racial-National Imaginaries.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 24, no. 2 (1999): 213–25.
• Rosenthal, Olimpia E. “La figura abyecta del mestizo en El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno.” Letras 85, no. 121 (2014): 31–45.
• Schwarcz, Lilia K. Moritz. “Usos e abusos da mestiçagem e da raça no Brasil: Uma história das teorias raciais em finais do século XIX.” Afro-Ásia 18 (1996): 77–101.
• Seigel, Micol. “Beyond Compare: Comparative Method after the Transnational Turn.” Radical History Review 91, no. Winter (2005): 62–90.
• Stolcke, Verena. “Los mestizos no nacen, se hacen.” In Identidades ambivalentes en América Latina (siglos XVI-XXI), edited by Verena Stolcke and Alexandre Coello, 19–58. Barcelona: Bellaterra, 2008.