Mestizaje and the discourse of national/cultural identity in Latin America, 1845-1959

Mestizaje, the process of interracial and/or intercultural mixing, is a foundational theme in the Americas, particularly in those areas colonized by the Spanish and the Portuguese. In this article, I present a critical overview of the discourse of mestizaje, primarily, although not exclusively, of African European mestizaje, and its relationship to the intellectual formation and transformations of the nation and of national cultural identify from 1845 to 1959. I examine the role that social scientific writings and cultural criticism have played in creating and extending race-defined exclusions and inclusions. My purpose in studying mestizaje as a discursive practice is not to unravel its allegedly labyrinthine nature per se or to invent yet another (Latin) American identity. Rather, I am driven by a scholarly and personal/political commitment to tracing the salient moments in the history of racialist discourse in Spanish and Portuguese America after the 1820s and, in doing so, mapping the poetics of racism in the region to come to terms with this rather complex historical phenomenon.