Indian Allies and White Antagonists: Toward an Alternative Mestizaje on Mexico's Costa Chica

• In Event: The Politics and Performance of Race

Abstract

This paper examines historical narratives and place construction in the Afro-descendent community of San Nicolás Tolentino, an agricultural village on the southern Pacific Coast of Guerrero (the Costa Chica). It focuses on the ways in which fiesta performances – particularly for Santiago -- engage agrarian and community history as they suggest a local and alternative form of mestizaje. The objective is to connect social and place-based identities etched in the material and symbolic complexes that create “morenos” -- a local racial category meaning “black Indian” and the one to which the majority of San Nicolás’s residents subscribe -- to the construction of a form of mestizaje that destabilizes dominant Mexican racial ideologies even as it creatively draws on them.

Author

• Laura A Lewis, University of Southampton