The colonial agenda of mestizaje: Constructing binary entrapments in race, gender and sexuality in education and schooling in Mexico.

• In Event: Indigenous Identities: Limits and Possibilities

Proposal

In this paper presentation, I argue that the legacies of mestizaje in Mexico have been sustained by two heteronormative ideologies that reign supreme and cause along the way discrimination, harm and violence. I refer to these as the Mexican m&m’s: machismo & malinchismo. Machismo is based on colonial constructions of femininity and masculinity. It is an oppressive system that positions heterosexual, cis-gendered males as normal, and everyone else as less. Inside this dominant heteronormative framework, your gender identity cannot lay outside the colonial constructions of appropriate expressions for the gender you are assigned at birth. On the other side, malinchismo is a common way of thinking that Indigenous heritages are not worth as much as the ones from more developed, European and wealthy countries. It can be defined as an Indigenous shame and inferiority complex. The term originates from the mother of mestizaje, Malinche, a vilified Indigenous slave, historically represented as a symbol of betrayal “known as la Chingada - the fucked one…Whore, prostitute, the woman who sold out her people to the Spaniards” (Anzaldúa, 1987, p. 44). This patriarchal account of Malinche disregards racial, gender, cultural and age conditions that played part in her role during colonization. Through a mestizo education, Mexicans are not only taught to look down upon feminine aspects but also neglect their Indigenous roots. Both Mexican m&m’s perpetuate racist and heteronormative logics that fuel the oppressive machinery of mestizaje.

The term mestizaje is “the historical mixing of the races and cultural traditions in Latin America, sometimes as a direct result of sexual abuse and downright exploitation of Native Peoples and African slaves by European colonial powers” (Alarcón, 2008, p. 274). According to Grande (2008), mestizaje has been maintained for centuries to force the integration of Indigenous communities into the national mestizo model where the narrative of the white master is perpetuated. Similarly, Aguilar Gil (2019) reminds us that the oppression and disappearance of Indigenous communities in Mexico come from the use of mestizaje as a tool for de-indigenization. Mestizaje emanated directly from colonialism to become a hegemonic ideology based on racialized hierarchies established by promoting the idea of white superiority. In the 1920s, the foundations of modern Mexico as a Mestizo nation began to consolidate and, in turn, drastically transformed all aspects of culture, politics and education in Mexico, especially for identities that deviate from colonial formations of white masculinity. Known as one of the most influential figures in the history of education, José Vasconcelos was the architect of such change and built Mexico’s post-revolutionary public education system by implementing his philosophy of mestizaje (Ocampo López, 2005). In his essay, La Raza Cósmica (1948), Vasconcelos advocates for the evolution of race, a superior new cosmic race created by mestizaje. Using a Darwinian lens, Vasconcelos believed that this new race had to absorb inferior ones, writing that through superior assimilation, Black and Indigenous peoples could redeem themselves by a voluntary extinction where “the ugliest lineages will make space for the most beautiful ones” (p. 24). Vasconcelos alludes to a lack of Christian values as the main reason for the decay of other nonwhite races and believed imposing this religion made them advance “from cannibalism to a relative civilization” (p. 3). He viewed European settlers as saviours who brought intellectual knowledge that would create the future Mestizo race and makes it clear that the voluntary extinction of inferior races will come from a homogenous education for all. Racist, patriarchal and white supremacist logics were hidden within the ideology of mestizaje which form the structures of the public education system we currently uphold in Mexico.

Although much of the research on the political agenda of mestizaje focuses on the repercussions of imposing a national white race, little has been examined on the impacts of mestizaje as a colonial assimilation tool that enforces heteropatriarchal hierarchies and entrenched binaries on gender and sexuality in Mexican public education. The invention of a Mestizo identity has established false ideals of gender equity and solidarity when in reality, it has deeply intensified gender-based violence. Through a mestizo education, modern Mexico has not only operated with a racist colorblind ideology but has also been shaped by colonial heteropatriarchal structures. This paper presentation explores how mestizaje as a political tool is reproduced and preserved in public education by the Mexican m&m’s. The analysis began as an exploration of the questions, how does education reproduce entrenched binaries to maintain the political agenda of mestizaje? And how has the public education system established sites that perpetuate heteronormative logics? I analyze how values associated with language, gender and power are produced through discursive content on official public education primary textbooks and study how language constitutes a space where heteronormativity is learned by reproducing gender stereotypes, sexist assumptions and stigma. This presentation explores the role of mestizaje to enact gender inequalities in education and schooling by presenting theoretical explorations of the oppressive sexist and patriarchal cultures in Mexico. By exploring how the dominant discourse of gender is positioned and how the colonial heteropatriarchy is upheld in official education primary textbooks, this paper presentation aims to expose how mestizaje has been used historically to construct race, gender and sexuality entrapments. And ultimately, learn how to challenge binaries, disrupt colonial heteropatriarchal structures and resist the Mexican m&m’s.

Author

• Daniel Gallardo, The University of British Columbia