Mexican Indigenismo in a Hemispheric Context—Elements for a Historiography of Inter-American Entanglements in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

This chapter discusses some elements that shed light on the impact an entangled perspective may have on the rewriting of traditional national historiographies. The underlying politics of representation in the field of indigenismo was highly problematic because mainly non-indigenous experts were designing programs for indigenous people which were in many cases aimed at assimilation. In Mexico, indigenismo has been a very forceful political-cultural formation in the control of the indigenous population and the construction of the post-revolutionary nation. In the first step indigenismo discourses will be critically reconstructed from a national, Mexican perspective. In a second step, this fairly common national perspective will be contrasted with an inter-American interpretation of indigenismo. Indigenismo called for the integration of the indigenous population through national modernization programs. And it provided the cultural cement for the new nation through the "invention of tradition"mainly visible in the grounding of the nation in pre-Hispanic Aztec culture.