The Indian Question and the Construction of Latin American National Identities in the Post-Independence Period
Open Access
- Author:
- Pandya, Panini
- Area of Honors:
- Spanish
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Arts
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- John Andres Ochoa, Thesis Supervisor
John Lipski, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Latin America
Indigenous Communities
Literature
National identity - Abstract:
- The following thesis examines how the newly independent Latin American republics grappled with the question of the Indian, or “the other within”, when formulating their national identities during the post-independence period of 1821-1910. I argue that the particularities in each country’s response to the Indian question depended on whether national leaders viewed indigenous peoples as something that could be safely disappeared. More specifically, I hold that the respective nation-builders mediated their visions for indigenous peoples through distinct sociological frameworks depending on the demographic, socioeconomic, and mythical visibility of the Indian. This broad definition of “visibility” includes the demographic preponderance and geographic distribution of indigenous communities, the importance of the subjugated Indian to the social and economic functioning of society, and the centrality of ancient Indian empires in the historical national imaginary. These three elements of “visibility” refer back to a central question: Was the Indian a distant and disposable other? I ground my analysis in three works from Mexico, Peru, and Argentina that placed the Indian as a central theme: El Zarco: Episodios de la Vida Mexicana en 1861-1863 by the Mexican intellectual of indigenous descent Ignacio Manuel Altamirano, Aves Sin Nido (1889) by the Peruvian writer Clorinda Matto de Turner, and Facundo: Civilización y Barbarie (1845) by the Argentine intellectual and statesman Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. I structure my argument by first providing historical context. I then break down the first element of my “visibility” argument, demography, by looking at census data from each of the selected countries. The heart of the paper concerns the three texts and I dedicate a chapter to each. In each chapter, I dissect how Indian “visibility” shaped the author’s answer to the Indian question and unpack the intellectual theories they applied in defense of their specific visions. Concluding remarks suggest that all three works participated in the erasure of the subaltern Indian from the national narrative as leading emancipatory thinkers of the time were also sharers in the system of subjugation.