‘It’s Not Race, It’s Culture’: Untangling Racial Politics in Mexico

Abstract

Mestizaje and ethnicity are key ideas that inform Mexico’s 20th-century racial project. But while mestizaje – as an ideology, state project, and daily practice – has been discussed and criticized at length, these roles for ideas about ethnicity and diversity have not. This article deals with some of the theoretical and political implications of the use of ethnicity for race studies in Mexico. The emergence of the idea of ethnicity in the late 1930s was closely linked to the racial project of mestizaje and indigenismo, which was carried out by the formative Mexican state in the decades after the Revolution (1910–1920) and continues to shape today’s discourses of multicultural, intercultural, and racial relations in that country. The uncritical deployment of concepts of ethnicity and difference actually hinders the development of an understanding of racism and mestizaje focused squarely on domination.