Part two of Theories of Mixture! So, in the first part, we talked about mestizaje and its implications. What it meant, how it was achieved and how it was important to Latin American culture. Now, in the second part, we are introduced to a somewhat new topic. Transculturation. We somewhat touched upon this topic in class in which we said transculturation was how two cultures (e.g. indigenous and Spanish) assimilated various elements of each other’s culture to make something fresh.

In Mark Millington’s readings, he mentioned how mestizaje has now become generally confined to discussions of racial mixing while transculturation and hybridization where more in favor nowadays. However, he drew a clear distinction on how while transculturation and hybridization are similar, they mean different things. Transculturation, he said had a distinct Latin American identity and was rarely employed outside that context. On the other hand, hybridization had a more global reference to it. Although I have yet to fully unpack the difference of the two meanings in a way that I can understand, I definitely find this area of topic interesting. Maybe because the length of the readings were a bit more manageable.

I found that this reading had a few similar ideas that Rowe & Schelling talked about in their “The Faces of Popular Culture”. For example, Rowe & Schelling talked about how Mexico had their process of acculturation be more complete. I will need to reread the two readings but this is what I have for now! Thanks for reading guys!