Theory of Mixture
Rethinking Mestizaje: Ideology and Lived Experience* – Peter Wade
Peter Wade begins this text by grounding his understanding of mestizaje or mixture in Latin America as “not just as a nation-building ideology—which has been the principal focus of scholarship, but also a lived process of racial-cultural mixture…” (239). The author works to acknowledge the nuanced understanding of mestizaje, with no single definition, but a negotiation between diversity and homogeneity. Wade asserts that the scholarly discourse that surrounds mestizaje, “privilege[s] two assumptions: first, that nationalist ideologies of mestizaje are essentially about the creation of a homogeneous mestizo (mixed) future, which are then opposed to subaltern constructions of the nation as racially-culturally diverse; and second, that mestizaje as a nationalist ideology appears to be an inclusive process, in that everyone is eligible to become a mestizo, but in reality it is exclusive because it marginalizes blackness and indigenousness, while valuing whiteness” (240). He maintains these assumptions are reductive. His piece reemphasizes the notion of “lived-experience” not limited to Latin America, but also in the US and Europe, moving through the ambivalence and confliction in the “process of hybridity” (241). This notion is interesting to me because the same sort of rhetoric is often touted in regards to Canadian nationality and identity construction with the terms like “multiculturalism” or “cultural mosaic.” Multiculturalism works similarly to homogenize an identity of difference or holding all cultures in a position of “equality.” This too is a sort of highly contested ideology wherein the term is used navigate a culture of hybridity.
The Cosmic Race // La Raza Cósmica – José Vasconcelos
I agree that Wade’s explanation of Mestizaje is much more nuanced accessible. This could be a function of his writing being much more modern than Vasconcelos’. However, this does not diminish the fact that he does a good job explaining the ideology of Mestizaje as a sort of exclusive inclusivity, a notion which is easily applicable to modern Canadian and American societies.
I thought your comparison to Canadian national identity to be pretty interesting because I saw the mestizaje identity in a similar light (especially with Wade’s direct use of the term ‘mosaic’). Homogenizing a people through their differences- saying we’re all the same because we’re so different. So we’re all equal…yet we’re not.