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Copyright of Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies (JOLLAS) is the property of Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article explores El Buen Vestir-Tlakentli (2017 and 2019) and argues that the two iterations of this dance-theatre piece are powerful explorations—through dance and the artists' sensate relation to objects—of the moving journey that led artists Leticia Vera and Carlos Rivera Martínez from Mexico to Canada and from a sense of estrangement from their Indigeneity to an encounter with their ancestors' complex and resistant negotiations with the oppressive forces ushered in by settler colonialism in Mexico. Shedding and layering clothes and leveraging the knowledges they encode, the artists remind us of all that moves us in the world. Through inhabiting clothes saturated with meaning, the dancers embody their ancestors throughout the performance, returning to them to better understand the past, its violence, and its joy and imagine a future remapped through decolonial geographies. This future, the author contends in conversation with the artists' own words, takes the form of a hopeful reconfiguration of the symbolic space of Aztlán. Critical of its problematic past entanglement with race yet mobilizing its transformative power, the artists create a space where Indigeneity is no longer relegated to the past, where kinship is articulated on radically different terms, and where it might be possible to shed the layers of settler-colonial violence—gendered violence in particular–that continue to impact the everyday life of Indigenous women and girls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a socio-ecological and an intersectionality framework, this cross-national study examined the perceived discrimination experiences of U.S.-based diasporic Yucatec-Maya Mexican students (n = 66), U.S.-based non-Yucatec-Maya (non-indigenous) Latinx students (n = 65), and Mexico-based Yucatec-Maya students (n = 70). U.S.-based Yucatec-Maya students self-reported experiencing the greatest number of instances of perceived discrimination and higher levels of perceived discrimination distress as compared to their non-indigenous counterparts. Maya language was positively related to peer-perceived discrimination distress. U.S.-based Yucatec-Maya boys self-reported experiencing the most acts of peer-perceived discrimination and first-generation Yucatec-Maya students had the highest levels of peer-perceived discrimination distress. This study examines indigeneity to contribute to an intersectional understanding of Mexican-origin students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades, indigenist anthropology has been considered indefensible in Mexico. Its conception of Indigeneity persists, however, as a resource for national heritage and identity construction. This article analyses works on Indigenous peoples by prominent Mexican scholars and traces their links to contemporary heritage narratives and practices. It discusses how a national anthropological historiography, embedded in a secularizing ideology and state project, has generated a popular, transhistorical view of Indigenous peoples as embedded in a world of religious belief. I contend that this gaze has a dematerializing discursive effect, dissociating Indigenous peoples, past and present, from material agendas and practices. This is a dispossessive narrative tradition that is being regenerated through the framework of intangible heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the "danza de los mecos", a dance performed annually by young Nahua men during the carnaval in Tecomate, Veracruz, in honor of Tlacatecolotl/Tlahuelliloc, a deceitful and capricious demon-like figure otherwise known as "el Diablo". The performance features Indigenous men who dress as devils, wear masks, or dress as women. Drawing on fieldwork, I analyse the performance of the "danza de los mecos" as a critical site in which to examine the embodiment of indigeneity, the enactment of Nahua epistemologies, and the queer gestures that subvert colonial structures of power in contemporary Mexico. By focusing on dancing bodies, I attend to the intricate ways bodily acts transmit memory, knowledge, and imagination through ritual. I explore the role that embodied expressions of indigeneity play in the queering of colonial systems of power, while allowing Indigenous men to simultaneously assert and undermine their masculinity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the importance of the Nahua concept of tequitl, a term that meant work, duty, task, office, and obligation, as an expression of indigeneity and community solidarity in colonial Mexico. Nahuas used collaborative labor arrangements within marriages and across households to establish and sustain social bonds. To work on behalf of others was an act of love, respect, and concern, and between couples, of intimacy. Nahuas often conceived of tequitl, whether office holding, tribute labor, or gendered work, as "a great bundle, a large packframe" that a person must carry to fulfill their obligations to others in their community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2019, residents of the rural district of San Rafael Comac in the municipality of San Andrés Cholula, Mexico, challenged the implementation of the 2018 Municipal Program for Sustainable Urban Development of San Andrés Cholula (MPSUD), a rapacious urban-planning policy that was negatively affecting ancestral communities—pueblos originarios—and their lands and traditions. In 2020, a legal instrument called the writ of amparo was proven effective in ordering the repeal of the MPSUD and demanding an Indigenous consultation, based on the argument of self-recognition of local and Indigenous identity. Such identity would grant them the specific land rights contained in the Mexican Constitution and in international treaties. To explain their Indigenous identity in the writ of amparo, they referred to an established ancient socio-spatial system of organization that functioned beyond administrative boundaries: the Mesoamerican altepetl system. The altepetl, consisting of the union between land and people, is appointed in the writ of amparo as the foundation of their current form of socio-spatial organization. This paper is a land-policy review of the MPSUD and the writ of amparo, with a case-study approach for San Rafael Comac, based on a literature review. The research concludes that Indigenous consultation is a key tool and action for empowerment towards responsible land-management in a context where private urban-development impinges on traditional land uses and customs, and could be beneficial for traditional communities in Mexico and other Latin American countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In P'urhépecha territory, Central Michoacán, Mexico, Indigenous revival processes have characterized in recent years by a resurgence of language reclamation projects that revendicate ethnic identity in Indigenous communities. In a country that has historically highlighted language as a marker of indigeneity, how do ethnic revindication processes tied to language emerge in communities where the Indigenous language has been entirely displaced by Spanish? This article discusses the case of Huecorio, a community of P'urhépecha descent located in Lake Pátzcuaro, where community members have engaged in language revival practices in the past 5 years. Grounded in Indigenous-based participatory research, we center our discussion on the use of the P'urhepecha language in the interrelated spheres that make up the community to demonstrate how Indigenous communities that no longer speak their heritage language are contributing to the reconfiguration of their ethno-cultural identity through language reclamation practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution seeks to contextualize historically a particular conjuncture through which significant changes to the national formation of alterities are expressed and performed by different media outlets and socio-digital networks as the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in Mexico. By analysing three significant media events – which have triggered a broader discussion about racism, ethnicity, mestizaje, media and politics in Mexico – I argue for the need to develop a theoretical framework able to account for the constitutive relations between communication technologies, culture industries and singular articulations of local, regional, and cosmopolitan practices of inclusion/exclusion, at a time when notions of indigeneity, afromexicanidad, whiteness and mestizaje are being reshaped politically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, Central American Indigenous women who seek asylum are officially classified as Latinas or Hispanic. The erasure and consequent invisibility of Indigenous identity not only causes assimilation but also jeopardizes Central American Indigenous women's procedural rights. Using a transnational feminist lens combined with a Critical Latinx Indigeneities framework, and drawing on fieldwork research, I address the complex relationships of migrants whose identities are intertwined with geography, different states, and racial representations, while I claim that the invisibility of Indigenous women from Abya Yala who cross borders responds to the white settler colonial project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dillingham highlights these unexpected outcomes through the Instituto de Investigación y Integración Social del Estado de Oaxaca (IIISEO), a school founded in 1969 to train Indigenous youth from far-flung communities to become I promotores biligües i . The first chapter explores the "double bind of indigenista development" (45), which Dillingham frames as government projects intended to improve material conditions in Indigenous communities but that ultimately had the opposite effect. Dillingham focuses on the southern state of Oaxaca, often revered as the Indigenous heartland of Mexico. [Extracted from the article]

The article "Mexico before Mexico" analyzes the evolution of Mexican identity throughout history. It highlights three key moments in the definition of this identity: the indigenous characterized by religious worldview, the indigenous manifested by Universal Reason, and a stage of approach and search for the incorporation of the indigenous into Mexican society. The importance of mestizaje in the formation of a homogeneous nation is mentioned. The article also talks about the cultural diversity in Mesoamerica and how, over 13 centuries, despite the differences between the groups that arrived in the region, they managed to create a cultural unity based on the cultivation of corn and the formation of a tradition. Different historical stages in Mesoamerica, such as the Preclassic and the Classic, are described, and the disappearance of some great Mesoamerican cities and the possible causes behind it are discussed. The different regions of Mesoamerica and their geographical, cultural, and climatic characteristics are also mentioned, as well as the main cultural groups in the history of Mesoamerica, such as the Olmecs, Teotihuacans, Zapotecs, and Mexicas. The article concludes by reflecting on the importance of understanding the past to understand current problems and conflicts. [Extracted from the article]

Food memory has been determinant in the survival of social groups, the causes of its activation are varied (e.g. feelings, identity, need or challenge) and it is transmitted from generation to generation. These interactions have given rise to an ethnic food heritage that responds to cultural processes and territorial specificities. It is in this logic that this study is proposed, which aims to explore the dynamics between food, memory, and identity of two ethnic groups in the state of Puebla in Mexico in a context of health disruption. The experience of these two groups shows how food identity and memory is particularly strategic in the face of adversity, as is currently the case with the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a dossier on qualitative and audiovisual methodologies for conducting ethnography in the present day. It reflects on the way anthropological research is conducted, including fieldwork and ethnography. The importance of the ontological turn in epistemological debates is highlighted, and the actor-network methodology is mentioned as an example. The article also addresses experimentation and ethnographic cinema, as well as the changes brought about by the pandemic in research methods. It refers to a seminar on experience and experimentation in ethnography and raises questions about current methodological approaches and aesthetic forms of presentation. Additionally, three specific articles are mentioned that explore the relationships between inequalities, symbolic forms, and power relations, the methodology used in the making of a documentary about a generational group of women from Lima, and the reflection on indigeneity and the use of video cameras in an ethnographic documentary about ethnotourism projects in the Peruvian jungle. An article on the use of the internet among indigenous peoples in Mexico and the difficulties researchers face in fieldwork is also mentioned. [Extracted from the article]

In the 1970s, Latin America became a global laboratory for military interventions, the cultivation of terror, and ideological and economic transformation. In response, family groups and young scientists forged a new activist forensics focused on human rights, victim-centered justice, and state accountability, inaugurating new forms of forensic practice. We examine how this new form of forensic practice centered in forensic genetics has led to a critical engagement with Indigeneity both within and outside the lab. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with human rights activists and forensic scientists in Argentina, Guatemala and Mexico, this paper examines the relationship between forensic genetics, Indigenous organizing, and human rights practice. We offer the concept of 'genetic syncretism' to attend to spaces where multiple and competing beliefs about genetics, justice, and Indigenous identity are worked out through (1) coming together in care, (2) incorporation, and (3) ritual. Helping to unpack the uneasy and incomplete alliance of Indigenous interests and forensic genetic practice in Latin American, genetic syncretism offers a theoretical lens that is attentive to how differentials of power embedded in colonial logics and scientific practice are brokered through the coming together of seemingly incompatible beliefs and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crucial to Dillingham's argument is the assertion that this multiculturalism was not merely an identity-based strategy of the state to incorporate Indigenous Mexicans into an increasingly austere, neoliberal economy. By closely examining agricultural and educational programs led by state agencies from the 1950s through the 1980s, Dillingham demonstrates the contradictory and complicated nature of I indigenismo i in Mexico in the decades after World War II. Indigenous youth, in particular, drive this interdisciplinary analysis, which relies on local, state, and national archives, as well as interviews with key figures, to highlight the contested nature of state-directed modernization efforts. [Extracted from the article]

This study considers some of the ways in which engagements with literacies are embedded in social practices and produced and enacted through distinct ethnolinguistic and cultural histories. Drawing on research with learners and facilitators in an adult literacy program for Indigenous language speakers in Mexico, the findings reveal various meanings, values, and uses attached to literacies, including as a defense, a necessity, access to full knowledge, to express oneself, and to learn from one another. The study concludes that literacies are connected to the broader project of Indigenous self-determination. • Indigenous literacies are shaped by social practices and cultural histories • Indigenous perspectives on the role of literacy highlight literacy as a defense • Adult learning contexts help foster community relationships through 'convivencia' • Literacies are connected to the broader project of Indigenous self determination [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Anthropology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this article I argue for a renewed engagement with the concept of positionality in archaeology. I provide a brief history of thinking about the idea of subject position in archaeology, focusing specifically on researcher subjectivity rather than that of past persons. The discussion highlights some of the strands of archaeological thinking where positionality has figured prominently in investigative and interpretative strategies: namely, intersectional, relational, and community‐based archaeologies. I then offer three examples from research in Quintana Roo, Mexico that speak to the ways that grappling with positionality has influenced my and my collaborators' agendas and goals related to the commemoration of the heritage of the Maya Social War (Caste War of Yucatan). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Costa Chica is home to the largest Afromexican population in Mexico most of whom are of Afro-Indigenous descent. In 2019, Afromexicans gained official state recognition as collective ethnic minority subjects which opens up new political potentialities for organising strategies. This article examines the development of Afro-Indigenous politics in response to the ecological devastation that Costa Chica of Guerrero is experiencing as a consequence of climate change. I contextualise this research project in my personal experiences researching family histories and coming into a sense of Afro-Indigenous subjectivity. A brief overview of the historical human-nature relations influenced by slavery and colonialism helps to contextualise the socio-political and ecological situation in the region. Finally, I draw from my ethnographic work to suggest various ways in which Afro-Indigenous organisers can mobilise the new political category to address environmental concerns. In the conclusion, I return to my own personal experiences with trying to understand Afro-Indigenous politics arguing that while connections need to be made with other geographic experiences of Blackness, Indigeneity, and Afro-Indigeneity, one must stay attuned to the geographic particularities that shape subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One highly significant yet under-investigated source of variation within the Latinx Education scholarship are Indigenous immigrants from Latin America. This study investigates how Maya and other Indigenous recent immigrant youth from Guatemala and Mexico, respectively, understand indigeneity. Using a Critical Latinx Indigeneities analytic, along with literature on the coloniality of power and settler-colonialism, I base my findings on a year-long qualitative study of eight self-identifying indigenous youth from Guatemala and Mexico and highlight two emergent themes: youth's understanding of (a) asymmetries of power based on division of labor, and (b) language hierarchies. I propose that race is a key component that contributes to the reproduction of divisions of labor and the subaltern positioning of Indigenous languages. Findings from this study provide linguistic, economic, and historical contexts of Maya and other Indigenous immigrants' lived experiences to educators and other stakeholders in public schools working with immigrant Latinx populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we examine the role of the festivals known as Guelaguetzas that are organized among communities of Oaxacan (Oaxaca, Mexico) immigrants settled in California (United States), as a key factor for their internal consolidation process. We argue that all cultural activities displayed in such festivals allow a greater appreciation of the reconfiguration processes linking the places of origin and destination. Furthermore, the organization of these festivals entails the creation of cultural spaces that allow a resignification of their contents by emphasizing three core elements of the social identity for these Oaxacan immigrants: the migrant condition, indigeneity and the pan-Oaxacan dimension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the humanized birth movement in Mexico and analyzes how the remaking of tradition-the return to traditional birthing arts (home birth, midwife-assisted birth, natural birth)-inadvertently reinscribes racial hierarchies. The great irony of the humanized birth movement lies in parents' perspective of themselves as critics of late capitalism. All the while, their very rejection of consumerism bolsters ongoing commodification of indigenous culture and collapses indigeneity, nature, and tradition onto one another. While the movement is quickly spreading across Mexico, indigenous women and their traditional midwives are largely excluded from the emerging humanized birth community. Through ethnographic examples, the article suggests that indigenous individuals are agentive actors who appropriate cards in decks stacked against them. Examples of resistance emerge within a context of power and political economy that often capitalizes on images of indigeneity while obscuring the lives, experiences, and opinions of indigenous people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Antropología Social is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article examines how indigenous peoples living within Mexico following its conquest by Spain were encouraged to secure political achievement by aiding the Spanish monarchs. This form of political advancement could be secured through acts such as warfare, as evidenced by a letter sent from Don Antonio Cortés Totoquihuaztli, the governor of the city-state Tlacopan, to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1552. The author examines how the conquest of Mexico influenced not only the identity of indigenous populations, but also the language that they used to reference themselves.

The article focuses on the legislation surrounding land tenure of the Coca Indians on the island of Mezcala, Mexico, beginning in the 1970s. The effects of the legislation are discussed with respect to the agrarian nature of the Coca society, their communal lands and their ethnic identity as indigenous peoples. The rights of the Coca people to self-govern and own land during this time are analyzed with attention to the globalizing effect on the island's residents and the redefinition of indigenous identity.

The indigenous groups incorporated into the Spanish missions of Alta and Baja California faced a variety of challenges during the colonial period and experienced a wide range of outcomes in the persistence of native identity. The indigenous Paipai community of Santa Catarina, located in northern Baja California, is composed of the direct descendants of native peoples who lived and worked at the Dominican mission of Santa Catalina and is one of the few remaining native communities in Baja California. Through the examination of a mission census dating to 1834, this article considers the demographic parameters of life at Santa Catalina as well as the ethnolinguistic composition of the mission's indigenous population. This analysis points to two important patterns that likely had implications for the persistence of native identity at the mission. First, the mission's native population does not appear to have suffered from the demographic collapse associated with introduced diseases. Second, the native population at Santa Catalina consisted of speakers of at least three languages and was drawn from a wide geographic area. The diversity of the native population at Santa Catalina may have provided the mission neophytes the opportunity to form a larger and stronger social group that could draw on various geographical homelands for support and refuge during the mission period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is to be hoped that the passing of the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by the United Nations in 2007 will have the effect of intensifying the discussion of the rights of the indigenous communities in Mexico. This article seeks to draw attention from the perspective of anthropology to some important theoretical aspects for this discussion, which also has relevance for the search for political proposals. The first part problematizes the concept of culture, whose origins can be traced back simultaneously to the beginnings of anthropology as well as the consolidation of the national state. The second part formulates two reasons for maintaining cultural diversity. The final part points to some things to take into account for pending intercultural dialogues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an ethnographic study of collective memory, cultural identity, and the traditional music of woodwind ensembles on the Tarasco plains of Mexico. It explains that the study was carried out through interviews with members of wind ensembles from the town of Tingambato in the state of Michoacán, Mexico as well as with teachers, students, and radio broadcasters in other population centers on the plains. The article shows how Tarasco Indian communities build cultural identity regarding their past and present through traditional music.

This article demonstrates how the promotion of Indigenous women's political-electoral rights in Mexico has furthered a conservative agenda of state securitization. To do so, it presents a discourse analysis of national media reports focused on the story of Eufrosina Cruz, a Zapotec woman who became the figurehead for state-led initiatives to promote Indigenous women's rights. It argues that a colonial rescue narrative constructed through Cruz's figure helped generate new hegemonic discourses of gendered indigeneity that portrayed Indigenous peoples' alternative political practices and spaces as anti-democratic and illegal. In an era where advancements in party democracy were linked to processes of state securitization, these categorizations helped justify new forms of state intervention into Indigenous peoples' lives. By exploring how rights initiatives were discursively constructed through racialized, spatialized and gendered constructions of indigeneity, this article contributes to a critical geography of indigeneity within political geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]