Colores Mexicanos: Racial Alterity and the Right to the Mexican City
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UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Colores Mexicanos: Racial Alterity and the Right to the Mexican City Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5w87640k Author Negrin, Diana Michele Publication Date 2014 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Colores Mexicanos: Racial Alterity and the Right to the Mexican City By Diana Michele Negrín A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Geography in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Beatriz Manz, Chair Richard Walker Percy C. Hintzen Spring 2014 This dissertation is dedicated to the vision and hard work of Wixárika students and professionals. Pamparius. Table of Contents List of acronyms iv Acknowledgments v Introduction: Negotiating Expectations, Articulating Identities in Urban Mexico 1 1. Indigenismo, Vision, Race and Nation-Building 12 The Rise of the Mexica: Iconography and Visual Representation 15 To Name and To Place: Casta Paintings and the Colonial Racial Consciousness 20 Indigenismo and Mestizaje as a Meditation on Mexican Alterity 24 Rebellion and Commodification of Land and Labor 29 2. Acción Indigenista and the Development of Indigenous Peoples 36 Revolution, Acculturation and the Fathers of Indigenismo 40 Developing Wixárika Territory 50 Beads, Wage Labor and the Promise of the City 58 3. Tepic: City of Inclusion, City of Exclusion The Fall of the Tiger 64 Nayarit’s Impossible Conquest 68 Small Port, Big Capital 73 A Sleepy City Enters the Twentieth Century 79 Racial Impressions and Spatial Appropriations in the Age of Multiculturalism 84 Transcending Multicultural Ambivalence 90 4. Guadalajara de Indias A City Saved From the Savages 93 The Birth of a Frontier City 96 The Pearl of the West: Immigration & Modernization in Nineteenth Century Guadalajara 101 Urban Expansion and Neighborhood Struggles 107 Challenging the Multiracial City 112 Unfixing the Tapatío Narrative 119 5. Makuyeika-She Who Walks in Many Places Through the Looking Glass 121 Recognition Beyond Authenticity 124 Strategies for Recognition in a Multicultural World 128 Awakenings to the Urban Hustle 133 Claiming Space and Identity Through Activism 137 With and Against the Archive 145 Conclusion: Walking Together Pushing the Limits of Multiculturalism: Nunca Más Un México Sin Nosotros 147 Wixárika Claims to the City 149 Bibliography 152 ii Map of Region iii LIST OF ACRONYMS CDI/CDPI Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples CFE Federal Commission of Electricity CONASUPO National Company of Popular Subsistence DAI Department of Indigenous Affairs EZLN Zapatista Army for National Liberation FONART National Fund for the Fomentation of Crafts GEI Indigenous Student Initiative III Interamerican Indigenist Institute INI National Indigenist Institute PAN National Action Party PRD Party of the Democratic Revolution PRI Institutional Revolutionary Party PNDPI National Plan for the Development of Indigenous Peoples SEP Secretary of Public Education UCIHJ Union of Indigenous Huichol Communities of Jalisco UEIM Union of Indigenous Students for Mexico UPIN Union of Indigenous Professionals of Nayarit US Solidaritous University WAAU United Wixaritari Artists and Artisans of the Metropolitan Area of Guadalajara iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is no stretch to say that the present work has been incubating from the moment I gained consciousness, or at least since my earliest memories of wandering on a donkey somewhere in the Wixárika community of Tuapurie in the highlands of northern Jalisco. I must have been three years old and in my vague recollection we were arriving to somebody’s ranch. More vivid than this first visual recollection is the memory of the scent of wood burning and tortillas cooking on the traditional stone comal of the region. A decade would pass until my return to Tuapurie alongside my father. The smell of wood and tortillas suddenly brought me back to my first years of life when our family spent extended periods of time at the ranches of their Wixárika compadres and comadres. I was now fourteen and three years had passed since my mother, my sisters and I had moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. My father’s environmental and social work in Wixárika territory had brought him a fair amount of enemies that included loggers, politicians and local strongmen. By the early 1990s, the tensions that surrounded his work were intensified by his battle with epilepsy and my mother felt it was best for the family to take a break across the northern border in her country of birth. Although my father joined us several years later, his heart never left Wixárika territory and as I got older I became his travel companion. These visits with Wixárika friends in Tepic, Guadalajara and the sierras undoubtedly planted the first seeds for my doctoral research. While an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, I spent a year studying and conducting research in Mexico under the guidance of my academic mentor, Percy C. Hintzen. These first attempts at ethnographic and archival research centered on a series of controversial infrastructure projects in and around Wixárika territory. After a two-year stint doing social work in Los Angeles, I returned to school eager to go back to the sierras of Jalisco wearing my new hat as a geographer. But a rough year of graduate school and online conversations with Wixárika university students re-routed my focus toward the western cities of Guadalajara and Tepic where a growing number of Wixaritari (plural) were claiming their rights to higher education and professional careers. In this way, the theoretical and practical questions that I address in this dissertation resulted from a constellation of familial and academic relations that exposed the need to speak to the current experiences and paths that young urban Wixaritari are taking in Mexico. I am grateful to Atilano Carrillo and Kena Bautista’s frank conversations that initiated my temporary departure from the realm of political ecology and development studies. Their experiences as indigenous students in private universities demonstrated the urgency of addressing the social and economic inequalities that are reproduced in Mexico—from university campuses to crafts markets and law offices. Tutupika Carrillo was an early colleague in this research. Not only did he connect me with Wixárika and v Náayari students in Tepic but he remains a colleague with whom I can share honest observations and receive illuminating responses. Juan Aurelio Carrillo and the Carrillo Ríos family opened their home and hearts to me, making Tepic a more familiar place. Beyond our family’s deep friendship, Juan Aurelio has been a committed partner in this project. At the Autonomous University of Nayarit I was fortunate to count on Tukarima Carrillo, Maximino Muñoz, Tzicuritemai and Álica Rentería, Octavio Salas, Oscar Ukeme Muñoz and several others to organize events, break bread, and critically analyze the paths that Wixaritari youth are taking inside and out of their traditional communities. In Guadalajara, much of my research was anchored to longtime friends and colleagues, but Antonio and Sofía García dramatically shifted the ground I was walking on. At any hour I could count on these brilliant siblings for critical, honest and often emotional conversations about any number of topics, but especially about the state of race and belonging in Mexico. Anastacio Hernández, Claudio de la Rosa, Agustín Carrillo, Santos de la Cruz, Jamaima Carrillo, Lisbeth Bonilla and all of the members of Universidad Solidaria were instrumental in helping me ground my research and direct my arguments. This work is indebted to the stories that so many Wixaritari youth generously shared with me over the past few years. As a graduate student I was fortunate to count on the mentorship of a wonderfully diverse committee. Beatriz Manz supported my graduate studies from day one and helped me find a sense of belonging in the Geography Department. As my dissertation chair, Beatriz never failed to show her enthusiasm for my research and was central in guiding my ethnographic practice, including the difficult and sensitive work of writing in the stories of my informants. Above all, Beatriz exemplifies the importance of holding long- term political commitment to our research projects. Richard Walker was an unexpected and irreplaceable addition to my graduate work as he helped me navigate the field of urban studies and economic geography. I could always count on DW’s (as his graduate students lovingly call him) careful reading of my work. His emphasis on proper syntax and clear uncontrived prose was exceptional and helped foster my love for writing without the need for jargon and the hyper-theorization that is so prevalent in academia. I want to thank Mark Healey not only for his seminar on Race and Nation in Latin America but also for his mentorship during my qualifying exams and during the early phases of my research. I know that I am not the only geographer who missed his departure from Berkeley. Finally, I am grateful to Percy Hintzen who has directed my academic work from the time I was an undergraduate student fumbling around with literature from his course, Political Economy of the Third World. When I mentor young students I always think of Percy because without his guidance I may have never written an undergraduate thesis nor pursued a graduate degree. When I returned to Berkeley I found his door wide open and his graduate seminars became instrumental for fostering my intellectual growth and my continued engagement with Black and diaspora studies. Percy has always been vi the first to demonstrate his high expectations for my work, encouraging me to attend conferences, publish, and seek opportunities that I might otherwise think are inaccessible. Research is virtually impossible without financial support and I have been fortunate to receive fellowships that made my work possible over the last seven years.