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Nationalist Myths and Ethnic Identities: Indigenous Intellectuals and the Mexican State

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A quick glance may lead us to conclude that this is just another book on the never-ending frictions and conflictive relations between the Mexican State and sundry ethnic groups that dwell within its territory. A more profound look will lead us to discover not only new issues about the said subject, as a result of the numerous works dealing with the challenges posed by ethnicities living within the state-nations, but also new theoretical and methodological outputs that may helps us disentangle the meaning of such processes.
The main concern of Natividad Gutiérrez is to analyze the processes of creation of the national identity in a multiethnic society. Thus, the book is divided in two parts. The first is dedicated to analyze the institutional mechanisms by which the state uses the past as a way to facilitate the integration of an ethnically diverse society. The second examines the articulated response of educated members of indigenous groups to an imposed national identity.
In the light of the highly polarized academic debate between "historic-culturalists" and "modernists" represented by Anthony D. Smith and Ernest Gellner respectively, on whether today's nations have an ethnic and historic origin or they are just the product of modern objective conditions, namely, revolutions, state, industrialization, integrationist policies and mass education, the author suggests a second level of analysis. If from the "modernist" perspective the enormous burden of the state institutions and instruments may be demonstrated (i.e. educational system, mass media, textbooks, among others) in the transfer, spread and instilment of nationalism, it is not less true that such perspective tells but little about the use and persistency of the historical past and the cultural uniqueness. In order to relief such absence, the author makes use of the perspective hold by the "historic-culturalists" who argue that the subjective elements of the cultural past, based on religion, ethnicity, symbolism or mythology, constitute the ground upon which to understand the ideological content of each nationalism, for nowadays nations are recognized by their unique cultural background, exclusive and authentic. To possess an "authentic culture", no less renovated, reconstituted and rebuilt, plays a decisive function, for it allows the state-nations to conceive themselves a unique aggregate that holds a territory, a history and a culture, unique as well. Therefore, both the "civic" nationalism model and the "territorial" one require to limit and search for their "myths of origin and their shared history", which are taken from myths and symbols of preexisting ethnic groups or recombine them into new cultural matrices.
The collection and analysis of the views and perceptions of the indigenous peoples regarding the nationalist discourse, constitutes the third level of analysis. Gutiérrez uses the opinions granted by the study of a minority of Indian people who have benefited from a higher level of education and yet maintain clear and definite attachments to the Indian milieu. The individuals interviewed may be grouped in two categories: intellectuals & professionals and college students. The first group includes 3 women and 7 men from diverse ethnic groups (Tzotzil, Tseltal, Purepecha, Maya, Nahua, Zapoteco and Mixteco) of different states of the country (Chiapas, Michoacan, Yucatan, Campeche, Tlaxcala and Oaxaca). All men hold a graduate degree and some of them have postgraduate qualifications in disciplines related to studies of ethnicity, history and development. The situation of the interviewed women is different, 2 of them receive training in the teaching profession and ethnolinguistics and the third one holds a graduate degree in anthropology by the university of Yucatan. All perform different activities both creative and productive, have a large experience in publications and are related to editorial tasks of indigenous nature.
The second group is made of two sets of students who answered a questionnaire, contrary to the intellectuals who were interviewed. The first set includes ten students who are currently taking a Master's course (Master Degree in Indoamerican Linguistics, taught at the Center for the Research and Study of Social Anthropology in Mexico City), out of which one is a woman and the remaining nine are men. Eight of them declared that their mother language is an Indian Language, among which we may find Nahua, Totonaco, Chinanteco, Triqui, Chol, and Tzotzil. The students belong to areas of high demographic concentration: Veracruz, Huasteca Potosina, Puebla, Oaxaca and Chiapas. The second group of interviewed students is entirely made of students from the B.A. course in Indigenous Education by the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional. From the 50 individuals who answered the questionnaire, 27 are women and 23 are men. Their ethnic composition includes Mixtecos, Tzotziles, Nahuas, Triquis, Zapotecos and Ñahñu. They come from four states with a significant indigenous population: Oaxaca, Chiapas, Guerrero and Hidalgo. All but one who declared that he only speaks Spanish, are bilingual both in Spanish and their mother indigenous language. Forty of the interviewed students have worked as elementary-level teachers.
An argument of major interest developed throughout the book is that the current creation of ethnicity within the national Mexican state, must be explained, not by means of the permanence of ancestral traditions or uninterrupted continuities, but by the use made by the ethnic groups themselves of modernity. Paradoxically, the access to technology has helped the ethnicity to strengthen, amplify and rebuilt itself within a wider social life rather than disappear. Such process neither has given rise to nationalist movements nor crystallized into an ethno-political project seeking autonomy or separation from the central state.
Without any doubt, we are in front of an excellent work of mandatory study for all those interested not only in the challenges posed by the ethnicity within the contemporary state-nations, but to those interested in the processes of construction of the national identity in a multiethnic society. Natividad Gutiérrez compels us to rethink new and fresh ways to study the much worn-out topic of nationalism.

Dení Ramírez Losada