El indigenismo de los indígenas. Historia de una “nebulosa autóctona” (México, décadas de 1940-1950)

Abstract

This work analyzes the conformation of an ‘autochthonous nebula’ in postrevolutionary Mexico (1940s-1950s) which structured in close connection with the indigenist device. Formed by Indian politicians and intellectuals like Genaro V. Vásquez and Juan Luna Cárdenas, aborigine organizations such as the National Confederation of Indigenous Youth (CNJI, 1946) and in a more distant way by rural communities, this vast social sphere had one specific goal: to indianize indigenismo, that is to say to control, in practical terms, the policies implemented by the General Directorate of Indigenous Affairs (DGAI) or by the National Indigenist Institute (INI), and in symbolical terms, to forge an Indian political culture articulated to the Mexican revolutionary culture. This article sheds light on the links that united the different actors of this ‘autochthonous nebula’ and helps to understand the strategic transformations of indigenous alterity facing indigenismo in Mexico.

Keywords

• indians
• Mexico
• indigenismo
• alterity
• political history