The Indigenous Peoples in Mexican Anthropology: Concepts and Representations

How has a century of anthropology defined Mexico’s 10million indigenous people and helped to shape government and social policy?

From its origins as a science, anthropology has influenced the ethnic policies of the State and its social institutions.

Visiting professor and leading anthropologist, Alicia Castellanos Guerrero will explore the ways in which the indigenous peoples of Mexico have been studied, defined and represented by anthropologists since the nineteenth century to the present day.

Professor Castellanos Guerrero, based at the Universidad Autόnoma, Metropolitana -Iztapalapa in Mexico City, has spent decades researching and working with a wide range of indigenous communities throughout Mexico.
This lecture will scrutinise the role of anthropology in defining indigenous groups and the ways in which these definitions have implications for social policy and government decision making.

To complement this picture she will also discuss the position of the indigenous peoples themselves and the ways they have resisted, challenged and contributed to such representations.

According to the Mexican National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples, in 2000 there were 9,854,301 indigenous groups (indígenas) reported in Mexico, which constitute 9.54% of the population in the country. There are 62 indigenous language groups, many of which have multiple dialects.
In different periods of the development of anthropology in Mexico, there are concepts that endure, change their meaning and coexist with new conceptualisations, such as indio and indígena. The times and places when these definitions are being made are dynamic, they transcend, change route or become out of fashion and forgotten.

Anthropologists are important in constructing and reproducing stereotypes and present dramatic figures, strongly idealised of the subjects being represented (indígenas) and pretend neutrality. Indio and indígena are unavoidable categories in the analysis of the ethnic and national difficulties in Mexico. Historically, these terms have been stigmatised by referring in a generic way to a group that is presented as homogenous but that emerged from conquest and colonisation and is both culturally and linguistically diverse.

The concepts produced by anthropologists that construct images of the indio and of the indígena, paradoxically contribute to the domination of indigenous people while simultaneously serving their struggle against that same domination.

From its origins as a science, anthropology has influenced the ethnic policies of the State and its social institutions. The anthropologist has a social responsibility which is a crucial issue for their academic practice. Furthermore, such responsibility also means critical analysis of anthropological science itself.

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