Blackness and Mestizaje in Mexico and Central America

Blackness and Mestizaje in Mexico and Central America

Africa World Press
2013
176 pages
ISBN: 978-1592219339

Edited by:

Elisabeth Cunin, Sociologist
Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, France

Odile Hoffmann, Geographer
Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, France

American configurations, because of their originality, force us to adopt plural visions, toward the margins, with particular emphasis on situations of mixtures and ambiguous categories (Afro-indigenous, creoles, mestizos), multiple belongings (national and transnational), or seemingly contradictory practices (black culture without black people, mobilization without ethnic claims).

Beyond the ideal of a homogenized citizenship produced by mestizaje, there are complex social dynamics based on difference and indifference, stigmatization and fascination, homogenization and othering. We believe that mestizaje is not only a “myth” and multiculturalism a “challenge” to it. The essays in this book investigate the different processes of racialization, ethnicization, and negotiation of the belongings that characterize mestizaje as multiculturalism.

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