Seminar with Dr Laura Lewis, University of Southampton

Abstract: San Nicolás Tolentino, Guerrero, Mexico, is a village of “mixed” black-Indians on the coastal belt of Mexico’s southern Pacific coast, the Costa Chica. This talk examines local expressions of race in San Nicolás in relation to Mexico’s ideology of white/Indian mestizaje (race mixing), which excludes blacks from Mexican national identity. San Nicolás’s black-Indians are strongly nationalistic while expressing a collective or regional identity different from those they identify as Indians and as whites. Such collective expression produces an alternative model of mestizaje, here explored through local agrarian history and several village festivals. This model favors Indians and excludes whites, thereby challenging dominant forms of Mexican mestizaje.

Refreshments will be served. All are welcome.

A joint event with CAS (Comparative American Studies)