Broadly defined, indigenismo (Spanish, "indianism") refers to the representation of indigenous peoples (ind^genas in Spanish) in Latin America by outsiders (called indi-genistas). It is a uniquely American phenomenon, and its origins are inextricably bound together with debates on the question of how colonized indigenous peoples should be treated. Its importance as a philosophical aspect of Latin American thought dates to the beginnings of European attempts to subdue the aboriginal inhabitants of the American continent in the late fifteenth century. It reached its high point in the early twentieth century in countries with high concentrations of indigenous peoples, particularly Mexico and Peru. Although its characteristics changed over time, indigenismo always presented a critique of indigenous issues from an elite, educated, urban perspective rather than from that of the indigenous peoples.
The Dominican priest Bartolome de las Casas (1484-1566) presented the earliest articulate defense of indigenous rights from a European perspective. But he retained loyalty to the Catholic Church and to the Spanish Crown, and ultimately the purpose of his efforts was for the conversion of indigenous peoples to Christianity and their assimilation into the Spanish kingdom.
Modern indigenismo first emerged in the nineteenth century and was characterized by romantic and humanitarian impulses. This indigenista discourse came to be dominated by intellectuals who were strongly influenced by Spencerian positivist thought meant to assimilate the surviving indigenous peoples in the Americas into a dominant Spanish or Portuguese culture. Indigenismo particularly gained strength in Mexico in the aftermath of the 1910 revolution because it embraced the country’s glorious indigenous past while assimilating their descendants into a unified mestizo nation.
By the 1920s indigenismo had become a form of protest against the injustices that Indians faced. Political parties, especially populist ones, began to exploit indigenista ideologies for political gain. Indigenismo flourished in the 1930s, particularly in Peru and Mexico, and in the 1950s it was institutionalized in the Guatemalan and Bolivian revolutions. With officialization, indigenismo lost its revolutionary potential to improve the lives of Indians. Elite mestizo intellectuals and leftist political leaders led this movement, which they often used only to advance their own political agendas.
Indigenismo often emerged out of anthropological and archaeological studies. Manuel Gamio (1883-1960) was both a pioneer anthropologist and indigenista in Mexico who reconstructed archaeological sites for tourists, including Teotihuacan north of Mexico City. Although indigenistas proudly championed the ancient Aztec and Inca civilizations, they often ignored or discounted their present-day descendants.
Peruvian Marxist Jose Carlos Mariategui is one of the best-known indigenista intellectuals. In Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality (1928), Mariategui criticized various strategies that others had employed to improve the lives of indigenous peoples, including humanitarian campaigns, administrative policies, and legal reforms. He argued that their problems were rooted instead in the nature of the land-tenure system, and that only through fundamental economic change and land reform would social improvements be possible. Mariategui was an indi-genista in the classical sense in that he was an urban mestizo intellectual who had little contact with Peru’s indigenous peoples, but he did not portray the worst elements of paternalism and assimilation common to indigenismo.
Indigenismo was also represented in literature, particularly in well-known novels such as Jorge Icaza’s Huasipungo (1934) in Ecuador or Rosario Castellanos’s Balun-Candn (1957) in Mexico. Typically, such novels focused on the oppression of poor indigenous agricultural workers at the hands of large landholders, depicting ind.i-genas as primitive and ignorant people who are unable to improve their lives without outside assistance. The solution, when one is offered, is that through education they might be elevated and assimilated into the dominant culture; rarely are indigenous cultures recognized as valuable and worthy of protection. In art, the paintings by the Mexican artists Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) and Diego Rivera (1886-1957) utilized indigenous themes to advance their leftist political ideologies.
In 1940 the Mexican president Lazaro Cardenas (1895-1970) organized the First Inter-American Indigenist Congress at Patzcuaro in the state of Michoacan. Delegates were anthropologists and sociologists as well as religious workers and high government officials such as John Collier, the architect of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Indian policy in the United States. The Patzcuaro Congress broke from colonialist thought, but its tone was still integrationalist. The Instituto Indigenista Interamericano (III, Inter-American Indigenist Institute) that emerged out of the Patzcuaro Congress was based in Mexico City, and Gamio served as its first director. The III held congresses about every five years, and indigenistas formed national branches in many of the American republics. In addition to publishing the journals America Indigenista (later renamed Anuario Indigenista) and Boletm Indigenista, the III became an official organ of the Organization of American States (OAS).
In 1971 eleven anthropologists gathered in Barbados for the Symposium on Inter-Ethnic Conflict in South America. Their Declaration of Barbados demanded the liberation of indigenous peoples from colonial domination, specifically calling for the defense of indigenous culture and territory, the establishment of economic, social, educational, and health assistance, and support for a native-led pan-Latin American movement for self-government.
As indigenous peoples began to build their own organizations, they presented a sustained critique of indigenismo as a construction of the dominant culture, a paternalistic impulse designed to stop liberation movements. Indigenous peoples criticized academics who studied their cultures without returning any political benefits to their communities. Rather than letting outsiders appropriate indigenous cultures and concerns for their own purposes, indigenous leaders insisted that they could represent themselves. Particularly strong indigenous political movements emerged in countries with relatively weak indigenista traditions such as Ecuador and Guatemala. By the end of the twentieth century indigenous leaders had created a neoindigenismo that advanced their own political agendas.
