To Die in This Way: Nicaraguan Indians and the Myth of Mestizaje, 1880-1965 (review)

In To Die in This Way Jeffrey Gould is concerned with historicizing the myth of Nicaraguan mestizaje, which asserts that Pacific Coast Nicaraguans are uniformly mixed-race, all indigenous groups having disappeared by the late nineteenth century. Gould's work shows that this myth formed part of a concerted ladino attack on indigenous lands, labor, and identity at both the national and local levels. This study provides a major contribution to our understanding of the political dimensions of the term mestizaje and a caution to those who, in an effort to de-essentialize indigenous peoples, apply theories of mestizaje uncritically without examining the relationships of power specific to particular regions. Gould's study explores the development of a hegemony that transcends ideological divisions between liberals and conservatives, revolutionaries and neoliberals, as the national discourse of ethnic homogeneity masked continuing ethnic conflict. It also provides the background necessary to understanding why progressive revolutionary movements like the Sandinista Front have such difficulty acknowledging and addressing the concerns of ethnic communities.

Relying on an impressive array of documents, historical studies, and oral interviews from several Pacific Coast communities, Gould pieces together a sobering narrative of ethnic erasure. He is careful to limit his claims, calling for more fine-grained studies of the various communities he could only visit during eighteen months of research. He notes with particular regret the absence of a female indigenous voice in his study. Gould's research, however, provides an interesting and well-supported study of the simultaneous attacks on and denial of indigenous communities throughout the twentieth century that will be of interest to folklorists working in Central America.

Gould takes as his point of departure the uprising of the Matagalpa Indians in 1881, in which armed Indians attacked the town of Matagalpa in response to extremely repressive labor relations. This uprising was quickly followed by the massacre of rebels and a scorched-earth campaign by government troops, ostensibly marking the demise of the indigenous group. Gould then traces the negative economic and political effects on indigenous highlanders of what is normally considered a progressive liberal period in Nicaraguan history, the Zelaya Regime (1893-1909).

Subsequent chapters move in roughly chronological order and take up the struggles of indigenous communities in Matagalpa, Boaco, Leon, and Masaya. Gould uses the history of community suppression to challenge the notion that a narrative of cultural loss necessarily embraces an essentialist notion of ethnic identity. In the case of Boaco, ladino elites, intent on gaining access to indigenous lands and labor, adopted a rhetoric of citizenship and individual rights in order to disarm the indigenous discourse of community that protected communal lands and political structures. Further, elites constructed a notion of the wild Indian that denied the possibility of the autonomous indigenous subject and labeled as fakes those educated, "civilized" Indians who did not correspond to this stereotype.

Progressive movements also accepted the myth of mestizaje, which all but erases the indigenous male in the mythical wedding of indigenous females with the Spanish conquerors. Gould notes Sandino's lack of interest in or knowledge about indigenous communities during his anti-imperialist revolution of the 1920s, despite the fact that these communities were arguably the most active in organizing collective resistance to foreign oppression at that time. In a series of chapters that move from the rural highland regions to communities in the urban coastal area, he carefully documents the sporadic incidents of indigenous resistance and state repression that continued into the 1960s. Internal and external, material and symbolic circumstances encouraged successful forms of resistance and even the revival of indigenous values in some areas, while in others they led to community disorganization and dispersal.

In conclusion, Gould reminds the reader that indigenous communities were legally abolished or threatened with extinction...