Logica mestiza en America (review)

Lógica mestiza en América. Edited by GUILLAUME BOCCARA and SYLVIA GALINDO. Temuco, Chile: Instituto de Estudios Indígenas, Universidad de La Frontera, 1999. Maps. Bibliographies. 199 pp. Paper.

Very often clichés appear in book reviews. One most commonly stated about edited volumes is that the essays published therein are uneven in quality. This cliché certainly applies to the volume reviewed here. The book contains essays five essays, first presented at a 1999 conference on mestizaje organized by the Instituto de Estudios Indígenas of the Universidad de La Frontera. Conference organizers and editors Guillaume Boccara and Sylvia Galindo added a sixth essay to the collection because it fit within the general theme.

The six essays span a wide spectrum of time and themes. Boccara explores what he calls "La antropología diacrónica: Dinamicas culturales, procesos historicos y poder político." The author argues that acculturation was not a linear process going from point A to point B, but a more complex phenomenon. Cultural mestizaje is not distinct from cultural change among indigenous peoples, who are not static. Carmen Bernand outlines the historical and legal roots of the status of people of mixed ancestry in Spain, and as introduced into the Americas. This essay, the best in the collection, provides a well-documented and useful analysis of the Spanish precursors of the Spanish American caste system. José Martínez's contribution titled "Ayllus e identidades interdigitadas" discusses migration by the Lipes and other indigenous peoples of the Atacama and Salar de Uyuni regions of Bolivia and Chile. Jacques Poloni-Simard's contribution "Redes y mestizaje" deals with social relations in colonial cities and mestizaje. While placed within the historiography of colonial Peru, Poloni-Sinard presents new evidence for Huamanga. Lidia Naccuzi takes the volume from the core to the periphery in an essay that documents contacts between Spaniards and native peoples in northern Patagonia in the late eighteenth-century. The point of reference for the study is the establishment in 1779 of the fuerte (frontier fort) Nuestra Senora del Carmen on the Rio Negro. The final essay written by Andrea Aravena is a sociological study of culture loss and survival among Mapuches living in Santiago in the 1990s.

Although linked by a broad theme, the six essays in this volume are idiosyncratic and extremely uneven. They attempt to establish a theoretical and analytical basis for understanding the complex process of biological and cultural mestizaje in different parts of South America. Several of the essays succeed well, particularly those of Boccara, Bernard, and Polomi-Sinard. These three essays do have interesting and useful things to say about the topic. The other essays, on the other hand, do not contribute much beyond information presented as a part of case studies. These essays also tend to be light on original documentation, and only present examples that the authors assume to be representative.

This volume had the potential to be more interesting, but fails to rise above being anything more than conference proceedings with a catchy title attached. The presentation and preface authored by Galindo and Boccara, respectively, fail to establish a common tone for the essays, although Boccara's contribution comes closer. Moreover, the volume does not have a conclusion to place the six studies within a context. The reader finishes the last essay, and is then left waiting for the punch line, or, if using the example of an opera by Antonio Salieri, the "boom." No effort is made to present a synthesis or a theoretical model of any kind suggested by the contributions published here. The book ends up being just another compendium of conference proceedings with some interesting essays and some not so proficient ones. One redeeming value is that North American scholars will be introduced to colleagues outside of the United States, and the topics of their research. Before reading the book, I only knew of Boccara, who recently published an interesting study of the...