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

To Die in This Way is an exquisite ethnohistorical description and analysis not only of how local, regional, and national forces and dynamics shaped local identities and popular ideas, but also produced constituencies. These constituencies-Indians, ladinos, landlords, intellectuals, workers, politicos-have continued to produce and reproduce myths and rationales that, however unevenly, contribute to the very continuities of tensions and fractures lines that are rooted in the nineteenth century. Gould describes individual indigenous communities according to how varied local social and political forces shaped specific identities that diverge regionally from one another, which in sum calls into question conventional notions of Indianness. Gould's work provides a foundation for understanding the current patchwork of class, inter-ethnic, and ideological antagonisms in Nicaragua.

In To Die in This Way Gould argues that there are no longer Indians in western Nicaragua while simultaneously exploring just what indigenous identity consists of today. This is no small feat considering he must contend with the dominant myth of mestizaje which has forged a homogenizing nationalist discourse based on the extinction of Central and Pacific region indigenas. Gould does this without succumbing to a salvage project of finding real Indians grounded on essentialist notions of authenticity. Gould closely examines three indigenous communities (Comunidades Indiginas) and provides a finely textured history of each while eschewing a totalizing explanation that overrides the distinctive clusters and trajectories of power that shaped each community. His work provides a firm grounding for understanding how over time the destruction, crippling, and survival of Indian communities refracts discursive and ideological assaults, along with land acquisitions, forced labor practices, and co-optation of indigenous organizations. The latter combined to alter significantly the way not only non-Indians think of Indians, but how Indians think of themselves.

Gould begins by examining the last major Indian uprising in western Nicaragua, in the central highland municipality of Matagalpa. The eventual victory of civilization over barbarism is also credited as contributing to the birth of "the myth of Nicaragua mestiza" (p. 38). The myth of mestizaje, whether the curious biological melding of Indians with whites or the transformation of Indians to mestizo cum ladino through culture loss and shifted loyalties, requires a sharp distinction be made between Indians and others that distorts the actual relations that obtained between them. At the time of the uprising, Matagalpan Indians were religiously loyal to the Jesuits as well as imbued with a protonationalist sentiment that included other Indians that allowed for tactical alliances with Liberal and Conservative factions. Such details run counter to a discourse of mestizaje that depicts the Indian as barbarians, who impede progress, are lazy, wild, and unreliable. It is precisely the variety of relations the Comunidad Indigena forge and reforge to resist Liberal attacks on the Comunidad itself that lead it to struggle in a manner that was ultimately constraining. In countering real and symbolic attacks, the Comunidad entered into agreements and tactical alliances with non-Indian counter-hegemonic forces and in doing so, unwittingly, if not reluctantly accepted, or at least legitimized, a nationalist ideological logic that ultimately worked to undermine their very social and political integrity.

If in Matagalpa the Comunidad Indigena ultimately was splintered and increasingly ineffectual, it did survive. Whereas with the indigenous communities of Boaco and Camopa, Gould describes a more thorough "cultural loss" that culminates in the alteration of indigenous identity. In Boaco and Camopa, cultural loss relates to the local and state politics of denying indigenous identity to Indians. Such actions are the basis for expropriating their homes and land, while at the same time providing limited recognition of their status through a renegotiated communal organization that is incapable of holding their community together (p. 78). Gould skillfully dissects how the imposition of new modes of communal solidarity arbitrated by local non-indigenous forces dictate the terms of citizenship, legal claims, and indeed, cultural identity that dissipate resistance and result in social fragmentation...