Nationalist Myths and Ethnic Identities: Indigenous Intellectuals and the Mexican State (review)

In Nationalist Myths and Ethnic Identities, Natividad Gutiérrez explores the participation of indigenous peoples "in different facets of Mexican nationalism" (xi). She does so by combining a theoretical debate about the nature of the nation with an investigation into the national identity of modern Mexico that encompasses three levels. First, she reviews the project of the official cultural nationalism encoded in compulsory education. This is followed by a revision of civic and ethnic mythologies derived from cultural history of the nation. Finally, she analyzes views and perceptions of educated Indians regarding these nationalist discourses and offers a wealth of empirical data for assessing the theoretical study of Mexican national identity. Here, her main goal is to show the "mutual complementarity" of conflicting positions in the well-known debate between "modernist" (e.g., Ernest Gellner, Benedict Anderson, Eric J. Hobsbawm) and "historical-culturalist" perspectives (especially Anthony D. Smith).

Although Mexico is a nation built on Indianness, inspired and authenticated by pre-Hispanic splendor, living Indian people—descendants of those splendid creators—figure largely as human obstacles to the nationalist agenda of modernity. The creation of an ideal uniform nation has been entrusted, like elsewhere, to public education, and since 1960 a series of uniform textbooks has been developed to reach the most remote classrooms in Mexico in order to disseminate a nationalism based on the Aztec past, the veneration of heroes like Benito Juárez, and a series of national symbols and emblems.

Gutiérrez reviews first the content of the state propaganda and then devotes most of the book to the responses official nationalism created among educated indigenous intellectuals. She also includes a discussion of whether the Chiapas conflict (the 1994 uprising by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation or ezln) made access of indigenous claims to public opinion easier and whether Indian voices are taken seriously in political decision making and subsequent policies and their implementation. Her conclusions in this regard are pessimistic, and this is in line with recent developments in Mexico where, even under the new pan (National Action Party) government, a damper has been put on hope raised by the Acuerdos de San Andrés back in 1996.

The book is well organized and clearly written. Among the reference matter, the fine index serving well its purpose of allowing easy access to information deserves special mention. Unfortunately, this same care does not apply to the data presented in the book. My criticism is not with the data itself or the way Gutiérrez gathers her data—basically through interviews and the application of questionnaires—but with her handling. Better general information on her samples and an adequate organization and description—very often a simple summarizing table—would have made it easier to keep track of threats of arguments and of the relation between particular quotes and the rest of the sample. At times, I felt like Gutiérrez's orchestration and selection of statements could not be checked against the entire corpus of data.

Gutiérrez does a good job in illustrating what can be seen as a double paradox. On the one hand, she finds that despite a highly vocal contestation of the official nationalism by educated Indian intellectuals, centralized public education remains the most powerful instrument of the Mexican state's integrative strategy. This supports Gellner's view of the paramount importance of the educational system in promoting nationalism. Her work gives a good illustration of how in Mexico Indianness was used to promote a unique national culture while, at the same time, ethnic differentiation became muted and Indian culture was forced to assimilate. On the other hand, these same developments created the ground for Indian intellectuals to emerge on the national scene. Upward social mobility, access to higher education, and information technology make...