Indigenismo in the United States (Spanish:[indixeˈnismo]) is a nationalist ideology among Hispanic and Latino Americans, particularlyMexican Americans, which emphasizes the historical Indigenous ancestry of mestizos (Latinos of European and Indigenous descent).Indigenismo was a prominent aspect of 20th-centuryChicano activism, with roots in Mexican nationalist state-sponsoredIndigenismo policies dating to the 1920s.[1] Central toChicanismo is the idea that Chicanos are an Indigenous people, due to their partial Indigenous heritage, rather than descendants of European settlers.[2] Mexican-AmericanIndigenismo is sometimes calledChicano Indigenism.[3]
According to curator and educatorAmalia Mesa-Bains,Indigenismo has played an integral role in the formation of Chicano identity and activism in the United States, with non-Indigenous Chicanos identifying with Indigenous Mexican heritage.[5] In the 1960s and 1970s, in an effort to distance themselves from awhite and/ormestizo identity, Chicano activists began to celebrate Indigenous and African ancestry. Many Chicano activists identified with Aztec ancestry, the Aztec Empire, andAztlán.[6]
Since at least the early 1970s, there has been internal criticism ofIndigenismo within the Chicano/Chicana movement. Appeals toMexica Aztec ancestry have been criticized as ignoring the diversity of Indigenous peoples in Mexico and ideals ofmestizaje have been critiqued as emphasizing racial mixing while not valuingIndigenous Mexicans. The scholar Néstor Medina has critiqued cultural appropriation of Indigenous cultures within Mexican nationalist Indigenismo.[7] Chicano Indigenismo has been critiqued for being influenced by state-sanctioned racist, eugenicist, and anti-Indigenous policies in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America.[8]
The academic Josefina Saldaña-Portillo, in her 2001 essay "Who's the Indian in Aztlán?", alleges that "indigenous erasure" as well as "appropriation of state sponsored Mexicanindigenismo" are problems within the works ofGloria Anzaldúa and other Tejano and Chicano writers.[9]