Neither “Scientific” nor “Colonialist”

Abstract

Efforts to develop a shared, Pan-American indigenista plan, beginning with the creation of the Inter-American Indian Institute (Instituto Indigenista Interamericano—III) in 1940, had to overcome a series of problems, especially financial and political ones. Obtaining support from the Mexican government and, above all, from the United States allowed the III to launch some important projects, but it greatly limited the extent to which it could promote a truly Pan-American program. The historical record suggests that, in the end, the radical and ambitious indigenista plan was hard to realize. Moreover, this history was much more uncertain, mixed, and ambivalent than had been expected and challenged long-held assumptions about indigenismo and its role. Con la creación del Instituto Indigenista Interamericano (III), en 1940, se pretendía elaborar un programa indigenista panamericano, pero había que superar una serie de problemas, sobre todo financieros y políticos. Gracias al apoyo inicial del gobierno mexicano y de los Estados Unidos, el III puso en marcha algunos proyectos importantes, pero ese mismo apoyo limitó, en buena medida, la posibilidad de promover un programa indigenista que fuera realmente panamericano. La evidencia histórica sugiere, de hecho, que este programa indigenista, ambicioso y radical, era de difícil realización. Además, su historia se revela mucho más incierta, incoherente y ambivalente de lo esperado, desafiando muchas de las ideas consolidadas sobre el indigenismo y su papel.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 58 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.