Indigenismo is a Latin American nationalist political ideology that began in the late nineteenth century and persisted throughout the twentieth that attempted to construct the role of Indigenous populations in the nation-state. The ideology was particularly influential in Mexico where it shaped the majority of Indigenous-state relations since its incorporation into the Constitution in 1917. While the perspectives and methods of Indigenistas changed and adapted over time, the defining features of Mexican Indigenismo are the implementation by primarily non-Indigenous actors, the celebration of Indigenous culture as a part of the nation's history, and the attempt to integrate Indigenous populations under the authority of the nation-state. The ideology was enacted by a number of policies, institutions, governmental programs, and through artistic expression. These included education programs, land reform, political reform, and economic development as well as national displays of Indigenous heritage. Although generally viewed as beneficial for creating a platform to discussing Indigenous issues, Indigenismo has been criticized as still operating under colonial paradigms of racial hierarchy and often helped to solidify some stereotypes of Indigenous peoples even while trying to break down others.
Post-Revolution The Mexican Indigenista movement flourished after the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920. Prior to the Revolution, under the presidency of Liberal General Porfirio Diaz, from Oaxaca and himself having Indigenous antecedents, his policy makers, known as Cientificos ("scientists") were influenced by French Positivism and Social Darwinism and thinkers such as Herbert Spencer. They saw white European ethnicity as superior and sought to build the nation toward a European model. Porfirian state development policies implemented laws of the Liberal Reform passed in the 1850s, which included dispossessing rural lands, particularly Indigenous community lands under the Lerdo Law; collective Indigenous groups being integrated as individuals by coercion, and expanding rural education aimed at creating a reliable workforce. In the aftermath of the Revolution the new government incorporated indigenismo as an official ideology into the 1917 Constitution, which claimed to strive for the emancipation of previously exploited Indigenous peoples through integration into the Mexican state.
Mexican policies of indigenismo were influenced largely by Columbia University-trained Mexican anthropologist Manuel Gamio. In his 1915 book Forjando Patria (Forging a Nation) he advocated for the study of Indigenous groups in order to determine which cultural traits to preserve and which to improve in order to create a unified nationalist state Gamio stated that Indigenous people have the same intellectual capability and that their perceived cultural inferiority is a product of their history of oppression and current disadvantaged environment. With improved education and living conditions, he believed Indigenous groups would accept acculturation and "embrace contemporary culture" Gamio was instrumental in directing his young nephew, Miguel León-Portilla, who went on to be a leading authority on Nahua thought and history, to study Nahuatl with Ángel María Garibay. Garibay published translations of Aztec texts and created the field of Nahuatl literature.
While the first decade of revolutionary presidencies of Venustiano Carranza (1917–1920), Adolfo de la Huerta (1920), Álvaro Obregón (1920–1924), and Plutarco Elías Calles (1924–1928) saw the start of change in terms of improving education and land reform these administrations still saw Indigenous populations as an obstacle to progress and their policies were geared toward modernizing and improving Indigenous populations to fit into civilized national culture. All of the presidents in the immediate aftermath of the Revolution were from northern Mexico; Carranza, Nuevo León; De la Huerta, Obregón, and Calles, Sonora), a region very different from central and southern Mexico (Mesoamerica), where great civilizations had arisen before the arrival of the Europeans. The revolutionary general most associated with Mexico's Indigenous population in central Mexico was peasant leader Emiliano Zapata from Morelos, who was murdered by an agent of Carranza in 1919. Obregón and Calles both distributed land under the tenets of Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution of 1917, allowing the Mexican state to expropriate property. Calles distributed 3,045,802 hectares to over 300,000 people living in rural areas, many of them Indigenous. Much of this land was ill-suited for agriculture or even barren. It is debated whether Calles's land redistribution was done for concern for the well-being of rural citizens or used as a tool to gain political support from rural areas. When Lázaro Cárdenas of the southern Mexican state of Michoacán became president in 1934, land reform in Mexico again became a high priority.
Education reform Reform of rural education became a national priority when President Alvaro Obregon appointed José Vasconcelos to begin to combat rural illiteracy in 1920. Vasconcelos would eventually be appointed the director of the new Ministry of Public Education (SEP) in 1921. Vasconcelos was a nationalist who believed a culturally homogeneous mestizo state was necessary to create a strong, modernized Mexico. He is known for his phrase describing Mexico's population, the "cosmic race," a blending of Indigenous and Europeans. His indigenous education policies then were aimed at assimilation and de-Indianizing Indigenous groups so they became a part of mestizo national culture. Prior to 1920 national education policy had emphasized decentralized local control. By reversing this policy and giving Vasconcelos and SEP centralized control nationwide education, Obregón and Calles used education to extend federal control and aimed at acculturating indigenous populations into national citizens In addition to the SEP, Vasconcelos created the Department of Indigenous Culture in 1921 to facilitate the "incorporation [of indigenous peoples] into the dominant European culture" through the rural federal schools. Vasconcelos emphasized racially inclusive national schools to break down racial differences, as well as training rural teachers to educate rural children and parents within and outside of the school. His hope was that national mestizo cultural practices would spread through teachers to transform rural communities and create a patriotic national identity through "technological diffusion, agrarian reform, political mobilization, and nationalist propaganda". Vasconcelos' SEP taught reading and writing to over 37,000 illiterate peasants and the Department of Indigenous Culture created 1,926 rural schools and trained 2,388 teachers from its creation to 1924
Art and literature Both Gamio and Vasconcelos, along with other indigenistas, saw creating national artistic and cultural production as essential to creating a national identity and used the romantic image of Indigeneity in creating a national culture through state sponsored art production starting in 1920 until 1940. Manuel Gamio argued that Mexican artists' inspiration should be derived from ancient Indigenous aesthetics, from the Aztec in particular.
During the Revolution, Indigenous images were used as official nationalist symbols and after the revolution the government continued to use Indigenous symbols to establish the roots of Mexican culture and identity within the physical nation state Vasconcelos was appointed to be head of the cultural development program under Obregón, and began to commission artists to create national artwork supported by the revolutionary government, specifically focused on large public works that were visible and accessible to the people in order to solidify the national identity. Artists who contributed to this movement include Diego Rivera, Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Much of this expansive artistic production was done in the form of murals on public buildings. Rivera alone created at least 124 murals over 8 years, including murals on Nacional Palace of Mexico, the Cortes Palace in Cuernavaca and the National School of Agriculture. These images very often depicted Indigenous figures and symbols as a celebration of pre-colonial Mexico. In the view of Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, a Mexican anthropologist, while Indigenous people were often depicted as a symbol of national pride and cultural heritage, they were depicted as relics of the past with little recognition of existing Indigenous groups. The aspects of Indigeneity that were depicted were selectively chosen as those most appealing such as the calm, campesino life and traditional crafts, dance, and popular folklore. Rivera's first mural under Vasconcelos' commission, titled Creation, is described by Rivera as a racial history of Mexico and demonstrates the cultural hierarchy present in the Indigenismo ideology as the primitive-looking Indigenous figures look up to the enlightened European figures who have come to save them from their misery with education. Even while these artists helped create the mestizo identity, they often created images that displayed ideas and images of Indigenous peoples that conflicted with the goals of the nationalist government.
After 1940, muralism was deemphasized to create national identity. Different forms of art and culture production were still used to form and shape national identity such as music, crafts, architecture, and literature, and still incorporated aspects of a romanticized Indigenous heritage. Another way Indigenous heritage was celebrated and publicly displayed was through museums. The largest and best known project is the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City constructed in 1964 to house the extensive national collection of Indigenous cultural artifacts. The museum displays and celebrates Mexico's precolonial past and Indigenous roots. Critics of Indigenismo have commented on how the museum is structured around primarily Aztec exhibits and artifacts, while the exhibits dedicated to existing Indigenous groups in Mexico are positioned to the side and are often overlooked by visitors. They have also noted that the language used in the Museum places the greatness and achievements of Indigenous people in the past.
The creation of Aztec literature as an academic field was spearheaded by Ángel María Garibay K., a Mexican linguist and translator of Nahuatl and Spanish texts of the prehispanic and colonial eras, and gave scholarly standing to the native literature of Mexico. Garibay and his student Miguel León-Portilla published works by Aztec poets written down in the colonial era as alphabetic texts. As the Mexican government supported expressions indigenismo, the establishment of Nahuatl literature with scholarly standing has been seen an integral part of that nationalist state-sponsored project.Lee, Jongsoo. "Mestizaje and the creation of Mexican national literature: Ángel María Garibay Kintana's Nahuatl project." Bulletin of Spanish Studies 91, no. 6 (2014): 889-912.
Under Cárdenas (1934-40)