coldhearted scientist وداد

“If mestizaje in the colonial period was a strategy supporting hispanization and European hegemony, the nineteenth century nation-states harnessed it to marginalize blackness and indigeneity yet more thoroughly than the colony had done (Mariátegui 1928, Lund). The mestizo as idealized citizen-subject supported, and did not contest elite hegemony; Mestizo presence did not disturb racial hierarchies, and concrete alliances were with the lighter, not the darker classes. These were also the eugenicist years, when the new republics sought to “whiten” by encouraging European immigration. At the same time the Amerindian as symbol and mestizaje as trope affirmed Latin American originality, authenticity, and difference from the United States and Europe (Martínez-Echazábal 1998).”

Axé.