La Construcción conceptual del indio y del indígena en México

Una reflexión genealógica

Abstract

The consolidation of the project of an independent Mexico nation, at the end of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, was accompanied by a story that supposed that Mexican society and culture originated in a process of miscegenation. According to the story, this was configured in the racial, cultural and social mixture of two nuclear substrates: the indigenous and the Spanish. The account assumed that these two concepts had an essential or ontological substratum.

In this work, a historical-genealogical reading will be offered with the aim of revealing that both concepts were historically built in a contrast of colonial origin as political categories with the intention of consolidating the power and dominance of the Creole elites, first, and, later, of the liberal elites. Both categories are essential for the nationalist narrative to retain its logic and structure.