La Raza Cosmética

Beauty, Identity, and Settler Colonialism in Postrevolutionary Mexico

Natasha Varner (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

200 Seiten

2020
University of Arizona Press (Verlag)
978-0-8165-3715-0 (ISBN)

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In the decades following the Mexican Revolution, nation builders, artists, and intellectuals manufactured ideologies that continue to give shape to popular understandings of indigeneity and mestizaje today. Postrevolutionary identity tropes emerged as part of broader efforts to reunify the nation and solve pressing social concerns, including what was posited in the racist rhetoric of the time as the 'Indian problem.' Through a complex alchemy of appropriation and erasure, indigeneity was idealized as a relic of the past while mestizaje was positioned as the race of the future. This period of identity formation coincided with a boom in technology that introduced a sudden proliferation of images on the streets and in homes: there were more photographs in newspapers, movie houses cropped up across the country, and printing houses mass-produced calendar art and postcards. La Raza Cosmética traces postrevolutionary identity ideals and debates as they were dispersed to the greater public through emerging visual culture.

Critically examining beauty pageants, cinema, tourism propaganda, photography, murals, and more, Natasha Varner shows how postrevolutionary understandings of mexicanidad were fundamentally structured by legacies of colonialism, as well as shifting ideas about race, place, and gender. This interdisciplinary study smartly weaves together cultural history, Indigenous and settler colonial studies, film and popular culture analysis, and environmental and urban history. It also traces a range of Indigenous interventions in order to disrupt top-down understandings of national identity construction and to 'people' this history with voices that have all too often been entirely ignored.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. La reina de la raza: The Making of the India Bonita
2. La Flor más Bella del Ejido: Springtime Maidens, Invented Tradition, and Making a “Modern” Mexico City
3. Cine folclórico: From Racial Fantasy to Cinematic Spectacle
4. Virgén Xochimilco: Pure Women and Waters in Mexico City’s Suburban South
5. Doña Luz Jiménez: “The Most Painted Woman in All of Mexico”
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	01.09.2020
Reihe/Serie	Critical Issues in Indigenous Studies
Zusatzinfo	20 black & white illustrations
Verlagsort	Tucson
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 226 mm
Gewicht	283 g
Themenwelt	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik ► Allgemeines / Lexika
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	0-8165-3715-1 / 0816537151
ISBN-13	978-0-8165-3715-0 / 9780816537150
Zustand	Neuware