Seeing Indians
Subtitle: a study of race, nation, and power in El Salvador
By: Virginia Q. Tilley.
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Published: 2005
Place of publication: Albuquerque
Language: eng
Number of pages: 297
Subjects: Indians of Central America -- El Salvador -- History; Indians of Central America -- El Salvador -- Ethnic identity; Indians of Central America -- Cultural assimilation -- El Salvador; Ethnic conflict -- El Salvador; El Salvador -- Race relations; El Salvador -- Ethnic relations
Description: "Since the 1930s, government claims and popular thought within El Salvador have held that the country no longer holds any Indian population. Seeing Indians explores why this claim has endured despite the existence of substantial indigenous communities within the country's territory. Drawing on history, anthropology, and archaeology, Virginia Tilley delves into the history of Salvadoran racial thought and nation-building to illuminate the political motives for eradicating Indians from the country's national consciousness." "Part I draws from the author's own ethnographic research in El Salvador and Guatemala to show how "Indian-ness" has persisted, in contested forms, within El Salvador. Part II traces how the Salvadoran definition of being Indian has been altered to fit within the country's desired image as a racially unified society - and to erase Indians from public records after 1932. The author explains in Part III the motives driving the myth of Indian disappearance and ends with a look at the debate that raged in the 1990s regarding El Salvador's indigenous peoples' attempts to express themselves politically."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: A conqueror's vision; title: "There are no Indians in El Salvador" : indigeneity, the state, and power; title: El Salvador's ethnic landscape/s; title: "What is an Indian?"; title: In the shadow of the Maya; title: Remembering Cuscatlán; title: From colonial rule to independence; title: The Matanza : genocide, ethnocide; title: auto-ethnocide?; title: Assimilated or erased ? : ethnocide by statistics; title: Being mestizo: the twisted logics of Mestizaje; title: Celebrating Indians.