Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Mestizo acts Paul K. Eiss 2. Indian allies and white antagonists: toward an alternative mestizaje on Mexico’s Costa Chica Laura A. Lewis 3. Playing mestizo: festivity, language, and theatre in Yucatán, Mexico Paul K. Eiss 4. Foundational essays as ‘mestizo-criollo acts’: the Bolivian case Javier Sanjinés C. 5. Mestizaje as ethical disposition: indigenous rights in the neoliberal state Deborah Poole 6. Racing to the top: descent ideologies and why Ladinos never meant to be mestizos in colonial Guatemala John M. Watanabe 7. Mestizaje, multiculturalism, liberalism, and violence Peter Wade

About the Author

Paul K. Eiss is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and History at Carnegie Mellon. In publications like In the Name of El Pueblo: Place, Community and the Politics of History in Yucatán (2010), he explores: labor, value, commodities, indigeneity, mestizaje, media, violence and the politics of historical memory.





Joanne Rappaport is Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, at Georgetown University. She is the author of The Disappearing Mestizo: Configuring Difference in the Colonial New Kingdom of Granada (2014), Intercultural Utopias: Public Intellectuals, Cultural Experimentation, and Ethnic Dialogue in Colombia (2005) and coauthor (with Tom Cummins) of Beyond the Lettered City: Indigenous Literacies in the Andes (2011), Cumbe Reborn: An Andean Ethnography of History (1994) and The Politics of Memory: Native Historical Interpretation in the Northern Andes (1998).