Journeys to Self and Lessons of Other: Carlos Castaneda and the Depoliticization of Indigenous Identity During a Contested Cold War

Paper Abstract:

During the 1970s, Carlos Castaneda’s series on shamanism introduced a large U.S. readership to Mexico, at the end of the Mexican Miracle, a period of rapid economic decline. Yet, this was also a time when the country saw the growth of an alternative tourism industry that fit Castaneda's "lessons" on the nature of reality, which recommended that readers take journey inward as a turn away from US-style consumerism. The question of a "separate reality" predicated on an indigenous worldview was geared to a larger world, and spoke especially to a global middle-class youth culture based on disaffection with materialism. Due to their global reach and counter-culture success, Castaneda’s books also became popular with Mexican youth.  This paper argues that Castaneda's best-seller works, such as The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (1971), became instrumental in the construction of an imagined Mexico, which featured a new way of conceptualizing race and gender in the wake of the Cold War.   In short, at a time of increased guerrilla warfare inspired by the Cuban Revolution, Castaneda’s imagined Indians facilitated a de-politicization of indigenous identity.