Race, Culture, and Community in Mexican Indigenismo

It is commonly assumed that, following Franz Boas, Mexican anthropology jettisoned the concept of race, embracing instead the idea of cultural difference (and inequality). Focusing on the intellectual and institutional work of Manuel Gamio (1883-1960), the father of Mexico's post-revolutionary indigenismo (and a student of Boas' at Columbia), this paper examines the survival of racial thinking in indigenista writings and public policies, and its complex relationship with emergent understandings of cultural difference and social inequality.