Liberators or Dissidents? Barbados I, Anthropologists, and Indigenous Rights

Since the 1930s the Mexican government boasted a leadership role in Latin America. From public education to consumerism to indigenous policies, the image that the Mexican government strove to build on the American continents was one of vanguard. In relation to indigenous federal policies, Mexico cemented its leadership position by hosting the InterAmerican Indigenist Congress in 1940 which resulted in the foundation of the InterAmerican Indigenist Institute. However, by 1970 the actors in shaping the relationship between nation states and its indigenous citizens were not primarily government officials but intellectuals and indigenous peoples themselves. At the 1971 Barbados Conference, several scholars, journalists and religious leaders gathered to discuss human rights, indigenous rights and the roles of indigenous peoples, anthropologists, and religious leaders in this process. In the midst of growing state-sponsored and guerrilla violence in the Americas, indigenous peoples, anthropologist and religious leaders attempted to make demands not only for material goods but for citizenship rights, indigenous rights and human rights. Mexico was represented in Barbados by renowned anthropologist Guillermo Bonfil Batalla. My paper examines Bonfil Batalla’s role at the Barbados meeting, his efforts to shape indigenous rights at home and abroad, and the solidarity he built with indigenous grassroots organizations at home but also that with his American colleagues in the south; many of which faced multiple forms of violence in their home countries (i.e. Darcy Ribeiro in Brazil, Miguel Chase Sardi in Paraguay, Victor Bonilla in Colombia). Using intelligence records at the National Archives in Mexico City as well as Guillermo Bonfil Batalla’s private papers, I trace the ways he tried to continue Mexico’s leadership, sans the state, in the continent in regards to shaping indigenous rights and self-determination claims.