Land of the Cosmic Race: Race Mixture, Racism, and Blackness in Mexico

by Christina A. Sue

Overview

Land of the Cosmic Race is a richly-detailed ethnographic account of the powerful role that race and color play in organizing the lives and thoughts of ordinary Mexicans. It presents a previously untold story of how individuals in contemporary urban Mexico construct their identities, attitudes, and practices in the context of a dominant national belief system. The book centers around Mexicans' engagement with three racialized pillars of Mexican national ideology - the promotion of race mixture, the assertion of an absence of racism in the country, and the marginalization of blackness in Mexico.

The subjects of this book are mestizos - the mixed-race people of Mexico who are of Indigenous, African, and European ancestry and the intended consumers of this national ideology. Land of the Cosmic Race illustrates how Mexican mestizos navigate the sea of contradictions that arise when their everyday lived experiences conflict with the national stance and how they manage these paradoxes in a way that upholds, protects, and reproduces the national ideology. Drawing on a year of participant observation, over 110 interviews, and focus-groups from Veracruz, Mexico, Christina A. Sue offers rich insight into the relationship between race-based national ideology and the attitudes and behaviors of mixed-race Mexicans. Most importantly, she theorizes as to why elite-based ideology not only survives but actually thrives within the popular understandings and discourse of those over whom it is designed to govern.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199925506
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	02/11/2013
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Christina A. Sue is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Mapping the Veracruz Race-Color Terminological Terrain
Chapter 3: Beneath the Surface of Mixed-Race Identities
Chapter 4: Mestizos' Attitudes on Race Mixture
Chapter 5: Inter-Color Couples and Mixed-Color Families in a Mixed-Race Society
Chapter 6: Situating Blackness in a Mestizo Nation
Chapter 7: Silencing and Explaining Away Racial Discrimination
Chapter 8: What's at Stake? Racial Common Sense and Securing a Mexican National Identity
Epilogue: The Turn of the Twenty-First Century: An Ideological Shift?
Appendix
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

"This is an outstanding ethnography of race in Mexico. Christina Sue understands the beauty and depth of everyday Mexican identity and cultural life. She adds to that a profound grasp of the country's unique racial history and social structure. The result is a definitive study that reinterprets mestizaje, that recognizes the blackness that has been hidden for so long, and that reveals the poetic and emotional soul of Mexican society today. Very well-written and accessible, Land of the Cosmic Race is both a triumph of scholarship and an indispensable text for course use. Highly recommended!"—Howard Winant, University of California, Santa Barbara

"In Mexico, the official ideology of mestizaje has provided a master narrative in which the mixture of Indians and Spaniards functioned as a powerful antidote to racism. In her innovative study of race and skin color, Christina Sue combines ethnography and discourse analysis to explore how people of different classes negotiate the contradictions between the mestizaje ideology and their everyday experiences. While avoiding the use of the term race, most of her informants express a 'non-racist common sense,' accepting the social value of light skin but minimizing its significance as a factor of negative discrimination. Sue dexterously argues that such common sense reflects the national ideal of unity and fairness, but also hinders the effective critique of crucial aspects of Mexico's social inequalities."-Guillermo de la Peña, Professor of Anthropology, CIESAS, Mexico

"The Land of the Cosmic Race exposes the popular underbelly of Mexico's racial ideology, which stresses racial mixture while denying racism and blackness. Based on the port city of Veracruz, where at least 200,000 Africans had disembarked as slaves, Christina Sue's ethnography vividly explores how ordinary Mexicans make sense of race, racism, color and nation. At the same time, this book reveals how personal experiences interact with powerful national ideologies. Anyone who believes that Mexico has little or no racism, should read this carefully-researched book."-Edward Telles, Princeton University

"Land of the Cosmic Race is a richly-detailed ethnographic account of the powerful role that race and colour play in organizing the lives and thoughts of ordinary Mexicans. It presents a previously untold story of how individuals in contemporary urban Mexico construct their identities, attitudes, and practices in the context of a dominant national belief system. Carefully presented and self-consciously written, this is an excellent book for anyone with an interest in how Mexican racial politics can be seen to operate on the ground..." -The London School of Economics and Political Science Review of Books

"In Land of the Cosmic Race, Christina Sue offers an ambitious, data-rich ethnography set in the "blackest" area of Mexico: the port city of Veracruz. Sue presents very rich qualitative data, drawn from respondents across the spectra of color and class. The content of the interviews, in particular, is quite revealing, and the impression is that the author has attained a broad and deep cross section of perspectives." -Contemporary Sociology

"As a qualitative researcher I am particularly struck by both the breadth and depth of this data, as well as the way in which Sue presents the narratives. Her ability to move beyond surface-level conversations regarding race and color and the detail in which she presents her participants speaks to the methodological excellence of this work." -American Journal of Sociology

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