Abstract

PIORSKY AIRES, Max Maranhão. Anthropology in Mexico and the invention of the indigenous intellectual. Antipod. Rev. Antropol. Arqueol. [online]. 2014, n.20, pp.73-93. ISSN 1900-5407.  https://doi.org/10.7440/antipoda20.2014.04.

The article analyzes the way in which a certain style of anthropology practiced in Mexico, especially in the 1970s and 80s, defined the indigenous intellectual on the basis of practices previously structured by indigenism, although not exclusively by them. A new juncture has altered the narratives of acculturation. This juncture has responded to national situations in a context marked by the struggles of decolonization and focused on topics relating to poverty, change and cultural revitalization. If indigenism can be understood as a type of orientalism, this text has sought to reflect on the way indigenous intellectuals were the subject of this process of creation, imagistics, and of anthropological utopías. The "critical anthropologists" politicized the place of the intellectual of their day as a subject capable of unveiling certain truths and hidden forms of domination that could be discovered by indigenous people with the help of anthropologists. The ideal was to train indigenous persons as anthropologists, so that they could discover these truths for themselves and then teach them to the members of their community.

Keywords : Anthropologists in Mexico; indigenous intellectuals; narrative; indigenous ethnology; indigenous education.

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