The Return of the Native: Indians and Myth-Making in Spanish America, 1810-1930

Rebecca Earle’s The Return of the Native: Indians and Myth-Making in Spanish America, 1810-1930 endeavors to examine the use of the Indian in elite constructions of the nation in Spanish America’s long nineteenth century. Earle’s book investigates this pattern in Spanish American elite creole nationalism via national history, museums, archaeology, iconography, genealogical metaphors, literature, art, folklore, and conceptions of citizenship and the “Indian problem.” Earle builds on the argument of David Brading about the Aztec past as a central part of Mexican nationalism but with a larger Latin America focus for parallels in elite discourse on nation and identity. In addition, Earle is influenced by Benedict Anderson’s work on the nation and imagined communities as well as other scholarship on nationalism to make a few bold claims on Spanish America as an innovator in nationalism and not behind the wheel in comparison to Europe.

Beginning with the independence struggles, Earle’s text examines the use of the feather-crowned Indian princess, Inca sun symbols across South America, narratives of Spanish conquest and colonialism as three centuries of tyranny, and the preconquest era as a past of freedom for revolutionaries. Hence, romanticized notions of the Incas or the preconquest societies as idealized groups wronged by Spanish colonialism became part of the invented past for a creole nationalism. However, Earle is careful to note how this changed over time as liberals and conservatives in various moments and locations appropriated the pre-colonial societies while maintaining their own elite positions and access to power, regardless of the lofty rhetoric used in praise of the preconquest civilizations or the metaphorical use of the Indian as a step-father in the patria. This pattern of continuing to privilege Iberian cultural practices in Spanish America while simultaneously appropriating the Indian as national symbol remains a constant throughout the period, even if masked in the language of cosmic race or mestizaje as in the case of Vasconcelos or attempts to “Mexicanize” the Indian under the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas.

            Two major weaknesses of Earle’s book consist in the inconsistent and weak inclusion of the Spanish Caribbean and the negligence of Afro-descendants in the nations she examines. Surely, part of this reflects the different conditions in the Caribbean such as later dates of independence, but certain parallels continue in those regions where the indigenous population was no longer a factor. For instance, the appeal of the Taino in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico has been part of national myths, not to mention the Museo del Hombre in Santo Domingo’s extensive pre-conquest Hispaniolan artifacts. Although Earle briefly mentions the use of the Indian in pro-independence Cuban sentiments in the middle of the 19^th century, a fuller inclusion of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic would have added some nuance to her narrative as well as the role of race in regions with large populations of African descent like the Caribbean.

Furthermore, Earle’s book does not mention Afro-Latin Amerca at all, despite the presence of Afro-descendants in Argentina, Colombia, Peru, and Mexico, and studies of these population’s relationship with the state, immigration, racial theories, and modernity. Basic questions pertaining to differences in elite nationalisms regarding black populations or how creoles of African descent contemplated the nation and its relationship with indigenous communities are not considered here at all. The well-studied examples of the Liberals in Colombia and their relationship with Afro-Colombians would have provided an interesting example of how political parties in Spanish America approached the subject of popular liberalism or how they interacted with Conservatives or indigenous communities in defining the nation-state, for example. Were there parallels in elite imaginations of the patria’s vision of the Indian and black populations? Were there counterhegemonic forms of nationalist expression or resistance that united Indians and Afro-Latin Americans? Without including at least tangentially some of these questions, studying the role of the Indian in elite ideological formulations of the state obscures ideas of the nation.