A Modern Mexica Palimpsest

Abstract

México’s recent history (last five centuries) is marked by what Guillermo Bonfil Batalla (1996) called the “permanent confrontation between those attempting to direct the country toward the path of Western civilization and those, rooted in Mesoamerican ways of life, who resist.” (p. xv) The year 2010 marked the bicentennial of México’s independence, and millions of individuals and cultural critics paused to consider what direction the country could take in the face of tremendous social challenges. Can the conditions that arrange for warring drug cartels, widespread poverty, massive emigration, and other current challenges in México be traced to institutionalized colonialism? Bonfil Batalla argued that, though independence from Spain was achieved, decolonization remains incomplete. Instead, all visions of social progress have been organized under a Western framework (p. xvi). Moreover, indigenous models for society are not only ignored but also disparaged and abhorred as backwards, obstinate, or worse. The dominant culture in México has directed a devastating, continual de-Indianization project forcing native communities to change their ideologies, lose their lands, renounce their identity, and abandon their languages and ways of life (pp. 17 and 62).