Indian Given: Racial Geographies across Mexico and the United States

by María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo

In Indian Given María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo addresses current racialized violence and resistance in Mexico and the United States with a genealogy that reaches back to the sixteenth century. Saldaña-Portillo formulates the central place of indigenous peoples in the construction of national spaces and racialized notions of citizenship, showing, for instance, how Chicanos/as in the U.S./Mexico borderlands might affirm or reject their indigenous background based on their location.  In this and other ways, she demonstrates how the legacies of colonial Spain's and Britain's differing approaches to encountering indigenous peoples continue to shape perceptions of the natural, racial, and cultural landscapes of the United States and Mexico. Drawing on a mix of archival, historical, literary, and legal texts, Saldaña-Portillo shows how los indios /Indians provided the condition of possibility for the emergence of Mexico and the United States.

 

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Grad School, Cultural Studies

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 28, 2016

Reviews

[Ai Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was an incredible look at processes of racialization and state formation. Saldana-Portillo does an amazing job of bringing together a WHOLE BUNCH of theory and making it legible (to me, at least) though I will admit I had to take it pretty slowly. But her use of heterotemporality is really intriguing as a historical lens in the future, and her reading of the different racial geographies that make up the US, Mexico, and the borderlands is a great reminder of how unstable categories of racialization really are. I strongly recommend this to anyone thinking about historical categories of race and the borderlands.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dense and challenging, but also compelling and profound, Saldaña-Portillo argues that rather than being static, fixed entities, the way in which Mexico and the United States are “visualized and known as nations” is contingent on the ongoing relationship between the two, from colonization to the present, and in particular how the geographies of both have been constructed as a result of their relationships with the Indigenous peoples already residing in what became known as the Americas. As she explains it, “Succinctly put, the geographies of the United States and Mexico have been produced, materially and representationally, through historical, social and racial relation with indigenous subjects.” Drawing on the methodology of racial geography, she shows how British and Spanish colonizers (and later, U.S. and Mexican governments) organized and perceived space within their colonial projects, in particular with regards to Indigenous inhabitants, that both led to and was based on the creation of racialized categories, constructions, identities, and spaces and how that practice echoes through to our present moment.

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maria Josefina Saldana-Portillo provides readers with a brilliant look into the racial mapping of the US-Mexican borderlands through historical archives, legal readings, and contemporary media. The last chapter stunned me with the tracing of racialized figures through heterotemporal geographies.

[Mills College Library]

305.80097 S162 2016