Speaking of Difference: The Politics of Indigenous Education and Development in Southern Mexico

FAIN: FT-229868-15

Alan Shane Dillingham
Reed College (Portland, OR 97202-8138)

Summer research and writing on Latin American History and Studies.

This manuscript project is the first historical study of mid-twentieth century efforts aimed at incorporating native peoples into national political and economic structures in Latin America. It examines the relationship between indigenous peoples and modernization through a regional focus on southern Mexico and in particular the state of Oaxaca. The orthodox critique of indigenous modernization emphasizes the homogenizing nature of capitalist development. In contrast, I take as my starting point an understanding of modernization as a contested project, and explore the ways in which native peoples, in this case indigenous bilingual teachers, articulated and acted on their own visions of modernization. The project advances our understanding of a key question in humanistic inquiry, that of the persistence and re-creation of cultural difference, through a focus on how historical legacies of marginalization interacted with twentieth century processes of integration.

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