Rise and Fall of the Cosmic Race : The Cult of Mestizaje in Latin America

x rise and fall of the cosmic race result, I was surprised by how appropriations of mestizaje could differ so dramatically within Latin America. A profound paradox became increasingly evident: whereas numerous intellectual and political leaders, including Simón Bolívar, José Martí, José Vasconcelos, and others, had enlisted mestizaje as a way of ascertaining Spanish American difference when confronted by cultural and political pressure from Spain or the United States, intellectuals in Latin America and especially in North America responded by reifying mestizaje as the mark of Latin American sameness, as the most recognizable and pervasive condition of all peoples and cultural productions found south of the Rio Grande, as the mark of la raza. This leveling gesture seems to have survived the recent deepening of interest in Latin America in a wide range of disciplines, including literary and cultural studies, that, in the wake of poststructuralist and postmodern thought, might have dismissed similarly essentializing identity formulations. The United States now arguably boasts the best resourcesbibliographic, economic, and human-for scholars and students of Latin America. But despite privileged access to the subject, including the presence and collaboration of an unprecedented number of Latin American scholars in the North American academy, generalized and generalizing notions of mestizaje are still commonplace, so commonplace, in fact, that a pan-Latin American conception of mestizaje is now routinely enlisted in neoliberal and globalizing political and economic discourse throughout the Americas. This book attempts to illuminate just how uncommon configurations and experiences of mestizaje are across Latin America and the Caribbean, and how those experiences are so historically complex and intricate that they can never be fully explicated, understood, or consumed. ## acknowledgments The presence and convivencia of many academic friends and intellectual kin sustained this project in different moments of gestation in the United States, Ecuador, Mexico, Brazil, and the Caribbean. Among them, Leslie Bary, Latin America is characterized by a uniquely rich history of cultural and racial mixtures known collectively as mestizaje . These mixtures reflect the influences of indigenous peoples from Latin America, Europeans, and Africans, and spawn a fascinating and often volatile blend of cultural practices and products. Yet no scholarly study to date has provided an articulate context for fully appreciating and exploring the profound effects of distinct local invocations of syncretism and hybridity. Rise and Fall of the Cosmic Race fills this void by charting the history of Latin America's experience of mestizaje through the prisms of literature, the visual and performing arts, social commentary, and music. In accessible, jargon-free prose, Marilyn Grace Miller brings to life the varied perspectives of a vast region in a tour that stretches from Mexico and the Caribbean to Brazil, Ecuador and Argentina. She explores the repercussions of mestizo identity in the United States and reveals the key moments in the story of Latin America's cult of synthesis. Rise and Fall of the Cosmic Race examines the inextricable links between aesthetics and politics, and unravels the threads of colonialism woven throughout national narratives in which mestizos serve as primary protagonists. Illuminating the ways in which regional engagements with mestizaje represent contentious sites of nation building and racial politics, Miller uncovers a rich and multivalent self-portrait of Latin America's diverse populations.