“Authentic Indians” or trouble-making subalterns? The indigenous delegates at the First Inter-American Indian Conference (Pátzcuaro, 1940), from racial identification to political subversion and continental projection

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the place and role of the indigenous delegates at the First Inter-American Indian Conference (Pátzcuaro, April 1940). To what extent were these representatives of the “native peoples” —from Mexico, the United States, Chile, Panama and Peru— able to influence the course of nascent indigenismo? To this end, the article draws on sources that have rarely been consulted to date, in particular the typewritten report of the First Inter-American Indian Conference and the stenographic record of its plenary debates (in addition to other sources including the metropolitan press and the archive of President Lázaro Cárdenas). From the perspective of a political history of otherness, focusing on the interaction between white and mestizo “indigenists” and Indian intermediaries, this contribution shows that the emergence of “inter-American indigenous indigenism” had as much to do with a desire for the symbolic inclusion of native peoples as with the power dynamics between the Congress organizers and the indigenous representatives.