CHAPTER 8 NATIVE MESOAMERICANS IN THE MODERN ERA 335unchanged through time). Indian identity in Monimbó and elsewhere in the Masaya
area, Field says, is best seen as resulting from a dialectical reaction to the national
myth that all Nicaraguans are mestizos. The Indian cultural identity has practical im-
plications for the Monimboseños’ present-day situation: It provides ethnic grounds for
regaining long-lost Indian communal lands and for opposing government programs
that in general have not been beneficial to them.
Hegemonic Nationalism
For the second type of Mesoamerican ethnic and nationalist construction, we turn
to the question of how far the hegemonic nation-state (national) identities and cul-
tures of the region have been influenced by native Mesoamericans. We are not pri-
marily concerned here with the many surface features of native origin that historically
have diffused broadly into the mestizo and national cultures of the region: for ex-
ample, Mesoamerican foods, idiomatic expressions, names of geographic locations,
traditional arts and crafts, iconographic themes incorporated into modern archi-
tecture, painting, and advertisement. Rather, we want to determine whether com-
plex Mesoamerican cultural themes (including the “cultural logics” described in Box
8.5) have been embedded into the very core of national thinking in Mexico and
Central America. As we will see, native Mesoamerican influence has been far greater
on Mexican nationalism than on nationalism in the Central American states.
Mesoamerican Influence on Mexican Nationalism. Within the Mesoamerican
region, only in Mexico has the question of native Mesoamerica’s influence on
nationalism been seriously addressed, and even in Mexico the proposed answers to
this question are highly controversial and vociferously disputed. Nevertheless, the
anthropologist Gonzalo Aguirre’s general assertion that “the cultural symbols that
today serve to identify the Mexicans are in part Indian” would seem to be
indisputable. Aguirre (García Moray Medina 1983:207–208) elaborates as follows:
The absorption of the Indian personality and values by the national culture is an inex-
orable process that enriches that culture.... Unlike the U.S. and Argentina... Mexico
elected the personality and values of the Indians to be symbols of national identity....
This election was transcendental because the Indian is integrated into a national world
that does not discriminate against or deny him, because that would be like denying and
discriminating against one’s self.Octavio Paz provided a most influential (and highly controversial) interpretation
of the Indian roots of Mexican national culture in his widely acclaimed book,The
Labyrinth of Solitude(1961), as well as in other writings. Paz claimed that following the
revolution, the Mexicans created a new national culture and identity, or, as he refers
to them, “hidden collective conscience.” The revolution finally gave the mestizos a
central place in society and a set of ideas that represented a synthesis of the traditional
Indian and creole cultures. To a large extent, this synthesis was based on a dialecti-
cal process, the negation of both things creole and things Indian. Thus, the emerg-
ing national culture could be traced to the mestizo’s lack of a defined national
identity, whether creole or Indian, and therefore to a feeling of orphanhood or