CHAPTER 8 NATIVE MESOAMERICANS IN THE MODERN ERA 337institutional cultural variations of a large nation such as Mexico. Many Mexicans, in
fact, not only do not identify with Paz’s characterization of their national culture but
also deeply resent it.
Although criticisms of Paz’s interpretation of Mexican nationalism may be valid,
it would be surprising if the Mexican national culture were not to contain impor-
tant Mesoamerican elements embedded within it, even if in dialectical forms. After
all, Mexico has a history that began with an aboriginal civilization of great complexity,
witnessed the survival of native peoples as a significant percentage of the population
for almost 500 years, and more recently experienced the active participation by mil-
lions of Mesoamerican Indians in the great modernizing events of the twentieth cen-
tury. Given this historical background, the Indians and their cultural traditions
necessarily were factored into the equation of modernizing Mexico. As a minimum,
Paz’s account of Mexico’s hidden culture suggests one complex symbolic process by
which Mesoamerican symbolism found its way into the emerging nationalism.
(Box 8.6 provides an account of middle-class peoples living in Mexico City who
identify as Indians but who differ from each other in terms of the degree to which
native Mesoamerican culture should provide the basis of Mexican nationalism.)
Mesoamerican Influence on Central American Nationalism. Studies of national
cultures and identities in the Central American countries are less well known than
in Mexico, in part because nationalism in the Central American countries remains
more incomplete. Furthermore, with the exception of Guatemala, the impact of
the Mesoamerican cultures on national cultural identities has been relatively weak.
For example, in Nicaragua the historian Jeffrey Gould (1998) documents the
ethnic persistence of Mesoamerican Indians in Nicaragua up to the modern era, fol-
lowed thereafter by their ethnic transformation as “mestizos.” The process was facil-
itated by the dominant class’s creation of a “myth” that identified all Nicaraguans as
ethnically mestizo. The myth was then used to justify governmental programs and
policies designed to eliminate “Indian” lands, community organizations, languages,
customs, and identities.
In broad terms, the same processes by which the Indians were denied important
influence on Nicaragua nationalism have been at work in El Salvador, Honduras,
and Costa Rica. Nevertheless, in all of these countries, along with Nicaragua, some
belated recognition of the contributions made by native peoples to their national
cultures and identities is taking place as part of the accommodation between ne-
oliberalism and the currently popular notion of “multiculturalism” (see the discus-
sion that follows on this form of ethnicity and nationalism).
Guatemala is the one Central American country where we find a stronger
Mesoamerican nationalist component, no doubt because of its historically large Mayan
population. Nevertheless, until recently the recognition of the Indians’ contribution
to Guatemalan national culture remained weak. In contrast to Mexico, the “ladinos”
and “Indians” have always been ethnically and racially segregated, with the Indians con-
sidered to be too inferior to provide inspiration for the national culture. Further-
more, as already noted, the important 1944 to 1954 reforms did not strongly promote
nativist symbols, certainly far less so than in Mexico for the equivalent period of time