Rodriguez: Re-indigenization is Underway

Fleshing the Spirit: Spirituality and Activism in Chicana, Latina and Indigenous Women’s Lives is a book that I regularly teach. As I was going through my students’ papers this past week, I came to the realization that something radical is happening within these communities alluded to in this book. It is a process referred to as re-indigenization.

This is a huge development, not simply in the history of this country, but on this continent. I venture to say that this process has been going on for at least a generation, though with the rise of this administration, this process appears to be accelerating now even faster. In addition, it is greatly accelerating precisely because of the hostility of the current administration, which actually rises to the level of a full-scale immigration war against these communities.

This war — whose primary feature is to rip millions of families apart — can aptly be referred to as modern-day Indian removal. In addition, it can only be waged if these communities are viewed and treated by government and society as foreigners and less than human. This is precisely why these actions are also contributing to the process of re-indigenization.

To understand the significance of re-indigenization to these peoples and communities, one needs to understand its anti-thesis: the 500-year process of de-indigenization.

De-indigenization is what in history is known as La Otra Conquista or The Other Conquest, and which was somewhat memorialized by a 1998 movie by the same name. This second conquest actually had a name, reducciones, and it was a 300-year process designed to kill the Indian ​and create a Christian in its place. After independence in the 1800s, this process never actually ended, and yes, it is virtually the same process that took place in the 1800s through 1900s in this country, what is referred to as the boarding school system: “kill the Indian; save the man.”

Guillermo Bonfil Batalla argued in Mexico Profundo: Reclaiming a Civilization (1996) that the reducciones actually failed because, despite the outward appearance, Mexico’s roots remain undeniably indigenous. In fact, Enrique Florescano, in National Narratives in Mexico (2006), takes the argument further and argues that the many thousands of years-old maiz-based cultures of Mesoamerica are alive and well today, including anywhere Mexican and Central Americans live today, i.e., the United States.

In this country, one can argue that the process of re-indigenization began during the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and ’70s, though some might argue that this actually marked an era more of romanticization of ancient Aztec/Maya cultures, rather than actual re-indigenization. Romanticization permits the glorification of the ancient, while permitting a people or culture to ignore, demean and marginalize living indigenous peoples.