Rethinking Mexican Indigenismo

Dr. Stephen E. Lewis 
Faculty, History Department 
CSU, Chico 

In the southern state of Chiapas, Mexico’s leading social scientists undertook an innovative program of education, development, and integration for the indigenous people that put Mexico at the vanguard of hemispheric indigenismo. (“Indigenismo” is defined in the Encyclopedia Britannica as “a movement in Latin America advocating a dominant social and political role for indigenous people where they constitute a majority of the population.”) In this presentation, Dr. Stephen Lewis examines how the program stagnated in the 1960s and how it revived in the 1970s. He discusses what this rise and fall of indigenismo tells us about indigenous people and contemporary Mexico.

Recorded: February 9, 2017