Land of the Cosmic Race
Race Mixture, Racism, and Blackness in Mexico
By Christina A. Sue, assistant professor of sociology
Oxford University Press
“Land of the Cosmic Race” is a richly detailed ethnographic account of the powerful role that race and color play in organizing the lives and thoughts of ordinary Mexicans.
It presents a previously untold story of how individuals in contemporary urban Mexico construct their identities, attitudes and practices in the context of a dominant national belief system.
The book centers around Mexicans' engagement with three racialized pillars of Mexican national ideology — the promotion of race mixture, the assertion of an absence of racism in the country and the marginalization of blackness in Mexico.
The subjects of this book are mestizos — the mixed-race people of Mexico who are of Indigenous, African and European ancestry and the intended consumers of this national ideology.
“Land of the Cosmic Race” illustrates how Mexican mestizos navigate the sea of contradictions that arise when their everyday lived experiences conflict with the national stance and how they manage these paradoxes in a way that upholds, protects and reproduces the national ideology.
Drawing on a year of participant observation, more than 110 interviews and focus-groups from Veracruz, Mexico, Christina A. Sue offers rich insight into the relationship between race-based national ideology and the attitudes and behaviors of mixed-race Mexicans.
Most importantly, she theorizes as to why elite-based ideology not only survives but actually thrives within the popular understandings and discourse of those over whom it is designed to govern.
“This is an outstanding ethnography of race in Mexico. Christina Sue understands the beauty and depth of everyday Mexican identity and cultural life. She adds to that a profound grasp of the country's unique racial history and social structure. The result is a definitive study that reinterprets mestizaje, that recognizes the blackness that has been hidden for so long, and that reveals the poetic and emotional soul of Mexican society today. Very well-written and accessible, “Land of the Cosmic Race” is both a triumph of scholarship and an indispensable text for course use. Highly recommended!”
“In Mexico, the official ideology of mestizaje has provided a master narrative in which the mixture of Indians and Spaniards functioned as a powerful antidote to racism. In her innovative study of race and skin color, Christina Sue combines ethnography and discourse analysis to explore how people of different classes negotiate the contradictions between the mestizaje ideology and their everyday experiences. While avoiding the use of the term race, most of her informants express a 'non-racist common sense,' accepting the social value of light skin but minimizing its significance as a factor of negative discrimination. Sue dexterously argues that such common sense reflects the national ideal of unity and fairness, but also hinders the effective critique of crucial aspects of Mexico's social inequalities."
By Christina A. Sue, assistant professor of sociology
Oxford University Press
“Land of the Cosmic Race” is a richly detailed ethnographic account of the powerful role that race and color play in organizing the lives and thoughts of ordinary Mexicans.
It presents a previously untold story of how individuals in contemporary urban Mexico construct their identities, attitudes and practices in the context of a dominant national belief system.
The book centers around Mexicans' engagement with three racialized pillars of Mexican national ideology — the promotion of race mixture, the assertion of an absence of racism in the country and the marginalization of blackness in Mexico.
The subjects of this book are mestizos — the mixed-race people of Mexico who are of Indigenous, African and European ancestry and the intended consumers of this national ideology.
“Land of the Cosmic Race” illustrates how Mexican mestizos navigate the sea of contradictions that arise when their everyday lived experiences conflict with the national stance and how they manage these paradoxes in a way that upholds, protects and reproduces the national ideology.
Drawing on a year of participant observation, more than 110 interviews and focus-groups from Veracruz, Mexico, Christina A. Sue offers rich insight into the relationship between race-based national ideology and the attitudes and behaviors of mixed-race Mexicans.
Most importantly, she theorizes as to why elite-based ideology not only survives but actually thrives within the popular understandings and discourse of those over whom it is designed to govern.
“This is an outstanding ethnography of race in Mexico. Christina Sue understands the beauty and depth of everyday Mexican identity and cultural life. She adds to that a profound grasp of the country's unique racial history and social structure. The result is a definitive study that reinterprets mestizaje, that recognizes the blackness that has been hidden for so long, and that reveals the poetic and emotional soul of Mexican society today. Very well-written and accessible, “Land of the Cosmic Race” is both a triumph of scholarship and an indispensable text for course use. Highly recommended!”
—Howard Winant, University of California, Santa Barbara
“In Mexico, the official ideology of mestizaje has provided a master narrative in which the mixture of Indians and Spaniards functioned as a powerful antidote to racism. In her innovative study of race and skin color, Christina Sue combines ethnography and discourse analysis to explore how people of different classes negotiate the contradictions between the mestizaje ideology and their everyday experiences. While avoiding the use of the term race, most of her informants express a 'non-racist common sense,' accepting the social value of light skin but minimizing its significance as a factor of negative discrimination. Sue dexterously argues that such common sense reflects the national ideal of unity and fairness, but also hinders the effective critique of crucial aspects of Mexico's social inequalities."
—Guillermo de la Peña, Professor of Anthropology, CIESAS, Mexico