Native son deferred: Indigenismo, Latine self-ID, and what to do with Raza and Mestizaje during Indigenous People's Day?

Indigenous People's Day is an attempt at demystifying colonial mythologies and centering Native people erased by settler narratives but it's become a day overrun by colonial self-mythologizing instead

From Carl Campbell on Flickr, "Danza Azteca (September 14th 2006)”

First off, to set the space on this day and with these words, I want name, invoke and honor the Arawak ancestors of the Island of Ayiti, the Taino and the Carib, and our African ancestors, from West and Central Africa, many from the DRC, for their struggle against colonial rule and violence that we see live on in the power and beauty of the Haitian people and the Dominicans that stand in solidarity with them against the tyranny and violence of Western powers like the United States and the colonial white and mixed race Dominican government. Columbus landed on Ayiti first and brought the first Africans as slaves in bondage to the island as well, so it is there and particularly with Haitians we must always begin the story of Columbus Day, Indigenous People’s Day and anticolonial resistance. As a mixed race Black Dominican, I reject Antihaitianism, anti-Blackness, mestizaje and colorism foundational to Latinidad and the identity of the Dominican Republic. I stand in love and solidarity with all free and resisting Black people of the Island since the early 1500s through today. I am who I am because you are who you are, and to you I am eternally grateful.

Now to get into it: I feel as each year passes, I spend more time talking about the anti-Black and anti-native Latine myth-making surrounding Christopher Columbus and his goofy-ass day and the attempts at decolonizing and recuperation that is Indigenous People’s Day. Since the increased genocidal aggression of the Israeli occupation towards the Palestinian people of Gaza, it all seems to have only gotten worse, with non-Native non-Black Latines throwing themselves front and center into every single space and action they possibly can under the guise of “Indigenous Solidarity".

Like Israelis, the Latine is not born, he is built, like a story of lore, on half-truths and full on lies and the slaughter of the people of the land he occupies. Many Latines, white and non-Black ones in particular, have spent the better part of the last year finding parallels between their histories to the Palestinian struggle, but none want to be honest about how our colonial myth-making mirrors that of Israel’s.

Think of the Jewish Übermensch—The antisemitic project and ideology within Zionism in which you destroy the old weak small nebbish Jew for the sake of the new one who, despite Jewishness not being a race or ethnicity with any identifiable phenotypes or traits, ironically enough looks Aryan-strong, blond and gentile with small and fine features. Most importantly this New Jew mirrors the white European Christian in his hunger for colonial might and dominance, and looks down on a lot of aspects of diaspora Jewish identity including languages as lesser than a Hebrew-speaking Israeli identity. It is an old and foundational ideology and propaganda within Zionism. This project involves piecemeal making a Frankenstein’s monster of an imagined superior Jewish person, the reanimated most appealing bits and pieces of the old this and discarding of the rest, to create a monster of a fake Native son to supplant the real living ones, Palestinians.

While I want to be careful not to make too generalizing of one to one comparisons, it yet reminds me so much of La Raza Cosmica and mestizaje in Latinidad—the idea that the old inferior Black and Indigenous races are made better when they are mixed, assimilated and disappeared, with bits and pieces of their culture that can be appropriated, assimilated or remixed for colonial needs being kept, processed, sanitized and slapped onto the facade. This race making is the underbelly of Latinidad as well as ancillary fake Indigenous identities and mythologies invoking such peoples and ideologies such as the Mexica, Aztec, Chichimecha and Aztlan,

So used to the erasure of the millions of millions of Native and Black people living across Latin America are we that we accept this beast of a myth, and so do many non-Hispanics of all backgrounds and tribal affiliations. So desperate to reject the violence of Latinidad that we have experienced, white, mixed and mestize Latines run to mythologizing ourselves and participating in more colonial violence and displacement as opposed to accepting the reality of colonialism and engaging in solidarity.

Black and Indigenous people of the United States and Canada, unaware of the violent history and deception of mestizaje, move with trust when it comes to accepting these racial mythologies of Latines not knowing what lies underneath. The white settler, ever ignorant and incurious, wants an easy performative out and a quenching of guilt. The mestizo wants affirmation in a nationalist identity regardless of the lack of basis for their identity claim, so that makes for a strong tie to cover the deceit as well. All work in collusion to further obscure, not tell truthful stories, of Indigenous survivance and existence across Latin America.

As obviously nasty as this stuff is, at the same time I also don’t want to become some fake-Native head hunter, as this always ends up hurting actual Native people and those with genuine ties on a journey to reconnect, especially Afro-descendants. It is true that there’s for the most part no ambiguity in who is non-Native in Latin America vs who is Indigenous, but people’s histories and family stories can at times be complex. At the end of the day, the Mestizaje system is one forced on us all and Mestizo identity can at times be fickle and loosely defined—mixed Black people can be Mestizos and Afro-Indigenous ones are often erased and misplaced as such as well. People who have close and living ties to a pueblo or a nation can still identify or be identified as non-Native or Mestizo even if they are one generation removed from a language speaker. People can reconnect with a pueblo or peoples of their family. Then there’s the fact that some Native people from original nations and pueblos push for a broader recognition and inclusion of mestizos as Native in their respective communities and nations. I have to name and acknowledge these as realities and complications, but as well that they are ones that are admittedly misunderstood, overstated and manipulated by the “Disconnected, colonized, detribalized, descendant” crowd to their own ends.

I am less interested in hemming and hawing over the identities of individuals, though there’s conversations of merit on how to identify misinformation, deception and lies in that regard, as I am getting into how the mestizo Pretendian relies on nationalistic, anti-Native, anti-Black myth making to create itself. How it relies on fetishization and erasure of Native people and real Native identity to supplant itself as the face of Indigeneity despite not knowing or caring about the actual lived reality of Native peoples globally.

Danza, while taking from various dances and practices of pre-Columbian Mexico, was created and peddled during moments of mestizo nationalism both in Mexico and in the United States through the 50s-70s, and doesn’t worry itself with what has happened with Native peoples and their practices and dances in the centuries since the 1500s. Atzlan is just colonizer angst that imagines the traditional land and territories of dozens of diverse, varied, at times related but often largely disparate, Native peoples as Aztec circa 1419. Dominicans will sooner refer to themselves as “Mixed with Taino” than give credit for the bulk of our food, culture and genetics to Africans. Puerto Rican Taino identitarianism is a hotbed of racism, colorism, whiteness, misinformation and appropriated Amazonian headdresses that erases that for all the talk of “Somos las tres” and the reality of the violence of US occupation, race has still played a huge role in Puerto Rico and affects Black Puerto Ricans the most.

“OK, so there’s some missteps and ignorance to unpack, but what does it matter that someone who is a descendent with no proper claim to an established pueblo, language or people in so-called Latin America calls themselves Native?" many ask. Isn’t that a net good? What does it hurt for people who while disconnected are still so deeply affected by colonialism to find identity or self in Indigeneity?

Well, when those white and mestizo Latine communities are the ones who used to engage and benefit from the enslavement of Native people including through the Encomienda system, or when white and Mestizo Latines are the ones overrepresented in governments that displace and kill Native people and uphold the settler colony that destroys and exploits the land and kills Black and Native land and environmental activists, or when they are the ones who get on TV in redface and Blackface and mock “Ind**s y negros” as ugly and stupid maids and slaves, it matters. When Native people in Latin America experience barriers to medical access due to discrimination and cultural and language barriers thanks to Hispano cultural and linguistic dominance, it matters. When Native people from Latin America in the US have worse access and outcomes in all metrics than non-Native Latines including and especially on matters of immigration, it matters. When Latine Americans take over Native American spaces and culture with mestizaje pretendianism, it matters. The violence of colonialism, displacement and cultural disconnect is felt by mixed and mestizo people in Latin America, but they also have participated in and benefit from it immensely, while erasing how it is experienced by living and existing Native peoples of so-called Latin America (because if you are claiming you are them, you have to take them out of the picture one way or another). I can only see and understand Native identity claims from non-Native Latines through this context. If—and that is a BIG if—there is going to be a sincere push for them to identifying as their own sort of Native, to me, this can only happen through great effort and at no benefit to themselves to start, and only after great, long, intentional structural changes, repair and amends have been made towards Black and Indigenous communities across Latin America.

But as it stands, there’s no care for solidarity, amends or repair in Latin Pretendianism. There’s just growing out your hair, putting some random feathers in it, hopping online and announcing on Tik Tok that you’re Boriqua Taino, Mexica, Aztec, or whatever the hell else, and taking everyone to the cleaners’ while shouting down anyone who may criticize you. This honors and respects no one but their own ego and pockets. It claims to want to find oneself in insufficient identity markers and cultural spaces but it upholds and reimagines race science, hegemony and racial violence instead of opposing it.

At the end of the day, what’s the point of these Pretendios if they take up space from Indigenous peoples of the United States on days like Indigenous Peoples day, taking attention and funds as well as appropriating their medicines and experiences for themselves? What’s the point in the Reconnecting Detribalized Ancestral Indigenous Two Spirit grifter if the struggles of Native and foundational communities like Indigenous, Afro-Indigenous and autonomous and maroon Black communities get erased for not looking the part of the Mestizo and white cosplayer dripped in Hispano Pan-Native Mexica Taino Aztec redface? What’s the point if we will let a tan Hispanic in a ridiculous mid-century nationalist cosplay take up the most space while never even once listening to or invoking Palestine, Haiti, The DRC, Sudan, or only doing so to center themselves and their mestizaje narrative of being?

I don’t want to have any more conversations of how non-Native, mestize, white, and mixed Latines should identify themselves with the sole point being what feathers they can put in their hair and what census box they can check. I want to see work around destabilizing the colonial violence of Latinidad and how it continues to marginalized and hurt Black and Indigenous people.