Colonialism In Mexico

Democratic societies struggle with the demands of ethnic minorities. In the last decade of the twentieth century, these struggles were intensified by the rise of new cultural claims and claimants. Democratization led to discussions about citizenship and membership, which raised questions of national identity and belonging. The Soviet Union disintegrated as its component units exercised their rights to self-determination; the European Union attempted to develop new level of protection of minorities; and indigenous rights were eventually involved in international law. The demands of ethnic minorities punctuate the political landscape both in rural and urban areas, in developed and developing countries, in the East and in the West, re-adjusting
Basically, one can describe internal colonialism as a complex web of policies designed simultaneously to include and to exclude. According to Gonzalez, the formal equality admired by liberalism on Mexico’s native population has done nothing to reduce the de facto exclusion of indigenous people, namely, participation in the political, civil, and economic life of the nation. Gonzalez presents evidence of low rates of voter turnout in indigenous areas, along with high rates of infant mortality, poverty, malnutrition, and illiteracy, to support the allegation of internal colonialism, and focuses particular attention on Mexico’s history of indigenous exploitation as a legacy of colonial practice. Indigenous people have been subjected to lower wages for the same jobs, employment and trade-union discrimination, and unfair terms of trade. Two elements of Mexican history are crucial to Gonzalez’s characterization of this relationship as one of internal colonialism: the practice of institutionalized discrimination on the basis of cultural difference; and the exploitation of one group of people (and their lands and resources) for the benefit of
The goal of the National Indigenous Institute development policies was not merely the improvement of rural indices of wellbeing, but the incorporation of the indigenous population into the Mexican nation. Indigenismo tried to “fix” the indigenous problem by transforming the indigenous into mestizos. In the modern Mexican context, mestizo identity could be achieved by learning Spanish and abandoning indigenous traditional culture. Indigeneity was not fixed by race or bloodline and could be passed through education and the process of