Mexican Indigenismo and the International Fraternity of Science

Mexican racial science developed in close relation to foreign scholars and institutions including Corrado Gini of Italy, a proponent of Latin eugenics, Franz Boas, the Carnegie Institution in Washington, the international eugenics movement, and the Pan-American child welfare movement. Along with the mobilization of rural peoples during the Mexican Revolution, growing international interest in Mexico and the international eugenics movement galvanized Mexican indigenismo, the state-sponsored movement championing the nation’s indigenous heritage. This chapter focuses on Manuel Gamio, who founded Mexico’s Dirección de Antropología and worked in the powerful Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP). Gamio conveyed Mexican social science abroad and foreign social science to Mexico. He attempted to create a social science that was both “Mexican” and modern, but found it hard to delineate a modernity that could accommodate Mexico’s demographic heterogeneity. Gamio creatively reconciled Mexico’s demographic characteristics with liberal universalism and scientific rationality, yet still suffered the intellectual imperialism and condescension of his U.S. counterparts.