This study is concerned with the Self/Other dichotomy, originally formulated by scholars of South Asian history in the context of European imperialistic treatments of the peoples whom they colonized for centuries, as applied to Mexican history. I have chosen some visual, cinematic, and literary representations of indigenous and other dispossessed peoples from both colonial and post-colonial Mexico in order to gain some insights into the vision of the powerless, (the 'Other'), held by the powerful (the colonizers, whether internal or external), especially, but not exclusively, in the context of race. Some public and private works of Mexican art from the 18th , 19th. and the 20th centuries are used to understand the perceptions of the Other in Colonial Mexico City, at the time of Independence, in state-sponsored pre and post-Revolutionary spectacles representing indigenous peoples, cinematic representations of the marginalized and the dispossessed from the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, and in the representation of the marginalized in the literary and photographic works of Juan Rulfo. I conclude that an ambivalent mixture co-existed in Mexican culture through the centuries, on the one hand, honoring the blending that is expressed in the word 'mestizaje', and on the other, adhering to a thoroughly Eurocentric world view. This ambivalence persisted from the 18th century through Independence and the Revolution and its aftermath, albeit in transformed ' / M. A. / Mexico presents an interesting contrast to the United States with respect to the history of race since colonization. The 16th century Spanish conquerors, and the colonizers who followed them, acknowledged the offspring of their unions with indigenous women, setting a tradition that resulted, by the 20th century, in mixed race peoples becoming the major component of the Mexican population. Despite this, there remained a sense in the culture that Europe and those of European descent were still the ideal towards which Mexico aspired, while from time to time, there were paradoxical displays, honoring the ethnic diversity that was New Spanish/Mexican reality. In light of this ambivalence, I have examined some literary and artistic examples of the perception of the colonizers, internal or external, of those whom they marginalized.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/99233 |
| Date | 09 January 2019 |
| Creators | Grene, Ruth |
| Contributors | Foreign Languages, Venkatesh, Vinodh, Cana Jimenez, Maria D., Bixler, Jacqueline E. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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