Seeing Indians: A Study of Race, Nation, and Power in El Salvador

by Virginia Q. Tilley

Since the 1930s, government claims and popular thought within El Salvador have held that the country no longer holds any Indian population. Seeing Indians explores why this claim has endured despite the existence of substantial indigenous communities within the country's territory. Drawing on history, anthropology, and archaeology, Virginia Tilley delves into the history of Salvadoran racial thought and nation-building to illuminate the political motives for eradicating Indians from the country's national consciousness. Part I draws from the author's own ethnographic research in El Salvador and Guatemala to show how "Indian-ness" has persisted, in contested forms, within El Salvador. Part II traces how the Salvadoran definition of being Indian has been altered to fit within the country's desired image as a racially unified society--and to erase Indians from public records after 1932. The author explains in Part III the motives driving the myth of Indian disappearance and ends with a look at the debate that raged in the 1990s regarding El Salvador's indigenous peoples' attempts to express themselves politically. As Tilley notes, the transnational indigenous rights movement, translated into potent funding leverage by non-indigenous doner agencies, has "actually generated new difficulties for the Salvador indigenous communities and their movements for national recognition by erecting new standards for 'being Indian' that clash with older ideas and local experience."

315 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2005

About the author

Virginia Tilley (1953-) is an American political scientist specializing in the comparative study of ethnic and racial conflict. She is Professor of Political Science at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale in the US.

Reviews

[Willy Palomo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve known about this book for years but didn’t read it, because I read a review that said something along the lines of “this white woman gets indigenous identity wrong.” I couldn’t disagree more whole-heartedly. What Seeing Indians sets out to do is explain how the racial politics of mestizaje and indigenous rights plays out in Central America, specifically El Salvador, and how global indigenous politics further marginalize El Salvador’s indigenous groups. Rather than advocating for a particular interpretation of indigenous identity, she simply gives a lay of the land, providing crucial clarity for folks trying to understand racism in El Salvador and IndoAmerica at large. Reading Seeing Indians enabled me to see clearly the apartheid in Guatemala and the racism of Guatemala and El Salvador, whereas before I would be somewhat confused and unsure if I just simply didn’t have more historical or social context for a dynamic or work of art or situation. Seeing Indians provides many leads for a young researcher to explore in their understanding of Latin America. I whole-heartedly recommend it especially for people outside of Latin America, trying to better understand the racial politics of mestizaje. 4 /5

[Michele · Rating 3 out of 5]

Her arguments are weak and I'm not so sure that she understands the history of El Salvador. In 1932, there was a massacre of all peoples who looked, acted, or dressed as an Indigenous person. The social heirachy established in El Salvador makes it impossible to figure out if there is an Indigenous population. Not to mention the 1980s civil war didn't help with those that were considered poor. Indigenous peoples took their cultures underground and I can't say I blame them. El Salvador is unlike Guatemala where indigenous peoples are out into the open.