Abstract

GONZALEZ PONCIANO, Jorge Ramón. Blancura, cosmopolitismo y representación en Guatemala. Estud. cult. maya [online]. 2006, vol.27, pp.125-147. ISSN 0185-2574.

This article examines the exacerbation of anti-Indian and anti-mestizo sentiment in Guatemala aimed at working class ladinos and indígenas who are stigmatized as choleros, shumos and mucos. These sentiments reflect upper and middle class reactions towards the growing influence of the indigenous movement and changes in symbolic and material consumption due to intranational and transnational migration. Guatemala's racism manifests itself in the crisis of legitimacy of three factors that have been strategic for the reproduction of the local socio-racial hierarchy: a) The cult of the pure Indian, conceived as hard working and docile servant, and living testimony of the cultural authenticity venerated by anthropologists, b) the portrayal of the indio aladinado and the popular ladino as rebellious and lazy agents trapped in the symbolic contradictions of whiteness, and c) the way both representations support the reproduction of tutelary and servile relations that normalize the place of everyone in society and the unwritten rules of "cultura finquera".