Indian Identity and Change

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Indian Identity and change.

Óscar Hdez. Mañas

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Table of contents

Introduction

1.- From "Are these not men?" to a modern concept of Indio.

2.- Historical view.

3.- The independence era: polarisation of the social class system.

4.- New path to ethnic development: facing the globalisation.

5.- Conclusion.

Bibliography

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Introduction

The birth of the new Latin American Republics came about during, and to some extent stemming

from, a wave of enthusiastic thought centred on questions over Liberal concepts of freedom,

progress and order. The Enlightenment ideas were followed by a vivid debate that presented the

socio-political upheavals and the overall state of ferment on contemplating the truly possibility of

self-government beyond the Spanish immovable backwardness embodied by a medieval cast of

mind. As Belaunde has highlighted:

"The conflict of the Spanish absolutism with the democratic ideal of the revolution; the

conflict of continental solidarity based on common language and culture with nationalism

deeply rooted in geographic, subethnic and psychic phenomena; the conflict between

democratic changes which were in the atmosphere at that period and the need for a stable and

strong government; the conflict between the need for an independent middle class of small

landowners and the fact of latifundium, and the conflict between political equality and the

racial and social differences within each nation"(Belaunde, 1938:xiii).

This paper shall trace how, as Latin American republics evolved into Nation-States striven to

pursue their national identity, Indian communities developed a wide range of strategies, which run

parallel to the changes in the thinking of Latin America's elites, to maintain their identities.

However it will, firstly, look at the concepts of Indian in order to unpack the question, then it will

move on a brief review of the conquest and colonial period not only to draw the historical

background but also to set it up as a starting point. As Diaz Polanco highlights, it can be said that the

colonial system created the Indian (Diaz Polanco, 1997:58).

Secondly, this essay will follow the Latin American intelligentsia's policies on Indigenous people

from the first years of the Independence, branded by liberalism and positivism, to the last National

concerns on Indian identity market by the "globalisation" of el problema indígena and the support of

those peoples by international Institutions and Non-governmental organisations, throughout the

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years of the Indigenismo as a official answer to the Indian question that characterised, mostly, the

Populist governments such as Velasco's (Peru) or Cardenas's (Mexico).

Finally it will be argue that the changes in Indian identity become not only an outcome closely

bound up with the process of development of the Latin American republics but also a conscious

decision-making process lead to precisely secure the Indian identity in a new environment where the

huge impact of communication technologies and globalisation of the markets advise those peoples

against taking stances based on isolation policies.

This essay will not study any particular Indian people located in any specific Latin American

country but rather the relationships that Indian and non Indian population have hitherto developed,

some particular cases will be commented though.

1.- From "Are these not men?" to a modern concept of Indio.

Had Conquerors approached Indian peoples bereft of preconceptions they would have come

across not only who they baptised as Indios, but also utterly complex societies beyond the most

obvious Indian features, such as nudity. Indeed it was seen by the conquerors as the embodiment of

their lower human conditions giving rise to a bitter debate on the rationality of the new peoples. (see

Seed. JLAS 25:3, 1993)

However it is not the purpose of this stage to explore the points of the Great Debate between

conquerors, with large privileges and vested interests on labour, and the Monarchy and the regular

clergy, concerned on wealth tax and Indian welfare respectively, on the nature of the Indians; but to

clarify what have been termed as Indios means at today's standards. The question "what is an

Indian" as Borah reminds us, presented not difficulty for Hernán Cortés or any sixteenth-century

conqueror: "Any of the people found in the New World at the time the white men landed and all of

their pure-blooded descendants were Indios" (Borah in Domínguez, 1994:1). Indeed the contingency

of the other speech alongside with extremely different ways in dressing, feeding and behaving could

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not pass unnoticed by the conqueror's euro-enthnocentric eyes.

However, what it means to be Indio today escapes any easy reduction, and it can be accounted

for, in part and only, by a multidisciplinary approach. This is more evident when current Latin

American governments have tried to take a census of their population (Borah in Domínguez, 1994:

2). A criterion of language or race become useless on their own and wider approaches that take into

account, for instance, cultural traits, or the will of self-identity become necessary.

According with Marie-Chantal Barre's indianist point of view (Barre, 1983) to be Indio means

having both an array of common values and a sense of unity forged throughout five centuries of

domination. What comes out is that the category of Indio refers to Colonisation. Thus, following

Barre, Indio would be claimed by Indian people as the term that, although, born during the colonial

period, embodies the persistent colonial relationship between the Latin American Republics and the

Indian Communities. Bare also points out the subtle different between the term Indio and Indígena.

Whereas the latter has been appropriated by those communities that have sought to establish

alianzas tácticas with the Nation-State; the former would refer to those Indios who hold more

spirited stances. Another Barres's caveat alludes to the hazard of leaving the colonial connotation

that Indio oozes behind making use of the word Indígena.

From Friedlander's anthropologic stance to be Indio "is to have a primarily negative identity"

(Friedlander 1975:71) that takes shape vis-à-vis the dominants groups. The relationship between

Indios and no-Indios, suggests Friedlander, shows the plight of the formers, who, even though

pursue to achieve dominant's status, remain backward as the dominants groups reinvented

themselves. Throughout this quest, Indios modify their identity and eventually become utterly

identified with the lower classes. From Friedlander's analysis on a Mexican Indian community one

might conclude that Indio and "low socio-economic status" became to a single entity.

Harking back to Borah's works on Race and Class in Mexico (in Domínguez 1994) the author

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review the Caso's criteria for classifying and defying Indian people, namely (1) the physical

appearance, which given the mestización of the population become a rough evidence rather than

proof of indianess; (2) Cultural traits that implies both a different cultures opposed to the cultural

mainstream, and a virtually impossible lack of cultural intermingling; (3) Language, even though it

is an obvious cultural trait it fails to recognise those communities which switched to Spanish but

identify themselves as Indian communities; (4) Loyalty. It appears as a subjective and psychological

criterion. The loyalty to the Indian town and the acceptance of its micro-cultural traits such as

fiestas, common decision-making bodies etc, would determine one's Indian features. However, as

Borah reminds us, still unclear which particular features define an Indian town; finally Borah review

Caso's fifth criterion for clarifying what it means to be Indian, which in its turn is related to Barres's

Indianist point of view from which Indian Identity/definition refers to the struggle for redressing a

permanent colonial status. Indeed the idea of historical injustice has not gone unnoticed for many

authors and intellectual and it glides away throughout Indigenismo thought and modern theories on

Indian plight.

From this standpoint Indio is not only and Eurocentric invention but also a "categorical term that

takes part in a broader process of symbolically removing indigenous American people from their

histories and reducing them to stereotypic symbols of isolation and alienation from colonial and

independent states of America" (Hill 1996:9)

Even though much more work needs to be done before scholars have articulated clear criteria and

definitions, it might be said that every intent to clarify what it means to be Indio suffers from a

number of drawbacks, either because those criteria are not exclusive of Indian identity such as

poverty or because they do not include all those who claim to be Indian such as language.

At this point might be helpful to copy word for word a Quichua Indígena leader statement: " Our

identity is forged as we struggle to survive. In the process of this struggle whatever people choose to

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call themselves is what they are" (quote in Hale, 1994).

2.- Historical view.

The discovery and conquest of America has been profusely analysed (Brading 1991, Burkholder

& Johnson 1994, Todorov 1984) however this brief comments aim to show the effects that the

colonisation had over the Indian identity. As Urban and Sherzer (1992:12) point out, in a strict sense

there were no Indios before the arrival of the Spanish Conquerors but a huge number of peoples and

cultures, among those peoples were to be found either nomadic groups dependent on hunting for

food such as Araucanians in the southern Chilean border or Chichimecas beyond the northern

frontiers in Mexico, or, likely more developed, those dependent primarily on agriculture and cattle

such as Incas in the Andes or Aztecs in Mesoamerica. For instance, according with Florescano

(Florescano 1996:30) only in Mesoamerica more than one hundred ethnics settled down and more

than two hundreds languages were spoken. Furthermore as Burkholder and Johnson (1994)

underscore those people not only were highly divided among numerous cultural and linguistic

groups but also in the vast territories under Aztec or Inca control each society was, in turn, internally

diverse.

However, the diversity and complexities of those peoples were barely understood by the early

Spaniards.

In the face of one another the sharp differences in the external appearance of their systems,

structures and cultures might have seemed absurdities; but actually the internal of those social

structures were largely similar. Both systems were constructed upon concepts of (1)

authority/leadership either in the form of kingship or cacicazgos (an Arawak word for leadership

whereby the Spanish referred to Indian authorities in overall (Nash 1995:16), (2) social divisions,

and (3) religious practices. Indeed that was Garcilaso's appreciation, which concluded that the

conquest was the logical corollary to the great Incas civilisation (Bradding 1991:264).

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Thus, on realising that the pillars of another society were so similar, because they seemed so

different, might have been wholly disconcerting, and myths about that society were bound to be

created to rebalance and reaffirm ones own idea of themselves.

In any case, the Conquest, as Sandstrom underlines, tended to simplify the situation "within a

short time, the conquerors lumped all Indians into one socially inferior category" (Sandstrom

1991:100).

From then onwards overwhelming shifts reshape the Indians Identity. (1)The "nearly unknown"

concept of profit, despite the tibrutes and surplus required by the pre-Columbian dominant people

from the subdued communities and ethnics (it should be taken into account that these relationships,

in spite of their subordination features were based on reciprocity principles); (2)the new political

layout and relocation of Indigenous people into more manageable communities; (3)and the value-

rationality (wertrational) of the Christian ideology were to be the key factors in modelling the socio-

economic structures in America.

Note that all these changes were also deeply amenable to demographic shifts yielded up by (1)

sharply depopulation closely bound with epidemic diseases introduced by (2) African and European

migration, that in its turn paved the way to endless (3) miscegenation process. Indeed, new

vocabulary such as Cholos, mestizos, zambos and mulatos along with a profuse legislation on social

relationships mirrors the profound concerns on social and demographics relationships since the

discovery, (Lipschutz 1967, Domínguez 1994, Wade 1997)

According to Varese (in Contreras 1988:101) those changes ran in parallel with a twofold

process of transformation within Indian people. Firstly, Indian people developed, to a certain degree,

esoteric and clandestine Indian strategies aimed to maintain the pre-colonial ideological elements.

Secondly, an array of developing Indian institutions that could not escape from the influence exerted

by the greater structural system imposed by the colonisation adapted itself to the new reality. One of

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those institutions that turn to be fundamental value for the Spaniards was the Cacicazgo institution,

which enabled, somehow, a smooth mediation between the Spanish elite and the Indian population.

The caciques of Mexico, the batabs of Yucatan and the kurakas of the Andes were essential to the

functioning of the colonial labour and fiscal system, they oversaw the collection of tribute payments

and labour for the repartimento/mita.

Monetary system

Precisely was the introduction of the new economic system one of the greater shifts in Indian

identity. Even recognising that Incas had a complex administrative and territorial structures and

fairly developed trading system, for instance, the mita worked as a kind of compulsory labour to

secure the continuity of the Andean's empire, it should be taken into account that no monetary

system had evolved in pre-colonial societies. Neither the accumulation of valuable metals such as

gold should be understood as developed concept of profit wherein a complex instrumental

rationality and the added value concept replace the barter system; regardless of the degree and scope

of these activities, for instance the Aymaras's barter system articulated through the ayllu.

The Spanish enterprise sought, at first, to open up new sea routes for commerce following the

Portuguese style of expansion in the African coast, soon with the awareness of the discovery of new

lands the Spaniards strove to pursue wealth.

To achieve this goal Indian populations were converted into native and cheap labour force. The

main institution whereby the Spaniards made use of the native labour was the encomienda. Others

institutions such repartimento or mita were to be found throughout Latin America though. Indians

where wrested away from their communities and forced to work in mining and agriculture.

In terms of cultural identity, given that Indian people were accustomed to work for their own

subsistence, Spaniards strove both to introduce changes in the traditional forms of producing and

trading of the Indian, and to constrain Indians to integrate themselves in the monetary economy. For

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development. In others scholars words, "in a remarkably short time, the conquerors's cathedrals,

monasteries, administrative buildings and private residences replace the pyramids, elevated plazas,

and palaces of the indigenous elite" (Burkholder and Johnson, 1994:174)

As the conquest was evolving the Spanish settler either reshaped the Indians towns when these

cities escaped the outcomes of battles or founded new ones. Nonetheless, Spaniards strove to foster

the reallocation of the Indian people paving the way for Christianization and economical

participation of the natives. Indeed it is widely accepted that towns were the embodiment of social,

politic and economic philosophy. Therefore, not in vain, most of the mission settlements also

followed the grid pattern, for instance, the Jesuit reducciones.

For the purpose of this essay it should be taken into account that Spanish towns and villages were

face to face with the traditional Indian settlement based on dispersed and isolated rural settlements

such as Incas's Ayllus. Hence, urbanisation meant detribaliization. As Leslie Bethel has noted

"colonisation was largely a labour of urbanisation, that is, a strategy for appropriating resources and

implanting jurisdiction". (Leslie Bethel :176)

These new sources of organisation for labour and the economy assisted the transition from a pre-

conquest economic system to one that meshed more directly into the European mode of agro-

pastoral, mining, and manufacturing production based on peonage and wage labour.

In the long term the differences between being Indian and participating in the lower urban -and

not urban- classes might have become blurred to the extend that claims in cultural identity might be

confused with class struggle (See Friedlander, 1975).

Religion.

The discovery and conquest of America was led by a economical interest as much as a religious

determination, to the extend that some scholars have pointed that the key factor in the process of

acculturation of the Indian people rested mainly in its spiritual dimension.

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The ideological clout helped both to sharper the desestructuration of the native world through the

introduction of new concepts, rituals and creeds, and to prepare the Indian people for integration into

the new colonial structure.

The following words from Jonathan D. Hill resume cleverly the wide range of Indian strategies to

deal with the foreign religion

In some cases Indian peoples revitalised precolonial symbols of ritual power; in other

cases Indian people formed new alliances and shaped new cultural identities through creative

refashioning of formerly separate indigenous religions.

Also important were indigenous people appropriations of European symbols of ritual

power, especially in Andean regions, where Christian saints and deities became absorbed into

a centuries-long process of constructing religious hierarchies. Although such appropriations of

Christian ritual symbols were somewhat less prevalent in the south American lowlands than

they were in the Andes, the nineteenth-century adoption of Christian symbols into indigenous

religion among carib speaking provides an unusual example of ethnogenesis through actively

appropriating religious symbols of the European colonisers. In all these different cases Indian

and European ritual and myth did not act as static cultural moulds existing independently of

changing historical conditions but as dynamic blocks for the historical construction of new

cultural identities" (Hill, 1996:3)

To sum up briefly, it is now generally recognised among scholars that the discovery and conquest

was not a uniform process, rather a complex progression wherein two fairly different evolved

societies, despite they were unable to understand one another, interact in many different ways:

Europeans introduced dramatics shifts such as new forms of spiritual life, the monetary system and

above all the market economy. Indigenous, when they not adopted firm stances against western

culture, learned how to take advantage of this new framework and not only participated in the

economy system but also were successful, even in the new urban environment, and exerted clear

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influence in shaping the colonial system.

3.- The independence era: polarisation of the social class system.

Newly liberal Latin American republics elates strove to harbour and implement, it might be said

with extraordinary fervour, those ideas that rapidly followed the Enlightenment thought, such as

positivism, nationalism, or evolutionism (See Demurrals 1981), creating the ideal conditions for the

exclusion of the, from now on, indigenous people from the national projects.

Indeed, liberal projects, emerged throughout the nineteenth century, were accompanied by

measures to enhance the criollo status to the detriment of indigenous people. Europerization of the

population through migration policies, privatisation of communal lands, cultural homogenisation,

new, although empty of content, category of citizenship that in fact [mis]displace the majority of

indigenous from society of castes into a society of classes might summarise the spirit behind the

policies developed by the Latin American leader. In the heyday of the Liberalism, the social

fragmentation substituted the immovability of the colonial social division, giving rise both to the

abiding social polarisation of current Latin American societies and the stigmatisation of indigenous

people. Indeed the association between the concept of indigenous and poverty might date back as far

as the independence era.

Notwithstanding, within this new framework, as Mörner highlights, "the Indigenous reactions to

the undoing of colonial protection at first were historically rather insignificant. On the whole, they

appear just as objects" (Mörner :68)

Mexican revolution: becoming an actor.

It is generally accepted that the Mexican revolution that took most of its national symbols from

Indigenous culture was a watershed in Indigenous policies and movements, favoured by the new

position gained by the mestizo population who, as Stavenhagen points out, "came to occupy the

economic and social space that neither the reduced criollo upper classes nor the indigenous were

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able to control". Indeed, from now on mestizos were identified with the economic, social and

political modernisation. Mestizo intelligentsia contribute to hasten the new reality, i.e. Vasconcelos's cosmic

at the same time that reviewed the indigenous policies, whereas in previous years the newly nation

state sought the disappearance of the Indigenous communities, i.e. Argentina's Sarmiento, Bolivia's

Arguedas or Colombia's Samper, now the Latin American republics were to take the lead of the

indigenous movements seeking national integration through education, development projects, or the

creation of specific offices for indigenous affairs. These paternalistic policies, well-known as

Indigenismo, helped both to construct the myth of racial democracies and to conceal the indigenous

plight in a broader context of class problem through political clientelism. Among the main

precursors and intellectuals of Indigenismo there have been authors of the stature of Mariategui in

Peru, López Fuentes in Mexico, Valcárcer en Peru. Even thought the Indigenismo intellectuals did

not call in question the social structures and the concept of nation-state, they contribute to shape

awareness of el problema indio and to mitigate some of the historical abuses.

Populist governments such as Cárdenas's and Echevarría's (Mexico) Velasco's (Peru) or Torrijos's

(Panama) made use of Indigenismo to address wider sector of the population, by so doing

Indigenismo was bound both to lose its assertive feature and to become an ideological instrument of

the state. Therefore the internal colonial situation remained irresolute.

Nevertheless Indigenismo questioned a situation in ways which had been previously

inconceivable, proof of this is the Inter-American Indianist congress held in Pátzcuaro (Mexico,

1940) under Cárdenas's populist government. Latin American republics were encouraged to

establish their own Indian institutes, and, as Polanco conclude, "its success was such that it soon

became an internationally accepted approach to the solution of the "tribal" and indigenous problem".

In due course international bureau such as International Labour Organisation fostered those

Indigenist recommendations and formulated specific conventions on integrationist Indigenismo, i.e.

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Convention No. 107.

However, Schryer, has underscored that faced with the new policies, which have adopted

indigenous cultural traits, indigenous people sought new strategies. Thus some Indigenous villages

developed vivid roles in creating their own local variant of nationalism. "Their discourse, which

incorporates alternative ways of defining citizenship, land ownership, and political institutions was

in turn the outcome of an uneven but ongoing process of contestation among men and women,

peasants, schoolteachers (...) within predominantly [Mexican]native rural regions" (Schryer in the

Cambridge history of the native people of the Americas vol. II:230).

On the other hand the disintegration of Indigenous communities through liberal programs of

privatisation and resettlement in new private haciendas gave rise to a different patterns of

relationships with the new landowners and in some cases indigenous people learned how to take

advantage of the elites's partenalismo and clientelismo.

For instance, Sandstrom have find that Amatlán people have learned to make use of the ejido

institution, which was introduced after the Mexican revolution as a new form of village

administration. Even though it was not led to target indigenous communities some of them took

advantage of the ejido for creating new forms of autonomy and cultural development.

Amatlán strategies range from staying with indigenous technology so as to reduce dependence on

mestizo inputs, to building houses without nails and furnishing them with very few industrially

manufactured items, via recovery of reciprocity principles which in its turn helped to encourage the

group identity. By so doing Amatlán communities have been able to rescue, according with

Sandstrom, pre-Hispanic organisation of the village (Sandstrom, 1991:153)

Similar strategies can be found in Aymara communities wherein the Ayllu, even though face the

pressure of the modernisation process through institutions such as agrarian unions, or modern

villages authorities, constitute the suitable framework to implement strategies of cultural social and

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political development.

4.- New path to ethnic development: facing the globalisation.

De failure of Developmentism and Populism to bring Latin America into the core of the western

economy and political life throughout the 1960s was to left political room for the emergence of new

indigenous movement closely bound up with new trends in development thought. Black and women

empowerment, new environmental concerns, or different ways of approaching poverty relief made

feasible the transformation of the ethnic based movements according to the national context in

which have they arisen. Nonetheless "their common feature is the research for new articulations with

political processes that go beyond the communal and regional levels and even beyond the limits

traditionally observed by ethnic groups" (Polanco, 1997:83).

Towards the beginnings the 1980s Latin America witnessed a intensification of the popular

movement (Escobar and Álvarez 1992, Ekstein, 1989), with regards to ethnic movements what is

novel is the construction of local and regional organisations, such as Consejo Regional Indígena del

Cauca, also based in Colombia the Organizacion Nacional Indígena de Colombia, or the

Confederacion de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador that enlarged to national sphere as well as

matured its regional and local organisations.

These organisations developed new ways of ethnic identity based in their class condition and

ethnic component. Indeed, as Sanchez has noted the particularities of the ethnic movements

throughout the second half of the 1970s and all the 1980s consisted in "el despertar de la conciencia

étnica y de clase y la articulación de la lucha por la tierra con la lucha por el respeto a la identidad

étnica." (Sanchez 1999:84)

The ethnic agenda (Sanchez, 1999:85), arose beyond the constrictions and mediations of

caciques and indigenist bodies, boosted first the use of the ethnic name (Zapotecos, Mixtecos,

Aymaras...) as a powerful way to assert their identification with particular ethnic groups; second the

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assumption of having a common historic process; third, the bond between land and ethnic identity,

not only because the spiritual meaning bestowed on land by pre-Columbian people but because land

can secure the ethnic and cultural continuity; fourth, support to the historical and cultural roots in

order to counteract the modern and individualist forces yielded by modernisation trends, and finally

the articulation of the political participation linked with the ethnic struggle.

Ethnic movements were not only to draw new political and cultural priorities but also to embed

their strategies in the broader context of social movements and socio-political forces that sought

social transformation. On embracing global focus such as environmental concerns, ethnic groups

rise their plight at international levels.

This new agenda, as Polanco has underscored, "does not imply any weakening of ethnic cohesion

or renunciation of their owns demands (...) on the contrary it will reinforce ethnic consciousness and

identity" (Polanco, 1997:86). On approaching and claiming national demands such as better

education or greater health services ethnic groups gain back from other sector of the civil society

and bestow new meaning on the relationship between them and the state.

As a result of this new ethnic movements and global frame work new constitutional legislation

have spread throughout under the influence of the Convention 169 Latin America recognising the

multi-cultural and multi-ethnic composition of those countries, Bolivia 1994, Paraguay 1992,

Ecuador 1998, Colombia 1991

Global strategies: changing for maintaining

Even though some ethnic groups remain to be fully incorporate into the capitalist mode, global

trends entail global solutions and global strategies. Hernández Castillo and Nigh show (in

Napolitano & Leyva, 1998) how ethnic groups, they refer to Man Maya people, can embrace and

take part in global markets keeping in mind that their ethnic identity goes beyond anthropological

categories and that is reinvented in a two ways street form. "what is new about this stage of

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globalisation is that the Mam have been able to have direct contact with sectors of the global

community through participation in information and communication structures (...) these

experiences have, of course, influenced the Man world view and the way in they have shaped their

own cultural discourse". The final idea of Hernandez Castillo and Nigh is that such influences are,

once have been articulate within the ethnic group, cast in form of ethnic identity.

5.- Conclusion.

A review of different pictures in the historical process of el problema indio lead to conclude that

the indigenous movements have been always cross-current.

The conquest era [mis]place two societies founded upon similar concepts of authority, religion

and social division but that in the face of one another were unable to recognise each other paving the

way for abiding process of [internal] colonial situation. Indian strategies range from rebellions

against the conquerors via collaboration with the new rulers to successful adaptation to the new

social and political situation. Mayor economical and sauce-structural changes were inevitable

though.

Throughout the nineteenth century and early years of the twentieth century the Latin American

intelligentsia faced el problema indio under the light of misplaced ideas on racial and cultural

inferiority. The new state-nation failed to open up political space for non-European people. Poverty

and lower class stigmatised the native groups.

The following years the nation-states articulated mechanisms to co-opt natives people through

clientelismo and paternalismo habits grounded in indigenist policies. Even though Indigenismo

years allowed native people to develop new strategies of development for instance recovery of

communal structures they remained objects of development rather than actors of development.

It was necessary to assist to the dawn of globalisation trends that implied a dwarfing of the state

to see Latin American republics loosing control over civil society creating spaces for political

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participation. Ethnic groups knew to take advantage of this new international framework to put

forward their own concerns.

Therefore it may conclude that despite of a continual thread in the historical process that have

relegate Indian people to the edge of the normal parameters of the welfare state, a parallel process

have continued within indigenous communities in order to secure their cultural, social and political

identity. There have been already changes since the very creation of the Indian category, however

how this changes have been managed by their very actor have defined and will establish in the

future the feasibility of self-identified ethnic groups. As long as shifts are backed on creative

decision making process in which dominant and increasingly global values are contrasted and

counteracted with local tenets there should not be fear to confront further changes.

Óscar Hdez. Mañ[email protected]

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Indian Identity and Change