Vanderbilt Library Open Journals

Cornejo, Kency

Lewis, Laura A. Chocolate and Corn Flour: History, Race, and Place in the Making of “Black” Mexico. 
Durham: Duke University Press, 2012. 370 pp.; $26.95 paperback; ISBN: 978-0-8223-5132-0 
 
Scholarly research on “black” Latin America has grown in the past decades through various 
disciplines. In this book anthropologist Laura E. Lewis subscribes to the view that 
ethnography can best help comprehend the formation and structural conditions that form 
black identities in the Americas. Her work combines historical documents with oral histories 
to understand identity formation in the village of San Nicolás Tolentino, located along la 
Costa Chica in the state of Guerrero. Interested in San Nicoladenses’ self-identification as 
“morenos,” a mestizaje of black-Indian, the author refutes labels such as “black,” 
“afromexican” and “afromestizo.” She argues such labels are imposed by scholars, activists 
and cultural workers that displace morenos as non Indian and non Mexican. Instead she 
shows how community, through memory, narratives, and traditions, constructs identity. In 
particular, she uses the notion of “home place” as a nexus between race and migration, 
arguing that San Nicoladenses define a moreno identity in terms of the physical locality of 
land and place of the ancestral past. 
Lewis begins with a contextual overview of la Costa Chica to present a myriad of 
social relations, agricultural practices, and local histories. In her second chapter, she 
emphasizes the role of “mixture” between Indians and morenos, which she claims extends 
beyond racial terms and into linguistic and geographic mixture. However, she observes how 
spatial organization of San Nicolás still separates morenos and Indians as insiders and 
outsiders. She thus claims the existing tension between the two groups is spatial, though 
expressed racially, yet mediated through marital practices when morenos and Indians marry 
and follow social protocols of living arrangements.  
Debates on who are truly native and foreign to San Nicolás, revolve around 
chronicles and traditions, undocumented and difficult to corroborate, but kept alive in the 
village through oral narratives. Lewis collects these personal memories to present a rich story 
of shipwrecks and escaped slaves, on how San Nicolás chose the village, and on the 
independence ritual performance know as La América. These three narratives equate slave 
freedom and Indian resistance with a nationalist Mexican identity, and a moreno saint with 
the validity of belonging and acceptance of Afro descendant peoples. Collectively they create 
a history of San Nicolás that ties spatial claims to a moreno identity. She thus shows in her 
third chapter how such oral and performative narratives offer a point of unity for morenos 
an Indians, which she uses to reinforce her argument of a mestizaje that embraces this 
amalgam while excluding whiteness.  
The book then takes a slightly disruptive turn in the fourth chapter, where she 
presents a genealogy on the “African thesis.” She especially criticizes Melville Herskovits’ 
proposal of an African migration to Mexico, and his intellectual influences on Gonzalo 
Aguirre Beltrán who pioneered ethnographic work on the Costa Chica, and Robert Harris 
Thompson for his claim that redondos evidence African ties. In particular, Lewis is critical of 
the Our Third Root project that aims to reclaim African cultural heritage as a third root in 
Mexico along with the Spanish and Indigenous. She claims this project “invented and 
valorized local traditions” (144) in order to proof pieces of African survival. The 
consequence, she believes, is a denial of local coast history and an imposed distinction 
between Mexicans and African descendants that “replicates the differences engendered by 
racism: blacks are not from Mexico, and neither are Africans” (152). She then extends this 
argument to contemporary cultural workers in Chapter 5, who she claims use a white 
discourse about race, and a top down approach, while unconcerned with local 
understandings about racial formations. She argues this further with the Meetings of Black 
Villages, claiming these are well intentioned but use essentialist categories that generate 
dissimilarities between Indians and morenos, posing them as natural enemies.  
 Lewis then shifts her analysis in chapter six to the role of gender in the segregation 
of public and private space and behavior. Her various examples range from parenting 
children and levels of gendered freedom, adolescent dating, to women’s fertility and the 
common role of queridas (mistresses) in marital relations. Addressing the acceptance of trans, 
homosexual and bisexual men and women, the author states that for San Nicoladenses 
gendered conduct is more crucial than anatomy or sexual orientation. She then returns to 
community practices in chapter seven, with special consideration of coraje, an anger 
accompanied by a physical manifestation of phlegm. Through various interviews Lewis 
shows how San Nicoladenses understand coraje as a social concern and proposes it as another 
cultural aspect that connects morenos and Indians in San Nicolás.  
Lewis concludes the books with migration, particularly to Winstem-Salem, North 
Carolina, which has in the last years attracted many San Nicoladenses who migrate towards 
family members and friends. Her analysis includes motives and how migrants maintain 
community practices and relations with San Nicoladenses though social media and 
remittances. She further extends the notion of “home place” to migrants, remarking on their 
commitment to the construction of houses they may never return to, but which nonetheless 
symbolize an identity anchor to San Nicolás. 
While Lewis is right to be critical of the too often co-optation of activism and culture 
for academic self-interest, her criticisms at times appeared very one-sided. She constantly 
distinguished herself from that group by reiterating her acceptance by San Nicoladenses, 
both anecdotally and visually. Moreover, while she argues that moreno identity challenges 
nationalist discourse of mestizaje because it excludes whiteness, preferring a blending of 
black and Indian, she presented extensive examples of racist perceptions between the two 
groups. Yet rather than further analyzing such observations through a historical and 
theoretical framework that acknowledges the institutionalization and internalization of 
racism as a legacy of colonialism, they were often dismissed as class based issues, rather than 
racism, evoking a post-race perspective.  
This book is a contribution to Latin American Studies and issues of race identify 
formation, nationalism and transnationalism in Mexico. Her use of oral histories creates a 
body of knowledge that fills voids in an area little documented, such as the local history of 
San Nicolás. Likewise, her inclusion of migration to Winston-Salem reveals a contemporary 
analysis of cultural transnationalism that contributes to the field of Latina/o Studies as well, 
especially concerning the current growing Latino migration to the South. Therefore the well-
researched book would appeal to scholars and students of race, nationalism and immigration 
studies of both Mexico and the United States.  
 
Kency Cornejo, The University of New Mexico 


English

Chocolate and Corn Flour: History, Race, and Place in the Making of “Black” Mexico

Wenz, Steven B.

John Gledhill and Patience A. Schell, eds. New Approaches to Resistance in Brazil and Mexico. Durham: 
Duke University Press, 2012. 398 pp. $28.95 (Paperback). ISBN: 978-0-8223-5187-0. 
 
For several decades, “resistance” has been an important topic in the humanities and social sciences. 
Scholars have yet to reach a consensus, however, on what phenomena the term should describe and 
which groups and individuals are worthy of attention. This volume makes a significant contribution 
to the debate through a number of case studies in Brazil and Mexico. Historians and anthropologists 
working in these two countries will find the work of particular value, but it will also be useful for 
scholars of Latin America in all disciplines and for general readers interested in resistance studies. 
John Gledhill’s introduction, “A Case for Rethinking Resistance,” provides an excellent 
background to the topic and a nuanced reflection on the volume’s engagement with existing 
scholarship. “Resistance” calls to mind the struggle of the disadvantaged for equality, justice, and 
dignity. Nonetheless, resistance studies have received criticism for romanticizing their objects of 
inquiry and for offering moral lessons instead of reasoned explanations. Therefore, following 
thinkers such as Foucault, Gramsci, and Bourdieu, Gledhill argues that “the study of resistance 
should be embedded in more complex accounts of the practices of power” (3). In order to expand 
upon James Scott’s influential studies of “everyday forms of resistance” (1985; 1990), Gledhill turns 
to Sidney Tarrow’s concept of “contentious politics,” which allows for the analysis of social 
movements and of power relations between subaltern groups and other actors. 
The chapters are organized into three parts, each dedicated to a certain aspect of resistance. 
Part One, “Resistance and the Creation of New Worlds,” focuses on the agency of indigenous and 
African peoples in colonial societies. In Ch. 1, “Rethinking Amerindian Resistance and Persistence 
in Colonial Portuguese America,” John Monteiro provides a valuable discussion of indigenous 
identity formation and the colonial roots of contemporary “ethnogenesis.” Ch. 2, “Rituals of 
Defiance: Past Resistance, Present Ambiguity,” reviews images of Mexico’s colonial past. Felipe 
Castro Gutiérrez points out the great variation in the degree of resistance among indigenous actors 
in the colonial period. In Ch. 3, “Indian Resistances to the Rebellion of 1712 in Chiapas,” Juan 
Pedro Viqueira shows how, even in a case of extreme polarization, the behavior of subaltern groups 
was far from homogenous. Ch. 4, “The ‘Commander of All Forests’ against the ‘Jacobins’ of Brazil: 
The Cabanada, 1832-1835,” explores how subalterns made use of clientelistic networks. Marcus J. M. 
de Carvalho also looks at the role of personal bonds in resistance and rebellion. In Ch. 5, “A ‘Great 
Arch’ Descending: Manumission Rates, Subaltern Social Mobility, and the Identities of Enslaved, 
Freeborn, and Freed Blacks in Southeastern Brazil, 1791-1888,” Robert W. Slenes argues that 
common experience moved plantation slaves to form a class-based identity. 
Part Two, “Resisting through Religion and for Religion,” fills a gap in the literature by 
studying the role of religion in motivating and sustaining resistance. In Ch. 6, “Millenarianism, 
Hegemony, and Resistance in Brazil,” Patricia R. Pessar focuses on multiple conservative resistance 
movements in the 19th and 20th centuries. Ch. 7 asks “Where Does Resistance Hide in 
Contemporary Candomblé?” Luis Nicolau Parés examines different kinds of resistance along a 
continuum of elite and small temples, with differing degrees of involvement with the Brazilian 
government. In Ch. 8, “Catholic Resistances in Revolutionary Mexico during the Religious 
Conflict,” Jean Meyer uses Martin Broszat’s concepts of “Widerstand” (armed conflict) and 
“Resistenz” (peaceful opposition) to account for pacific resistance in certain regions of Mexico. Ch. 
9, “Gender, Resistance, and Mexico’s Church-State Conflict,” studies a bourgeois Catholic women’s 
group within the same time period. Patience A. Schell makes the important argument that identity is 
not fixed and that there are multiple ways of being a subaltern.  
Part Three, “Rethinking Resistance in a Changing World,” considers the effects of 
neoliberalism and the “politics of difference” on the possibilities for resisting. In Ch. 10, “Tracing 
Resistance: Community and Ethnicity in a Peasant Organization,” Margarita Zárate studies a rural 
movement in Mexico that recovered and updated indigenous practices in order to confront 
capitalism. Ch. 11, “Resistance, Factionalism, and Ethnogenesis in Southern Jalisco,” explores 
“ethnic resistance” both in agrarian conflict and in daily negotiations among actors. Guillermo De la 
Peña calls attention to contexts, relationships, and shifting identities while pointing out the great 
individual variation in resistance. In Ch. 12, “The Transhistorical, Juridical-Formal, and Post-
Utopian Quilombo,” Ilka Boaventura Leite explains the multiple definitions of the term 
“quilombo,” its connotation of resistance, and its relationship to Brazilian racial and ethnic identity. 
In Ch. 13, “From Resistance Avenue to the Plaza of Decisions: New Urban Actors in Salvador, 
Bahia,” Maria Gabriela Hita reveals how official recognition and the entanglement with the state that 
it entailed affected a neighborhood’s long-held identity of resistance. Ch. 14, “Contestation in the 
Courts: The Amparo as a Form of Resistance to the Cancellation of Agrarian Reform in Mexico,” 
argues against a subaltern/elite binary. Helga Baitenmann calls attention to disputes within and 
between rural population centers. In Ch. 15, “Beyond Resistance: Raising Utopias from the Dead in 
Mexico City and Oaxaca,” Matthew Gutmann rejects romanticism and analyzes “failed” resistance, 
insisting on the need to understand not only concrete power relations but also whether subalterns 
are to blame for their misery, cooptation, and duplicity. 
In the volume’s thought-provoking conclusion, “Rethinking Histories of Resistance in Brazil 
and Mexico,” Alan Knight reflects on the roles of intentionality, scale, and ideology when classifying 
activities as “resistance.” Like Gutmann, Knight criticizes romanticism and encourages scholars not 
to “whitewash” the mistakes and shortcomings of subalterns. 
One of this volume’s greatest strengths is its attention to context and avoidance of facile 
generalization. Despite focusing on Brazil and Mexico, the contributors understand that these two 
countries do not exhaust the immense variation within Latin America. The volume’s discussion of 
how gender, class, race, and ethnicity affect resistance is another strong point. Non-specialist readers 
will be grateful for the definition of terms in Spanish and Portuguese and the frequent inclusion of 
background information. 
Although the three parts produce a coherent whole and the authors often trace connections 
to material covered by other contributors, this volume is comparative only to a certain extent. With 
very few and relatively minor exceptions, the chapters focus on either Brazil or Mexico and do not 
make detailed comparisons. This is not necessarily a weakness, however, as the juxtaposition of 
diverse topics encourages readers to consider the similarities and differences between the countries, 
as well as the implications for theorization on resistance in general. 
 
Steven B. Wenz 
Vanderbilt University 
 
 
 


New Approaches to Resistance in Brazil and Mexico

Harvey, Cynthia

Interview with Cynthia Harvey

Fitz, Earl E.

Inter-American Studies as an Emerging Field: The Future of a Discipline

Catelli, Laura

La ciudad letrada y los estudios coloniales: perspectivas descoloniales desde la “ciudad real”

Solodkow, David

Las ciudades indígenas a través del discurso etnográfico colonial. Utopía, asimilación cultural y violencia

Clough, Joshua Henry

Jorge Olivares, Becoming Reinaldo Arenas, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013. 
241 pp.; ISBN 978-0-8223-5396-6 
 
Jorge Olivares’s study of the life and work of Reinaldo Arenas contributes to a decisive shift 
in how we think about one of Cuba’s most notoriously controversial writers. Combining 
criticism and biography, Olivares’ makes it clear that a deep reading of Arenas’ life and vast 
body of work offers critical new ways of understanding how issues of exile, sexuality, and 
family have intersected in Post-Revolutionary Cuban social, cultural, and political life. Taking 
seriously Arenas’s claim that all literature is autobiographical, Olivares take his subjects life 
story and literary production as inseparable. This is important, as Olivares attests, because 
although the Cuban literary establishment has finally begun paying homage to Arenas’s 
work, this new respect is predicated on the depoliticization of the author, the erasure of his 
intellectual history, and the marginalization of many diatribes against Castro. In so doing, 
they have been able to safely appropriate Arenas as a Cuban literary icon without 
acknowledging the full content of his life and work. 
Widely regarded as one of the most brilliant and enigmatic writers to come out of the 
Cuban Revolution, Arenas’s life story only heightens his intrigue. Abandoned by his father 
while still an infant, Arenas was raised by his mother in the rural and impoverished Cuban 
countryside. While still a teenager, poor and fatherless, Arenas joined Castro’s revolution 
against Fulgencio Batista. After the revolution, Arenas relocated to Havana to study and 
ultimately pursue writing. After receiving a job at the Biblioteca Nacional, he seized the 
opportunity to write, and it paid off. However, after submitting his work to several literary 
contests, his prose was deemed counterrevolutionary and condemned for its supposedly 
immoral sexual themes. An openly gay man who refused to celebrate the revolution in his 
work, Arenas violated the central conceits of Cuban revolutionary masculinity most 
famously articulated by Che Guevara in 1965, promulgated by law, and perpetuated by many 
of the country’s writers. In 1973, after having sex with some men at the beach, Arenas and a 
friend were arrested for public lewdness and the corruption of minors, despite everyone 
being of legal age. After trying unsuccessfully to escape the island by inner tube, he was 
ultimately imprisoned at El Morro prison in Havana. After he was released in 1976, Arenas 
spent the next four years homeless and alone. In 1980, he made his way to the Miami as part 
of the Mariel boatlift; however, just as he had been denounced in Cuba, he was once again 
condemned by leftist thinkers in the United States for his criticisms of Cuba. As a result, he 
soon left for New York City where, despite initial optimism and excitement, he found 
himself once again lonely and alienated. 
Olivares possesses an impressive mastery of Arenas’s oeuvre and he notes at the 
outset that the book is deeply personal. Olivares has dedicated his career to Arenas and it 
shows. The book itself is the product of vast personal knowledge, deep analytic readings of 
Arenas’s well-known texts, interviews, and many years of conversations with friends and 
colleagues. Although writing primarily from a Freudian theoretical perspective, he largely 
avoids unnecessary academic jargon. Composed of five chronological chapters, he traces 
Arenas’s development from a poor fatherless peasant child in the Cuban countryside, 
through his initial participation in and ultimate disillusionment with the Cuban Revolution, 
and his final days as an exiled writer in New York City who ultimately took his own life in 
1990 after years of living with AIDS. Throughout the book, Olivares explores the full 
breadth of cultural and ideological forces that shaped Arenas’s literary output. Themes 
touching on Arenas’s family life and lack of a father, his sexuality and its consequences in 
Cuba, and finally his exile in the United States figure prominently throughout. In the first 
chapter, Olivares offers a straightforward biography of the writer in Cuba until 1980, 
contextualizing his life and literary development during these years by paying particular 
attention to the broader cultural and sexual ideologies that shaped social and political life 
during the period. The body of the book both flushes out and complicates this picture, 
focusing precisely on the sexual and familial themes that echo across Arenas’s body of 
literature. 
Throughout the book, Olivares concentrates on the intertextual dialogs with which 
Arenas was engaged and through which he sought constantly to write and rewrite his self, 
family, and history. Although others have acknowledged the ways in which Arenas’s works 
are rewrites of works by other authors, Olivares focuses instead on the particular ways 
Arenas focused on texts that were structured around a father figure. He goes on to argue 
that Arenas’s own lack of a father, which proved such a powerful motif in much of his 
writing, became emotionally intertwined with his estrangement from his fatherland as an 
exile in New York, constituting what he describes as Arenas’s “eroticized nostalgia.” Indeed, 
emphasizing the constant interplay of the familial and the sexual, he argues that it is precisely 
such “‘paternal erotics’ that are at the core of Arenas’s literary production”  (5). For example, 
in the books third chapter, Olivares shows how padre and patria were intertwined through a 
close reading of Arenas’s novella Viaje a la Habana, which he argues is a rewrite of Countess 
Merlin’s own nineteenth century work Viaje a La Habana. Typically regarded as a 
straightforward, if controversial, narrative about an exiled father who returns to Cuba and, 
unbeknownst to him, has sex with his estranged son, Olivares argues that Arenas’s work 
should be seen instead as a fantasy of both the protagonist, as well as Arenas himself, who 
longed so desperately for an intimate connection to a father he would never know and a 
fatherland to which he would never return. 
 Both a provocative analysis and novelistic account, Becoming Reinaldo Arenas is both 
a necessary and timely contribution to the study of Cuban literature and that of Latin 
America and the Caribbean more broadly. In digging deeper into Arenas’s words, in 
recovering and rearticulating his extraordinary life, Olivares’s book continues Arenas’s work 
by complicating our understanding of the Cuban Revolution, exposing the sexual politics of 
Post-Revolutionary Cuba, and reaffirming the intimate and productive relationship between 
life and art.  
 
 
Joshua H.V. Clough 
Duke University 


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Chocolate and Corn Flour: History, Race, and Place in the Making of “Black” Mexico

New Approaches to Resistance in Brazil and Mexico

Interview with Cynthia Harvey

Inter-American Studies as an Emerging Field: The Future of a Discipline

La ciudad letrada y los estudios coloniales: perspectivas descoloniales desde la “ciudad real”

Las ciudades indígenas a través del discurso etnográfico colonial. Utopía, asimilación cultural y violencia

Becoming Reinaldo Arenas

Interview with Daniel Ridge

American Genesis as Doctrine

Interpreting the Experiences of the African Diaspora in the Americas

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