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Indigena Self-Identity in Ecuador and The Rejection of Mestizaje

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

Scott H. Beck  and
Kenneth J. Mijeski
Scott H. Beck
Affiliation:
East Tennessee State University
Kenneth J. Mijeski
Affiliation:
East Tennessee State University
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Abstract

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Indigenous peoples of Ecuador have organized and mobilized over the past thirty years, partly to reshape their identities after centuries of domination. This research is a preliminary effort to explore the contemporary complexity of that identity. Best viewed as a quantitative case study, this analysis uses responses from seventy-six indigenous college students to a self-administered questionnaire. The authors found that indigenous students with greater “acculturation experiences” with mestizo culture were more strident in rejecting elements of that culture than were their colleagues who had had fewer encounters with mestizo elements of Ecuadorian society. While the tendency to identify oneself ethnically by rejecting the dominant culture represents only one dimension of ethnic identity (maintaining distinctiveness), the authors consider the findings important for future research on the dynamics of the process of ethnic identification.

Type
Research Reports and Notes
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , 2000 , pp. 119 - 137
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

∗

The research reported here was supported in part by a grant from the Research Development Committee of East Tennessee State University. The authors wish to thank the faculty and students at the Escuela de Educación y Cultura Andina of the Universidad Estatal de Bolívar for their participation in this project. The authors also appreciate the useful and extensive comments of three anonymous reviewers and the editorial staff of LARR. An earlier version of this essay was presented to the South Eastern Council on Latin American Studies, 27 February-1 March 1997, in San José, Costa Rica.

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