Synopses & Reviews
Review
andquot;
Indian Given is an important interrogation of racial and knowledge production in the Americas and offers important analyses of how racial geographies figure in the U.S./Mexico borderlands. With
Indian Given, Marandiacute;a Josefina Saldaandntilde;a-Portillo gives us the most comprehensive study of Indigenous Mexican and Mexican American identity formations to date.andquot;
Review
andquot;Indian Given is a transnational scholarly mural, offering a critical account of North America with both exacting specificity and stunning synthesis, all on one continuous canvas. Marandiacute;a Josefina Saldaandntilde;a-Portilloandrsquo;s archival skills are formidable across centuries, languages, and geographies. Her archive includes not only Las Casas, La Malinche, and Geronimo, but also Javier Bardem, Oscar Zeta Acosta, and Osama bin Laden. As soon as I finished reading Indian Given, I wanted to start it again.andquot;
Synopsis
In Indian Given Marandiacute;a Josefina Saldaandntilde;a-Portillo provides a sweeping historical and comparative analysis of racial ideologies in Mexico and the United States from 1550 to the present to show how indigenous peoples provided the condition of possibility for the emergence of each nation.
Synopsis
In Indian Given Maria Josefina Saldana-Portillo addresses current racialized violence and resistance in Mexico and the United States with a genealogy that reaches back to the sixteenth century. Saldana-Portillo formulates the central place of indigenous peoples in the construction of national spaces and racialized notions of citizenship, showing, for instance, how Chicanos/as in the U.S./Mexico borderlands might affirm or reject their indigenous background based on their location. In this and other ways, she demonstrates how the legacies of colonial Spain's and Britain's differing approaches to encountering indigenous peoples continue to shape perceptions of the natural, racial, and cultural landscapes of the United States and Mexico. Drawing on a mix of archival, historical, literary, and legal texts, Saldana-Portillo shows how los indios/Indians provided the condition of possibility for the emergence of Mexico and the United States."
About the Author
Marandiacute;a Josefina Saldaandntilde;a-Portillo is Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University and the author of The Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas and the Age of Development, also published by Duke University Press.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgmentsand#160; ix
Introduction. It Remains to Be Seen: Indians in the Landscape of Americaand#160; 1
1. Savages Welcomed: Imputations of Indigenous Humanity in Early Colonialismsand#160; 33
2. Affect in the Archive: Apostates, Profligates, Petty Thieves, and the Indians of the Spanish and U.S. Borderlandsand#160; 66
3. Mapping Economies of Death: From Mexican Independence to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgoand#160; 108
4. Adjudicating Exception: The Fate of the Indio Bandaacute;rbaro in the U.S. Courts (1869andndash;1954)and#160; 154
5. Losing It! Melancholic Incorporations in Aztlandaacute;nand#160; 195
Conclusion. The Afterlives of Indio Bandaacute;rbaroand#160; 233
Notesand#160; 259
Bibliographyand#160; 299
Index