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Más Que un Indio: Racial Ambivalence and Neoliberal Multiculturalism in Guatemala. Charles Hale, Santa Fe: School of American Research, 2006. 292 pp.
Charles Male's recent book-apparently more than a decade in the making-was for the most part worth the wait. There has already been quite a bit of sign-posting along the way in other academic journal formats. Más Que un India is in many ways simply the extended, except much more historical and ethnographic, version of an argument for which Hale is already known. Briefly stated, and in his own words, the argument goes like this: "With the rise of neoliberal multiculturalism in the 1990s, an inversion of racial ideologies in the making since the 1960s came into view. Before, most ladino power holders vehemently defended the separate and unequal ideology, while the state weakly evinced a discourse of universal equality. Today the state weakly promotes the notion of differentiated citizenship in the name of multiculturalism, while provincial ladinos express ambivalence: wanting to respect Maya cultural rights, but preferring the comfort of assimilationist politics that keep their own racial privelege firmly intact" (80).
The book is situated within a broad overview of Guatemalan history mid aoth century up to the neoliberal multicultural present. It focuses particular attention on the way the Utopian promises of the revolutionary Left, the corresponding military repression which eventually led to peace concessions, and the ascendancy of the Mayan movement feed into the construction of this new mode of governance. The re-reading of Guatemala's recent history that Hale offers to support his case made perfect sense to me as I read it. But...