Guillermo Bonfil Batalla

For Bonfil Batalla, ethnological research was inextricably linked to anthropology, specifically the ways social realities change. Bonfil worked with other intellectuals such as Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Lourdes Arizpe, Néstor García Canclini and Carlos Monsiváis, in an attempt to promote pluri-ethnic, pluricultural, and popular cultural politics in the Mexican government. His writing and political works often denounced Mexican discourses, politics, and national institutions that attempted to construct a homogeneous national and popular culture. Bonfil believed that the project of constructing a singular popular culture happens at the expense of excluding indigenous cultures and other minority groups in Mexico. This exclusion and suppression of indigeneity in the country led Bonfil to observe that there were political mobilizations that called for increased democracy and cultural plurality. He called on national institutions to respond to this demand through the creation and renovation of the institutions themselves.[1]

As an extension of the desires to recreate national cultural institutions, during his time as the director of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (Spanish: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia), Bonfil promoted the renovation of the museum system by encouraging direct participation with rural and urban communities. He continued this work through the development of the National Museum of Popular Culture (Spanish: Museo Nacional de Culturas Populares). Bonfil efforts to create a museum as an anti hegemonic space through ethnographic methods is in response to his belief that museums were in a generalized crisis of cultural elitism. The museum space, according to Bonfil, produced and reinforced hegemonic powers. While simultaneously reproducing hegemonic power dynamics, Bonfil also believed in the potential for the museum space to foster popular mobilizations and encourage different ways of conceptualizing political action.[1]

One of Bonfil Batalla’s most notable works is México Profundo: Reclaiming a Civilization (Spanish: El México Profundo, una civilización negada). In this book, he explores the permanence and resilience of non-colonial cultures which colonialism sought to eradicate in Mexico as well as the concept and effects of detribalization, which he refers to as "de-Indianization." Bonfil Batalla demonstrates the existence of two different symbolic Mexicos resulting from colonial intrusions and hegemony.

The first México is deep Mexico (Spanish: México Profundo), defined by the persistence of Mesoamerican civilization that reveals itself to national society in a variety of ways and forms together with contemporary Indigenous communities. México Profundo has permanently existed despite mainstream and nationalistic efforts in Mexico to conceal and erase its presence. Through the denial of México Profundo by mainstream Mexican society, Mesoamerican civilization has been detached from the identity of Mexicans as "something apart from ourselves, something that happened long ago in the same place where we, the Mexicans, live today. The only connection is based on the fact of them and us occupying the same territory, but in different time periods."

México Profundo is formed by a great diversity of peoples, communities, and social sectors that constitute the majority of the population of the country. What unifies them and distinguishes them from the rest of Mexican society is that they are bearers of ways of understanding the world and of organizing human life that have their origins in Mesoamerican civilization and that have been forged here in Mexico through a long and complicated historical process. The contemporary expressions of that civilization are quite diverse: from those indigenous peoples who have been able to conserve an internally cohesive culture of their own, to a multitude of isolated traits distributed in different ways in urban populations. The civilization of Mesoamerica has been denied but it is essential to recognize its continuing presence.[2]

The other Mexico is named the "Imaginary Mexico." It is referred to as "imaginary" because it does not actually exist, but rather has functioned as a national project of constructing a unified or "imagined" homogeneous Mexican identity. According to Bonfil Batalla, the mestizo is the embodiment of the Imaginary Mexico, as Indigenous cultures are experienced in his everyday life from the philosophical, to the ontological, and fundamentally the spiritual realms of his being yet he assumes a non-Indigenous identity. It draws inspiration from distant lands with dissimilar cultures distinct from any ‘real’ or ‘profound’ Mexican culture. The ultimate project of "Imaginary Mexico" is to uphold the dominant civilizational program geared towards Westernization.

Throughout the past 500 years of history, these two Mexicos have existed in a state of ongoing confrontation. At one pole are those that align with the "Imaginary Mexico" ideology and seek to direct the country to a Western civilization program. While, at the other pole, exist those who exhibit resistance tactics rooted in Mesoamerican ancestries, whether through silent resistance or open revolt. Bonfil Batalla asserted that this resistance can be attributed to that fact that "certain social groups have illegitimately held political, economic, and ideological power from the European invasion to the present." The illegitimate domination of these social groups emerged from "the stratified order of colonial society" and has expressed itself in the centuries since through upholding "an ideology that conceives of the future only in terms of development, progress, advancement, and the Revolution itself, all concepts within the mainstream of Western civilization."

As such, México Profundo and the "Imaginary Mexico" are not merely two different alternatives "within the framework of a common civilization," but rather are two entirely different paradigms "which are built on different ways of conceiving the world, nature, society, and humankind." Any attempt at "unification" of these two opposing frameworks has only been historically characterized by the pursuit to erase México Profundo and its inherent connections to Mesoamerican civilization while disseminating ideologies upholding the "Imaginary Mexico" and Westernization. This was historically carried about by various genocidal means, such as the complete obliteration of entire groups of Indigenous people as well as, "where the labor force of the Indians was required," their social and cultural segregation. This segregation meant that some Indigenous groups were able to retain continuity despite "the brutal decline in population during the first decades of the [Spanish] invasion."[3]

For Bonfil Batalla, Indigenous cultures have, in many ways, such an omnipresent and continuous presence in Mexico that rarely are they seen for their deep and complex meanings in the scheme of historical processes that made possible their presence in social sectors that assume a non-indigenous identity. This is the result of the symbolic process of constructing the Imaginary Mexico, that works to deny and conceal Indigeneity and permanently confront the reality of México Profundo. Bonfil Batalla believes that the role of indigenous peoples is so definitive in the ways it shapes Mexican culture, and will play an important role in shaping a new Mexican society.

In the 1996 English version of Bonfil Batalla's work, translator Philip A. Dennis cites the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) uprising in Chiapas as an event which brought México Profundo "into national consciousness," as Bonfil Batalla's conceptualization was "brought to life for millions of television viewers in Mexico and throughout the world."[4]