Mestizaje: (Re)Mapping Race, Culture, and Faith in Latina/o Catholicism.
Imperatori-Lee, Natalia M.
MESTIZAJE: (RE)MAPPING RACE, CULTURE, AND FAITH IN LATINA/O
CATHOLICISM. By Netor Medina. Studies in Latino/a Catholicism.
Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2009. Pp. xx + 203. $28.
Medina critiques major figures in U.S. Latino/a theology for their
pervasive, and ultimately totalizing, use of the category mestizaje. In
his view, mestizaje functions as a quasi-cosmic reconciliation/synthesis
(of the racially, culturally, and religiously diverse) that obscures the
sociopolitical and political impact of the term (24). This usage is at
once deceptive and dangerous in that it tends toward a false synthesis
that reinscribes the whitening tendencies of the term as it has been
used historically (114). It risks erasing the racial reality of Latin
American experience by incorporating the historical particularity of
different groups into a hybrid ideal that resembles a melting pot. M.
calls on the experiences and practices of African and indigenous groups,
which are not included but subsumed into mestizo, as possible
disruptions to this totalizing narrative. In this way he proposes an
intra-Latino/a, intercultural, interreligious dialogue (130) that takes
seriously the racial, ethnic, cultural, and religious differences that
persist in Latin America and Latino/a communities in the United States.
The first four chapters trace the use of mestizaje as a theological
and theoretical category, ranging from a messianicracial ideal to a
manifestation of the complex lived reality of a community. Chapter 5
takes up the Guadalupan Juan Diego, who allegedly was made mestizo,
rather than having been allowed to retain his indigenous culture and
name. Under the rubric of mestizaje even Diego's transformation has
been taken as a locus of revelation--a seemingly inevitable, ultimately
beneficial event that resulted from the violent, tragic events of
colonization. For M., following Chicano/a scholars, the Guadalupan
narrative rather represents the resilient indigenous voice, refusing to
be silenced, re-forming the Christianity of the colonizers.
It is this persistence, even in the face of genocide and cultural
extinction, that M. endorses and performs in his meticulous analysis of
the uses of mestizaje in U.S. Latino/a scholarship. He devotes important
attention to the ways all cultures, even those struggling against a
perceived "dominant" other, are themselves plural realities
simultaneously oppressed and oppressive. The danger of rendering
mestizaje as a totalizing narrative is particularly important in any
theological movement that seeks to subvert totalizing systems and
systems of dominance, as Latino/a theology claims to do. I hope
M.'s next venture will put forth a more constructive piece,
suggesting new language for the multifaceted, intercultural,
interreligious realities represented in/by U.S. Latino/a theology.
NATALIA M. IMPERATORI-LEE
Manhattan College, Riverdale, N.Y.
