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Chimeras Hybridity in Latin America

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    This article was downloaded by: [KU Leuven University Library]On: 08 October 2013, At: 05:39Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

    Journal of Latin American CulturalStudies: TravesiaPublication details, including instructions for authors and

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    Of Mestizajes, heterogeneities,

    hybridisms and other chimeras:

    On the macroprocesses of culturalinteraction in Latin AmericaMartin Lienhard

    a

    aProfessor of Iberian Literatures , University of Zurich

    Published online: 27 Feb 2009.

    To cite this article: Martin Lienhard (1997) Of Mestizajes, heterogeneities, hybridisms and other

    chimeras: On the macroprocesses of cultural interaction in Latin America, Journal of Latin

    American Cultural Studies: Travesia, 6:2, 183-200, DOI: 10.1080/13569329709361911To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13569329709361911

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    Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2, 1997 183

    Of Mestizajes, Heterogeneities, Hybridisms and OtherChimeras: On the Macroprocesses of CulturalInteraction in Latin AmericaIn Memory of Antonio Cornejo Polar

    M A R T I N L I E N H A R DAnd so we can say that, from the languages and customs and people ofdiverse nations, a mixture or chimera has been made in this land, onethat has been no sma ll imp edim ent to the good faith of this new peop le,( f ray Geronimo de Mendie ta , Historia eclesiastica Indiana)

    Eisenstein's ChimerasThe nightmarish visions and ch imeras that dom inate Europe 's gothic cathedrals,said Eisenstein (1976, p. 1.305), are nothing compared to the 'ornamentalmonsters' of Ancient Mexico. Nevertheless, the film director explains, theunusual and frightening effect produced by the Aztec or Mayan stone sculpturesis not the resultas it is with gothic chimerasof a composition made up ofterrifying details belonging to a number of animals, but rather of the 'ornamen-tal decomposition of the visible objects of nature' (p. 305).

    [W]hat real vertigo grips us when the hook of stone that protrudesdiagonally from the corner of the building is in fact a nose when oneneed search for the deformed eyes in the system of sculpted stones thatextend outwards from either side of the corner, and when the crenel-lated walls of the lower part of the building's decoration suddenlyreveal themselves to be a pair of monstrously deformed mandibles,(p . 306)1

    The vertigo evoked by Eisenstein is the result of a look that comes and goesconstantly between the imagecodified in our visual conscienceof a 'facialprototype' and that system of details that lacks any human likeness whatsoever.This vertigo corresponds toa painful attempt to reconstruct the process that occurs when the one istransformed into the other, that the point of departure becomes amonstrous result, and that this monstrous outcome, by a leap back-wards, becomes once again the point of departure. (Eisenstein, 1976)

    Contrary to the classic European chimera'a monster that spits blazing flamesfrom its mouth, with the head and neck of a lion, the body of a goat and the tailof a dragon' (Covarrubias, 1943, p. 1611)the Mexican, or Eisensteinian,1356-9325/97/020183-18 1997 Carfax Publishing Ltd

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    184 M. Lienhard'chimera' is, above all, the product of a gaze. Or, more exactly, of the co-oper-ation of two gazes: that of the artist wh o diso rders 'the visible objects of natu re',and that of the observer who puts them back together again. Gazes thatcorrespond to a particular perception, such as that brought on in a dream or bythe influence of a narcotic. Reminiscent of the very person that has evoked it,this chimera corresponds, point by point, to theeminently cubistcinematicmontage of Eisenstein.

    One of the examples of this cinema is the famous, though 'non-existant', filmthat Eisenstein shot in Mexico at the beginning of the 1930s:2 Que viva Mexico!... the history of the transformation of a culture, offered not verticallyby years and centuriesbut rather horizontallyaccording to a coexis-tant geography of the most varied states of cultureone alongsideothers, som ething th at in M exico becom es rem arkable (Eisenstein, 1978,I, p. 300).

    Like the stone 'monster' (no doubt one of the representations in Teotihuacan ofQuetzalcoatl), the 'chimera' of Mexican history awaits the look which willrecom pose its pieces that lie scattered, simu ltaneously, in space. Que viva Mexico!would have beenand is in its known fragmentsa supremely interesting'treatment' of cultural processes to be found in a country such as Mexico:processes that are alluded to in Mexico and elsewhere throughout Latin Americawith concepts or images such as 'mestizaje', 'transculruration', 'hybridism','syncreticism', and others.In the early years of the Spanish colonization of Mexico, a number ofmissionaries still sough t to define the observable re sults of the n ew processes ofcultural interaction that they themselves had contributed to unleashing. Themost powerful image, without a doubt, is offered by the Franciscan Ger6nimode Mendieta in a text of 1596:

    And so w e can say that, from the languages and customs and people ofdiverse nations, a mixture or chimera has been made in this land, onethat has been no small impedim ent to the good faith of this new people... (Mendieta, 1596/1980; vol. IV, pp. 552-553)Eisenstein's n otes, collected in both La non-indiferente nature (1945-47) and hisMemoires (1946-48), contain a number of interesting observations regarding thecultural processes occurring in Mexico before and after the European conquest.From these may be gleaned a chimerical image of Mexico that does not entirelyrefute Mendieta's Renaissance perspective. In a considered passage dealing with'chinese boxes' and other such toys, Eisenstein recalls the Mexican pyramids:

    Thus, in superimposed layers, each one 'capping' (in the manner of asombrero) the next, the pyramids of Mexico rise, be it in the distantChichen Itza of the Yucatan (where this phenomenon occurs in thepalaces), or in central Mexicothe Pyramids of the Sun and the Moonin San Juan de Teotihuacan. This manner of 'burying' the ancientpyramids beneath the strata of the most recent assures the total invio-lability of monuments pertaining to older stages of the culture, dissim-ulated as they were, by strata, one beneath the other [...]. The Spanish

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    Chimeras 185conquest continued this process of building (Catholic cathedrals) overthe pyra m ids (Eisenstein, 1976, I, p . 414).

    Here the Soviet film-maker emphasizes a 'continuity' of Mexican history thatstems from the prehispanic period prior to European conquest. 'Continuity'expresses itself through the image of layers that superimpose themselves uponprior strata without destroying them. Each new layer is only new to a certainextent because it makes use of elementslocation in geographic space, architec-tonic form, functionbelonging to its predecessor. How can one visualize theexistence of these buried layers? Through archaeology, which proceeds byvertical cuts, and thu s discovers the norm ally invisible strata in a perfect state ofpreservation. In fact, the m onu m ent 'discovered ' by the archaeologists is ano ther'chimera', one the archaeologist takes apart and reassembles in an incessantmovement of his gaze between the ensemble and its superimposed parts. Incontrast to the previous case, this 'chimera' is arranged not in horizontal space,but rather in a vertical space. Revealed by the gaze of the archaeologist, itconstitutes, no doubt, a 'thesis' on the history of Mexico. Materialized in themultiple pyramid, Mexican history appears as an accumulative process, asuccession of stages, each superimposed on its predecessor without completelyerasing it. Strictly speaking, the immediately visible part of this history isnothing but a mask that covers other masksor facesthat are still intact.The reading that I am imposing on the Eisensteinian understanding of theMexican pyramids is confirmed in a note by the Soviet film-maker regarding thepopular pilgrimages which converge on pyramids crowned by a Catholicchurch. Here the human actor occupies the scene of the stones accumulated by'history':

    The pilgrimages of today appear to be a rare mixture of epochs. Astrange order of dancers participates, the danzantes. From one dawn toanother, they repeat without break their single and u nvary ing rhythmicmovement of the feet in honour of the Virgin. Yet who knows that it isin honour of the Virgin? And not in honour of an older divinity, amother of the gods who has only feigned ceding her place to herforeign rivalthe mother of the god of Christianitybut who has notchanged over the successive generations of the descendants of thosewho founded her cult? (Eisenstein, 1978, I, p. 180).

    Applying this argument not to the layers of a pyramid but rather to culturalpractices, Eisenstein insinuates that the ancient cultural 'strata' could well haveremained intact bene ath the successive masks that g radually hid them. Almost 400years before, the Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagun already suspected, much tohis concern, that the pilgrimages of evangelized 'Ind ians ' dissimulatedpoorlythe continuation of indigenous practices prior to missionary preaching:Here [Tepeacac] they have a temple dedicated to the mother of the godswhom they call Tonantzin, which means Our Lady [...], they still comegreat distances, to visit this Tonantzin, from as far away as before, adevotion which is suspicious since there are churches to Our Ladyeverywhere and they do not go to those, rather they come from faraway to this Tonantzin, as of old (Sahagun, 1937: Bk 11, appx 7).

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    186 M. LienhardWith his cubist cinematic gaze, Eisenstein takes apart and reconstructs theanimated 'chimera' that climbing the pyramid constitutes for the Indians on aday of pilgrimage:

    The dance intoxicates with its monotonous excess. The cries of thepilgrim's children. Their mothers offer them the breast. Organ sounds.The smoke of candles. Fever and frenzy.And an uninterrupted stream of human figures soaked with sweat,dragging themselves upon their knees from the foot of the pyramid toits sacred summit.Knees bound in rags. Sometimes they had tied on a ripped cushion.Often, on their heads, a fantastic crow n of feathers (the dancers badge ).Heads wrapped in towels.Sweat pours.A number of old ones wrapped up in light blue shawlsel rebozokeep themselves to themselves.Gasping they climb the last step (Eisenstein, 1978, p. 180).

    Here, the successivemetonymic'takes' disassemble and re-assemble a'chimera' composed of elements taken from an eminently heterogeneous reality:the prehispanic pyramid's steps; crowns of feathers of prehispanic heritage:indigenous rites; candles; organs; shawls and Catholic discipline; simple humanbreasts and sweat. It is, in a word, the 'chimera' evokedin Covarrubius'senseby Mendieta: an object made up of elements from a variety of sources.However, a product of the gaze of the cubist writer/film-maker, it does notcease to be, at the same time, profoundly Eisensteinian.Eisenstein 'chimeras' are thus inscribed into the tradition of 'cubist montage'that characterizes the work of the Soviet film-maker. In cubist works therepresentation of reality occurs through the superimposition (painting) or rapidsuccession (film; poetry) of 'takes' taken from differing angles and distances.Obviously, this type of artistic representation of reality does no more thanimitate the principles that characterize human visual perception. To capture acomplex element of visual realitya scene, a person, a landscapeour gazedisassembles it rapidly into numerous singular perceptions that our conscienceis charged with reassembling according to the codes offered by accumulatedvisual experience. On fixing upon the canvas, film or written page the momentthat corresponds to the perceptual 'disassembly' of reality, cubist art obliges usto comprehend visual perception as a process, a succession of various phases.Observed through Eisenstein's eyes, the stone 'monster', the pyramids, orclimbing them, constitute true 'cubist works'instruments for a more consciousgrasping of reality.

    It remains for us to discuss a decisive point. To what extent Eisenstein'sMexican 'chimeras' are exclusively the product of a delerious (cubist) gaze, orwhether, perhaps, at the same time, they are representations of a reality that isitself 'chimerical'. The examples offered would appear to favour the secondhypothesis. Seen in its proper setting, a Mexican pyramid uncrowned by achurch appears as a perfectly homogenous reality. The gaze of the archaeologistconverts it into a 'chimera' anew. This gaze, nevertheless, far from 'inventing'something inexistent, 'discovers' itsliterally'profound' reality. The climbingof the pyramid-church by the indigenous pilgrims could, without doubt, appear

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    Chimeras 18 7as a compact, 'homogenously syncretic', popular rite. Upon disassembly into itsconstituent parts, Eisenstein transforms it into a 'chimerical' practice. Here, thecubist or analytic gaze connotes an interpretation that may not be shared by theprotago nists of the ritual act. It is probable that the pilgrims , withou t concern forthe analysis that their practice can give rise to, are simply following 'custom'.Perhaps, questioned by some ethnographer, they would emphasize their ortho-dox Catholicism, unless, supposing greater confidence in the interviewer, theyindicate the particular function of this rite in the totality of their (indigenous)ritual. It could be, also, that for them 'Our Lady' and Tonantzin are a singleentity, inaccessible to analysis.Objects and PracticesThe difference that exists between the two 'Einsteinian' analyses, that of thearchaeological pyramid and that of the pyramid as the object of a cult, is thatwhich measures between the analysis of an object and a human practice. Whilstnot seen as incorporated into a human practice, the object permits (almost) anyinterpretation: no one can, definitively, eject any of them. The interpretation ofa practice, however, has to take account of men and their concrete intentions.Observed over time, the correct practice disqualifies incorrect interpretations.The above reflections are directly related to the principal concern of this essay:the discussion of a set of topics that habitually appear in debates on theprocesses of cultural interaction in colonial and modern America, that is,'mestizaje', 'syncreticism', 'heterogeneity' and 'hybridism'. Strictly speaking, anycultural objecta culture in its entirety, observed from afar, also appears to beonemay be considered mestizo or syncretic. In effect, in each cultural objectmultiple cultural legacies are deposited, created or accumulated by those whogive it the form that it takes in the mome nt of its observation. Now , it is not onlyLatin American cultural objects, but also those from other parts of the worldwhich must be considered 'syncretic' or 'mestizo'. As an 'object', the Christianchurch is no less 'syncretic' than, for example, Cuban santeriaa syncretic'religion par excellence for many of those who study it. What is it, then, that isforegrounded when the 'syncreticism' or 'mestizo' nature of a Latin Americancultural object is foregrounded? The fact, no doubt, that in many cultural objectsfrom this continent (the Americas), the forms tak en by its primitive ingredients,on not being completely fused, remain visible. By calling Cuban santeria 'syn-cretic', for example, the fact that it still remains immersed in a process offormation is underlined. What is emphasized, therefore, is its 'hybrid' or'heterogeneous' nature. Now, the research carried out into the 'syncreticism' or'hybridism' of cultural objects is nothing more than theperhaps unconsciousapplication of the procedures of etymology to a non-linguistic 'lexicon'. Iflinguistic etymology reveals the primitive ingredients and the past of a lexicalobject, the 'etymology' of cultural objects informs us regarding the ingredientsand history of a 'culture' or of one of its elements. That which the etymologicalmethod cannot determine, on the other hand, is the significance of a term orobject in concrete time and space, because this depends less on its history thanon the practice of its speak ers or cultural actors. So, it is necessary to distinguishbetween the etymology or the history of an object and the practices in which thissame object serves as an instrument.

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    18 8 M. LienhardA simple example will illustrate my argument. In Havana it is said that theVirgin de Regla 'is syncretized with Yemaya', a divinity of Yoruba origin. It isunderstood that this Virgin incorporates, in some way, the functions of two'divinities', the Mother of God and the Yoruban divinity of the sea. In its

    principal representation, in the Church of Regla (Havana), this 'mestiza' or'syncretic' Virigin ap pea rs as the conven tional Virgin, bu t with black 'skin'likethat of many of her devoteesand a blue garment, the emblematic colour ofYemayd. No w, w hat of her 'syncretic' natu re? Is it a question of a 'ne w ' divinity,either Virigin or Yemaya, or does the mother of Jesus Christ or the Yorubangoddess of the sea predominate? Only a careful analysis of the practices inwhich the 'Virgin of Regla' intervenesinstrumentallycould throw some lighton the mystery. I will say now that, from my point of view, the Virgin of Regladoes not encourage a truely 'syncretic' cult, but rather, two separate cults: onein which the Christians worship the Virgin and one in which the santerocomm unity wo rships Yemaya. It is true, however, that those w ho participate inone or another of these cults could prove to be, at least in part, the same people.

    Having made clear now that what is of interest here are not cultural objectsthemselves, but rather the practices that are realized through their intermedia-tion, I wish to turn to another crucial point so as to und erstan d thoroughly wh atensues. 'Mestizaje', 'syncreticism', 'hybridism' and 'heterogeneity' are onlyparadigms. Now, any paradigm employed to describe and interpret the mecha-nisms that govern society at the economic, social, political or cultural levels doesnot escape from being a more or less vain attempt to impose an order upon atotality whose ever-evanescent reality always negates it:

    In the first place, society is captured merely as an approximate orderwhich is in perpe tual movem ent; it is, in varying degrees according toits type, the product of the interactions of order and disorder, ofdeterm inism and the aleatory. Moreover, it manifests configurations thereproduction of which never remains fully assured. This very termproves deceitful and pernicious, because it hides the reality of thesocial, the result of a continuous and never ending production. Finally,society reveals itself as a unifed totality, a form whose internal coher-ence is imposed; but this occurs above all because the play of appear-ances hides the cu ts and ill-adjustment. That wh ich w e call society d oesnot correspond to an order that is given, already ma de, but rather to anillusion (Balandier, 1985, p. 8).Illusory or not, the construction of paradigms is, nevertheless, indispensable toknowing reality. The problem is in correctly understanding the relation betweena 'p arad igm ' and 'reality'. The parad igm is not the system or the totality of rulesthat govern reality, but rather a means, always provisional, of thinking itor oneof its aspects. It is in this light that the proposals that follow should beunderstood.

    Cultural Interaction in Colonial and Postcolonial SocietiesThe European colonial system established itself 500 years ago on the forcedintegration of native societies and the massive employment of a slave labour

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    Chimeras 189force from Africa. This implied the political, social and cultural marginalizationof the autochtonous people, of Africans, and of their respective descendants, aswell as, with the passage of time, the enormous popular contingents of variedethnic ancestries. The politics of marginalization and discrimination against themajorities crystallized into a kind of matrix in wh ich we re gestated, for centuriesto come, the cultural macro-processes of the continent. It seems to me, that at atime of galloping modernization, this matrix still retains a certain validitythroughout Latin America.

    At the closure of the twentieth century three great paradigms have beendeveloped to explain the functioning and evaluate the outcomes of the macro-processes of cultural interaction in Latin America: those of 'mestizaje', 'accultura-tion', and 'cultural pluralism'.The paradigm of 'mestizaje' clearly belongs to the nineteenth century. For theadepts of positivism, the predominant sociological theory of the time, 'race' and'culture' formed an indisoluble unity.3 On explaining the (racial) process ofgestation of national populations, 'mestizaje' pretended to define the nature ofthe corresponding cultural processes. The consequences of mestizaje, however,are not particularly welcomed. Through itas may be read in the BrazilianEuclides da Cunha's Os sertoes (1902), for examplethere was a fusion of themost 'primitive' characteristics, the instincts, of the three implicated race-cultures (the Amerindian, the Portuguese and the African). The theory of the'formation of the Brazilian family' that Gilberto Freyre published in 1933(Casa-grande e senzala)reuses the discourse of Euclides da Cunha, giving it apositive twist. If, for the positivists, 'mestizaje' was, along with the permanenceof the 'prim itive' popu lation s, the greatest factor in the political, economic, socialand cultural backwardness of the new independent republics, Freyre convertedthis into the axis of a supposed Brazilian national identity.

    What value is there in making the paradigm of 'mestizaje' the nucleus of atheory of processes of cultural interaction? If 'culture' refers to the entirety ofsemiotic practices that are realised by different human collectives and theirmembers in the framework of given economic, social and political situations, aparadigm of biological inspirationthough employed here only as a meta-phordoes not help us to take account of the historical, social and territorialruptures that characterize the processes of its contradictory 'reproduction'. Ifculture (Brazilian or Latin American) is the sole process of 'mestizaje', how canone explain, for example, the movements dedicated to the revitalization andreinvention of 'condemned' traditions? And how is one to interpret, above all,the enormous diversity of observable cultural practices? Of course, neither doesthe doctrine of 'mestizaje' offer methodological tools to study the processes ofcultural com mu nication, nor for the analysis of its effects on the 'text s' pro duced .The paradigm of 'mestizaje' is no more, in reality, than an ideological discoursewhose purpose is to justify the hegemony of 'national' creole groups whoassumed power when the colonial system fell apart. In the midst of a politicaltransition characterized by its mechanisms of discrimination and exclusion, theideologeme of cultural 'mestizaje' served, above all, to postulate the equalitywhilst hiding the inequalityof the groups composing the different nationalsocieties.4 In a word, 'mestizaje' is the product and the instrument of a racistideology.

    Born in North American universities, the theory of acculturation apparently

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    19 0 M. Lienhardoffers a useful paradigm for the study of the processes of cultural interaction inall their aspects: framework (for example: colonial), protagonists, practices,processes, outcomes. In its canonical applications5 one perceives, nevertheless,an evidently a priori schematicism. The initial postulate is the existence of afundamental dualist antagonism between traditional cultures (indigenous, afro-american, rural, etc.) and the modern culture of European-North Americanancestry. Antagonism between 'cultures'? Yes: cultures do n ot a ppear as ensem-bles of practices realized by subjects immersed in a specific socio-politicalcontext, bu t rathe r a s ontological entities, as objects. From su ch a perspective, theconcrete cultural processes tend to be reduced to a parallel movement ofretrogressionserial 'cultural losses'of traditional (rural) cultures, and of theadvance of modernizing (urban) culture. In this 'culturalist' drama, whoseresolutionthe inevitable victory of 'modernity'is known beforehand, themarginalized play no more than the role of passive victim, incapable of anyoppositional strategy to 'Western' homogenization. Basing itself on an anti-quated, almost 'romantic', conception of the culture of the popular sector(folk-culture), the 'acculturators' do not capture, in effect, the protagonismthestrategies and capacities for resistance, of adaptation and of cultural reno-vationof the subaltern sectors. For the same motives, they also ignore the newcultural practices, either 'traditional' or 'modern', that develop in the outlyingneighbourhoods of modern cities. In its practical applications, the 'theory ofacculturation', far from demonstrating the processes of cultural interaction withall its contradictions an d unk now ns, ends up being a discourse of assimilationof folk sectors to 'modern' urban culture'.

    6Both theories based upon mestizaje-fusion, as well as those postulatingassimilation, are expressions of a teleological discourse. Both, also, point toinevitable cultural homogenization, be it 'mestiza' or 'occidental'. For the repre-sentatives of the 'fusionist' theories, internal cultural differences will be erasedlittle by little so as to make way for a 'national' culture, distinct from other'national' cultures. For the 'assimilationists', in turn, local cultures cannotandshould notresist the global advance of the bulldozers of modern urbancivilization. Opposed here, therefore, are a discourse of the nationalist type and

    another that would have been qualified, until recently, as 'imperialist' or'pro-imperialist'. Ideological and teleological, the 'fusionist' and 'assimilationist'discourses jell poorly, in fact, with a number of evident cultural realities: theobvious internal socio-cultural differentiation of Latin American societies andthe (relative) autonomy, resistance and creativity of subaltern, popular ormarginalized sectors.Beneath the impact of postmodern theories and their diffuse postcolonialechoes, various students of Latin American cultural processes are presentlyproposing a new paradigm, plural and open, whose conceptual axis is cultural'plurality', 'hybridism' or 'heterogeneity'. The paradigm of 'cultural plurality'the name which I will use hereis not, of course, an absolute novelty.7 Thecommon denominator of its different formulations is the recognition of theheterogeneityor hybridismof national, sectoral or individual cultures, theabandonment of monolithic or dualist conceptions of culture, and the prioritygranted to the level of concrete cultural p ractices. Am ongst others, Nestor GarciaCanclini8, today without doubt one of the most influential of Latin Americantheorists of ethnic and social processes, postulates the at least relative delinking

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    Chimeras 191of social positionbelonging to either the hegemonic or subaltern sectorsandcultural p ractice: 'it is no longer p ossible to rigidly link social class with culturalstrata' (Garcia Canclini, 1989, p. 828). Simplifying in the extreme his basic thesisregarding 'hybrid cultures'; each member of contemporary Latin Americansociety participatesand combines in their ow n fashionin a variety of culturalpractices offered by the available repertoires (formerly classified as 'traditional','modern' and 'mass'):

    ... technologies of reproduction permit each individual to put togetherin their own home a repertoire of records and cassettes that combinethe high with the popular, including those that already do so in thestructure of their work, national rock, for example, which mixes re-gional folkloric music with jazz and classical music. (Garcia Canclini,1989, p. 81).Now, who is each individual in this example? I believe I am not incorrect to saythat the first hybrid practice indicated is characteristic, though not exclusively,of hegemonic intellectuals. With regard to the practice of composers who mixmusic of all types, one has to ask oneself who they are, how they mix theiringredients, to which listeners their music is destined and in what social contextthey realize their performances (Zum thor, 1983). M ore than a hyb rid practice, I seein this double example, an entire array of possible practices, 'hegemonic' and'subaltern'. It is only fair to emphasize that in the discourse of this analyst, thethesis on the 'tum ultuou s co-presence of every style' (Zu mthor, 1983, p . 87)coexists with the reaffirmation of the permanence of marked social differences:'We do not want to suggest that this more fluid and complex circulation [ofworks of art] has evaporated the difference between social classes' (Zumthor,1983, p. 83). Indeed, combinations characteristic of the hegemonic sectors, andothers that singularized the subaltern sectors, have always existed in LatinAmerica.

    In fact, my concern here is not to emphasize any general disagreement withthe thesis of Garcia Canclini regarding the cultural mechanisms of Latin Amer-ica's contradictory modernity. As will have already been noted, my reflectionturns on the longue duree. From a perspective that takes as its object not theevolution over the last decades, but rather the enormous lapse of time between1492 and the present, the existence of a colonial matrix is very clear. Within thisframework, p resent changes doubtlessly constitute an impo rtant rup ture, but notnecessarily greater than others that have occurred during the length of five'colonial' centuries. With regard to the paradigm of 'cultural pluralism'thecollective construction of a series of researchersI am interested most of all inthe elements that, thoug h based in the observation of mod ern or actual pheno m-ena, do not fail to offer important stimulation to a more general reflection on theprocesses of cultural interaction throughout Latin American history. I amreferring, in particular, to the deconstruction of ontological notions such as'ethnic', 'peo ple', 'class' and 'culture': to the importance grantedat the expenseof a supposedly fixed social stratificationto the concrete situations of interac-tion or conflict. I feel, nevertheless, a certain discomfort with the tendencialdissolution of the notion of 'power' that is to be found in various works on the'mass-mediatization'' and the 'globalization' of contemporary societies. Be itbecause it is supposed that they (classes) never existed or because contemporary

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    192 M. Lienhardprocesses have undermined them, 'class society' has disappeared from the fieldof today's social sciences. Insofar as 'class' conceptionslike those based onethnicityconstituted an extreme simplification of the real mechanisms of socialdomination, their burial could certainly have a beneficial outcome. But, if thereis a tendencythrowing the baby out with the bath waterto doubt theexistence of such mechanisms, one begins to underestimate 'hegemonies', notbecause so ubiquitous, less real. If we can no longer speakeven when lookingat colonial societiesof fixed social stratifications, controlled by an equally fixedpower, what surely remains is, adopting Balandier's phrase, the existence of a'system of inequality and of domination'.

    Keeping in focus my concern to understand the processes of cultural inter-action in the 'long duration', I also feel uncomfortable with 'postmodern' orpostcolonial works that tend to frame cultural practices in the (or a) 'market'. Ifthis is a matter, as in their most recent formulations, of 'a market of symbolicgoods', the trace of the strictly economic market becomes unavoidable. In theworks of Garcia Canclini, for example, this trace manifests itself in the tendentialreduction of 'po pular cultures' to the produ ction, on the p art of its mem bers, ofdirectly saleable artesanal goods. Now, not all the cultural practices of the'popular' sectors are economically relevant. Many discursive practices, in par-ticular, are not. In this sense, the absence, in the works of this and othercontemporary analysts of any reference to popular memory and its discursiveforms of realization: to verbal interchanges that do not depend directly upon aninterchange of economic goods; or to the processes of linguistic interactionbetween 'national' and Amerindian tongues, pidgin or socio-lects, is notable.The instrument of analysis which I propose in the following pages respondsto the above concerns. Inspired by sociolinguistics, cultural diglossia permits theanalysis of discursive and symbolic macro-processes in the framework of a'system of inequality and of domination' as it has, without any doubt, beenconstituted in Latin American societies over the last 500 years.Diglossia9In 1968 the Peruvian writer and anthropologist J. M. Arguedas stated: 'I am notacculturated; I am a Peruvian w ho like a happ y dem on, speaks in Christian andin Indian, in Spanish and in Quechua' (Arguedas, 1983). As he makes clear inthis quote, Arguedas, like many of his Latin American colleagues, attributes toacculturation the value of assimilation. What he does not want to be, then, is'assimilated'. Nor, however, a 'mestizo', if this term refers to the fusion of thetwo major cultures present here: the hispano-occidental and the quechua. Inreality he seeks to be an individual representative of the broad sectors thatcombine the exercise of cultural practices of distinct origins, definitive 'heirs' ofthe victors and the vanquished of the sixteenth century.

    This example of contradictory cultural practices has as its result somethingelemental. It is not often, indeed it is very rare, to find such a simple binaryopposition. Nor is the case of an individual or a social group capable ofarticulating two distinct cultural practices in such a 'happy' manner thatfrequent either: Arg uedas wo uld commit suicide, partly from 'cultural' motives,1 year after these hopeful declarations. Strictly speaking, tha t which interests ushere is rather the fact that an individual or social group combines or articulates

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    Chimeras 193cultural practices that pertain, by virtue of their origin, to distinct repertoires.The 'culture'or the 'identity'of an individual can be considered as a sheaf orarray of diverse, possibly divergent or even contradictory, practices. It is to theensemble of those that manage the same array of practices in the same contextsthat we classify as a group or socio-cultural sector. A group or socio-culturalsector is not identified, then, by a 'cultural-object' ('Indigenous', 'Quechua'.'Afro-American'. Hispano-creole', 'Europanized', 'rock', 'Postmodern', etc.), butrather by a convergent attitude towards the cultural repertoires available in agiven time and space.

    It must be noted that the set of cultural practices realised by an individual orsocio-cultural sector in the 'Latin America' of the second half of the milleniumis given in a political, social and economic framew ork that valorizes and favoursor, on the contrary, disqualifies and discriminates against certain practices. Aframework which distributes, on the basis of existing social relations, the rolesof 'indians', 'blacks' and 'whites', of the 'left behind' or of 'moderns', of the'refined' and of the 'ignorant'.

    What rules may be inferred from the observation of the combinatory culturalpractices adopted, by different socio-cultural sectors and their members, in a'system of inequality and of domination' of colonial heritage? To define them, adescriptive paradigm created by sodolinguistics, diglossia,appears to me apromising point of departure.10 Socio-linguistics observes the real social func-tioning of language. For this discipline, abstract enunciations do not exist, onlythose that appear in communicative practice between individuals or groupspositioned in concrete situations of social interaction. Integrated or not into acommercial circuit, all cultural practices are, in the first place, communicativepractices. In this sense, socio-linguistics is the most adequate discipline toapproach a problem such as that which occupies us here. In the face ofparadig ms of the biologico-genetic ('mestizaje'; 'heterog eneity') or economic (the'hybrid cultures' of Garcia Canclini) type, a socio-linguistic concept such as'diglossia' offers, for the observation of the mechanisms of cultural interaction,the enormous advantage of doing so 'on site'.

    Diglossia11 refers to the coexistence of two linguistic norms of unequal socialprestige at the heart of a social formation. (I refer, in what follows, to the formsof diglossia to be found in the contexts of a colonial type: contexts that cansubsist, reproduce or recreate themselves after the official collapse of colonial-ism.) The norm 'A' (high) corresponds to the most prestigous language: that ofthe dominant or hegemonic sectors, of the state apparatus and its dependencies,of 'elite culture'. Norm 'B' (low), on the other hand, refers to thebasicallyoralmeans of verbal communication of the subaltern, popular or marginalizedsectors. In the situation of diglossia created by violent conquest, the antagonismbetween the two norms becomes particularly forceful.Diglossia supposes a specific, asymmetric practice of bilingualism. In its

    contact with the representatives of power, the native speakers of the subalternnorm are in the habit, albeit unkn ow ingly, of being obliged to make use of, albeitunknowingly, the 'high' norm. Failure to observe this rule may be considered,by their interlocutors, as insubordinate. The hegemonic sectors, on the otherhand, choose freely in their contacts with the subaltern sectors, the norm whichbest suits their purposes. A Quechua peasant has to speak to his government inSpanish to be heard, whilst the government has the option to direct itself

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    194 M. Lienhardtowards him or her, demagogically, in Quechua. The practice of one norm or theother does not depen d only, then, on the 'culture' of the individua l or gro up, butalso on the political characteristics of the communicative situation (the respectivehierarchy of the interlocutors) and of the objectives tha t mov e those participatingin the process of communication. So as to maintain its dominant function, norm'A' does not need to maintain a constant presence throughout a diglossicterritory: although people will speak exclusively in the Tupf until well into theeighteenth century, in Sao Paulo, for example, Portuguese never ceased tofunction in the entire Brazilian territory as the 'high' norm of an eminentlydiglossic system.

    The prolonged interaction between the two norms cannot fail to have reper-cussions, sooner or later, in the superficial and deep structures of both. Linkedgenerally to the metropole, norm 'A' is in the habit of showing resistance to itstransformation. If it tolerates certain intrusions at a superficial (lexical) level, itmaintains its gram mar relatively intact. Norm 'B ', in contrast, suffers on occa-sions transformations so profound that one is forced to speak of the appearanceof a new language (which will be the new norm 'B').

    What I have explained here is nothing more than a basic schema of diglossiain a colonial context. The geopolitical situation and its variations, the system ofgovernment, social and cultural politics (for example, the prohibition orofficializing of native languages), and the particular interests of the differentsectors (the abandonment or revitalization of native tongues by migrants)contribute to the modification of forms, contents and the socio-cultural incidenceof diglossia. For the description of observable linguistic practices in a given timeand space, it is important to take into account that both norms can containvarious languages or tongues. In colonial America, norm 'A' includes not onlyrefilled Spanish or Portuguese, but also Latin and, to a certain degree, thegeneral indigenous tongues 'sanctified' by the missionaries and transformed intolanguages of a written tradition (Nahuatl, Quechua, Tupf, Guarani, etc.). Tonorm 'B ' belong, apart from the oral Am erindian languages and the possiblelanguages of pidgin or Creole, the oral-popular variants of the European lan-guages. Throughout history, the languages that have occupied poles 'A' and 'B'in a diglossic system have not only grown or shrunk in number, but have alsochanged their identity. Thus, for example, the 'domesticated' indigenous lan-guages that form a part throughout the colonial epoch of repertory 'A', lose thisofficial status at the hour of 'independence': in Puerto Rico, English ends upcompeting with refined Spanish in the bosom of norm 'A'. Diglossia as such,should n ot be seen as a simple dichotomous opposition between two tong ues, oras a stable system. In certain circum stances, diglossia can becom e softer or a do ptless visible forms, tho ug h still w ithou t disap pear ing completely. On cond ition ofkeeping all the relevant variables of the case in mind, the use of diglossia, farfrom reducing linguistic processes to a simple struggle between opposites,permits the capturing of its full effervescence.Cultural DiglossiaThe diglossic paradigm is without doubt an excellent instrument for the observa-tion of linguistic processes in situations of the colonial type, characterized aboveall by the radical confrontation between m etropolitan and autochtonou s norm s.

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    Chimeras 195Its interest, nevertheless, goes far beyond purely linguistic questions. Followingfrom the analogy between verbal practices and other discursive or culturalpractices, the extension of this paradigm to non-verbal languages is highlytentative.At least in the beginning of a process of colonization, it would seem evidentthat all politically relevant cultural practices are articulated in a system thatincludes the official, metropolitan, nor m ('A'), and another, subaltern, norm ('B').that of the 'defeated' or those marginalized by the conquest. Norm 'A' corre-sponds to the repertoire of practices held in prestige by the dominant sectors,whilst norm 'B' unites the prohibited, discriminated against, or simply under-valued practices of the 'underdogs'.

    The diglossic paradigm can be applied, without major modifications, to thecolonial system of religious practices. In the colony, official Christianity wasimposed as norm 'A', relegating indigenous religions, those of African slavesand the popu lar practices of Christianity to norm 'B'. Differing from wh at occursin the field of language practices, norm 'A' functions herefrom its root inChristian exclusivityas the sole accepted norm. Norm 'B'known though notrecognizedwill be practised in absolute or relative clandestinity.

    Diglossia supposes, as has already been said, that the employment of one orother norm depends not solely upon the cultural competence of individuals orsocio-cultural groups, but rather alsoand above allon the communicativesituation and the intentions motivating its participants. In the field of religiouspractices, the Christian norm (A) is that which is impo sed at public festivals thatinvolve the presence of the apparatus of power (the State, the Church). In suchmoments, it is not only the members of the hegemonic sectors, but also those ofthe subaltern or marginalized sectors that observe them. Nevertheless, in thosemoments or spaces characterised by the absence of the representatives of power(such as the cerem onies of the ag ricultural cycle in indigen ous com munities), the'prohibited' norm 'B' re-establishes its predominance. It is notable that the sameindividua l or socio-cultural grou p can be seen to be implicated in both 'official'and 'clandestine' practices.In the terrain of religious practices, the diglossic paradigm resolves manycontradictory situations. We can recall, for example, the polemics that notori-

    ously 'ambiguous' indigenous religious attitudes provoked. The application ofan acculturationist paradigm tends to provoke sterile debates between thosewho defend the religious resistance of indigen ous collectivities and those w ho , onthe other hand, affirm their assimilation into Christianity. In the eyes of studentsof the vulgar variant of 'transculturation', in turn, the same attitudes willevidence the presence of religious syncreticism. A diglossic focus, however,enables us to understand that the most significant of these religious attitudes isneither 'resistance' or 'assimilation', nor the employment of syncretic ritualforms, but rather the choice, in each situation or concrete proposition, of themost adequate practice. The alternation of 'official' and 'unofficial' practices bymarginal sectors, an attitude of 'relative resistance', denotes its strategic intelli-gence.

    In situations of linguistic diglossia, as I have already noted, interactionbetween the languages that integrate norm s 'A ' and 'B' tends to provoke, in themedium or long term, reciprocal modifications of greater or lesser profundity intheir structures. The same is observed in the field of religious 'diglossia'.

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    196 M. LienhardUnderpinned by metropolitan power, norm 'A' (official Christianity) shows itselfresistant to change. The modifications touch, above all, the 'lexicon', whilst'grammar' habitually dem onstrates a marked solidity. Thus, the famous 'An deanbaroque' (Gisbert and Mesa, 1985)the 'mestiza' ornamentation that character-izes nu m ero us colonial churches in the central Andes is no m ore tha n a 'lexical'modification of the ornamental language of Christianity. Lacking a centralgua rdian of its principles, the practices of norm 'B ', in contrast, are transformedmore or less deeply in its dialogue with other practices of the same norm andthose of norm 'A'. Thus, norm 'B' can manifest the form of a 'syncretic'afro-american religion or, even, that of a 'mestizo' Christianitybut the practiceof this pop ular Christianity, unless it is recup erated by political or church pow er,will not transcend subaltern space. On the other hand, if the members of thehegemonic sectors frequently resort to certain practicesfor example,'witchcraft'within the popular religious repertoire, they are doing no morethan m aking use of the freedom of choice the diglossic system offers them. Theseincursions into subaltern practices do not diminish their generic identificationwith the official norm. In this, as in other areas, the application of a diglossicperspective reveals the fallacy of the idea of a generalized or inter-class 'syncreti-cism ' or 'hybridism '. I believe, w ithou t being able to dem onstrate it here , that theparadigm of 'cultural diglossia' permits us to evaluate the politically relevantcultural practices realized by different socio-cultural groups or the individualsthat compose them, in contexts of a colonial type, in their entirety.

    ConclusionTo what extent can one continue to affirm, in the face of 'postmodern' LatinAmerican societies, thesubterraneanpresence of a colonial matrix whichgenerates a cultural diglossia? I am not ignoring that they have all evolvedenorm ously, not o nly with respect to the horizo ns of 1550,1825 or 1930, bu t eventhose of 1970 or 1980. There has been change in their economic structures,relations of production, in the relations between 'races' and of 'genders', theinsertion of 'national cultures' into the 'global culture' and the displacement ofpopulations and their concentration in the largest urban agglomerations. (ManyLatin Americans, furthermore, emigrate to more promising countriesNorthAmerican or Europeanwhere employment opportunities permit. And therethey contribute to the growth of hitherto unknown and highly complex diglossiccultural systems.) At the same time, the relative demographic weight of thosesectors considered to be 'traditional' diminishes constantly. With the impact ofa voracious mass culture, often of 'international' inspiration or origin, culturalpractices are experiencing accelerated transformation, heightened furthermoreby the returndefinitive or transitoryof international migrants, or by therelative permeability of borders (e.g. Mexico/US).

    At first sight, the growth and expansion of 'mass culture', realized at theexpense of 'elite' and 'popular' cultures, would appear to invalidate or contra-dict the diglossic paradigm. Above all, does not 'mass culture' break thetraditional dichotomy between the 'refined' and the 'popular', the 'official' andthe 'marg inal'? In his essay, cited above , Garcia Canclini affirmed that:the classification that distinguishes between the refined and the popu-

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    Chimeras 197lar, and both from mass forms, is dying. All grouping of culture intofixed and stable totalities thus vanishes and with it, therefore, thepossibility of being refinedknowing the repertory of great worksorpopularbecause one knows how to manage the sense of objects andmessages produced by a more or less closed community (an ethnicity,a barrio, a class). (1989, p. 81)

    Strictly speaking, from the perspective of the diglossic paradigm, which impliesthe investigation of 'culture' from concrete practices, this 'gathering of cultureinto fixed and stable totalities' never existed. Since it hasn't existed, clearly, itcannot 'vanish'. The 'novelty' of contemporary cultural situations is not, then,absolutely new. In large measure it is nothing more than the result of a new'postmodern' focus. The colony, as has recently been discovered (Klor de Alva),was not as rigid nor as static as had been thought until recently. Regarding theexpansion of the mass media, considered by many to be the defining novelty parexcellence of presen t cu ltural situations, I risk formulating, the hyp othesis that thisconcerns the quantitative aspects of cultural communication more than itsqualitative functioning. Modern mass cultures, despite the novelty and power ofthe media employed, are not, in effect, without antecedents. In the colonialepoch, the (Christian) Church inaugurated, though without electronic resources,a true 'mass culture', distinct from 'elite' and 'subaltern' cultures. As an officialinstitution, the Church wasif we return once again to Althusser's famous,though now somewhat forgotten concept'an ideological State apparatus' (Al-thusser, 1984). Directed at all members of society, but destined above all, for thesubaltern sectors, the 'mass' discourse of the Church performs, at the ideologicallevel, a central function in the reproduction of the prevailing system of power.The 'mass' discourse and ritual of the colonial Church constituted, then, anantecedent of contemporary popular culture the culture that the hegemonicsector directs at the masses. The supposed inter-class and inter-active characterof television, the fundamental medium of popular culture,,hardly disguises itstrue nature as an 'ideological state apparatus', and an institutionnot neces-sarily state-runthat contributes to the reproduction of the dominant ideology.Thus the use, in telenovelas, of narrative structures of popular origin, does notmea n, as w e are som etimes led to believe, that these texts belong to the universeof the popular: colonial 'mass culture', controlled by the Church (norm 'A'),makes abundant use (both in discourse and ritual) of elements drawn from thepopular cultures of the time. In both cases, the incorporation of 'popular'elements does not refer, then, to a hypothetical popular control over texts andtheir diffusion, but rather only to the objective of effectively reaching the'masses'.

    Be it colonial ecclesiastic or televisua l, popular culture is a hegemonic discoursedirected at the masses. So as to exist socially, this discourse requires theco-operation of its recipients. It is the receptive practices of the 'masses'or ofits different sectorsthat will decide the ideological impact of the 'content' of amass message. W hat matters, as we already kno w, is not the cultural object itself,bu t rather the practice that is realized by its intermediation. The same object cansponsor, as an instrument, partially or totally divergent cultural practices. Thus,as we have already seen, the 'Catholic' Virgen de Regla, an element of Cubanecclesiastic popular culture, can serve in Cuban santeria as an instrument for the

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    198 M. Lienhard'Afro-Cuban' cult of Ochiin. In a recent work, Margarita Zires (1994) hassuggested that the reception of the same televisual broadcast by different socio-cultural sectors is realized according to the specific cultural norms of each ofthem. On authorizing divergent receptions, the 'same' broadcast ceases to be thesame, or, to put it in another way, the broadcast gives rise, instrumentally, todiverse (receptive) practices. Without taking this further, I wish only to suggestthat these practices may also be accommodated in a su i generis diglossic system.

    In contrast to those that have already buried them, I wish to point out that theexpansion of the mass media has not swept away popular12or 'traditional'cultures forever. Not only do many of them maintain, in diverse areas, a certainrelevance and a notable autonomy (in the Andes, Central America), but theyhave also demonstrated themselves capable of renovating and re-affirmingthemselves, often with the aid of certain 'mass' recourses: film, video, regionalindigenous festivals, mass-attendance eventssometimes subversiveby theimmigrant Andeans in Lima, the use of e-mail and other methods of communi-cation by the Chiapan Zapatistas. Thoug h it wo uld be useless to deny that at thescale of the sub-continent the culture of the subaltern sectors has been losingpart of its presence, autonomy and capacity for resistance, it would not besuitable, seeing it as the parrot or altar of postmodern 'globalization', tounderestimate its capacities of self-regeneration and resurgence.

    Elaborated from the observation of colonial macroprocesses of cultural inter-action, the paradigm of cultural diglossia does not attempt, of course, to serveas a global framework for the stud y of complex contem porary cultural processes.In the last few years there has been, with good reason, much insistence on the'deterritorialization' of cultural practices, on the 'bo rde r' a s the privileged site oftheir encounter, their insertion in 'gender' relations. To the extent that it refusesto allow the nature of 'systems of inequality and of domination' (Balandier) tobe lost from sight, I dare to think, still, that cultural diglossia remains a usefulinstrument for the evaluation of the most 'political' of these processes.

    Translated by Tim Girven

    Notes1. All quotations from Eisenstein have been translated by the author from the French editionslisted in the bibliography.2. Returning to the USSR, Eisenstein never received the material filmed in Mexico and could not,for this reason, edit his film. This tells us that none of the extant versions of Que viva Mxico!correspond to what Eisenstein's film about Mexico would have been.3. The exceptions also, as ever, confirm the rule. In La Peregrinacin de Bayon (1863), the PuertoRican Eugenio Mara de Hostos, future author of a positivist sociological treatise, attributes to

    his mouthpiece Bayon the following declaration: 'A race [the Haitians] that proves that m en donot have colour in their spirit; that they all carry the same spark that enables them to doanything: the negroes have founded an empire on this site.'4. It should be pointed out that 'mestizaje', more than a scientific paradigm, was and is a notunsuccessful literary topic. Amongst its cultivators we could include, admitting considerabledifferences regard ing the concrete use of the ideologeme of 'mestizaje' in each case, autho rs suchas: R. Gallegos and A. Ulsar Pietri (Venezuala); J. Vasconcelos and O. Paz (Mexico); A.Carp entier (Cuba); and J. Am ado (Brasil). All of them , as is well know n, played a significant rolein the construction of their respective 'national ideologies'.

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    Chimeras 1995. I refer here above all to the classic work of Robert Redfield on the processes of modernization

    in the southeast of Mexico: The Folk Culture of Yucatan(1941).6. In its Latin American adaptations, the 'acculturation paradigm' frequently arrives at other

    conclusions. In his well-known work El proceso de aculturacion (1957), the Mexican GonzaloAguirre Beltrn affirms, despite his application of the theory of 'acculturation', the thesis of a'mestizo' Mexican nationalism. The Cuban Fernando Ortiz (1940), for his part, opposed this andsubstituted, in Contrapunteo deltabaco y azucar,the idea of 'transculruration'a kind of 'perma-nent' or 'cascading' mestizaje. Ortiz, nevertheless, upon focusing on 'afro-cuban' history andculture, places the accent on the relative cultural autonomy of the descendents of Africans. Avery indirect disciple of the 'acculturationists' Redfield-Herskovitz-Linton, and of the 'transcul-turator ' Or t iz, the Peruvian Jos Mar a Argue das (Formacin de unacultura nacional indoam ericana,1975) insists, in turn, upon the persistence of socio-cultural polarization in Peru, but callsattention as well to the complex cultural behaviour of the Indian communities, their descendantsand the mestizos.

    7. The missionaries mentioned at the beginning of this work were guidedwithout being able toadmit it clearly before the occidental-Christian exclusivism of colonial powerby concepts noneto distant from those that sustain the modern paradigm of 'cultural plurality'. The same can besaid, no doubt, of an educated Indian like Guarnan Poma de Ayala, author of a plurilingual,pluridiscursive and multi-media chronicle. Nearer to us, various eccentric ethnologist writerssuch as Fernando Ortiz, Lydia Cabrera or Jos Maria Arguedas definitively anticipatewithoutvindicating it explicitlya 'pluralist' anthropology.

    8. In his book Culturas hbridas: estrategias para entrar y salir de la modernidad (1990), Garca Can cliniexpounds fully his thesis regarding 'postmodernity' in Latin America, centring on the disap-pearance of traditional frontiers between the 'high', the 'popular' and the 'mass' and theupsurge of 'hybrid' cultures. Insofar as I do not attempt to discuss these in their entirety here,I will refer to an article of his from 1989 which presents them in a more succinct form.

    9. After the presentation of what follows at a symposium in London, Ways of Working in CulturalStudies (King's College/Institute of Latin American Studies, 5-7 April 1995), Francisco FootHardman (Universidade de Campinas, So Paulo) had the generosity to give me his criticalcomments. Some of these proved useful when I came to reformulate my thesis. According toFoot, the paradigm of 'cultural diglossia' (see below) supposes thenon-existentgeographicalunity of Latin American cultural processes, and ignores its historical dimension and sins ofexcessive sociological determinism. In my perspective, these criticisms do not invalidate theparadigm of 'cultural diglossia', but rather emphasize the need to use it with caution andwithout dogmatism. A paradigm of limited applicability, 'cultural diglossia' captures, essen-tially, the politically relevant cultural behaviour in a situation of a colonial type. To my mind,its variables permit one to take into account the diverse geographical situations. With regard to'history', the descriptions of a 'diglossic' situation produce 'instant snaps', whose projection insequence permits one to see, like with the images of a film, the (historical) processes. And'sociological determinism'? I do not believe that it is such, but I would wish to clarify that oneof the objectives of my proposal is to reintroduce the taking into account of relations of powerin the study of cultural processes. The reader, as ever, has the last word.

    10. An incipient formulation of this proposal is to be found in Martin Lienhard (1990, 1991, 1992).11 . For an up-to-date consideration of the problematics of diglossia, see Berruto (1995).12. Despite being almost homonymous, I wish to distinguish popular cultures(culture produced by

    and for 'popular' sectors) from popular culture (culture destined for the masses). If popularcultures were 'deconstructed' with good reason by Garca Canclini and other contemporarythinkers, the important literature written in romance languages from this perspective preventsits confusion with popular culture.Nor is it possible to identify it, on the other hand, with folkculture, a term that refers solely to the most traditional practices, mostly found in the museum,of the culture of popular sectors.

    ReferencesG. Aguir re Bel t rn, El proceso de aculturacin (Mexico: UNAM, 1957).L. Al thusser , Essays on Ideology (London: Verso, 1984).J . -M. Arguedas, Formacin de una cultura nacional indoamericana (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1975).

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    1870, Mexico: Porra, 1980).F. Ortiz, Contrapunteo del tabaco y el azcar (La Habana: Montero, 1940).R. Redfield, The Folk Culture of the Yucatan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1941).f B de Sahagn, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva Espaa, ed. by A. M. Garibay (Mexico: Porra,

    1979).M. Zires, 'Anlisis de las tendencias de convergencia y divergencia cultural en Amrica Latina',

    Lateinamerika denken. Kulturtheoretische Grenz gange zwischen Moderne und Post moderne, ed. by B.Scharlau (Tubingen: Narr, 1994, pp. 81-92).Zumthor, 'Introduction la posie orale' (Paris: Seuil, 1983).

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