Mestizaje(s): Race and Gender in Mexican Visual Cultures Mariel Rodríguez

Abstract

This dissertation examines how race and gender have been produced and negotiated through visual culture in Mexico by tracing the historical transformations of mestizaje as a political, cultural, and visual project. Rather than treating mestizaje as a fixed national ideology, it approaches it as a historically contingent process whose meanings have continuously shifted in response to changing social, political, and epistemic contexts. Drawing on critical race theory, feminist theory, decolonial thought, art history, and visual culture studies, the dissertation asks how visual representations have contributed to the production of racialised and gendered identities while simultaneously obscuring the persistence of racism within the Mexican national imaginary.
The dissertation is organised around three case studies that correspond to three historical moments in which mestizaje and the meaning of the mestizo/a/e are reformulated. The first chapter examines the colonial period through the visual regime of eighteenth-century casta paintings, situating the emergence of racial classification within the intertwined histories of colonialism, primitive accumulation, heteropatriarchy, and the development of whiteness. The second chapter looks at the transformation of mestizaje from a racialist category into a dominant ideology, defined during the post-revolutionary period of nation formation through the writings of Manuel Gamio and José Vasconcelos, together with the photographs surrounding the India Bonita beauty contest. Finally the third chapter turns to contemporary feminist and decolonial thought, exploring Gloria Anzaldúa's concept of the New Mestiza as a critical reconfiguration of identity that challenges the homogenising logic of mestizaje as a national ideology and reconfiguration it into a radically inclusive concept.
The analysed case studies span different historical periods and theoretical frameworks, to point at the recurring figure of the “Indigenous woman” in national discourse. The dissertation argues that this figure should not be understood as a stable social category but rather as a historically produced label that has been continuously redefined through colonial, nationalist, and intersectional feminist discourses. By tracing these successive reformulations, the dissertation demonstrates how representations of the “Indigenous woman” have functioned as privileged sites for negotiating race, gender, and national belonging, while revealing the changing operations of mestizaje across Mexican history.

Keywords: Aesthetics, Art History, Critical Race Theory, Postcolonial Theory, Decolonial Thought, Latin American Studies, Critical Theory, Gender and Visual Studies

Short biography

Mariel Rodríguez (b. 1982, Mexico City) is a researcher, artist, and educator. She holds an MA in Critical Studies from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and is completing her PhD at the same institution. Her research examines the intersections of critical race theory, feminist epistemologies, decolonial thought, and art history, with a particular focus on how visual culture shapes understandings of race, gender, and national belonging. Closely connected to her scholarly work, her artistic and curatorial practice explores these questions through installation, site-specific projects, and publishing. She has taught and lectured at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, the University of Art and Design Linz, and the Instituto de Estudios Críticos in Mexico.