Post on 24-Jan-2023
-start w/thank yous: Center for Values, Ethics, and the Law in Medicine, especially Jacqueline Savard for organizing, REGS colleagues for their support
-what I’ll do in my presentation: discuss some highlightsfrom an article I’ve been drafting for publication for 20-30 minutes, then open things up for discussion
“One of the Most Uniform Races of the Entire World”:Raza chilena and the Myth of Chilean Racial Homogeneity
Javiera Barandiarán’s 2012 article, “Researching
Race in Chile,” evaluated the success or failure of
Chilean social scientists to measure racial
discrimination in Chilean hiring practices. She found
that any information the studies generated regarding
systematic or institutional racism were often overlooked,
ignored, or reinterpreted as indicative of class-based
discrimination by Chilean researchers. She pointed to the
findings of one 2007 study in particular as being
illustrative of this pattern. “Chile is not a country
with significant racial groups as may be the case of
other Latin American countries such as Bolivia, Peru or
Brazil. The percentage of indigenous population in Chile
is small. The type of discrimination we are looking at
may indeed be related to historical factors of inequality
of opportunities rather than subjective racism. (Bravo,
1
Sanhueza, and Urzúa 2007, 21)”1 Barandiarán concluded that
social class trumped all other types of social or racial
difference in Chile. Chilean researchers did not find
racial discrimination in the job market because they did
not see racial difference among Chileans. The article,
therefore, called for new attention on Chilean race
thinking and ideology to better understand why Chileans
prefer to see class rather than race.
Nicolás Palacios’s Raza chilena: Libro escrito por un Chileno i
para los Chilenos [Chilean Race: A Book Written by a Chilean
for Chileans] (1904) helps to explain this phenomenon.
Raza chilena is well known among Chilean scholars and has a
notorious reputation. The text was central to the Chilean
National Socialist Party’s rhetoric and many academics
studying Chile consider Palacios’s legacy to be one of
racism based on little more than hopeful fantasy. As
such, the 700+ page monograph is often only discussed in
relation to something else. Most scholars feel that Raza
chilena is useful only insofar as it demonstrates a
particular zeitgeist of the turn of the twentieth century,
1 Javiera Barandiarán, “Researching Race in Chile,” Latin American Research Review 47, no. 1 (2012): 164.
2
meriting little scholarly attention of its own.2 However,
Palacios’s vision of harmonious race mixing resulting in
Chilean racial homogeneity was a powerful trope that
seeped into many facets of Chilean culture over the
course of the twentieth century. Barandiarán’s article
demonstrates just how commonplace the notion of Chilean
mestizo identity has become and demonstrates why more
careful attention must be paid to works like Raza chilena.
This article will explore how Palacios’s work folklorized
2 I have not found any entire monographs in either English or Spanishthat discuss Palacios or Raza chilena. There are, however, various articles, book chapters, and essays that mention either (or both). See: Alvarado and Fernandez, “Una narración fundacional,” 47-63. Miguel Alvarado Borgoño, “La modernidad maldita de Nicolás Palacios. Apuntes sobre Raza chilena,” Gazeta de Antropología 20 (2004): 1-9. CristiánGazmuri R., “Decadencia del espíritu de nacionalidad,” in El Chile del Centenario, Los Ensayistas de la crisis, ed. Cristián Gazmuri R. et al. (Santiago de Chile: Instituto de Historia, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 2001). Pedro Godoy P. and Gustavo Galarce M., Día de sangre: Nicolás Palacios y el genocidio de Iquique 21.12.1907, (Chile: Universidad Arturo Prat, 2007). Thomas Miller Klubock, “Nationalism, Race, and the Politics of Imperialism: Workers and North American Capital in the Chilean Copper Industry,” in Reclaiming the Political in Latin American History: Essays form the North, ed. Gilbert M. Joseph. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 231-267. Ariel Peralta Pizarro, Idea de Chile, (Concepción, Chile: Ediciones Universidad de Concepción, 1993). Only the articles by Alvarado Borgoño and Fernández attempt a full scale analysis of Palacios’s work. While similar in content to José Vasconcelos’s La raza cósmica: Misión de la raza iberoamericana, Raza chilena has received comparatively little study by Chileanists or Latin Americanists though it preceded Vasconcelos’s monograph by two decades. This is especially true in English language sources. José Vasconcelos, La raza cósmica: Misión de la raza iberoamericana, (Madrid: Agencia Mundial de Librería, 1925).
3
and obscured indigenous peoples in Chile which served to
erase racial difference among Chileans.
Nicolás Palacios: The Man Behind the Myth
mention this section
give dates of 1854-1911 (birth/death)
served in Chilean military as field medic during
War of the Pacific (1879-1883)started to come up
with racial ideology in encounters with Peruvians
as doctor in mining country saw effects of foreign
economic exploitation
“El roto chileno”: Palacios’s Vision of the Chilean Race
Part of the reason why Raza chilena has been seen as
strictly racist, rather than informative of a larger
narrative about Chilean racial ideology, was that it was
written primarily as an anti-immigration polemic. Working
at the Chilean mines especially informed his strong
belief in Chilean exploitation at the hands of foreign
intervention. Palacios wrote that his book was meant to
counteract, “…that campaign of disgrace brought about by
the Government which has placed an iron-clad resistance
to the fulfillment of the national colonization law, and
4
which is bringing to the lands of the Nation families of
races different from our own.”3 The Chilean government had
instituted a number of programs and policies in the
second half of the nineteenth century to encourage
European immigration, often aimed at Spanish, Italian,
and French immigrants.4 They were meant to populate
regions of the country that were considered vacant with
Chilean nationals to prevent encroachment by nearby rival
Argentina. They were also considered a means of
civilizing the Chilean nation by injecting European blood
in large quantities into the population. Of course all of
these programs overlooked the fact that indigenous people
inhabited the supposedly vacant lands.5
Fundamental to Palacios’s objection to southern
European immigration was that he believed Chileans formed
a distinct race that merited protection. “This fact of
great importance for us, and which has been verified by 3 Palacios, Raza chilena, 31. “…aquella campaña de desprestigio trajo como consecuencia el que el Gobierno haya puesto una invencible resistencia al cumplimiento de la ley de colonización nacional, y queesté entregando las tierras de la Nación a familias de raza extraña ala nuestra.”4 Gabriel Salazar and Julio Pinto, Historia Contemporánea de Chile II: Actores, identidad y movimiento (Santiago de Chile: LOM Ediciones, 1999), 78-81.
5 Frazier, Salt in the Sand.
5
all of the observers who have met us, from Darwin to
Hancock, the leading men of Chile seem to ignore.”6
Annoyed by Chilean government support of southern
European immigration, Palacios turned to the expertise of
scholars to support his claims that Chileans formed their
own distinct race and that the race ought to be
preserved. Raza chilena was concerned then with proving that
Chileans were a distinct and unique race that required
protection from the interference of, and intermixing
with, unwanted outsiders.
Protecting the Chilean racial legacy was especially
important because Chile presented a unique opportunity to
study how race mixing could be beneficial. Palacios
claimed that, “Two or three generations more and Chile
will be able to count as one of the most uniform races of
the entire world.”7 The contention that race mixing could
produce desirable racial uniformity was unique, if viewed
from the perspective of North Atlantic eugenic models.
6 Palacios, Raza chilena, 34. “Este hecho de gran importancia para nosotros, y que ha sido constatado por todos los observadores que noshan conocido, desde Darwin hasta Hancock, parecen ignorarlo los hombres dirigentes de Chile.”7 Palacios, Raza chilena, 56. “Dos o tres generaciones más y Chile podrá contar con una de las razas más uniformes del mundo entero.”
6
Eugenicists of the same period in the United States,
Great Britain, and Germany were first and foremost
interested in achieving racial purity through efforts to
keep races separate.8 However, within the context of Latin
American eugenic philosophies, Palacios’s ideas fit into
a much broader spectrum.9 Though some eugenicists in Latin
America encouraged efforts at whitening the population,
this was almost always based upon some notion of race
mixing. Inspired by the strong positivist influence in
Latin America, many eugenicists believed that the key to
progress and civilization was the creation of a racially
homogeneous population that would work together because
racial uniformity indicated cultural perfection which was
vital for industrial strength.
Araucanian Visigoths: Chilean Racial Origins
Though Raza chilena assumed the obsolescence of
indigenous Chileans going forward, it did not omit their
racial contribution to the Chilean population in the
past. Chilean uniqueness, the fact that there was even a
8 Stern, Eugenic Nation.
9 Marisa Miranda and Gustavo Vallejo, Darwinismo social y eugenesia en el mundo latino (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI de Argentina Editores, 2005). Stepan, “Hour of Eugenics”. Vasconcelos, La raza cósmica.
7
Chilean race at all, was predicated on the existence of
indigenous heritage in the population at large. As such,
Palacios spent a great deal of his book explaining the
origins of the Chilean race. He argued that Chileans were
the result of a specific mixture of Araucanian indigenous
and Visigoth European ancestry. He also stipulated that
both of these groups were racially pure themselves
because their racial characteristics were stable and
long-standing.10
Though he championed mixed racial heritage, it is
probably not surprising that Palacios favored Chilean
European ancestry throughout Raza chilena. However, this was
not the European ancestry one might expect of people
living in South America. Rather than seeing Spain as the
racial homeland, Palacios stated that Chilean blood came
from Northern Europe. He argued that the Spanish subjects
who came to Chile during the colonial period were from a
10 Alvarado and Fernández, “Una narracion fundacional,” 49. “La raza chilena es el derivado de la contaminación mutua de lo que Palacios considera dos razas primitivas, en el sentido de fundantes, además depuras, no por el hecho de ser naturalmente superiores a otra razas sino más bien porque ‘poseyeron cualidades estables i fijas desde un gran número de jeneraciones anteriores’.”
8
specific ethnic subgroup within Spain. The explorers that
came to Chile were,
…the direct descendants of those blonde barbarians, warriors and conquerors, that in their exodus to thesouth of the European continent destroyed the Roman Empire of the west. It was these Goths, prototype ofthe Teutonic, Germanic or Nordic race, that conserved the almost total purity of their caste, thanks to their pride in their stock and the laws that, for various centuries, prohibited marriage with conquered races.11
Palacios believed that the Europeans who arrived in Chile
were the descendants of the Visigoths that spread
throughout Europe in the fifth and sixth centuries.
Claiming this lineage was no coincidence. It tied
Chileans to the more seemingly more productive Anglo-
Saxon races of northern Europe and implied their racial
superiority over both southern European immigrants and
11 Nicolás Palacios, Raza chilena: Libro escrito por un chileno i para los chilenos (Valparaíso, Chile: Imprenta i Litografía Alemana, 1904), 4. “…descendientes directos de aquellos bárbaros rubios, guerreros i conquistadores, que en su éxodo al sur del continente europeo destruyeron el imperio romano de occidente. Eran esos los Godos, prototipo de la raza teutónica, jermana o nórdica, que conservaron casi del todo pura su casta, gracias al orgullo de su prosapia i a las leyes que, por varios siglos, prohibieron sus matrimonios con lasrazas conquistadas. Por los numerosos retratos o descripciones que conozco de los conquistadores de Chile, puedo asegurar que a lo sumo el diez por ciento de ellos presentan signos de mestizaje con la razaautóctona de España, con la raza ibera; el resto es de pura sangre teutona, como Pedro de Valdivia, cuyo retrato es tan conocido.”
9
other Latin American nations. Clearly, race mattered even
in a mestizo national myth.
While it was easy for Palacios to prove Visigoth
purity and longevity, that was a bit more difficult for
Araucanians. To do this, he contended that Spanish
colonists practiced polygamy with native women. “The
Chilean race, like everyone knows, is a mestizo race of
the Spanish conqueror and the Araucanian, and it came to
the world in great numbers from the first years of the
conquest, thanks to the extensive polygamy that the
European conqueror adopted in our country.”12 To be clear,
Palacios’s notion of polygamy was very specific.
Polygamous relationships were the result of protracted
warfare in the region for a substantial portion of the
colonial period. Essentially, Spanish women did not
accompany Spanish men to the region and the men took
native women as their wives. Palacios also stipulated
that polygamy only occurred between European men and
indigenous women. Because no new immigrants were arriving
12 Palacios, Raza chilena, 34. “La raza chilena, como todos saben, es una raza mestiza del conquistador español y del araucano, y vino al mundo en gran número desde los primeros años de la conquista, merced a la extensa poligamia que adoptó en nuestro país el conquistador europeo.”
10
to Chile, the mixing process occurring between
Araucanians and Visigoths could be considered “pure” in
its own right.13 Of course, he neglected to address how
indigenous men fit into this scheme.
Blonde, Pink, and Hairy: Chilean Racial Phenotypes
Even though Raza chilena emphasized racial homogeneity
among Chileans, Palacios spent a great deal of time
discussing the different phenotypes that resulted from a
mixture between Visigoths and Araucanians. Studying
Chilean phenotypes served to obscure more virulent racism
contained in the text. Palacios discussed how all
Chileans were racially the same, even when phenotypically
different, and effectively elided racial difference
present in the Chilean populace. In particular, it hid
the fact that Palacios himself privileged European
features over indigenous ones. He wrote, “The conquerors
of Chile were blonde in almost their totality, and those
who were not showed their Germanic heritage in their
elevated statures.”14 In addition to being blonde and
13 Palacios, Raza chilena, 43-44.
14 Palacios, Raza chilena, 201. “Los conquistadores de Chile eran rubiosen su casi totalidad, y los que no lo eran presentaban el signo germano de su elevada estatura.”
11
tall, Palacios noted the following characteristics as
indicative of Visigoth heritage: “fallen” eyebrows, wavy
or curly hair, blue eyes, light skin, and (for men) lots
of body and facial hair.15 Much like eugenicists in other
parts of the world, Palacios catalogued phenotypic traits
to demonstrate racial identity, but he typically insisted
that phenotype did not denote internal racial
composition.
However, the phenotypic features of Araucanians
received significantly less coverage in the text
demonstrating an implicit ambivalence toward indigenous
racial traits. “In so far as the Araucanians, the traits
of their physiognomy are well known for all of us.
Genuinely American mongoloid, as some call it, it is
rather uniform in its size and its features.”16 Later in
the book, Palacios eventually gave a description of
Araucanian traits, but as part of a larger section in the
15 Palacios, Raza chilena, 199-200.
16 Palacios, Raza chilena, 210. “En cuanto a los Araucanos, son para todos nosotros bien conocidos los rasgos de su fisonomía. Netamente americana mongoloide, como la llaman algunos, es bastante uniforme ensu talla y en sus facciones.”
12
monograph dedicated to mestizos. According to him pure
Araucanians no longer existed, so there was no need to
give them their own section. Indigenous ancestry was
being folded into mestizo identity.
As such, Palacios was compelled to explain how race
mixing in Chile occurred to create a homogeneous race
that still manifested a large amount of phenotypic
variety.
A mixed race from another two [groups] as dissimilaras the Gothic and the Araucanian, presents the characteristics of both combined to give the most varied proportions. From the [Chilean] of Araucanianphysiognomy, seeming almost pure, to the blonde [Chiean] of well marked Germanic aspect, the gradations are as numerous as one could imagine. However, there exists a very numerous intermediate type with the combined traits of its two progenitors, without it being easy to say which of the two is dominant.17
Palacios pointed out that the large number of Chileans
that shared the same phenotype demonstrated the racial
homogeneity of the race as a whole. While some Chileans
17 Palacios, Raza chilena, 212. “Raza mestiza de otras dos de aspecto tan desemejante como la gótica y la araucana, presenta los caracteresde ambas combinados den las más variadas proporciones. Desde el roto de fisonomía araucana, al parecer pura, hasta el roto rubio de aspecto germano bien marcado, las gradaciones son todo lo numerosas que puedan concebirse. Sin embargo, existe un tipo intermediario muy numeroso con los signos combinados de sus dos progenitores, sin que sea fácil decir cual de los dos es el predominante.”
13
might manifest more European or indigenous features, they
still carried within them the same racial heritage as any
Chilean. After all, Chileans were not actually Europeans.
They would always carry with them some marker of their
American ancestry. “The white Chilean is always more pink
and with the characteristic tint of Araucanian pigment.”18
Not Created Equal: Race Mixing and Racism
While Palacios’s high regard for race mixing
obscured racism directed at indigenous people in Chile,
it did not hide his racism toward other groups. In
particular, he saved some of his harshest vitriol for
people of African descent. This is not terribly
surprising since he claimed that there were very few
African descended people in Chile; so few as to make
their influence on the racial make-up of the population
negligible. This he attributed to the fact that very few
slaves were brought to Chile because of their high cost
and because those slaves that were brought to the region
were severely punished for any “genetic impulsiveness.”19
18 Palacios, Raza chilena, 219. “El chileno blanco es siempre más rosadoy con el tinte característico del pigmento araucano.”
19 Palacios, Raza chilena, 57.
14
Presumably, this position made it far easier to hold such
a low opinion of African descended people. Vilifying
Afro-Latinos also reaffirmed that Chileans were white in
comparison to other Latin American nations, particularly
Brazil, Peru, and Bolivia.
Even so, Palacios was nervous about possible
contamination from Afro-Chileans. It was essential that
any African heritage in Chile be wiped out in its
entirety. He argued that, “It will not be too much to
remind here that black blood has a power of absorption
that is much more than white. Thus, while not one trace
of white [blood] remains at the fourth unilateral
generation with black, when in the mestizo 6.25% of white
blood remains…”20 Palacios believed that African heritage
had a unique ability to be absorbed into the larger
population and eventually disappear, much like indigenous
heritage.21 However, this depended upon correct race 20 Palacios, Raza chilena, 57-58. “No estará demás recordar aquí que la sangre negra tiene un poder de absorción mucho mayor que la blanca. Así, mientras del blanco no queda ningún rastro a la cuarta generación unilateral con el negro, esto es, cuando aun queda en el mestizo un 6.25% de sangre blanca…”
21 Novoa and Levine, Man to Ape, 129. Vicente Quesada (Argentine) “Tio Blas” believed that Afro-Argentines and criollos were slowly being absorbed into the population while Indians were being extinct.
15
mixing. African heritage could only disappear when mixed
with white blood. If African descended peoples living in
Chile reproduced exclusively with each other, the stain
of their blood would not be reduced but magnified as
their mestizo heritage would ultimately fade away over
generations. As such, Palacios exhorted all Chileans with
any African heritage to marry the lightest Chileans
possible until they were no longer distinguishable from
the mestizo majority.22
Palacios’s racism was not restricted to African
descended people. In what might be considered surprising
to some, he also had a very low opinion of Latin
descended people, the: Spanish, French, and Italian.
While many of his intellectual opponents advocated for
favored immigration statuses for these groups because
they shared similar cultural backgrounds as Chileans,
Palacios emphatically denied the connection. He contended
that, “The Latin race really shows a singular
predisposition to remain immobile in the old ways and a
certain repugnance in appropriating the last step in the
22 Palacios, Raza chilena, 221-222.
16
mental evolution of the human species.”23 While African
descended people might taint the Chilean race with
impurity, threatening the potential for racial
homogeneity, Latin descended people would cause mental
stagnation in addition to racial degeneration.
It should come as no surprise that Palacios felt
this way about southern Europeans. As a self-professed
Darwinist, he was most likely familiar with the
uncharitable opinion most North Atlantic eugenicists had
of Latin descended people. In a new sort of Black Legend,
Spain was an example of how racial empires failed in the
hands of the weak willed. An excellent example of this
sort of thinking appeared in Francis Galton’s Hereditary
Genius (1869). When explaining why Spain had lost its
empire and had fallen so far from its original grandeur,
Galton argued:
The extent to which persecution must have affected European races is easily measured by a few well-known statistical facts. Thus, as regards martyrdom and imprisonment, the Spanish nation was drained of free-thinkers at the rate of 1,000 persons annually,for the three centuries between 1471 and 1781; an
23 Palacios, Raza chilena, 89. “La raza latina muestra realmente una singular predisposición a permanecer inmóvil en los antiguos métodos y cierta repugnancia en apropiarse el último paso dado en la evolución mental por la especie humana.”
17
average of 100 persons having been executed and 900 imprisoned every year during that period. […] It is impossible that any nation could stand a policy likethis, without paying a heavy penalty in the deterioration of its breed, as has notably been the result in the formation of the superstitious, unintelligent Spanish race of the present day.24
This condemnation of Spain helps to explain why Palacios
sought a Spanish heritage that was coterminous with the
Inquisition. Chilean settlement began in 1540. The
Spanish conquerors that came to Chile left Spain before
the race had completely degenerated. Thus, Palacios
disavowed any real connection with contemporary southern
Europe at all.
The Reception and Legacy of Raza chilena
Raza chilena might merit nothing more than a footnote
if the myth it created about Chilean racial identity was
relegated to the esoteric realms of the Chilean
intelligentsia. However, it was a polemic that received
an incredible amount of press coverage, both positive and
negative. Chileans of all stripes learned about
Palacios’s racial ideology from media coverage. For
example, a book review appeared in La Revista Católica as
24 Francis Galton, Hereditary Genius: an Inquiry into Its Laws and Consequences (London: Macmillan, 1869), 359.
18
early as 1905. The reviewer lauded Palacios’s work. “Very
rarely, and perhaps never until today, has a work more
scrupulous, suggestive and patriotic than this one been
written in Chile, therefore it can be said that it
produces an enormous good for the Chileans who love their
country.”25 This author believed that Palacios’s book was
a patriotic achievement establishing Chile as one of the
modern nations of the world by virtue of its homogeneous
racial character.
In one of the many obituaries written about Palacios
upon his death in 1911, a different author praised the
myth Raza chilena created. The writer claimed that Palacios,
“…gave us that which no one, not even the founding
fathers could give us, our rehabilitation as Chileans, as
a homogeneous race and only engendered by the fusion of
another two good and virile lineages: the Goth and the
Araucanian.”26 Clearly, in only seven years, the notion of
25 Anonymous, “Bibliografia: Raza chilena,” La Revista Católica, August 5,1905, 49. “Pocas veces, y quizás nunca hasta hoy, se había escrito enChile una obra más concienzuda, sugestiva y patriótica que ésta, la cual, por consiguiente, está llamada á producir un bien inmenso en los chilenos amantes de su patria.”26 A. Aguirre Sayago, “El Dr. Nicolás Palacios,” Revista Medica Chilena, June 1911, 191. “…darnos lo que nadie, ni aun los padres de la patriapudieron darnos, nuestra rehabilitacion como chilenos, como raza homojénea i única enjendrada por la fusion de otras dos de bueno i viril abolengo: el godo i el araucano.”
19
Chilean racial homogeneity had gained ground. With no
racial obstacles to overcome, Chile was in prime position
to become one of the foremost nations of Latin America.
Esteem for Palacios and his text continued to rise
even after his death. On the first of January 1926, a
statue commemorating his work was erected at Cerro Santa
Lucia in the center of downtown Santiago. The opening
event was covered by the national daily newspaper El
Mercurio and was attended by then president Emiliano
Figueroa Larraín and a number of state ministers.27 El
Mercurio printed this story on the front page demonstrating
that by the mid-1920s Palacios was recognized as one of
the leading Chilean intellectuals of the age. However,
not everyone agreed with this monument to Palacios’s
achievements. In his biography appearing in the Diccionario
Histórico y Biográfico de Chile (1931), the article included this
information about Raza chilena and Palacios’s monument:
There is more delivery than truth, more lyricism than science. It deserved applause and diatribes. Mr. Miguel de Unamuno wrote a passionate and virulent judgment against him…It concluded in this
27 Anonymous, “Se inauguró ayer el monumento al autor de Raza Chilena,” El Mercurio, January 2, 1926.Diccionario Histórico y Biográfico de Chile 458
20
way, ‘It is not shameful that such a book was written, but it is shameful that there were people who took it seriously.’ And some admirers took it soseriously they did not back down in their commemorative offerings until they succeeded in the erection of a public monument in memory of the author of Raza chilena, which turned out anti-esthetic.28
While some Chileans at the time disagreed with his ideas,
the myth of racial homogeneity and general European
heritage in comparison to other Latin American nations
remained.
This was partially because Raza chilena became one of
most important foundational texts regarding Chilean
racial identity.29 While this monograph might have
disappeared with the passage of time, its myth of
Chilean racial distinctiveness was incorporated into
the work of another Chilean intellectual, Francisco
Antonio Encina. Encina was one of Chile’s most 28 [Diccionario Histórico y Biográfico de Chile 1931 457-458] “Hay más declamación que verdad, más lirismo que ciencia. Mereció aplausosy diatribas. D. Miguel de Unamuno escribió contra él un juicio apasionado y virulento, reproducido en El I. del 4 y 5 de agosto 1909. Concluía en esta forma: <No es lo vergonzoso que se haya escrito semejante libro, sino que lo vergonzoso es que haya habido quienes lo hayan tomado en serio.> Y tan en serio lo tomaron algunos admiradores que no cejaron en sus ofrendas conmemorativas hasta conseguir la erección de un monumento público en recuerdo del autor de Raza Chilena, que resultó antiestético.”29 Miguel Alvarado and Héctor Fernandez, “Una narración fundacional para una antropología filosófica chilena: Raza chilena de Nicolás Palacios,” Cinta moebio 40 (2011): 54.
21
important academic figures, having written the twenty-
volume Historia de Chile: de prehistoria a 1891 (1940). Though he
did not include Palacios’s ideas in the exact form they
appeared in Raza chilena, Encina’s text was widely
disseminated among Chilean school children and
popularized most of what Palacios argued in his
monograph.30 It is perhaps this development that
explains why so many Chileans today believe that they
are a racially homogeneous nation with very little
racial difference. Palacios’s argument, filtered
through Encina and passed down over generations, has
now acquired gravitas and respectability due to the
passage of time.
When sociologist Barandiarán assessed Chilean
attempts to measure racial discrimination she came away
with the conclusion that Chileans prefer to understand
difference through the lens of class rather than race.31
As Chileans became universally mestizo they were also
30 Biblioteca Nacional de Chile, “Nicolás Palacios,” in Reforma y nacionalismo en Chile (1910-1931), Memoria Chilena, accessed 1/29/2014 http://www.memoriachilena.cl/602/w3-article-97363.html.Klubock, “Nationalism, Race, and Politics,” 236-237.
31 Barandiarán, “Researching Race,” 169.
22
whitened, regardless of their phenotypic appearance,
thanks to Palacios’s work. It is why so many Chileans now
self-identify as both white and mestizo. It also helps to
explain why so much scholarly literature on Chile is
focused on labor and class issues. Those are the only
social differences Chileans have been taught to see.
23