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ABSTRACT
Scholarship on race in Latin America has overwhelmingly characterized racial mixture as a unique feature of the political and social landscape there. Studies of eugenics in Latin America especially highlight the relative pragmatism regarding race mixing in contrast to eugenics elsewhere. However, an acceptance of race mixing did not preclude the persistence of racial hierarchy among Latin American racial theorists. Examining the development of eugenics in Chile, this article reveals how notions of racial plasticity existed alongside that of racial superiority. Specifically, it contends that Chilean racial exceptionalism in the early twentieth century was predicated on the idea that some types of racial mixture were better than others. Conveniently for Chileans, their mostly indigenous and European ancestry was one such preferred combination. Yet, racial mixing was only desirable insofar as it resulted in a homogeneous national population. This combination of ideas functioned much like white supremacy in other parts of the world. Using historical texts, popular and medical periodicals, and visual images produced between 1900 and 1950, this paper will demonstrate how race science in Chile reconciled the nation’s history of racial mixture with its claims to racial homogeneity and superiority relative to the rest of Latin America.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. The research for this article was conducted via a project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme grant agreement No. AdG 695,573 – The Colour of Labour (PI: Cristiana Bastos).
2. McCook used the term in reference to the transnational efforts involved in sugar production. Historians of science in the Latin world have all advocated a more localized approach to better see these developments, see Chambers Citation1993; Glick Citation1987a, Citation1987b, Citation1996; Lopes and Podgorny Citation2001; Schell Citation2013.
3. Concerns about the perceived value of racial purity among eugenicists in the North Atlantic were attributed to the influence of Darwinism. For more complete discussions of Latin American concerns about the intellectual influence of Darwinism, see Novoa and Levine Citation2010, 3–14; Mignolo Citation2010, 58–9. In both cases, these scholars argue that the creation of “Latin” forms of racial thought and eugenics were primarily motivated by elite Latin Americans’ desire to maintain their power relative to increasing European intellectual and political supremacy.
4. It should be mentioned that there have been more recent efforts on the part of Latin American governments to institute programs of coerced sterilization of indigenous women, see Necochea López Citation2014; Pieper-Mooney Citation2010.
5. For Turda and Gillette, the “Latin” world is comprised of Latin America (including Brazil), Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Romania, and French-speaking Switzerland.
6. Gilberto Freyre (1933) made a similar claim in Casa grande e senzala regarding the periodization of active racial mixture in Brazil being mostly confined to the colonial era. The main difference, however, was that Freyre insisted that the mixed race population that resulted from these encounters was a new racial category that demanded respect rather than arguing that mixed race Brazilians were effectively white as Chilean intellectuals did.
7. A selection of his various published works includes: Observaciones sobre Suecia [Observations on Sweden] (Citation1921), Mi tierra: panorama, reminiscencias, escritores y folklore [My Land: Panorama, Reminiscences, Writers and Folklore] (Citation1928), and El Alba: 1818–1841 [The Dawn: Being the History of the Birth and Consolidation of the Republic of Chile] (Citation1931).
8. The origin of the “vanishing race” theory is often attributed to Edward S. Curtis’ The North American Indian series published between 1907 and 1930.
9. In addition to the Instituto de Puericultura, this period saw the establishment of the Escuela de Matronas and the Patronato de Infancia both of which were meant to address infant and maternal health (Illanes Citation2006, 127–8).