This book explores how ideas about race travelled across national borders in early twentieth-century Latin America. It builds on a vast array of scholarly works which underscore the highly contingent and flexible nature of race and racism in the region. The framework of the nation-state dominates much of this scholarship, in part because of the important implications of ideas about race for state policies. This book argues that we need to investigate the cross-border elaboration of ideas that informed and fed into these policies. It is organized around three key policy areas labour, cultural heritage, and education and focuses on conversations between Chilean and Peruvian intellectuals about the 'indigenous question'. Most historical scholarship on Chile and Peru draws attention to the wars fought in the nineteenth century and their long-term consequences, which reverberate to this day. Relations between the two countries are therefore interpreted almost exclusively as antagonistic and hostile. Itinerant Ideas challenges this dominant historical narrative.

Explores the transnational circulation of ideas about race and indigeneity in early twentieth-century Latin America

Focuses on Chilean-Peruvian conversations to show how cross-border debates underpinned national state policies

Reveals long history of transnational indigenous activism and decolonising agendas in Latin America

Autorentext

Joanna Crow is Associate Professor in Latin American Studies at the University of Bristol, UK

Inhalt
Introduction.-
Part I: Labour and Race: Seeing Race in Discourses of Class.
-1. Socialism, Communism, APRA and the Popular Front: Between Rofermist and Revolutionary Language(s) of Indigeneity.

2.- The Land Question.
1. Labour Legislation: Inclusions and Exclusions.
1. The Racial Politics of Dirt and Food: Producing Clean, Healthy Workers.-
  Part II: Cultural Heritage and Race: Contesting Geographies of Civilization.-
2. Weaving the Indigenous Past into the Present: Chile versus Peru or Chile and Peru?.-
3. Machu Picchu and Cuzco: Marketing Inca Peru for International Consumption.-
4. Museum Actors, Folkloric Performances, and Popular Art.-
  Part III. Education and Race: Interlocking Ideals of Salvation.-
5. Expanding the Estado Docente: Modernisation, Nationalism and U.S. Connections.-
6. Discissuion Forums and Collaborative Projects: Peruvians in Chilean Magazines and Chileans in Peruvian Magazines.-
7. Indigenous Voice: Politics, Language, and Knowledge Production.-
8. Conferencing Indigenous Education.- Conclusion.