Introduction to the Dossier: Miscegenation, ethnogenesis and border

Abstract

This volume of Memoria Americana has been dedicated to works that address the issues of miscegenation and the processes of ethnogenesis in different contexts provided by the colonial and state expansion of Latin American space. It must be recognized that the notions of miscegenation and ethnogenesis have inspired studies aimed at highlighting that borders (whether cultural, spatial or racial) are much more tenuous and porous, more complex, dynamic and multidetermined than those that history,  anthropology and a large part of the sources that we use has traditionally presented to us. This, however, does not diminish the need to continue paying attention to the place and role of “cultural difference” in the formation of Latin American societies, to the particular meanings of “mestizajes” and “mestizos” in different contexts and thus pointing out to explain the ways in which the identities of different social groups have been constructed and become what they are.