OCR Text |
Show 73 turacion Cultural Americana," America Indigena, XIII, No. 4 (October, 1953), pp. 273-290. English summary: The fundamental aims of the indianist movement as given in the Final Act of the first and second Inter-America Indianist Congress are summarized. Special stress is laid on the fact that the Indianist theory has from the very beginning aimed at an integral incorporation of the Indian masses into the respective political nations but with due respect for the Indian masses,,' own cultural values. As to the number of Indians reference is made to the census of Mexico of 1940, recently published; no less than 15% of the population speaks Indian languages; Indian languages are spoken in no less than 80% of the municipalities; there are regions in which, as for instance Yucatan, 80 and even 100 percent of the population speaks an Indian language. There is scarcely any doubt that more than 20 million Indians live in Latin America though part of them speak Spanish and no longer any native languages; the differentiation between Indians, Mestizos and even Whites is indeed a very difficult one. Probably no less than one half of the population of Latin America are mestizos physically or culturally. There are also about 40 million "imported" Natives - the Negroes of the United States, the Caribbean and of Brazil. Thus, out of the 300 millions of inhabitants of America certainly no less than 100 million feel that they are culturally different from Iberian or Anglo-saxon. One may indeed ask whether the cultural particularities of these non-Europeans in America, as language customs, religion, folklore, agrarian economy, have to be considered as cultural values which deserve to be developed. All those material or spiritual particularities which favour the upkeep of the community and the struggle against nature in the interest of all those who compose the group are certainly cultural values. And it is the feeling of modern humanity that the interests of the "group" have to be coincident with those of "mankind." This feeling is the very conquest of the Decalogue, of the Prophets and of the Sermon on the Mount. As far as the Indians like to keep their cultural particularities and as far as these are not contrary to the last mentioned cultural concepts they are values which claim our respect. That respect for these cultural particularities is not creating isolation has been shown by repeated observations. Monolingual Indians are always very inclined to take the opportunity of learning the common national language. Primary education given in the first grades in the native Indian language would probably be the best way to gain the Indian population for the Spanish language, i.e. to make them bilingual. The tribal agrarian community and its deterioration is really not an American particularity. On the other hand the agrarian economy throughout the whole world is on the way to become cooperative and planned: this is a general law and there is no escape as to this in Latin America. It seems but logical to profit by the legal and technical aspects which are common both to the ancestral agrarian Indian community and to the agrarian cooperation of our time. |