The Ladino as enemy: the anthropological and historical debate on the Ladino in twentieth century Guatemala

Abstract

This work investigates the different conceptualizations of the Ladino in Guatemala. It examines how mid-20th-century North American anthropology defined the Ladino as the non-Indigenous person, the invader, and the enemy of Indigenous peoples. Several North American ethnographers studied ethnic or racial conflict in Guatemala from questionable metropolitan canons and from the prejudices of white society. The view of the Ladino as the enemy of the Indigenous person ultimately contributed to the project of racial division promoted by Guatemalan plantation elites as they sought to insert themselves into global capitalism. In response, Severo Martínez Peláez called for de-essentializing the opposition between Ladino and Indigenous, and Eric Wolf urged a critique of the lingering traces of racial-degeneration theory in Mesoamerican anthropology. In this work, I trace different approaches to the history of the Ladino as a colonial, fiscal, political, and racial category within Guatemalan society. I conceptualize the Ladino as a reconfiguration of caste society under the impetus of capitalism through the system of Guatemalan plantations. Finally, I call for tracing experiences of common struggle between Ladinos and Indigenous peoples, experiential liminal zones, and even solidarities, in order to reveal racism within class experience and, conversely, class relations within racism.