Indians are drunks and drunks are Indians: alcohol and indigenismo in Guatemala, 1890–1940

• Published in: Bulletin of Latin American research Vol. 19; no. 3; pp. 341 - 356
• Main Author: Garrard-Burnett, Virginia
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Science 01.07.2000; Elsevier Science Ltd; Oxford Microform Publication
• Subjects: Addiction; Alcohol; Alcohol drinking; Alcoholic beverages; Alcoholism; Amerindians; Cash; Contraband; Crime; Criminal prosecution; Criminals; Drunkenness; Guatemala; History (1890-1940); Indians; Indigenismo; Indigenous populations; Literature; Native Americans; Press; Social history; Social problems; Special Section: Rethinking the Nation-State in Guatemala; Ubico; Underdevelopment; Violent crimes; Guatemala; Alcohol; Indians; Ubico; Indigenismo; Crime
• ISSN: 0261-3050; 1470-9856
• DOI: 10.1016/S0261-3050(00)00004-8

This article explores the ways in which the use of alcohol articulated with the discourse of indigenismo in Guatemala between the late 1890s and the late 1930s. In the first decades of the twentieth century, the public language of alcoholism merged with that of indigenismo. By the early 1930s, during presidency of Jorge Ubico (1931–1944), the theoretical conflation of alcoholism and indigenismo was fully evolved, providing a seamless paradigm for those who would place the credited Guatemala's `drunken’ and `racially degenerate’ indigenous majority with the nation's underdevelopment. The article utilises indigenista literature, newspapers, contemporary legislation and judicial records on the alcohol contraband trade and drunkenness to construct this argument.