Word: mestizos
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Mestizo: person of mixed Spanish and Indian blood, as are most Mexican Americans. Gueros have relatively light skins; trigueños are somewhat darker...
...retiring interim President, Otto Arosemena, "is poorer than a porter on Wall Street." The 2% of the population that the government considers to be rich has an annual per capita income of only $1,167. Most of the country's 5,400,000 people-40% Indian, 50% mestizo and 10% white-live in abject poverty, either scratching out a living in the scabrous, rock-strewn Andes or drifting into the reeking slums that blight the cities like open sores. With the disarming candor and detachment of one who is stepping down from power-and is glad of it-Arosemena...
...unique style thus developed under the tutelage of immigrant European craftsmen became known as mestizo (half-breed). It incorporated Christian and pre-Columbian conventions and beliefs, even included Oriental designs (copied from wares that had been imported via Pacific trade routes). The results were too precocious to pass for primitive, and not subtle enough to claim genuine sophistication. But as two current displays of post-Columbian Peruvian art testify, at its best the mestizo style was both lyrical and inventive (see color opposite...
...trades earned the mestizo craftsmen better wages or higher social status than silversmithing. That they worked with surpassing skill can be seen in 210 examples of their wares, selected by the Smithsonian Institution's Richard Ahlborn, that go on view at Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art this month. Silver was plentiful in colonial Peru, and Andean artisans used it for both religious and household articles. Grandees' stirrups alone weighed as much as 40 lbs., and in even the humblest Indian homes were found silver incense burners and boxes...
What dealt a death blow to the mestizo tradition was the introduction of cheap chrome lithographs in the 19th century. At the same time, as silver became scarcer and more expensive, the lower classes increasingly turned to chinaware and crockery. Early mestizo art became a collector's item, disappeared into wealthy homes, or was guarded by churches and convents. Many objects in the Smithsonian exhibition are being loaned for the first time in centuries. After the Metropolitan's showing, the exhibition will be put on view in Lima, enabling Peruvians to rediscover the full range of their forefathers...