Dreaming of Fathers: Fausto Reinaga and Indigenous Masculinism

Fausto Reinaga, writing in the 1950s and 1960s, is today celebrated as Bolivia's greatest indigenous intellectual by people from across the indigenous political spectrum. Few scholars have considered the role of gender in his work. I explore the ways in which Reinaga's project is explicitly the redemption of the Indian man and the ways in which he shows considerable antipathy towards mestiza women and profound ambivalence towards Indian women. Despite being a close reader of Fanon's work, Reinaga does not absorb his analysis of how gender and race intersect. Reinaga's quandaries as he elaborated his project for the 'emancipation of the Indian' and the 'revindication of the Indian man' remain relevant today. A reading of his work offers some insight into why indigenous politicians today so often express such profound ambivalence in relation to their female political companions; and why gender needs to be at the very centre of an analysis of indigenous ideology. © 2010 Taylor & Francis.