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Honor And Ethnicity Summary

Decent Essays

In Honor and Ethnicity, Alonso explicates how ethnicity plays differently on the Chihuahuan frontier. Not serving as the basis of labor division as in the Center, the logic of ethnicity on the Chihuahuan frontier is driven by contrasting two antagonistic forces, “civilization-barbarism and reason-animal instinct” highlighting gente de razón (civilized people possessing reason) versus indios bárbaros (barbaric Indian lacking in reason)” (64). She, further, argues that “the discourse of ethnicity was central to an ideology of frontier warfare that legitimated civilization’s use of force and delegitimated barbarism’s use of violence” (69). By juxtaposing the use of violence by the ‘civilized’ Chihuahuan frontier and the ‘barbarism’ Apache, Alonso

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