Race and Classification: The Case of Mexican America

This symposium explored the controversial topic of race and its visual representation in Spanish America, including Latinos in the United States, and how racial mixing and racial categorization have marked colonial and contemporary Mexico. The event featured a keynote presentation by renowned performance artist, writer, and MacArthur Fellow Guillermo Gómez Peña on the new “post-national Mexicans,” their bitter-sweet relationship with “homeland,” and their role in forming a virtual nation inside the United States known as Latino America Del Norte.

Organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the University of California Humanities Research Institute, in conjunction with the exhibition “Inventing Race: Casta Painting and Eighteenth-Century Mexico” organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.Presented by Univision Communications Inc. and supported in part by a grant from Bank of America. Moderated by UCHRI Director David Theo Goldberg.

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