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In this essay, I am exploring diverse examples of indigenous and mestizo musical instruments in order to underscore the manner in which these instruments can help us to comprehend the political negotiation and location of culture. When I say “cultural location” I refer not only to geographical place, but also to a people’s cultural values and traditions as situated within communities at particular moments in history. As for the “negotiation” of political identity, I am alluding to the process of transculturation through which different and sometimes contradictory elements of national, ethnic and/or social culture combine unevenly. Such negotiation is ongoing and subject to change; there exists no resolution. Strands of culture come to occupy dominant, prominent or subtle aspects of national identity through negotiation and these strands are visible in cultural representations such as music and dance. Although such processes of negotiation are inherent to all types of identity formation, they are particularly noteworthy in Latin American music because of the prevalence of cultural mestizaje. Consider the example of Guatemala’s national dance, the son. Ethnomusicologist Carlos Monsanto describes the dance as “a strange mixture of native rhythms and Spanish melodies” (“extrañas mezclas de ritmos autóctonos y melodías de corte español”). In a sense, this process of blending can be heard in much music in Latin America. Music in the Americas constitutes hybrid mixtures of Hispanic, indigenous and African cultures. The sounds of culture—representations and representers of identity—have been transformed through intense social, cultural and political negotiations. In this essay I will foreground the manner in which many of these negotiations have taken place on, with and through the mediation of musical instruments. I should state from the outset that I am not an ethnomusicologist. I have not conducted fieldwork nor attempted to carry out organological studies of instruments. I am writing, rather, from a perspective of cultural studies, analyzing specific usages of musical instruments in order to trace threads of identity construction that are articulated within and between Indoand Latin America. My analyses focus on exemplary cases in which musical instruments serve as platforms for the negotiation of indigenous, mestizo and national identities. My examples derive from an array of sources—from literary texts, such as Rigoberta Menchú’s testimonial, to anthropological, ethnomusicological and videographic documentary materials from Costa Rica, Guatemala and Mexico. I analyze the commentaries of musicians themselves, and also the observations of scholars and social critics who contribute to the overall discourse on music and identity. I primarily focus on “indigenous” instruments, such as marimbas, chirimías and Indian fiddles, emphasizing their hybrid or transcultural roots. These instruments reveal the process through which

Reading Indigenous and Mestizo Musical Instruments: The Negotiation of Political and Cultural Identities in Latin America