Bianca Brigidi

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Latin American History

Graduate Student
B.A., Pontifica Universidade Catolica do Rio Grande do Sul; M.A., Pontifica Universidade Catolica do

Advisor: Francis Dutra

My project investigates the influence of colonial legal frameworks in shaping racial categories in both colonial as well as postcolonial states, as well as in establishing hegemony over California’s Native Americans. At the same time, this analysis will show that social struggle played a significant and shaping role as the Indians responded to these rules, beginning with the Spanish empire of the eighteenth century and continuing all the way to 1852. This struggle, I argue, reached its peak during the Mexican state period, when Indians encountered a national discourse that met their immediate interests for autonomy over their own lands and labor. The major example is to be found during the Chumash revolt of 1824 and its demands that composed the process of ethnicization. Finally, I am interested in analyzing the history of social and cultural struggle over three different legal regimes spanning 83 years, to give a better understanding of Native Americans’ participation in the making of California history. To look at these groups without acknowledging their agency would be another way of silencing the Indians, producing simply another colonized discourse about them.