The History of Anthropology Review (HAR) is pleased to announce the recent publication of Ricardo A. Fagoaga‘s book chapter: “Primeras etnografías en México: su método, su olvido y la construcción de una idea la antropología mexicana.”

In this chapter, Fagoaga explores the history of the Huasteca expedition, an ethnographic fieldwork project carried out by María Atienza, Isabel Gamboa and Luz Islas during the early twentieth century. A short description of the chapter, along with its citation information, can be found below:

¡Tres señoritas recorrieron la Huasteca!was the headline of the Mexican newspaper El Imparcial of September 6, 1908. María Atienza, Isabel Gamboa and Luz Islas, with fellow ethnology students of the National Museum [of Anthropology], did fieldwork in the region known as the Huasteca in San Luis Potosí (Mexico) following ethnographic guidelines to collect information about the indigenous peoples of the region. The newspaper made emphasis on the fieldwork, celebrating women in the field, and to acknowledge a new “scientific era” of Mexican anthropology.

Unfortunately Atienza, Gamboa, Islas, and the male students of the expedition to the Huasteca, are unknown in Mexican and world anthropologies, even if they were fellow students of renowned anthropologists Manuel Gamio.  This chapter is an analysis of one of the very first ethnographic fieldworks in Mexico, following an ethnographic guide done by students, and looking for what they called the “ethnological unit”.

The full text of this chapter (in Spanish) can be found on pgs. 55-61 of Pablo Gatti Ballestero and Lydia de Souza’s (eds) Diálogos con la Antropología Latinoamericana. Montevideo: Asocación Latinoamericana de Antropología, 2018.