The Mesoamerican hard core, between unity and diversity?

Abstract

This paper presents a critica! review of the concept of núcleo duro (solid core), formulated by Alfredo Lopez Austin, which is shared by a mainstream of the current Mesoamerican studies. Starting from the debate around issues of unity and diversity of Mesoamerican tradition, held between the historian and several ethnologists, the author propases a sort of"symptomatic" (Althusser, 2004) reading of López Austin to identify the asswnptions underlying the concept of núcleo duro. Thus, it is shown that the adoption of the postulate of Mesoamerican núcleo duro perilously leads to a quasi-essentialist view of culture that supports what Pedro Pitarch has called the "mesoamerican canon", that is, the overemphasis on historical and archaeological data as a framework far the s tudy of contemporary indigenous peoples of Mexico. Finally, the paper shows sorne challenges far ethnohistorical research that derives from this concept, the need to turn the postulate into hypothesis, andan overview of a possible productive path forresearch arising from the contributions of Alfredo Lopez Austin.