The Indians portrayed by Jean-Baptiste Debret are classified by him in the categories of civilized or savages. However, there is evidence of mestizajes both in the images and their corresponding texts. The author presented the Indians, in the images as in the texts related to them, with significant traces of mixture blood. Some apparent contradictions of the author indicate considerable continuity between the so called categories of savagery and civilization and of racial mixture and Indian blood mestizaje and indianity. Indians and mestizos, "savages" and "civilized" interact and and blended both in American societies and in the images and in the images of the author. The aim of this paper is to reflect on these categories of Indians and mestizos and of savages and civilized pleople, developing a more complex view of these categories. The article adopts an interdisciplinary approach which considers the concepts of culture and ethinicity as historical products allowing us to have a new look at the interethnic relations and the processes of mestizaje fusion.
Indians; mestizos; Debret
