Gorn
Is Over Blood
CULTURE AND ETHNIC IDENTITY IN A CONTEMPORARY AZTEC INDIAN VILLAGE
By ALAN R. SANDSTROM
JiSit JiU :i ^i^:,i ;;;;;-;::•.:;•
ISBN: a-fiDbl-SBTI-D
Gorn Is Our Blood
Almost a million Nahua Indians, many of them descendants of Mexico's ancient Aztecs, continue to speak their native language, grow corn, and practice reli- gious traditions that trace back to pre- Hispanic days. This ethnographic sketch, written with a minimum of an- thropological jargon and illustrated with color photographs, explores the effects of Hispanic domination on the people of AmatMn, a pseudonymous remote vil- lage of about six hundred conservative Nahuas in the tropical forests of north- ern Veracruz.
Several key questions inspired an- thropologist Alan R. Sandstrom to live among the Nahuas in the early 1970s and again in the 1980s. How have the Nahuas managed to survive as a group after nearly five hundred years of con- quest and domination by Europeans? How are villages like Amatl^n organized to resist intrusion, and what distortions in village life are caused by the marginal status of Mexican Indian communities? What concrete advantages does being a Nahua confer on citizens of such a com- munity?
Sandstrom describes how Nahua cul- ture is a coherent system of meanings and at the same time a subtle and dy- namic strategy for survival. In the
(Continued on back flap)
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012
http://archive.org/details/cornisourbloodcuOOsand
CORN If OUR BIrOOD
sintli ne toeso "corn is our blood'
CORN 1$ OUR BLOOD
CULTURE AND ETHNIC IDENTITY
IN A
CONTEMPORARY AZTEC INDIAN VILLAGE
BY ALAN R. $AND$TROM
COPYRIGHT © 2012 ALAN R. SANDSTROM
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sandstrom, Alan R.
Corn is our blood : culture and ethnic identity in a contemporary Aztec Indian village / by Alan R. Sandstrom.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Nahuas— Ethnic identity. 2. Nahuas — Religion and mythology. 3. Nahuas— Social life and customs. 4. Veracruz (Mexico : State)— Case studies. I. Title. II. Series. F1221.N3S258 1991 972'.62— dc20 91-50307
ISBN 0-8061-2399-0 (cloth)
ISBN 0-8061-2403-2 (paper)
First edition pubUshed in 1991 as part of the Civilization of the American
Indian series (v. 206) by the University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.
ISBN 978-0-9882580-0-6 (PDF file) Online edition 2012 by Alan R. Sandstrom.
Dedicated to
Esther Plan^on Sandstrom
and to the memory of
J. Russell Sandstrom
NA NI INDIO
Na ni indio:
pampa ijkinoj nech tokajtijkej koyomej
kemaj asikoj ipan ni yankuik tlatipaktli.
Na ni indio:
pampa mokajkayajkej koyomej
kemaj asikoj kampa tlanauatiayaj nokoluaj.
Na ni indio:
pampa ijkinoj nech manextijkej koyomej
para uelis nopan nejnemisej uan nech pinajtisej.
Na ni indio:
pampa ijkinoj tech tokajtijkej koyomej
nochi timaseualmej tlen ni yankuik tlaltipaktH,
Na ni indio:
uan namaj ika nimotlakaneki ni tlajtoli
tlen yaluaya ika nechpinajtiayaj koyomej.
Na ni indio:
uan namaj ayok nij pinauia ma ijkinoj nechilikaj
pampa nij mati para mokuapolojkej koyomej.
Na ni indio:
uan namaj nij mati para nij pixtok
no neluayo uan no tlajlamikiHs.
Na ni indio:
uan namaj nij mati para nij pixtok
no ixayak, no tlachiaHs uan no nemiHs.
Na ni indio:
uan namaj nij mati melauak ni mejikano pampa ni tlajtoua mejikano, tlen inintlajtol no- koluaj.
Na ni indio:
uan namaj tlauel ni yolpaki
pampa ualaj se yankuik tonatij, se yankuik tlanextli.
Na ni indio:
uan namaj nij machilia tlamisa kuesoli
sampa uelis niyolpakis uan nimoyolchikauas.
Na ni indio:
uan namaj sampa yeyektsij nij kaki
ayakachtlatsotsontli xochitlatsontsontli.
Na ni indio:
uan namaj sampa nikinita
uan nikintlakakilia ueuetlakamej.
Na ni indio:
uan namaj sampa nech neluayotia tlaltipaktH,
tonana tlatipaktli.
I AM INDIAN
I am Indian:
because the white men named me thus
when they arrived in this new land.
I am Indian:
because of an error of the white men
when they arrived in the land governed by my grandparents.
I am Indian:
because that is how the white men labeled me
in order to crush me and discriminate against me.
I am Indian:
because that is what the whites called us
all the people of this continent.
I am Indian:
and now this word fills me with pride
the word which yesterday the white men used to jeer us.
I am Indian:
and now it causes me no pain that they call me this
because I know the historical error of the whites.
I am Indian:
and now I know that I have my own roots
and my own thoughts.
I am Indian:
and now I know that I have my own face
my own look and my own feelings.
I am Indian:
and now I know that I am truly Mexican
because I speak the Mexican language, the language of my grandparents.
I am Indian:
and now my heart is happy
because a new day is coming, a new dawn.
I am Indian:
and now I feel that this sadness will soon end,
again my heart will be able to laugh and be stronger.
I am Indian:
and now I can contemplate the beauty of the dance,
and hear the music and the song. '
I am Indian:
and now I can see and hear
anew the elders.
I am Indian:
and now the earth returns to give me roots,
our mother earth.
By Jose Antonio Xokoyotsij, pseudonym of Natalio Hernandez Hernandez, a Na- hua born in the municipio of Ixhuatlan de Madero (1986:50-51).
CONTBNTf
|
Illustrations |
Page xiii |
|
Tables |
xvi |
|
Preface |
xvii |
|
Acknowledgments |
xxi |
|
Transcription and Usage of Spanish, Nahuatl, |
|
|
and English Terms |
XXV |
|
1. Entering the Field |
3 |
|
2. The Village in Its Setting |
50 |
|
3. Amatlan and Its People |
102 |
|
4. Social Organization and Social Action |
150 |
|
5. Amatlan Household Economic and Production Activities 196 |
|
|
6. Religion and the Nahua Universe |
229 |
|
7. Ethnic Identity and Culture Change |
323 |
|
Epilogue |
378 |
|
Glossary |
385 |
|
References |
389 |
|
Index |
403 |
XI
ILLUfTRATIONf
COLOR PLATES
(following page 228)
1. Houses of a patrilocal extended family
2. A typical Nahua house
3. Small girls pose
4. Nahua boys waiting in front of the schoolhouse
5. A Nahua woman at home with her daughter
6. An Amatlan woman poses for her photograph
7. Men from Amatlan resting in front of the municipal palace
8. Men plant a field using dibble sticks
9. An Amatlan woman making a large pottery vessel
10. A shaman sits before his house altar and cuts paper images
11. A shaman chants before an offering to tlaltetata ("earth father" in Nahuatl)
12. A Nahua shaman interprets the pattern of corn kernels during a divination ritual
13. A Nahua shaman divines by crystal gazing
14. A typical altar set up by each household to observe xantoloj ("All Saints")
15. The mecos circle the food set out on benches
16. An Amatlan man kneels and prays before an altar
17. Some of the dancers performing for tlacatelilis
18. Nighttime altar for tonantsij
19. Closeup of an altar dedicated to the corn spirits chicomexochttl ("7-flower") and macuili xochitl {''S-^o^cx")
20. A shaman lays out an array of paper images of wind spirits and sacred herbs
21. A shaman lights cigarettes that he will place in the mouths of malevolent underworld spirits
22. A village shaman brushes his patient with sacred palm brooms
xni
XIV ILLUSTRATIONS
23. Pamela and Michael making adornments for an offering to the earth spirit
24. The author assists a shaman in completing an offering to the earth spirit
25. An adornment called eloconetl {''c\oic child") represents the corn spirit 7-flower
NAHUA RITUAL PAPER IMAGES
1. tlaltepactli ("the surface of the earth," an earth spirit) 262
2. /^/>^// ("hill") 262
3. tepetl{''\\\\\) 263
4. /<?/>^i-^^<9r (mixed Nahuatl-Spanish term meaning "hill lord") 263
5. chkomexochitl (corn spirit, literally "7-flower") 264
6. sttlalij ("star") 264
7. tlixihuants'tj (fire spirit, literally "honorific fire John," from the myth concerning Juan Ceniza, "John Ashes" or Juan Flojo, "John Lazy") 265
8. apanchanej ("water dweller," female water spirit) 265
9. tlacatecolotl {'"mdcVi owl") 266
10. tlacatecolotl sihuatl {''y^'xiz of tlacatecolotl," literally "man
owl woman") 266
11. tlahuelilo ("wrathful one") 267
12. diablo (Spanish for "devil") 267
13. miquilistli ("death") 268
14. miquilistli ("death") 268
15. ejecatl {''Wind,'' disease-causing spirit) 269
16. ^>r/^// ("wind," disease-causing spirit) 269
17. ^><f<^// ("wind," disease-causing spirit) 270
18. <^><r<^// ("wind," disease-causing spirit) 270
19. <^><r<7// ("wind," disease-causing spirit) 271
20. mijcatsitsij ejecatl {''corpses Wind'") 271
21. tlasoli ejecarl Cfihh wind," literally "refuse or trash wind") 272
22. xocAieJecatl C'HowcT wind'') 272
23. xoc^iejecatl C'fiowcT wind'') 273
24. tlasoli ejecatl Cfihh wind," literally "refuse or trash wind") 273
25. apanxinolaj si/iuatl (mixed Nahuatl-Spanish phrase
meaning "lady of the water," literally "water lady woman") 274
26. tlamocuitla/iuijguetl {''guardian' or "witness") 274
27. tlamocuitMuijquetl {''guardian' or "witness") 275
28. tlamocuitla/iuijguetl {"guardian" or "witness") 275
29. tonali ("person's spirit," "heat-soul," "fate," or "destiny") 276
ILLUSTRATIONS XV
30. tonalt ("person's spirit," "heat-soul," "fate," or "destiny") 276
31. tlaxca It yoyomitl {''toxxWXdi napkin") 277
32. tlaxcalt yoyomitl {'\om\\2i napkin") 277
33. tonatij ("sun") 278
34. metsli ("moon") 278
35. sitlalij ("star") 279
FIGURES
3.1. Age-sex distributions in Amatlan, 1972 and 1986 116
4.1. Amatlan Nahua kinship terminology (male speaking) 160
4.2. Amatlan Nahua kinship terminology (female speaking) 164 5.1. Corn price graph and bean price graph 210 6.1. Divination by casting corn kernels 237
MAPS
2.1. Mexico showing state of Veracruz and location of
municipio of Ixhuatlan de Madero 60
3.1. Named subareas in the village of Amatlan 105
4.1. Village households in 1972 indicating male and female kin ties among households located within 150 meters
of one another 169
4.2. Village households in 1986 indicating male and female kin ties among households located within 150 meters of
one another 172
6.1. Major sacred hills in Amatlan Nahua religion 243 7.1. Amatlan "urban zone" in 1986 showing location of houses
and other structures 356
TABLES
3.1. Inventory of possessions found in two representative
houses in Amatlan 112-13
3.2. Varieties of major crops grown in Amatlan 122-24
3.3. Steps in the slash-and-burn horticultural cycle for corn 126 4.1. Stages in the life cycle 182
5.1. Corn productivity in kilograms per hectare (under
moderate to optimum conditions) 204
5.2. Comparison of earning potentials of corn and beans 213
6.1. Major Nahua spirits 256-57
6.2. Rituals, sacred observances, and secular holidays in Amatlan 249-95
XVI
The ancient Aztecs of Mexico are the most famous of the Nahua Indians, almost a milHon of whom today continue to speak their native language, grow corn, and practice religious traditions tracing back to pre-Hispanic days. Although the Nahuas are one of the most populous and important Native American groups, few people recognize their name or realize their connection to the great pre-Hispanic civilizations of Middle America. Fewer still are familiar with basic Nahua cultural features. This work is an ethnographic sketch of the contemporary Nahua village of Amatlan (a pseudonym), written with a minimum of anthropological jargon for the interested nonspecialist. I hope that the work will also be of value to anthropologists, other social scientists, and students in social science courses interested in ethnicity, culture change, and the processes by which traditional people adapt to the conditions of life in a modern nation.
I gathered most of the information on Amatlan through participant observation, the research methodology favored by most anthropolo- gists who study living communities. Participant observation is a method in which the researcher is required to spend long periods of time living among the people he or she wishes to study. During my many months of residence in Amatlan, I was often physically uncomfortable, occasionally fearful, and usually in a state of some confusion, but I was never bored. Long-term research of this type is filled with problems and opportunities, and it is always conducted at the pleasure of one's hosts. In the pages that follow I will attempt to communicate something of what it is like to do this type of research in a Nahua village for those interested in learning more about the mysteries of the fieldwork experience. Despite its shortcomings as a scientific methodology, I remain convinced that participant observa- tion is one of the most powerful tools we have for increasing our understanding of the human condition.
To improve readability, I have used in-text citations sparingly.
xvii
XVlll PREFACE
However, I have deviated from this practice in the instances where I make use of an interesting source of ethnographic information. In the late 1970s, the Mexican government, under the auspices of the Secretary of Public Education and the National Indigenous Institute, established a program to make graduate training in ethnolinguistics available to bilingual Indian schoolteachers. One requirement for com- pletion of the program was that each candidate write a thesis based on ethnographic research among his or her own people. The works were then published in 1982 in a special series entitled Etnolingiiistica. Six of the candidates were Nahuas who wrote about villages in and around the southern Huasteca, the region where Amatlan is located. These schoolteachers produced works that are rare in the ethnographic record in that they contain descriptions of a culture by informed members of the culture itself. The names of the six researchers are Juan de la Cruz Hernandez, Rosendo Hernandez Cuellar, Joel Mar- tinez Hernandez, Agustin Reyes Antonio, Rosa Reyes Martinez, and Joaquin Romualdo Hernandez. Because their works contain valu- able cultural information from the vantage point of insiders, I have cited these authors often, either to confirm an ethnographic point I wish to establish or to refer the reader to additional information on a topic. All works consulted in the writing of this book are listed at the end.
I have organized much of the descriptive material to clarify several key questions that underlie this study. How have the Nahuas managed to survive as a group after nearly 500 years of conquest and domination by Europeans.^ What are the reasons for the continuities we see in Nahua culture, and why have certain changes occurred.^ How are villages like Amatlan organized to resist intrusion of the national cul- ture, and what internal distortions of village life are caused by the marginal position occupied by Indian communities in Mexico.^
The answer to these and related questions lies in the complex process by which the Nahuas have forged and maintained their identity as Indians. Here we enter the realm of paradox. The policy of the Spanish, and later the Mexican government, was to assimilate the Native Americans into an essentially European system. But by sup- pressing native populations and attempting to exercise total control over them, the Spaniards virtually guaranteed that Indian culture would survive. Ethnicity, to some extent, can be understood as an effective defense on the part of a subordinated group against social, political, economic, or military domination. My purpose in this book,
PREFACE XIX
in addition to describing features of life in Amatlan, is to examine how Nahua ethnic identity has adapted native peoples to Hfe under domination. I will not be concerned with the phenomenological prob- lems of understanding what it is to be a Nahua, how Nahuas see themselves relative to others, or how it feels to be an Indian in Mexico, although these are topics that I do not completely ignore. Instead, I want to specify some of the concrete advantages that being a Nahua confers on the people living in a particular village. I hope to uncover some of the underlying motives that lead people to be active in creating an identity for themselves both as a defense against alien elites and as a strategy for creating opportunities for themselves.
Some scholars today object to the use of the word Indian to refer to the Native Americans. They point out that an Indian is a person who fits a social category created by colonialism, a person who has suffered conquest and domination by foreign elites. They further argue that most native peoples do not refer to themselves as Indians. An addi- tional problem is that it has proven exceedingly difficult to attach a precise definition to the term Indian. Nevertheless, I use the term in this book because I believe that it is useful for distinguishing Hispan- ically oriented peoples from those who look to their pre-Hispanic traditions as their legitimate history. The Nahuas call Native Ameri- cans masehualmej, which means ''countrymen" or "Indian farmers," a term that seems too restricted to cover the range of Native American cultures. I do not intend my use of the word Indian to be demeaning or to perpetuate the pejorative categorization of human beings deriving from a dehumanizing colonial past. I use the term because it is familiar to most people, it is found throughout the social scientific literature, and it retains analytical validity if used with care.
Given the danger and potential harm that publicity can pose to traditional people, I have chosen to use a pseudonym for the village. Also, to protect villagers from possible embarrassment or even danger, I have not used their real names. The world has changed significantly since the first trained anthropologists journeyed to exotic locales the world over to bring back early scientific information about other cul- tures. Since then traditional cultures and ethnic groups have been increasingly caught up in international power struggles, and they have often been pawns and victims of unscrupulous governments, multina- tional economic conglomerates, missionaries, and other groups pursu- ing their own agendas without regard for the human cost. In this context, information gathered by anthropologists has become poten-
XX PREFACE
daily useful to powerful interest groups. The village, the people, and the events I have recorded are real, and the descriptions are as accurate as I can make them. I have changed only the names of people and selected locations.
Alan R. Sandstrom Fort Wayne, Indiana
ACKNOWIBDQMBNTS
It is my pleasure to express appreciation to some of the people and organizations who made this study possible. Greatest thanks of course goes to the people of the village of Amatlan who accepted me and my family into their community. The Nahuas are not saintlike, but if I catalogued all of the kindnesses both large and small they showed over the years it would fill a volume larger than this one.
An incident occurred in 1986 that will reveal something of what I mean. One day the eminent French anthropologist Guy Stresser-Pean and his wife, Claude, visited us in Amatlan. Neither I nor the villagers expected them, and in any event there was no way that our visitors could have let us know they were coming. At the time they entered the village, my family and I were attending a curing ritual, and some men came to inform us that my "parents" had arrived. We were delighted that they had come and invited them to witness the close of the ritual. Being experienced fieldworkers, the Stresser-Peans had come prepared with supplies of food; however, by the time we all returned to our quarters a couple of hours later, a child was waiting with freshly made tamales. Every several hours during the two days that the Stresser-Peans were with us a different child would appear with food for us and our guests. No one ever acknowledged that they had sent food and no payment was ever asked. The dishes that people sent were the most valued and delicious examples of Nahua cuisine, requiring much preparation time. .Obviously many families were coop- erating in this effort and the Stresser-Peans had no need to use any of their supplies. This expression of sincere kindness and generosity on the part of individuals with no thought of direct reward was a common occurrence in my years in Amatlan.
Many individuals in the village took a personal interest in my at- tempts to understand their culture and way of life. They spent hours talking with me as I asked question after question about topics that to them must have seemed obvious and boring. Still, throughout it all,
xxi
XXll ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
most people appreciated the high comedy of the situation and tolerated me and my family with grace and humor. As I will demonstrate shortly, they were as curious about me as I was about them, and I like to think that, in our interactions, they discovered something worth knowing about American culture. It is a sad commentary on the world we live in that I feel I cannot thank people by name for fear this will cause them trouble, either from local authorities or from foreign missionary groups.
To my wife, Pamela Effrein Sandstrom, I owe especial thanks for her unwavering support in this long-term effort. Pamela and our son, Michael, have accompanied me on all recent field trips to Amatlan. They are both natural ethnographers with abundant curiosity and a love of adventure. But Pamela is remarkable in the ease with which she adapts to the often difficult and dangerous conditions of life far from any familiar conveniences. She has proven herself outstanding at generating rapport even across a significant cultural and language gap. She made lasting friends among village women and was able to help me understand better their points of view. She also made signifi- cant contributions to the hard work of census-taking and mapping the village.
But Pamela's efforts did not stop when we left Amatlan after our last visit. She has also worked tirelessly to help in the editing of this work. She carefully read the manuscript several times and her excellent suggestions will be appreciated, even if unconsciously, by anyone who reads this book.
I also owe many thanks to my longtime friend John A. Mead for his meticulous editing of previous drafts of this work. John wrote many pages of corrections and suggestions based on his editing abilities and his extensive knowledge of anthropology. John contributed the glossary, and his efforts have significantly improved the quality of this work. I want to thank James M. Taggart for his extremely thoughtful suggestions on an earlier draft of the book. The anonymous reviewer for the University of Oklahoma Press also made many valuable sugges- tions. Finally, I want to thank my brother, John E. Sandstrom, for his worthy comments on the manuscript.
I want to extend thanks to Alfonso Medellin Zenil and Alfonso Gorbea Soto of the Instituto de Antropologia, Universidad Vera- cruzana, for sharing the institute's data with me and for arranging permissions for traveling and working in northern Veracruz. Thanks also to our friend, linguist Roman Giiemes Jimenez of the University of Veracruz, whose mastery of Nahuatl and whose knowledge of the
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XXlll
Huasteca was of great help to us. Roman accompanied us to the village on several occasions and he transcribed and translated much of the Nahuatl text that appears in this work. Thanks also to Virginia Oli- veros, who worked for a time as our research assistant.
I want to express appreciation to Domingo Cabrera Hernandez, schoolmaster and administrative director of the school in Amatlan when I arrived there in 1970. He and his family showed me every hospitality and actively aided in the research. The late Patricio Her- nandez, schoolmaster in Amatlan in more recent years, and his family also were hospitable during our residence in the village. I also want to thank our friends Manuel Torres Guevara and Julio and Ana de Keijzer for making visits to Xalapa a pleasure. A note of appreciation is due to Luis Reyes Garcia and Punciano Ortiz. And finally, for introducing me to the area, Christina Boiles and the late Carlos Boiles deserve special mention.
I wish to acknowledge the assistance of Frances Karttunen for her help with the Nahuatl. She gave generously of her time and did me the favor of introducing me to Geoffrey Kimball, an expert on Huastecan Nahuatl. Geoffrey spent many hours going over each of the terms included in the text and helped in translating some of the more difficult words. William Klemme generously offered his invaluable assistance in improving my translations of Spanish texts. Frans J. Schryer helped a great deal by sending me copies of data he collected among Nahuas in the Huasteca Hidalguense. Richard Bradley was kind enough to forward a copy of his dissertation based on research he conducted in southern Veracruz. To Georgia and Mark Ulmschneider I owe many thanks for their contributions leading to our acquisition of a four-wheel drive vehicle for our 1985-86 research.
I wish to thank Kenneth Balthaser, director of the Learning Re- source Center (LRC) at Indiana-Purdue University at Fort Wayne (IPFW) for his generous assistance over the years. Ken has done everything possible to facilitate my research, and his efforts have improved the quantity and quality of my results. To photographer Elmer Denman of LRC, I owe a debt of gratitude for his assistance over the years. James Whitcraft, an artist at LRC, did an excellent job finalizing details on the charts and maps that appear in this work. I want to thank my sister, Susan E. Sandstrom, and Robert Bradley for visiting us in Amatlan and for their support in this work. And for the numerous times they offered their help, Edwin and Dorothea Effrein deserve many thanks.
I also want to extend thanks to John N. Drayton, Editor-in-Chief
XXIV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
of the University of Oklahoma Press, for his support, as well as to the various staff members of the Press who have become our friends.
The research was supported by a number of grants from different organizations. I wish to acknowledge the United States government NDFL Area Studies Program, and the following Indiana University programs: Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies; Office of Research and Advanced Studies; President's Council on International Programs; President's Council on the Social Sciences; and the IPFW Grants for Summer Research Program. I also received major funding to support the fieldwork phases of the work in the form of a Fulbright Post-doctoral Research Fellowship (award #1035214) and an Organiza- tion of American States Research Fellowship (award #F96735).
THE TRANUMPTION AND Uf AQB OP f PANIf ll# NAHUATL, AND BNQLIf H TERMS
The Nahuas speak an Uto-Aztecan language called Nahuatl and as such it is related to several North American Indian languages including Ute, Paiute, Hopi, and Comanche. English has borrowed many famil- iar words from Nahuatl, for example, the terms chocolate, tomato, chile, peyote, coyote, ocelot, and shack. I have included many Nahuatl terms in this book, and my methods of transcription and translation require some explanation.
My knowledge of the language is mostly in the spoken form and, although I have studied Nahuatl grammar, I claim no expertise as a linguist. Throughout my research in Amatlan I have relied on bilingual informants for the transcription of words and texts. Most Nahuas of this region of Mexico do not read or write their language, and in fact only an occasional schoolmaster or Nahua who has been able to attend urban educational institutions has any facility with written Nahuatl. At this point there exists no standardized transcription system agreed upon by literate Huastecan Nahuas. Beller and Beller are linguists who have recently published a method for Huastecan Nahuatl (1984), but it is clear that they are dealing with a slightly different dialect from that spoken in Amatlan. Stiles (1976-79) has a brief course for beginners including a dictionary of yet another dialect, and I only recently discovered a grammatical sketch by Kimball (1980) of the Huazalinguillo dialect of Huastecan Nahuatl.
Because I believe that the Nahuas have the right to set the transcrip- tion standards of their own language, I have relied heavily on the systems employed by my bilingual research assistants. Although this system only approximates the actual sounds of the spoken language, it has the advantage of being far more accessible to the nonspecialist than would a literal transcription. I would like to add here that the absence of a standardized system for transcribing Huastecan Nahuatl and my reliance upon various bilingual research assistants over the years has produced a degree of inconsistency in my published render-
xxv
XXVI SPANISH, NAHUATL, AND ENGLISH TERMS
ings of Nahuatl. In fact, linguists who have worked on Huastecan Nahuatl have not always been consistent either, which compounds the problems of ethnographic researchers like myself. In any case, anyone familiar with the language should have little trouble recogniz- ing words and phrases that I have transcribed in this and previously published works. Where there are inconsistencies or clear errors in the transcriptions of words, I have relied on the work of the Bellers to make corrections. Where I have had difficulty translating a Nahuatl word or phrase into English I have included a more literal translation in parentheses following my English rendering. Finally, I acknowl- edge the contribution of two linguists who are experts on Nahuatl who have kindly checked all of my transcriptions and translations.
In general the letters used to transcribe Nahuatl words are equiva- lent in sound value to their Spanish counterparts. Following are excep- tions to the Spanish pattern: "x" is equivalent to "sh" as in shop, "j" is like the English "h" as in house, "tl" is a single sound with the "1" released simultaneously on both
sides of the tongue, "u" followed by a vowel has a "w" sound as in Spanish, but a silent "h" appears before the "u" when it begins a syllable or when it is between vowels; thus the word "cuahuitl" (tree or wood) is pro- nounced "kwawitl."
The glottal stops occuring in the Amatlan dialect of Nahuatl are predictable and I have not marked them. A glottal stop occurs before all vowel-inital words, between any two vowels that have a morpheme break between them, and following a final vowel in a word. Final "n" is generally devoiced but it is retained in certain words such as "apan" (water place) and "mictlan" (death place).
In general, stress in Nahuatl is on the penultimate syllable. Excep- tions are indicated with an acute accent mark ('). Vowel length is a feature of Nahuatl, but I, along with my research assistants and most linguists who have worked in the Huasteca region, do not mark it. It is apparently not necessary to mark vowel length in the overwhelming number of cases. In certain transcription systems, double letters are used to indicate the internal structure of words. Again following the practices of the Bellers and my local assistants, I do not use this method. To avoid prejudging the significance of concepts in my ethno- graphic descriptions, I have not used capital letters in Nahuatl words. When quoting Nahuatl words published by others, I have retained their spellings and translations. Finally, when I write "in Nahuatl"
SPANISH, NAHUATL, AND ENGLISH TERMS XXVII
throughout the text to distinguish indigenous words, please read "in this particular dialect of Nahuatl" because I do not wish to imply that what is spoken in Amatlan is necessarily representative of the language as a whole.
I have used the Random House Dictionary of the English Language, second edition unabridged (1987), as my authority for word usage in English. Both Nahuatl and Spanish words are set off by italics the first time they appear in the text. Certain Spanish terms, however, such as "arroyo" and "mestizo" have, according to the editors, entered the English language to the point that it is no longer necessary to write them in italics. When in doubt, I have followed their editorial judg- ment in these matters.
CORN If OUR BLOOD
CHAPTER 1
On the evening of December 24, 1972, I was seated in the corner of a small thatch-roofed shrine deep in the tropical forests of northern Veracruz, Mexico. The shrine is located in Amatlan, a Nahua Indian village of just under 600 people and the site of my first anthropological fieldwork. I was in a state of high anticipation as I watched people make preparations for a major ritual dedicated to tonantsij, a mother deity associated with fertility. Although I had lived in Amatlan for several months, this was the first time people had invited me to witness an important village event.
Outside, men wearing colorful headdresses constructed from bam- boo, folded paper, long ribbons, and mirrors shook rattles as they performed traditional dances mimicking planting and harvesting. Off to one side, men and boys squatted around glowing beeswax candles and a smoking incense brazier preparing palm and marigold adorn- ments for the main altar inside the shrine. More and more people began to arrive, each bearing food offerings or additional palm leaves and marigolds for the adornment makers. Inside, two pairs of musicians played the lilting and eerily beautiful sacred music of the Nahuas on guitar and violin. Thick clouds of copal incense smoke perfumed the air, obscuring the yellow light given off by the dozens of beeswax candles that lined the altar.
As helpers adorned the altar, men, women, and children entered the shrine, faced the altar, and walked down its length bowing. Sud- denly, out of the darkness appeared Reveriano, the tall, imposing, and slightly mysterious head shaman of Amatlan. I had tried to contact him on several previous occasions without success. He peered at me long and hard through the swirling activity and then squatted down to chant before the altar. Assistants brought in four chickens, and the shaman, after censing them and chanting, quickly wrung their necks. As he laid the still-fluttering bodies of the chickens down in front of the altar, helpers brought him his sisal carrying bag. Out of it he
ENTERING THE FIELD
carefully removed a pair of scissors and a folded stack of colored tissue paper.
Reveriano was a man of powerful personality and great assurance of movement. He proceeded to select sheets of paper, fold them, and cut out intricate figures that, when unfolded, resembled small human beings with their hands raised by the sides of their heads. They were fantastic creations with headdresses that resembled animal horns, benign facial expressions, and patterns of holes cut from the body. While the shaman worked I tried to contain my excitement and remain inconspicuous as I began to realize what I was witnessing. Ritual paper cutting was practiced extensively by the pre-Hispanic civilizations where it played a major part in religious observances. The craft was suppressed by the Spaniards and later by missionaries who associated it with the Native American religions they were trying to eliminate. And yet here in Amatlan, almost 500 years after the Conquest, ritual paper cutting was apparently a central feature of religious practices (see Lenz 1973, 1984, and Sandstrom and Sandstrom 1986).
The shaman, who suddenly took notice of me again, raised his hand, and shouted for the musicians to stop playing. I became uneasy, unsure of what was to follow. He picked up a smoking brazier filled with red-hot coals and, while the hushed crowd look on, walked over to where I was sitting. He stood over me and began to blow incense smoke up and down until I was enveloped in a rosiny, pine-scented cloud. He then led me to the center of the shrine, and as we squatted he began to explain the ritual. He told me about tonantsij and about the offerings that would be made later that night. He explained why each house in the village was visited by a procession during the first days of the religious observance. Finally, he pointed to the neat stack of paper figures and revealed that they represented malevolent wind spirits that viciously attack people and cause disease and death. The figures would be used to cleanse the shrine before the main offering to tonantsij. After these explanations, the shaman waved his arm, the musicians resumed their playing, and the ritual continued until 10 o'clock the following morning.
On that memorable night in December, my position in Amatlan changed forever. Instead of dangerous intruder, I would now be treated more as a harmless ignorant outsider. This is a big step in the fieldwork enterprise. After the tonantsij ritual, I had shared a signifi- cant experience with the people, and it gave us a common ground for interaction. But at the time, of course, my main feeling was of relief. I was pleased that I had not been escorted out of the inner sanctum
ENTERING THE FIELD
of the shrine, and I was amazed that Reveriano had taken the trouble to explain what he was doing. This was touched with a feeling of embarrassment at the thought that I had interrupted what seemed to be the most sacred part of the ritual. As I was invited to more events, I learned that Nahua rituals are characterized by a sense of informality and that such interruptions are easily tolerated.
At the same time I had the overwhelming feeling that night that I had been privileged to witness something rare and absolutely amazing. Here was a ritual, deeply felt by the people in attendance, that traced back to the days before the Conquest. I was struck by the continuity with the past and the fact that cultural systems are far from ephemeral. The ritual contained elements from Spanish Catholicism to be certain; Nahua culture is far from static. But as I hope to show in this book, the core of Nahua religion and world view is Native American and not European. I want to show that the people of Amatlan have used their traditions to forge a cultural identity for themselves that has allowed them to survive as a people. They, along with the other Indian groups of Mesoamerica, blended the old with the new to create a remarkable and resilient cultural system that over the centuries has allowed them to overcome conquest, near extermination, bloody war, and exploita- tion by European and native-born masters. Nahua culture is not a quaint survival; it is a subtle and powerful instrument wielded by a people who wish to endure and thrive.
Nahua Indians first came into contact with Europeans in 1 5 1 9 shortly after Hernan Cortes and his Spanish soldiers landed on the shore of what is today the state of Veracruz on the east coast of Mexico. The Nahuas were united by a common language (although it was separated into several dialects) and a common Mesoamerican cultural tradition. Most of them lived in the central highlands of Mexico where the massive Sierra Madre Occidental and the Sierra Madre Oriental moun- tain ranges meet. But the Nahuas were divided into a number of sometimes mutually hostile groups, the most well known of which were the Colhua-Mexica, better known as the Aztecs, and their impla- cable enemies, the Tlaxcalans. With the help of the Tlaxcalans, Cortes conquered the Aztec capital on August 13, 1521, thus ending Nahua hegemony and initiating the colonial period of Mexican history.
Under Spanish domination the Native Americans of Mesoamerica withstood one of the most brutal colonial regimes in history. Within 100 years of the Conquest the region's population was reduced by as much as 95%. Entire areas were depopulated. Disease claimed most lives, but the Spaniards, through neglect, forced labor, and outright
ENTERING THE FIELD
murder, were to blame. Over the centuries the decimated Indian populations began to increase, and in isolated pockets the people began to reconstruct their cultural traditions. Today there are approxi- mately 800,000 people who speak Nahuatl, the Nahua language, many of them continuing to live in small villages or towns in the central highlands of Mexico (Horcasitas de Barros and Crespo 1979:29).
The village of Amatlan is located in the lowlands of northern Vera- cruz, to the north and east of the central highlands and thus outside of the main Nahua population concentration. Village and regional history will be sketched in a subsequent chapter, but the inhabitants of Amatlan are historically, linguistically, and culturally connected to the ancient Aztecs. Ethnohistorical sources affirm that several Aztec emperors launched invasions into the region, and large tracts of coastal territory had already been conquered before the arrival of the Span- iards. More direct evidence of Aztec heritage comes from the village itself. A man from Amatlan refers to himself as a mextjcatl, the same word an ancient Aztec would have used to identify his group affiliation. In fact the name "Mexico" means "place of the Mexijcaj (or Aztec) people," a name that recognizes their political, military, and economic dominance in this region of the New World.
BACKGROUND AND AIMS OF THE STUDY
Few contemporary American anthropologists go to the field with the aim of writing a generalized description of the culture being investi- gated. Most field research in cultural anthropology is problem oriented in that it seeks to accumulate information that will be useful in solving or at least casting light on a specific theoretical issue. Problem orienta- tion is a legacy of earlier fieldworkers such as Margaret Mead, who was one of the first to realize that general descriptions are of limited use in the formulation and testing of sociocultural theories. In any case, total descriptions are impossible to achieve. All cultures are infinitely complex, and all descriptions entail theoretical assumptions on the part of the researcher even though they may be unstated or even unconscious.
My original purpose in going to Amatlan was to analyze Nahua magico-religious beliefs and practices in relation to ecological adapta- tion and economizing behavior. The goal was to explain as much of the ritual and symbolic system as possible with reference to its effect upon and derivation from horticultural practices and other production activities and the ways villagers chose to allocate their scarce resources.
AIMS OF THE STUDY
I found that much of Nahua behavior in Amatlan could be understood in terms of social and economic exchange and that even rituals were viewed by the villagers as a form of exchange between humans and spirit entities. These initial findings formed the basis of my doctoral dissertation.
The work presented here develops from that original research pro- gram. Before stating my present aims, however, I would like to explain the scientific problems I plan to examine and provide the context for the approach that will clarify these problems. What follows, therefore, is a summary; most of the issues presented will be considered in greater detail later in the book. A key question underlying this study is how and why do traditional cultures persist in the face of massive worldwide change.^ Traditional cultures the world over have risen to meet the challenge of modernization, industrialization, and Western- ization, and, just like many Indian groups in Mexico, they have man- aged to survive to a remarkable degree. Before the crash of the interna- tional oil market in 1982, Mexico had one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Yet thousands of villages like Amatlan persist all over the country. In this book I will examine the part that villagers themselves have played in maintaining their cultural identity.
In attempting to understand the persistence of traditional cultures, I am led to consider other related questions. How do communities like Amatlan fit into the nation as a whole.^ What role do they play in national life.'^ As we will see later in this chapter, anthropologists and other social scientists have struggled to understand the place of the Indian community in rapidly developing Mexico (and the persistence of traditional communities in other parts of the world). Often tradi- tional peoples survive as subjugated minorities, ruthlessly exploited by a dominant group. Why do villagers perpetuate traditions and lifestyles that can be used to justify exploitation. ^^ How are Indian communities organized to perpetuate traditional culture.'^ What fea- tures of village life encourage the continuance of tradition, and how do villagers insulate themselves from outside influence.^ The issues involved are extremely complex, and there is little agreement among experts on how to clarify them. Finally, how are certain features of village life distorted by social, political, and economic forces that originate at the regional, national, and international levels.^ Even the most remote village is linked to the rest of the world by a network of ties and must respond to forces generated outside itself.
None of these questions admit of easy answers. The most I can hope to accomplish in a single study is to clarify some of the key issues
8 ENTERING THE FIELD
and suggest fruitful appoaches to the problems. Two conclusions from my study of Amatlan must be kept in mind from the start, however. Although these conclusions may appear self-evident, I believe that many scholars have failed to grasp them and that this failure has contributed to the difficulties of understanding the place of the tradi- tional community in Mexico. The first is that the villagers are quite capable of acting rationally on their own behalf. There is no need to invoke blind obedience to strange customs to account for their behav- ior. This assertion will become clear in the discussion of Nahua farming practices and the relation of the village to the market system. The second conclusion is that Indian culture is neither static nor opposed to change, and in fact many changes in village life have been self- generated and achieved through traditional means. But if the villagers make rational decisions and they are not opposed to change, how do we explain the persistence of traditional cultures within a modern nation-state.^
I believe that we can make progress in understanding the enduring presence of Indian communities in Mexico (and traditional communi- ties throughout the world) by focusing on the processes by which ethnic groups are forged and maintained. Traditional cultures Hke that of the Nahuas often exist as ethnic enclaves within larger nation-states. In a sense, ethnicity is the response of a group of people to the threats and opportunities they face in a world they do not control. People are motivated to create and maintain an ethnic identity for specific reasons. I will examine Nahua ethnicity to find out how being a Nahua in a nation of non-Nahuas confers advantages upon the inhabitants of Amatlan.
I will discuss the concept of ethnicity in the next chapter, but here it suffices to state that ethnicity clearly has to do with culture and differentiation. Members of ethnic groups consider themselves to be culturally distinct from other groups. Of necessity, ethnicity is based on contrast and requires at least two groups to have any real meaning. Ethnic identity emerges, then, where two or more groups interact with each other on the basis of perceived cultural differences. In some cases ethnicity is ascribed to people against their will by the members of a dominant group, although in fact there has been no previously estab- lished ethnic identity. It is rare, however, for the subordinate group to remain passive in this circumstance, and in most instances members of suppressed populations will respond by developing an ethnic iden- tity. In this book I am not directly concerned with ascribed ethnicity, although I will return to the topic in the concluding chapter. I am
AIMS OF THE STUDY
more interested in showing how and why a group in a population creates an identity by which it distinguishes itself from other groups.
Nahua culture as it exists today undoubtedly derives from processes of ethnicity that have their origin in the colonial period. Ethnic identity was also important in pre-Hispanic Mexico, but the cataclysm of the Conquest altered forever the old social arrangements. Nevertheless, the Nahuas possess a culture that is based to a large extent on traditions tracing back to the pre-Hispanic era. Like all ethnic groups, the Nahuas often define themselves in contrast to other groups and in particular to the Hispanically oriented and dominant mestizos (see Chapter 2). Nahuas differ culturally from mestizos in a number of important ways, including language, motor habits, living arrange- ments, technology, and most significantly, religion. When in public, however, a man communicates his identity through his striking white costume, tire-tread sandals, and sheathed steel machete hung at his side. A woman proclaims her Indian identity with her spectacularly embroidered blouse, colorful skirt, and strips of bright cloth braided into her hair. These symbols say, "I am an Indian" to all the world and yet, paradoxically, every one of these items is of Hispanic origin. This fact implies that Indian culture is not a simple survival of pre- Hispanic traditions in remote villages. Rather it suggests that Indian identity is actively and creatively pursued by villagers, that it is a rational response to the conditions of their lives.
It is instructive to examine what the Nahuas of Amatlan choose not to use as an ethnic marker. As we will see in Chapter 6, Nahua religion is quite distinct from what most North Americans and most mestizos would recognize as standard Roman Catholicism. Nahua religious beliefs and practices derive largely from pre-Hispanic traditions and thus set the Nahuas apart from mestizos. Yet villagers are careful to identify themselves to outsiders as Catholics. Villagers clearly recog- nize the distinction between their own religion and standard Catholi- cism, and still they call themselves Catholics. In fact the one clear test of whether an individual is an Indian or mestizo is whether or not the person participates in traditional rituals. There are historical and political reasons why Indians do not wish to identify as non-Catholics, but the point I want to make is that villagers make an active choice in the symbols of their ethnic status. They are not passively carrying forward fragments of some remote pre-Hispanic past.
The core of this work is a description of selected aspects of life in Amatlan. Following a venerable anthropological tradition I will trace the effect of macroscopic forces originating on the national and interna-
10 ENTERING THE FIELD
tional levels on the lives of real people. I will chart village-level responses to the social forces of our time as well as the great cataclysms of history. I will examine how the Nahuas of Amatlan respond to their place in Mexico and the world. In my description I will attempt to link specific features of village life to the strategies the people have developed to forge and maintain their identity as Nahuas. Finally, I will document recent changes that have overtaken the village, changes that threaten the status quo and promise to undermine Nahua identity. I will show, for example, how the workings of the Nahua political and kinship systems are subverted by a land shortage imposed by outside forces. In my descriptions of village life, I will not attempt to distin- guish in a systematic way pre-Hispanic features from those that were imported by the Spaniards. As we have just seen, in establishing their Indian identity the villagers themselves do not seem concerned over questions of aboriginal authenticity.
The majority of data presented here were gathered between 1970 and 1977. These years constitute the ethnographic present of my description of Nahua life in Amatlan. However, each time I return to the field I discover new information, and I increase my total grasp of village life. Thus, although the ethnographic data were collected for the most part in the early- to mid-1970s, they are organized and analyzed according to my most recent understanding of Nahua culture. When I make an observation or present data from the period after 1977 I will specify the years to which the observation or data pertain. Information I gathered after 1977 appears, for the most part, in the last two chapters.
Fieldwork is a never-ending process, and any field report is a tempo- rary resting point in time and space in a continuous struggle to under- stand cultural processes. Although the focus of this work is a small village of fewer than 600 people, village life — like human life every- where— is exceedingly complex. Despite the restricted scope of this study, it is an axiom of anthropological research that global processes are best isolated and analyzed as they are reflected in the lives of real people. My work there will never be complete, but I hope that in this endeavor to make sense of the microcosm of Amatlan we may gain an increased understanding of village life and its transformations every- where.
Several classic ethnographic studies of the Nahuas have been pub- lished by anthropologists over the years. Redfield (1930) wrote a well- known community study of the small town of Tepoztlan located near Cuernavaca, in the state of Morelos. In his study he focused on
AIMS OF THE STUDY 1 1
Tepoztlan as an example of a relatively homogeneous folk community. Lewis (1951) provoked a debate within anthropology with his restudy of Tepoztlan in which he disputed many of Redfield's interpretations of Nahua culture. Madsen (1960) studied San Francisco Tecospa, a small Nahua community near Mexico City and was able to connect many practices and beliefs he documented with those recorded in the ethnohistorical literature. Nutini has written a number of detailed studies of highly Hispanicized Nahua communities in the state of Tlaxcala focusing on kinship (1968), ritual kinship (with Bell 1980, and 1984), and the religious observance of All Saints (1988).
Montoya Briones (1964) published a study of the Nahua commxunity of Atla located in the Sierra Norte de Puebla (in Puebla state), an area adjacent to the Huasteca region and Amatlan. He describes a conservative community in which many beliefs had survived, some- times in modified form, from the pre-Hispanic era. Chamoux (1981b) has written a community study of Teopixca, a Nahua village located near the city of Huauchinango in the Sierra Norte de Puebla. She examines Nahua identity in the context of Indian-mestizo interaction and shows how being an Indian is functional for individuals on a number of levels. Focusing on Indian communities also located in the northern Sierra de Puebla, Taggart has produced studies of Nahua kinship (1975b) and gender relations as reflected in oral narratives (1983). He found that kinship is an important factor in Nahua social organization and that gender relations are affected by historic as well as socioeconomic factors. Nutini and Isaac have written a survey of contemporary Nahua communities in the Tlaxcala-Puebla region (1974), and Madsen (1969) summarizes what is known about Nahua Indians in general.
Very little work has been published on Nahuas of the Huasteca. Provost (1975) has written a dissertation on the village of Tizal in the southern Huasteca in which he analyzes Nahua cultural principles. My own dissertation (1975) focused on the interpretation of Nahua ritual in Amatlan. Reyes Garcia published a study of Carnival in a Huastecan Nahua community (1960) and has summarized features of Nahua culture in the region (1976). This listing does not exhaust the published works on contemporary Nahua culture, but it gives an idea of the range of studies undertaken. My work in Amatlan adds to the published research on the Nahuas by presenting information on a highly traditional community that has managed to retain its Indian identity to a high degree. Amatlan shares many cultural features with other Nahua communities reported upon by researchers, but the small
12 ENTERING THE FIELD
village study remains relatively rare in anthropological scholarship on Mexico. My work in Amatlan is intended to help fill this gap in our knowledge and add a further dimension to our scientific understanding of Nahua culture during a period of rapid change.
ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE STUDY OF CULTURE
The study of Nahua ethnicity is, in the end, about culture and about how culture persists and is transformed. In this section, therefore, I will briefly discuss the concept of culture along with some of the methods and motivations that have guided anthropological research. Culture in its anthropological sense is the evolving totality of learned behavior, ideas, and values shared by members of social groups. The first scientific formulation of the concept of culture was made in the latter part of the nineteenth century by the early English anthropolo- gist Edward B. Tylor. The concept was used to help explain what the Europeans of the day regarded as the exotic or quaint practices of foreign peoples. The concept of culture took on a new significance in this century when trained scholars began to conduct on-site field research and publish reliable information on non-Western peoples. Although nothing about anthropology required that researchers restrict their studies to non-Western peoples, the discipline developed that reputation early and retains it to this day. The purpose of cross-cultural study was (and is) to obtain a better sample of the range of human behavior so that social scientific theories will be objective and universal in scope. For this purpose all cultures are equally valid expressions of human nature, and thus all cultures contribute equally to our increasing understanding of human conduct.
The early contact that fieldworkers had with people from alien cultural traditions paid unforeseen dividends. Fieldworkers returned home with a whole new level of respect for traditional cultures. Often arrogantly dismissed by other Western scholars, traditional cultures proved to be coherent, complex, and often elegant solutions to the problems of being human. Long-term immersion in foreign cultures led early scholars to improve our understanding of the phenomenon of culture itself. It led to the creation of powerful new concepts that elucidate sociocultural systems. Equally important, it caused social scientists to view our own cultural system in a new light, to view the familiar as strange and thus render it amenable to analysis. How else would we know that most Anglo-Americans use an Eskimo-type kinship terminology or that a wedding is a rite of passage.'^
THE STUDY OF CULTURE 13
The research method most used by anthropologists is called partici- pant observation. It requires that the researcher Hve among the people being studied and that he or she participate in daily life while at the same time making systematic observations. It may sound easy but it is not. The project is long term, usually over 1 year, it involves learning the native language, and it means living a life that is unfamiliar and not always pleasant. Fieldwork is hard work in an alien context. But that is the whole point; to let the newness of the situation work its magic and allow the researcher to see what even the people living the culture often cannot.
Participant observation is a general approach to social research that is composed of a variety of specific methodologies. Fieldworkers must undergo training to learn such techniques as mapping, using aerial photography, census taking, conducting structured and unstructured interviews, linguistic analysis, administration of psychological tests, sampling techniques for all types of observations, eliciting kinship data, and using a variety of equipment such as still and movie cameras and tape recorders in data gathering. There are also several techniques for eliciting highly specialized kinds of cultural information. These include the creation and administration of questionnaires (if the field situation allows it) and highly developed procedures for gathering data on cognitive categories. The most successful field projects use a variety of these techniques both to retrieve new data and to check earlier observations. Many books have appeared in recent years on the subject of methods and techniques in anthropological research, including Ber- nard 1988, Collier 1967, Naroll and Cohen 1973, Pelto and Pelto 1978, Spradley 1979, 1980, Vogt, 1974, and Werner and Schoepfle 1987.
In participant observation, the trained fieldworker is the instrument of research, and herein lies a problem. Culture is pervasive and largely unconscious in human beings, and this includes the researcher. There- fore the researcher brings to the field a set of orientations and values that affect the information being gathered. In addition, the fieldworker is trained in the Western scientific tradition that in turn will affect the selection of data gathered. This is a problem faced by all sciences, but it is particularly acute in cross-cultural studies. Many techniques have been developed to lessen the influence of the observer upon the data he or she finds, but no complete solution to the problem exists. When reading this account of the Nahuas it should never be forgotten that I am giving my own version of their culture. What I have written is probably not identical to what the Nahuas themselves would have written, but, on the other hand, they do not have the advantage of
14 ENTERING THE FIELD
being outsiders and hence of being somewhat objective about their own culture.
Despite the many advantages of participant observation in contribut- ing to a scientific understanding of culture, it would be misleading to imply that ethnographic fieldwork in anthropology is motivated solely by intellectual curiosity or the desire to obtain a better sample of the range of human behavior. There is a less tangible factor involved that affects the kinds of information retrieved and the development of explanatory theories in anthropology. Fieldwork has a mystique and romance about it that can transcend its scientific purpose.
Most cultural anthropologists are partially motivated by a sense of adventure in travel and in living in circumstances that are out of the ordinary. Perhaps it is a legacy from the earliest fieldworkers who often caused a sensation when they returned home with information about faraway peoples. But the image of the intrepid explorer meeting strange new peoples is also a theme in Euro-American history and strikes a chord in contemporary popular culture. Both true and fiction- alized accounts of expeditions into the unknown provide themes for movies, television shows, books, and magazines and are always popular fare among the public. Cultural anthropology is part of that adventure- seeking tradition and has even helped to define it.
Ethnographic fieldwork based on participant observation provides the romantic mystique that tantalizes anthropologists and the general public alike. We imagine the lone scientist living in some remote mountain or jungle village interviewing people about esoteric aspects of rituals or kinship. Margaret Mead in Samoa, Bronislaw Malinowski in the Trobriands, and Franz Boas among the Eskimos give cultural anthropologists a self-definition and job description that separates them from generalized social science. The experience of fieldwork is considered a necessary rite of passage for students before they can legitimately claim to be professional anthropologists. In the wake of cutbacks of funds supporting research during the 1980s, this criterion of professionalism is weakening, but it is still strong.
Part of the negative results of this romantic side of ethnographic fieldwork is an inclination to emphasize the more exotic discoveries or the behavior that deviates most from familiar Western practices. Here is one reason why anthropological accounts often stress ritual cannibal- ism, food taboos, matrilineality, blood sacrifice, and bizarre sexual practices. These are interesting customs calling out for description and explanation, but they can overshadow everyday behavior that may be less dramatic but more important scientifically. Although it is true that
THE STUDY OF CULTURE 15
one of the contributions anthropology can make is to document the complete range of human behavior (hence justifying the stress on the exotic), the overall goal of the discipline is identical to that of all social sciences: to propose and test scientific explanations for human behavior.
The romance of fieldwork in anthropology is thus a necessary part of the discipline, but it can interfere with its scientific mission. It is part of the "cultural baggage" brought along with the fieldworker mentioned earlier. But critics of the participant-observation method and of cross-cultural studies in general often have a false view of ethnographic fieldwork and of all science. Anthropological fieldwork is a systematic attempt to gather information on another culture. It is the search for cultural data that can be verified or falsified by others. Wherever possible information is quantified, photographed, taped, or video recorded. The fieldworker is faced with a chaos of information coming in bits and pieces, and it is his or her task to propose a way to construct a version of the culture in a coherent fashion. No scientific presentation should be considered the final word on a subject. Ethnog- raphy, like all science, produces a tentative formulation subject to revision, and it is self-correcting through critical evaluation by peers.
The aura that surrounds ethnographic fieldwork is a key to under- standing a core value of contemporary cultural anthropology. Field- work is an adventure, and it has its moments of high drama. It involves hardship and the thrill of discovery, both central elements in stories and myths. Most of all, it is an experience with deep psychological and emotional implications that can change the life of the fieldworker. The relationship between the researcher and his or her subjects in participant observation is unique in all the social sciences. The people being studied become friends or at least allies in the study of their own culture. Attachments formed in the field are particularly intense and often last a lifetime. In the end, most fieldworkers develop a strong admiration for the people and the culture they have come to know so intimately. Leaving the iield can be far more traumatic than entering it. It is small wonder that fieldwork itself is surrounded by stories and myth.
None of this invalidates ethnographic information nor the methods by which it is collected. The fieldworker must become personally involved in the research because of the nature of the methods being used. Separating out various sources of bias is a problem to be faced and cannot be avoided by simply depersonalizing the data collecting techniques. Anthropologists learn techniques of objective observation
16 ENTERING THE FIELD
as part of their training, and like all scientists they succeed to varying degrees. What is important is that anthropologists' cultural accounts are documented and open to correction and that readers of their work are aware of the problems of human beings studying human beings.
MY INTRODUCTION TO THE NAHUAS
My first encounter with the Nahuas occurred in the summer of 1970. It is a meeting I shall never forget. At the time I was a graduate student in anthropology, and I was chosen to participate in a pilot field school in Mexico. I was not particularly enthusiastic because Mexico was not a major interest of mine, but I was anxious to experience fieldwork and the thrill of getting to know an alien culture firsthand. The director of the project was a firm believer in the "sink-or-swim" method of field training, and thus it did not trouble him that I spoke very little Spanish and not a word of Nahuatl.
There were four graduate students selected to go to Mexico, and we were each to be placed in Indian villages widely separated from each other in the remote reaches of northern Veracruz. Once every 2 weeks we were scheduled to meet in a small, centrally located market town to discuss our progress and problems. No matter that maps of the region did not exist, that there was no communication in or out of the area, or that most of the people had seen few foreigners before. Our group assembled in the city of Xalapa, capital of Veracruz state, for a final round of preparatory seminars and to obtain the official permissions necessary to travel into the rural areas. We departed by bus a week later and traveled toward the north all night, arriving in the frontier oil town of Poza Rica the next morning. We transferred to an overcrowded third-class bus with little intact flooring and no glass in the windows for the trip to the interior. After leaving paved roads, we crossed the broad Rio Pantepec on a rickety ferry and left urban civilization behind.
The bus bounced over the ruts for hours as the tropical sun turned the vehicle into an oven. We passed through streams and flooded areas left by the seasonal rains as the road deteriorated into a trail. I began to feel a mild panic that we were getting too far into the interior where escape would be no easy matter. After several hours most of the remaining passengers were Indians heading back to their villages after attending to some business in town. It was amusing to see people board and do double takes as they first caught a glimpse of the group of dirty and exhausted Anglos in their midst. At midafternoon the bus
INTRODUCTION TO THE NAHUAS 17
lurched to a stop, unable to pass a quagmire created by the previous rain. We grabbed our equipment and proceeded on foot as the bus slowly turned around and abandoned us. The other passengers, accus- tomed to such inconveniences, disappeared into the forest carrying their belongings.
We slowly trudged along in the broiling heat, catching an occasional glimpse of a thatch-roofed Indian house in the forest. Smaller trails led off into the brush on either side, but we stayed on the main road, hoping to reach the tiny market town of Ixhuatlan de Madero by nightfall. It was at this inopportune moment that several of us experi- enced equipment failure. One colleague broke a thong on her hiking sandal and had to proceed barefooted. The strap on my backpack snapped, turning the pack into an awkward bundle that was extremely difficult to carry. Actually, I was glad it happened because the straps had cut deeply into my shoulders and I could not have endured them much longer anyway. We walked for 3 hours before reaching the Rio Vinazco. We arrived overheated, injured, and deeply fatigued. I was absolutely amazed at how quickly we had become truly miserable and demoralized. But then our luck changed.
As we sat at the river's edge, wondering how we would get to the other side of its broad expanse, a man approached and offered to pole us across in his dugout canoe. The trip across was death defying as the canoe dipped and spun in the raging current. Once across we faced a 3-hour walk to our destination. After we had traversed about half of the distance, a pickup truck from a local cattle ranch stopped to offer us a ride. We gladly accepted and arrived in Ixhuatlan at dark. We found room in the only boarding house in town, and by that time even the plank bed looked wonderfully inviting. But sleep was not to be ours that night. A local meeting of rural schoolteachers turned into a riotous party that lasted until dawn.
The next morning, after gathering information and necessary per- missions from local authorities, our director took the other 3 students and accompanied them in search of likely villages for their research. I remained in town with his Mexican wife that day, awaiting his return. The director arrived that evening, and the next morning the three of us departed along the road we had traveled the day before. They had planned to return that evening and so carried no equipment with them. Only I was burdened with my defective pack and a carrying bag. Our destination was Amatlan, a Nahua village listed by the Ixhuatlan authorities and suggested by state anthropologists back in Xalapa as a representative village of its type. Although no one had studied Amatlan
18 ENTERING THE FIELD
or any villages in the vicinity, a Mexican anthropologist had passed nearby while on an exploratory mission in the mid-1950s (Medellin Zenil 1979, 1982). He reported that Amatlan appeared to be laid out in the pre-Hispanic pattern and that pre-Hispanic statues were still being venerated in neighboring villages. This was certainly intriguing information. As we walked along that day it suddenly occurred to me that the villagers may have managed to maintain their fascinating traditions by rejecting all intrusions by strangers.
The fieldschool director and his wife assumed background positions and forced me to handle any eventualities that arose. We met very few people as we walked but whenever we did, I asked directions to Amatlan. What I did not know at the time is that people in this region have a complex attitude toward direct questions. If they do not know the answer to a question, they consider it rude to say so. Rather than insult the questioner they will simply tell the person what they think he or she wants to hear. Once you become aware of this practice, it is fairly easy to determine that the person you are asking is groping for the answer to your question. The slight hesitation or the overly enthusiastic response are dead giveaways. But at the time I was un- aware of this custom, and so I tended to believe what people told me. At one man's suggestion we turned into the forest near the river and were instantly engulfed by an eerie green silence.
According to our last informant, Amatlan was supposed to be about 15 minutes along this particular trail. After walking for half an hour we began to grow anxious. Tropical forest trails are not as idyllic as one might imagine them to be. Rather than sunny thoroughfares, they are more like narrow tunnels — branching, labyrinthine, dark, and suffocating tunnels that make retracing your steps an impossibility. We longed to meet somebody again to ask directions but then, with bitter irony, I reflected, "what good would that do.^" We had been walking for 6 hours at this point, since leaving Ixhuatlan that morning. The temperature was over 100 degrees, and the humidity was stifling. We came upon a rushing stream that cut across the trail. Removing shoes and socks we carefully picked our way across the slippery bot- tom. In the next hour we crossed a total of six such streams, some of them almost waist deep.
Two hours after we had entered the forest we were all becoming panicked. We had not seen a single house or human being on the trail. Evening was approaching, and none of us relished a night alone in the forest. It was with some relief then that I spotted a small board attached to a tree with the words "Comunidad de Amatlan." I later learned that
INTRODUCTION TO THE NAHUAS 19
the village schoolmaster had placed the sign there so that visitors would not get lost. My relief was immediately tempered by the thought of the next problem, namely what should I say to the people I was about to encounter. I had rehearsed this moment in my mind a hundred times, but all of that left me as we walked on, soaking wet from the stream crossings, filthy dirty, thirsty, and exhausted.
The trail led to a cleared area in the forest with four horses grazing on the thick tangled grass. At the far end of the clearing were some small low buildings with mossy ceramic-tile roofs. Nearby was a larger building with a corrugated iron roof, undoubtedly the schoolhouse. In the thick forest that surrounded the clearing, I could see Indian houses with tall, peaked thatched roofs. The atmosphere smelled of cooking fires, and a haze of smoke hung over the forest. Dogs began to bark and the horses started, but so far not a soul was in evidence.
We approached the school buildings, but no one appeared to greet us. Finally, I sat on my pack and waited as my companions left to wash and cool off in a nearby stream. I began to wonder if the village had recently been abandoned. In about half an hour a small man dressed in dazzling white and carrying a Collins machete with a 30- inch blade in a dark leather sheath appeared at the edge of the forest. He approached me with determination in his step, and I began to get an uneasy feeling. I stood erect as he walked up to me. He looked at me and said in broken Spanish, "What are you doing here.'^" I must admit at that moment I was not sure of the answer, and the canned response I had rehearsed seemed totally out of place. I told him that I had come from the United States to ask permission to live in Amatlan for a while in order to study the customs of the people there. I said that I was interested in studying how corn is grown and how houses are built. None of this made the slightest impression on him. Finally, I got lucky when I added that I want to study Nahuatl so that I could talk to people. He perked up and said, "You want to learn Nahuatl.'^" I said yes and handed him the letter of introduction from the local authorities. He held it upside down, examined the official seal, and then turned around and walked back into the forest.
Five minutes later the man reappeared leading several dozen men, each wearing the traditional white tunic and pants and carrying a sheathed machete. Apparently they had retreated into the forest to observe our approach. They surrounded me and my companions, who had just returned from the stream, and the man, who was seemingly the village leader, asked why I wanted to learn Nahuatl. I explained that I wanted to learn the language so that I could talk to people and
20 ENTERING THE FIELD
that many Mexicans speak Nahuatl and that therefore it is an important language to learn. It did not make any sense to me either, but the headman repeated it in Nahuatl and the men entered into discussion among themselves. I could not tell how it was going, but I did notice that it was getting dark. Darkness comes fast in the tropics, and the night is remarkably black a hundred miles from the nearest electric lights. The headman asked what I had in the pack and indicated that the crowd wanted to see. I opened it and everyone examined the contents, passing my things around amid intense discussion.
Admittedly I did not have much of interest or value having lightened my load several times in the previous three days. But I did not like the feeling of having a group of strangers passing my possessions around and discussing them in a language I did not understand. Appar- ently they could see that I was getting anxious, and everyone carefully handed the things back to me. At this point I did not know what to do next. I know that if it had been possible for me to leave and to return to the United States at that moment I would have done it. I wondered why I was there and whether I was cut out for this work. I was miserable and wanted everyone to leave me alone, and yet I was the one who had come to Amatlan. I had intruded on these people, and I resented them for it. At that black moment four figures mounted on horseback emerged from the forest and headed in our direction.
It was the schoolmaster and his wife and sons returning from the market. I witnessed yet another classic double take as they rode over. They introduced themselves and asked what we were doing there. I explained, and then the headman, the schoolmaster, and several other men held a conference. The schoolmaster read the letter of introduc- tion to the assembled men and a brief conversation ensued. They decided that I could spend the night in one room of the two-room schoolhouse because school was out of session for the summer. My companions were to sleep in an abandoned hut attached to the school. They opened the door to the schoolhouse and I carried my pack inside. The room was small, but it had a stone floor and would do for one night. I made no arrangements for obtaining a more permanent residence nor for having food prepared because I was firmly committed to the plan of leaving the next day, never to return. As I was trying to unpack by flashlight, the schoolmaster carried in a makeshift cot made of burlap bags. He said casually that I probably should not sleep on the floor because of the tarantulas and scorpions. The blackness seemed to close around me as I gratefully accepted the cot.
As I sat there trying to think of alternative careers for myself, I
INTRODUCTION TO THE NAHUAS 21
realized how completely exhausted I was. I had gotten drinking water from the schoolmaster's wife, and I could actually sweat again. The heat was oppressive and took away any desire for food. Sleep was all I could think of when out of the darkness more than 100 men, every one of them carrying a machete, crowded into the small schoolroom and stood there silently. I lighted a small candle stub I found and tried to assume a casual air as I arranged and rearranged my things. Finally I took a risk and announced that I was tired and that I was going to sleep. There was a pause, and then one man repeated my statement in Nahuatl. A conversation broke out, and the headman approached holding out his hand. I grabbed it thinking that a vigorous handshake was in order. His hand withdrew rapidly and went for the black machete handle at his side. He came forward again and indicated that a proper handshake is to touch fingertips lightly. The men lined up, and I touched everyone's fingers in the proper manner. They all laughed, said "tomorrow" in Nahuatl, and left. I had just had my first lesson in Nahua etiquette.
That night it rained so hard that I thought the building would collapse. The beating on the tin roof was like the roar of a locomotive, and the lightning and thunder were spectacular. At dawn the headman came and stood outside of my door without making a sound. This was another lesson in Nahua protocol, and it was only by accident that I happened to open the door to find him there. Nahua visitors do not make their presence known right away in order to avoid interrupting the household they are visiting. I later developed the skill to be able to tell when someone was silently waiting outside. I learned that my companions had left several hours before in the pre-dawn hours with- out telling me. I remember feeling abandoned and alone. The head- man asked for the packets of rice and beans I had brought with me. He placed them in his carrying bag and then invited me to follow him to his house. I could barely keep up with him on the trail even though I was a foot taller than he was. Upon arriving at his house I was treated to more Nahua hospitality — a special tiny visitor's chair set out for guests.
As several women prepared food over a smoky fire, the headman said that there would be a meeting of the village household heads that evening to decide whether or not I could remain. In the meantime he offered to have food prepared for me and to show me where it was safe to bathe in the arroyo that nearly encircles Amatlan. He wanted to know how long I intended to stay. I did not know what to say, but I heard my voice respond two months. The previous night I had
22 ENTERING THE FIELD
planned to leave immediately, but that morning I realized that I was not in physical shape to face the long trail back loaded with my supplies and equipment. I needed some time to recover and besides, where would I go? I decided to give it a few days to see what developed. The interaction was somewhat friendly but formal and guarded. It was clear they did not know what to make of me, but I was grateful that the headman had set about solving the problem of my living arrangements.
I spent the day in the vicinity of the schoolhouse. It was not neces- sary for me to wander throughout the village to meet people because everyone seemed to have business on my front porch that day. At first I thought it was some kind of meeting, but I soon realized that I was the attraction. It was interesting being the center of attention for about the first hour, but then it became a burden. There was lots of laughing and staring and a few unsatisfying attempts at interaction, but it was exhausting trying to communicate across the language and culture barriers. Finally I decided to close the door and go to the arroyo to bathe. To my horror most of the crowd followed me and sat on shore to watch the proceedings. This lack of privacy was to prove one of the most difficult aspects of fieldwork and one to which I never quite became accustomed. In any event, the crowd was friendly, and they only cast occasional glances in my direction.
That evening men slowly gathered in the clearing in front of the schoolhouse. They were the heads of households meeting to discuss my case, and I counted 1 10 individuals who showed up. The meeting was yet another lesson in Nahua culture. There appeared to be no organization nor any formal procedures being followed. As some men lounged around holding private conversations, others stood up and spoke with no one seeming to listen. Sometimes two or three men would stand and speak simultaneously. The audience remained inat- tentive, even when the headman rose and held up the letter of intro- duction. After about 45 minutes of seeming pandemonium, most of the men got up and drifted away as slowly as they arrived. I was convinced there was a serious problem regarding my case, and I made mental preparations to leave on the following day. The crowd dis- persed, leaving only a few hangers-on smoking homemade cigars en- gaged in quiet conversation. An hour later the headman and several other men came to break the news. They informed me that it was decided unanimously that I could stay, and that furthermore I could continue my residence in the schoolhouse. A widow was found who agreed to cook for me for the wage of 50 pesos (then $4 U.S.) per
INCIDENT AT CHOTE 23
week. I also learned that several other important items of business were decided that night, all by unanimous vote.
The surprise decision meant that I could stay if I wanted. The big question remaining now was, Did I want to.'^ Over the next few days as I developed a routine and as I was able to explore the village and surrounding area, I developed a curiosity about Amatlan that was to prove decisive. What was going on beneath the placid exterior of this place.'^ The village was dotted with pre-Hispanic ruins covered with thick undergrowth. What was their history.^ I could see that the village was arranged in groupings of beautiful thatch-roofed houses scattered widely in the tropical forest. How was the village organized.^ What were the people like, and how did they see the world.'^ It was like an enticing mystery waiting to be solved. After a few weeks the mystery deepened as I discovered flower-covered shrines built over freshwater springs in the forest. Once, while going to bathe, I surprised two men standing in the arroyo holding candles. Standing between them was a naked 10-year-old boy, and one man was rubbing his back with smooth stones from the water. What were they up to.'^ I stayed on 2 months and vowed as I left to come back to the village as soon as possible.
The pilot field school was never funded, and so no further expedi- tions have been sent into the region. I returned to Amatlan for over a year in 1972-73 to conduct research for my doctoral dissertation and again for several shorter periods in subsequent years. In 1985-86, I went back to Amatlan for 1 year, this time accompanied both by my wife and 3-year-old child. Finally, the three of us spent several months in the village in the spring of 1990. The outcome of an initial field encounter with people from an alien culture hinges on many factors. The personalities of the local leaders, whether or not there has been recent political infighting, and the availability of housing are all circum- stances outside of the control of the fieldworker. Success takes perse- verance to be sure, but luck plays a major role. It is impossible to develop the natural curiosity that is necessary to conduct field research if living arrangements cannot be made or if the initial experience in the field site is overwhelmingly negative. Of the four graduate students to participate in the pilot project I was the only one to return to the region.
THE INCIDENT AT CHOTE
The following case study provides an introduction to some of the features of village life to be described and analyzed in later chapters.
24 ENTERING THE FIELD
It dramatically illustrates the deep divisions that can tear apart the social fabric of even remote villages. The incident reveals the danger- ous passions that can be aroused as national and international issues become linked to local conflicts and are fought out among villagers. Most of all the tragedy at Chote brings out into the open what is often obscured. The incident vividly demonstrates the subordinate position of the Indian village in the nation and world.
In early 1977, Pedro Martinez from Amatlan was murdered as he walked with a friend to the distant town of Ixhuatlan de Madero. I was not in the village at the time of the killing, but I was able to piece together what had happened by interviewing witnesses and participants in the events surrounding the tragedy. By luck I was able to read the sentencing document prepared by the judge who heard the case and so had access to the findings of the official investigation. The court document was written in Spanish, the language of the trial, and it contained quoted testimonies of the defendants and witnesses. I present this case for what it reveals about village dynamics in the politico-economic realm. A traumatic event such as this reveals what is often hidden and brings to the foreground what lies just out of sight and consciousness. Small villages often are the stages upon which life and death struggles are enacted, the ultimate causes of which derive from national-level political and economic forces far removed from the awareness and scrutiny of the actors in the local drama.
When I first entered Amatlan, I was struck by its isolation and almost idyllic serenity. With no electricity or motorized vehicles, and with the dense forest muffling every sound, life seemed peaceful and calm, quite unlike the often raucous chaos of daily existence in a Mexican city or town. I knew about the violence of the colonial era with its genocidal reduction of Indian populations. I also knew about the brutality that led up to the Mexican Revolution, and the unbelievable devastation it produced in the cities and countryside. I was aware that city newspapers often reported on contemporary violent struggles over land in the southern Huasteca. But all of that seemed far away from village life where peaceful afternoons were only disturbed by a single high-flying jet that the Indians said was loaded with gringos going to Mexico City. It was only after several months in residence that I began to realize how much violence and fear form a part of villagers' lives.
The incident directly involved five men, but in the end most people in the village became participants. At the center of the action was Pedro Martinez, a well-proportioned young man with a handsome
INCIDENT AT CHOTE 25
face. Pedro was a leader with a quick mind who never shrank from a fight. Quietly confident, he was a compelling speaker who could produce in his listeners the same outrage at perceived injustice that he felt so strongly himself. To his enemies he was a troublemaker; to his allies he was perceptive and courageous. I often saw him walking with one of his children on the way to market or to visit with friends. His brother, Gregorio, shared Pedro's quick mind and striking appear- ance, but he projected more of an air of aggressiveness. His temper flared at the hint of insult, and he seemed to be hiding a grudge or some deep personal injury. He possessed a charismatic personality and took great pride in being an Indian farmer. He had much energy and provided well for his family.
The third protagonist was Lorenzo Hernandez, a man of about 35 years with a stocky build and the air of a man accustomed to command. I knew Lorenzo better than the others, and I found him to be some- what grim but highly intelligent and quick-witted. He was very friendly to me, but at the same time he struck me as someone who would make a dangerous adversary. He was politically minded and a prominent sponsor of village rituals. Of all the people I knew in Amatlan, Lorenzo was the most direct in his speech and at times he appeared almost brusque. He was one of those people of powerful personality who can intimidate with a look and who does not mind pointing out to people when they have made a mistake. The last two men involved in the incident played relatively minor roles. One, a teenage boy named Martin, accompanied Pedro on that fatal morning. Martin was a quiet person, accustomed to being in the background. I had the impression that he joined Pedro Martinez's group because of the attention he received from the older men rather than from commitment to any political cause. The final figure is Lorenzo's nephew, a man I knew quite well and who, in this case, seemed to be a victim of circumstance.
Pedro Martinez held the village office of Presidente del Consejo de Vigilancia at the time of his death. The Consejo de Vigilancia is a committee of local men elected to oversee village affairs and to insure that the will of the majority is carried out by officials. Pedro's brother Gregorio occupied the important village post of Presidente del Comisa- riado Ejidal during this period. The Comisariado Ejidal is a committee that oversees important aspects of village internal affairs particularly as they relate to land issues (see Chapter 4 for a more detailed explana- tion of these committees and their officers). Under normal circum-
26 ENTERING THE FIELD
Stances, having brothers occupy important village offices tends to smooth local operations. In this case, however, the two brothers were deadly enemies who often fought in the presence of others.
Pedro was the elder brother and thus had inherited most of the land owned by his father. Land was in short supply, and Gregorio fell into a bitter dispute with his brother over a parcel passed down by their father. Moreover there were political differences between the two brothers. Pedro had worked for a short time in a restaurant in Mexico City and had become active in socialist politics. He returned to Amat- lan a confirmed member of the Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores (Socialist Workers Party, or PST), and he began to attract a following among the villagers. Gregorio was a member of the mainstream Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Party of the Institutionalized Revolu- tion, or PRI). One might think that political differences of this type would have little meaning in an Indian village that is so far removed from the centers of national power. In this case, however, the stakes in the battle between the PST and the PRI were more than symbolic.
The self-appointed PRI spokesman in the village was Lorenzo Hernandez, whose better than average command of Spanish qualified him to represent people to higher authorities. He formed a faction, which included Gregorio Martinez, composed of men who had no land of their own or who had insufficient land to support a family. He collected money from these men and went to the city to plead with party and government officials that more land be allocated to the people of Amatlan. Bureaucracy in Mexico can be remarkably slow in acting, and the solicitations went on for many years. Initially, Pedro Martinez was a supporter of Lorenzo in his efforts and even became his ritual kinsman when Lorenzo's wife gave birth to a child. Over the years, however, resentment began to grow among villagers, and a rumor circulated that Lorenzo and his friends were stealing the money given to them. On one occasion Lorenzo and two friends were ob- served eating in a restaurant in the provincial town of Alamo when they were supposed to be in the state capital meeting with PRI officials.
Pedro Martinez became leader of the opposition to Lorenzo's fac- tion, and the stage was set for tragedy. The event that apparently triggered the killing was a dispute over village land distribution. Ac- cording to law, land is to be distributed evenly among household heads in the village. This law is sometimes circumvented in a number of ways, and Lorenzo was accused by his growing opposition of having more than his share of property. He denied guilt, but Pedro took up the cause and proposed that all land be redistributed evenly in accord
INCIDENT AT CHOTE 27
with the law. This proposal must have threatened more village land- holders than just Lorenzo, and the controversy, fueled by numerous other rumors, standing disagreements, and outright confrontations, reached the boiling point.
Two versions of what happened predominate, one from Lorenzo Hernandez and the other from the victim's brother, Gregorio Martinez. According to Lorenzo, Gregorio became increasingly agitated over the actions of his brother. Following is a translation of Lorenzo's testimony as it was recorded in court documents at his trial for murder. I have edited sections to improve readability.
Yes, it is true that on various occasions Gregorio Martinez said to me that we should do something to his brother, to kill him, because he is becoming so troublesome. He said this to me because Gregorio was Comisariado Ejidal and Pedro was Consejo de Vigilancia but they were never in accord. Gregorio was PRI and Pedro was PST and they were never in accord in the running of the village.
On Friday the 14th of that month Gregorio came to my house at about 6:30 in the evening. He told me that on the following morning his brother, Pedro, was going to leave to have a meeting with fellow party members. He confided that he feared Pedro was contracting with others to have him killed. He said that he was sick and tired of his brother, that it would be best to get him out of the way, and that he wanted me to accompany him. I figured since Gregorio wanted to kill his own brother that if I went along I would be considered less responsible for what happened than he would. Gregorio asked if I would borrow a gun for him to use. That is why at about 7:00 o'clock that same evening I went to my nephew's house to borrow his shotgun. He only had one cartridge left, and I told him that I would pay for it later if I used it. I told him I wanted the gun to shoot ducks.
The next morning at about 7:00 o'clock Gregorio returned to my house, whistled for me to come outside and meet him, and said that we must go because it was already late. At this time I handed him the shotgun. We hurried to the place called Chote near where the trail goes down a steep decline and hid ourselves in a thicket. In a little while Pedro came walking along with his friend Martin and passed close to us. Gregorio stood up, bending underneath the bushes and shot his brother in the face with the single cartridge. Martin, splattered with Pedro's blood, was dumbstruck and stood there a moment before running away as fast as he could.
Gregorio, seeing that Martin was far away, jumped out of the thicket and went over to his brother who was already dead. So that no one would suspect what happened, Gregorio robbed the body. We left Pedro on the trail, his face torn apart by the shotgun and his blood soaking into the dry earth. Upon returning to the village, Gregorio said that we should go to
28 ENTERING THE FIELD
our houses and say nothing. I returned the gun to my nephew, and after a while I went to the weekly communal work party that was assembling at the schoolhouse.
Later Martin came to the village and reported where the body was and we all went to Chote. People immediately recognized that the deceased was Pedro, and Gregorio, my nephew, and I became suspects. The police came from Ixhuatlan de Madero and took us to jail. It is true that I confessed to many things in Ixhuatlan but what I said is not what really happened. I was beaten by the police and then dunked in a tank of ice- cold water until I told them what they wanted to hear. The fact is that I was there in the ambush but Gregorio, Pedro's very own brother, was the one who pulled the trigger.
Gregorio's story differs from that of Lorenzo. According to the court document he stated that he did not really know who killed his brother. He claimed that several witnesses could prove that he was at the schoolhouse work party at the time of the murder. Further, he stated that Lorenzo and his brother were deadly enemies and that Lorenzo was vehemently opposed to having the plots of land measured and allocated to each household head. He, too, renounced his earlier confession that he claimed was elicited by police torture. In short, Gregorio turned the suspicion back on Lorenzo even though they were former allies against Pedro and the PST faction.
An investigation was held over the next several months while Lo- renzo, his nephew, and Gregorio were held in jail. Martin, the murder victim's companion, refused to testify for fear that the killers or their friends would retaliate. The villagers lined up in their testimony according to which faction they supported. Witnesses swore that Gre- gorio was at the work party during the murder and that he could not have committed the crime. Others swore that Lorenzo was with them at the time of the murder and that he could not have done it. It was even stated that Lorenzo did not really borrow the shotgun from his nephew. At the end of the initial investigation, the picture was con- fused and seemingly without resolution. Many villagers were begin- ning to think that Pedro was killed by gunmen hired by local ranchers. Ranchers were in fact worried that Pedro was succeeding in his efforts to have ranch land redistributed to local Indian villages.
All three men were charged with murder, and a trial was held to determine the varying degrees of responsiblity each had for the crime. A break in the case occurred when Martin was convinced by the police to testify about what he witnessed on the day of the murder. Following is his testimony on the day of the trial that I have translated from
INCIDENT AT CHOTE 29
the court document. Again, I have edited the statement to improve readabiHty.
Out of fear I did not testify before about who fired the shot that killed my companion Pedro Martinez. But the truth is as follows: on the day of the crime I accompanied my friend Pedro until we reached the place called Chote. I heard a shot from a shotgun come from our left. My companion fell mortally wounded face up on the trail. From surprise I stopped for a moment and turned toward the place from where the shot came. I can now give account that the man who fired the shot was Lorenzo Hernandez. I could see perfectly well because it was daytime and I know him perfectly welL I can say this with no fear of confusing him with someone else. Knowing full well that Lorenzo is an extremely dangerous individual I fled from that place swearing to myself never to reveal who killed Pedro Martinez.
Now I am testifying because the authorities have guaranteed my personal safety. I have decided to tell the truth even though I have fear of being a victim of reprisal. I further state that I saw no companion of Lorenzo at the time of the shooting.
The judge listened to the case and evaluated all of the confusing and contradictory evidence. The judgment was necessarily based on a weighing of various testimonies rather than the attempt to ascertain some absolute truth in the matter. Lorenzo was found guilty of homi- cide with some extenuating circumstances. He was given 15 years in prison. Both Gregorio and Lorenzo's nephew were absolved of the crime and were freed following the trial. Lorenzo was released from prison after about 9 years, and he returned to Amatlan to resume his life. In fact he returned to the village in 1986 while my family and I were in the field. He invited us to eat at his house "for old time's sake" and informed me that he plans to devote his energies to cultivating his crops and to the celebration of the traditional rituals. He made me ritual kinsman of his 12-year-old son and he confided to me late one night that he did not kill Pedro Martinez.
This murder case even in the simplified version I have presented reflects the complexity and convoluted nature of village politics. More importantly it mirrors some of the dynamics that underlie village life. Paramount among these is the struggle for land. In a sense, competi- tion over land began when the Spaniards first stepped ashore in Vera- cruz almost half a millenium ago. Even though serious long-term land distribution began after the Mexican Revolution, as this case reveals, the struggle between the Indians and the ranchers and among the Indians themselves is far from over. Land shortage is a problem that
30 ENTERING THE FIELD
permeates village life. Witness the altercation between Pedro and his brother Gregorio over their inheritance. Their animosity may have begun in conflicts they had during their childhoods, but what is inter- esting is that their enmity is expressed through a heated quarrel over land. Most villagers interpret any fight between brothers as the result of a land dispute. The land shortage that leads to inheritance customs that divide brothers against each other is one of the underlying causes of this and many other tragedies in the southern Huasteca region.
A key feature revealed by this case is the relative helplessness of the village in the face of outside forces. Lorenzo is selected to represent landless villagers because his Spanish is more acceptable to urban lawyers and bureaucrats. The language and culture barrier between Indians and those in positions of power on a national or regional level can be used against the villagers. They are constantly put in a position of pleading or even begging official authorities for considerations that are often their right by law. Notice also how local police and militia are alleged to torture suspects in order to elicit "confessions." The judge in the murder trial casually mentioned the beatings and water torture in his sentencing document with no indication that such things should be halted or even investigated. Occasionally, the marginal position occupied by Indians in Mexican society works in an individu- al's favor. One reason that Lorenzo was convicted of murder with extenuating circumstances was that the judge noted Lorenzo's "low level of culture," that is, he was "only" an Indian and thus was not to be held fully responsible for his actions. Most often, though, being Indian means powerlessness and third-class citizenship in the eyes of the power elite.
But, paradoxically, there can be a certain power in being powerless, as I will demonstrate in subsequent chapters. Unfortunately the case of Pedro Martinez reveals a key obstacle that prevents villagers from expressing what power they have in an effective manner. Despite their mutual identity as Indians in a hostile world not of their own making, the villagers are divided among themselves. They do not speak with the same voice, and so their message is garbled and under- mined by the lack of consensus. As is often the case, violence deriving from social inequality is directed inward, against other victims of an unfair system. The people of Amatlan had to suffer the double agony of having within their community a murder victim and a murderer, not to mention a village hopelessly divided against itself. The struggle was a confrontation between brothers and village factions; small com- munities almost always fight among themselves over specific local
IN THE NATION AND THE WORLD 31
issues. But the pretext of the battle was expressed as a fight between the capitaHst PRI and the sociahst PST, two pohtical philosophies rooted in urban Mexico and deriving from a European tradition basi- cally alien to the Indians. Village conflicts in Mexico and throughout mjch of the developing world are increasingly phrased in the idiom of global struggles over abstract philosophical principles. The war between these political systems is really being waged in the national and international arenas, but as the case of Amatlan demonstrates, we are seeing it begin to penetrate small villages far from the centers of urban power. The philosophical issues may be abstract, but injury and death are concrete, and it is often rural villagers who suffer the wounds and do the bleeding (see Wolf 1967:314).
THE VILLAGE IN THE NATION AND THE WORLD
To clarify the dynamics of village life, we must reach an understanding of the place of the Indian community in Mexico. This understanding has proven difficult to achieve. The first problem is in distinguishing Indians from non-Indians. In this section let us call an Indian a person who identifies as an Indian by orienting to cultural systems deriving largely from the pre-Hispanic traditions of Mexico, but, as we have seen, including elements of European origin. I will call mestizos, those people who identify as mestizos by orienting to the national culture, which, although it includes a few elements borrowed from pre-His- panic traditions, is essentially of Western European origin. More pre- cise definitions along with a discussion of the difficulties of distinguish- ing these social categories appear in Chapter 2.
Many scholars over the years have attempted to analyze the complex interactions and structural relations among villages of Indians and the regional, national, and international forces that affect them. Virtually the only area of agreement to come out of this effort is that the Indian or so-called peasant populations of Mexico are at a tremendous social, economic, and political disadvantage in their dealings with representa- tives of the national economy and government. The sometimes contra- dictory approaches to understanding the place of small agricultural communities in Mexican society that I describe in this section are not simply arid academic exercises. Government policy and even one's political stance on such issues as exploitation, poverty, the global population crisis, human rights, and cultural plurality are determined to a large extent by assumptions about how small agricultural commu- nities relate to individual nations and the world. I include capsule
32 ENTERING THE FIELD
summaries of various of these approaches to focus attention away from the microcosm of village life to see the village's place in the national and international arena.
One of the earliest formulations was proposed by Robert Redfield in the 1940s. Redfield was one of the first anthropologists to focus attention on peasants, and he is well known for his studies conducted in the Nahua town of Tepoztlan and in various communities in the Yucatan peninsula (1930, 1934, 1941, 1950, 1953, and 1960). Basing his insights on the work of earlier social thinkers, notably Maine, Durkheim, and Tonnies, Redfield visualized a folk-urban continuum in which villages, towns, and cities form a developmental series. At one extreme of the sequence are the folk communities like Amatlan, which are isolated, small, homogeneous, and family based. To the people in these "little communities," according to Redfield, the social and natural world is permeated with a sense of the sacred, and the universe is governed by a powerful moral order. At the other end of the continuum are the cities and towns that display opposite character- istics. Moving along the continuum from village to urban center, the culture becomes increasingly heterogeneous and loses coherence and organization. The social and natural worlds become secularized, and the moral order of the universe disintegrates. Finally, with the breakup of large families in urban centers, the communal orientation of villagers is destroyed and they become individualized.
As conceived by Redfield, the folk-urban continuum reproduces the historical stages through which small villages have moved on their way to becoming cities. The folk-urban continuum is also a model of acculturation that charts changes in village life as the influences of the city overwhelm local traditions. For Redfield the direction of culture change is unilineal, with villages becoming more like the dominant urban centers as economic development allows the city to reach further into the rural areas. Indian culture survives in Mexico in isolated "little communities" like Amatlan, located far from cities. Indian culture is linked to village life in a fundamental way, and as the little communi- ties are absorbed into urban Mexico, remaining pre-Hispanic traditions and ethnic identities will eventually disappear.
Redfield was interested in peasants, and he wanted to determine whether or not they represent a worldwide social type. Following Eric Wolf (1955), he characterized peasants as people who live in small rural communities and who cultivate crops as a part of their traditions and not as businesses for profit. He added that peasants exhibit a strong traditional attachment to the land and that in some way peasants
IN THE NATION AND THE WORLD 33
control the fields they work. A key factor in understanding peasants, according to Redfield, is that they exist only in relation to urban centers. There were no peasants before cities, and the city dominates the political, economic, and social life of all peasant peoples. Peasants are a kind of rural work force that supplies the city with food through barter or small-scale selling of surplus crops, but the peasant-city relationship is asymmetrical with the urban center retaining all of the power and prestige.
In order to clarify the relation between peasantries and cities. Red- field developed the concepts of "great and little traditions" (1960:41ff.) Peasants possess a little tradition rooted in village life that lacks the systematizing influence of professional scholars and codifiers. Cities produce sophisticated philosophies, religions, and aesthetic forms that become the great traditions characterizing an entire nation or state. Following Alfred Kroeber (1948:284), Redfield writes that peasants are "part societes with part cultures": they are incomplete in them- selves and exist only as a little tradition dependent upon but unable fully to participate in a great tradition. Peasants share some social and cultural features with the city; they are the folk end of the folk-urban continuum, but they participate in the total social system as mere bit players in the national and international drama.
On the surface, Redfield's model has much to commend it. Besides organizing into a coherent scheme masses of information on Mexican villages, towns, and cities, it also attempts to define peasantry and account for processes of modernization and Westernization. Yet like many initial formulations, it has proved inadequate in explaining the complex relation between village and state in Mexico. One immediate problem for understanding peasantries throughout Latin America is that the Spanish Conquest replaced the great traditions of the Indians with one of European origin. The discontinuity between the Spanish great tradition and the little traditions found in Indian villages, not to mention discontinuities of language and custom, led Redfield to call Indians semipeasants. This means that the thousands of Indian villages throughout Mexico and Latin America fall outside of the strict defini- tion of peasantry.
More serious flaws in Redfield's scheme are revealed as anthropolo- gists apply the folk-urban continuum concept to the real-life situations they study. Many small villages located close to urban centers have retained their Indian character, whereas remote villages in rural regions have undergone dramatic changes. Redfield's assertion of the homoge- neity of the little community is contradicted by numerous studies
34 ENTERING THE FIELD
showing that Indian villages can be characterized by significant internal differences in levels of wealth and political power. The murder in Amatlan recounted above is an example of fundamental divisions and discord that should be absent in an ideal little community.
Further complications arise when one examines some of the devel- opments in Mexico that are overlooked by the folk-urban continuum. Urban centers can in fact be the settings for movements to revive some version of Indian identity. Anthropologists have documented city dwellers, far removed in time and space from village life, who expend a great deal of time and money in reestablishing their cultural and linguistic ties to their Indian ancestors (e.g., Royce 1975). In the small villages, Indian culture is far from the passive, evanescent pre- Hispanic survival that, as portrayed by Redfield, is doomed to extinc- tion by the urban onslaught.
The Indians have developed responses to deal with the changing world including the creation of whole new rituals based on their pre- Hispanic heritage. The chicomexochitl cuh celebrating the sacred nature of corn is an example of one such ritual that will be discussed in Chapter 6. In fact, a major purpose of this book is to document that, despite their disadvantageous position relative to urban Mexico, rural Indians are far from passive players in the national drama. They, too, have their strategies for getting what they want and for asserting themselves in the struggle with the national economy and government over the distribution of resources.
Like Redfield, Eric Wolf ties the survival of Indian culture to a particular type of rural social group that he calls the "closed corporate community" (1955, 1957; see also 1960). According to Wolf, the ap- pearance of the closed corporate community in Mexico is the result of certain historical forces, particularly those that conditioned the rela- tions between Spain and its New World colonies, and later those that influenced economic and political development of postcolonial society. The key characteristics of these communities derive from their former need in colonial Mexico to organize in order to meet tribute payments and to supply corvee labor. In the nineteenth century, the communi- ties were reorganized to meet the need for periodic wage labor and a work force that was self-sufficient and could be used for Mexico's developing capitalist enterprises.
Wolfs closed corporate community is characterized by community control over land resources, mechanisms for pressuring individuals to redistribute excess wealth, values that extol "shared poverty," preven- tion of outsiders from joining the community, and mechanisms for
IN THE NATION AND THE WORLD 35
discouraging members from developing social ties outside of the com- munity. Internal and external features of these communities thus serve to isolate them from the larger society and the potential for change that it represents. According to Wolf, Indian culture has persisted in Mexico and elsewhere because it exists in conjunction with closed corporate communities.
Amatlan retains its Indian character and seemingly exhibits many corporate features. Yet this study will show that additional features of village life do not fit Wolfs typology very well. For example, there are real, long-term differences in wealth and political power within Amatlan. Individuals at the cattle-owning level of the village economy are substantially better off than other community members and yet they are not the object of public scorn nor are they subject to magico- religious sanctions due to envy. In addition, villagers have always periodically left the southern Huasteca to work in neighboring regions, and several have worked as far away as Mexico City. Almost everyone has relatives who live permanently in cities throughout northern Mex- ico, and these people return to the village regularly, most often for ritual observances. Based on my findings, Wolf overstates the homoge- neity and closedness of traditional Indian communities. Moreover, as I will show, he underestimates the degree to which Indians actively participate in the national economy. The people of Amatlan differ more in the style of that participation than in substance. When one is at the bottom, being perceived as an Indian can have its advantages in economic and political pursuits.
But if being an Indian can be an economic benefit and if villages can create and maintain their own internal elites, then why do the Indians and peasant peoples of Mexico consistently occupy the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder.^ This is a complex question that has been answered in different ways by different scholars. The theories of Arturo Warman (1976) and Rodolfo Stavenhagen (1975, 1978, and 1980) focus upon historical factors and upon ongoing social, political, and economic dynamics within mgdern Mexican society. Following the Conquest, the Spaniards set up a colonial regime whose purpose was to extract wealth from the colony and transfer it to Spain. In the early part of the nineteenth century Mexico won its independence, and the national elites introduced the capitalist mode of production both in industry and agriculture. It was, however, a peculiar variant of capitalism that was totally dependent on the more mature European and North American economies. What resulted is the dualistic eco- nomic system found in Mexico today. In the cities and on the large
36 ENTERING THE FIELD
ranches and farms, modern capitalist enterprises predominate, whereas in the rural areas peasants and Indians practice production techniques that have changed little from colonial or even pre-Hispanic days.
The dual economic system that characterizes Mexico deprives the Indian and peasant sector of outside investments and the application of modern technology that it would need to participate as an equal partner in the nation. In fact, the dual economy is set up to extract wealth from the small horticulturalists and transfer it to the developing capitalist sector. This is accomplished in a variety of ways. In a place like Amatlan, surplus produce, usually corn, is sold in local markets to professional middlemen who transport it to urban markets for resale. The prices offered to the villagers are usually well below the national average, but, given the lack of transport, the Indians have no choice but to sell locally. This pricing mechanism controlled by monopolistic middlemen thus effectively transfers wealth from the village to the national economy.
Additional ways that wealth is transferred from the village to the capitalist sector of the economy include unequal inflationary processes rendering agricultural products increasingly worthless relative to man- ufactured items, monopolies on transportation facilities allowing ex- horbitant fees to be charged, the trend toward decreasing size of individual land holdings due to population increases, and agribusiness competition with Indians and peasants for remaining arable land. In effect, what has happened since Mexico's independence is that the peasant and Indian peoples have become internal colonies, plundered now by their fellow countrymen in the cities and on the agribusiness farms and ranches.
According to Warman and Stavenhagen, in the dependent capitalist system such as that found in Mexico and throughout much of Latin America, wealth produced locally is siphoned off to the more mature economies of North America and Europe. For example, each year billions of dollars are transferred from the Mexican economy to the United States, often in the form of interest payments on debts. Invest- ment funds for local industry and agribusiness are desperately needed in Mexico and are obtained by increasing the exploitation of the peasant and Indian sector of the economy. Because village horticulture is labor intensive, the villagers have responded to the pressure in the only way possible: by increasing their numbers. This population boom eventually exacerbates the problem because land resources are limited and an ever-growing body of peasants and Indians are forced to seek
IN THE NATION AND THE WORLD 37
work outside of their villages for part of the year. Wages paid to these intermittent workers are extremely low, which effectively transfers even more wealth to the national capitalist sector.
Many urban Mexicans share with international development experts the view that village horticulture with its traditional ancient technology such as that found in Amatlan is an obstacle to general economic development. Warman and Stavenhagen both point out that, to the contrary, it is the surpluses produced by the village farmers that power Mexican capitalism. Warman goes so far as to state that Mexican "industry [is] made of corn" (1976:176). Both scholars show that the poverty of the villages is, in fact, caused by the excessive wealth extracted by the dependent capitalist sector of the Mexican economy. They point out the ultimate irony of the claims made by representa- tives of the very system causing economic backwardness in Mexico's rural areas who contend that peasant and Indian villages are actually hindering economic expansion.
We can conclude from the work of Warman and Stavenhagen that it is in the interest of the power elites in Mexico to maintain a substantial population of small-village agricultural producers. Far from constitut- ing an obstacle to economic development, such an arrangement has many short-term advantages for the capitalist sector. Rural populations provide a much needed source of surplus wealth for investment and a pool of inexpensive labor. They also do not demand expensive social services, such as social security or unemployment compensation, because they can always return to their villages in times of need. Labor- intensive farming practices in villages absorb enormous numbers of people who would otherwise exacerbate Mexico's chronic urban unem- ployment problem. Finally, keeping people in the countryside stabi- lizes the entire social system by diffusing political movements that demand change.
Stavenhagen points out, however, that in the end an impoverished peasantry will hinder economic growth in Mexico because poor people will be unable to purchase industrial goods produced in cities. This in turn will make the capitalist sector more dependent on the United States and Europe, which will result in even greater levels of poverty among peasants and Indians. Warman illustrates the impossible situa- tion of the peasants by examining cycles of corn production in the state of Morelos. Contrary to all apparent economic logic, he found that as the price of corn rose, production fell and that as the price fell, production rose. This is the reverse of what economists expect to happen, and the situation has reaffirmed the opinion of some experts
38 ENTERING THE FIELD
who see peasant production activities as irrational. Actually, the distor- tion is caused by the poverty of peasant farmers and not the reverse. Corn is the staple crop and as agricultural prices decline, peasants fall back on corn to ensure their food supply. As agricultural prices rise, peasants switch to more profitable crops including a variety of vegeta- bles and cut back on corn production. Thus once again the pricing system and the price cycles of crops effectively prevent peasant pro- ducers from entering the national economy on an equal footing with other producers.
Warman and Stavenhagen, then, explain the persistence of peasant and Indian populations in modern Mexico as due to the critical role these play in the maintenance of the dominant capitalist system. From their viewpoint, the key factors in understanding the place of the village in modern Mexico are to be found by examining the historical processes that led to the current socioeconomic situation and by unrav- eling the complex and sometimes contradictory nature of Mexico's dependent capitalism. For their purposes, the regional- or national- level study best reveals the forces linking villagers to the total system. But both analysts recognize that inhabitants of small villages are not passive bystanders in the national and international system of which they are a part. Villagers have their own strategies and agendas, and the larger processes that Warman and Stavenhagen elucidate are played out in particular places by real people. The process of social incorporation works both ways, and villagers develop their own means of dealing with the prevailing political and economic powers.
The Mexican anthropologist Gonzalo Aguirre Beltran (1979) has developed an influential and compelling perspective on Indians of Latin America that differs in emphasis from the viewpoints presented above. He recognizes that contemporary Indian peoples are the rem- nants of pre-Hispanic cultures and that as such they are more than just economically underdeveloped farmers. Indians are ethnically (but not racially) distinct from representatives of the national culture. Indian culture has survived in what he calls "regions of refuge" — hostile and inaccessible environments that are unattractive to capitalist devel- opers.
Through a phenomenon that Aguirre Beltran calls the "dominical process" {proceso dominical, see Hunt 1979:1), the economically and technologically advanced centers of the nation are able to dominate Indians living in the regions of refuge. The dominical process includes such elements as political control, economic subordination, unequal
IN THE NATION AND THE WORLD 39
distribution of social services, maintenance of social distance, and missionary activities that encourage Indians to be submissive and to accept and even embrace their low status.
Within these regions of refuge Indian people live in small rural villages and form a type of caste in relation to the mestizo representa- tives of the nation who, for the most part, live in provincial cities. He uses the term caste instead of class to emphasize the archaic and extremely rigid social hierarchy characterizing Indian-mestizo rela- tions. The Indians are subsistence farmers operating in a precapitalist microeconomy based on reciprocity and redistribution of goods, whereas the mestizos are part of the national capitalist economy ori- ented to making profits. This dual economy, like the dominical process in general, is a legacy of the colonial history of Mexico.
Aguirre Beltran stresses the mechanisms that keep the Indians sepa- rate and unequal. Representatives of the national culture actively resist admitting Indians into the national mainstream. Local mestizos themselves are near the lowest reaches of the national status hierarchy, and having a caste of Indians beneath them often serves their interests. Mestizos maintain their position relative to the Indians through force and by an elaborate system of false consciousness that mystifies the true nature of mestizo-Indian interaction. Thus, from the mestizo viewpoint, Indians need mestizo expertise to provide an element of rationality in their economic and work lives. For their part, the Indians actively resist forces of assimilation that they realize would mean the destruction of their traditional cultures. Their political system, language, religion and world view, strong identification with the land and local environment, and negative experiences in dealing with mes- tizos leads Indians to close their communities to outside influences.
Central to Aguirre Beltran's perspective on the place of the Indians in the nation is the idea that colonial-type conditions characterizing the regions of refuge prevent Indian communities from evolving be- yond their pre-Hispanic and precapitalist stage of development. He states that while Indians may behave rationally within their own cul- tural systems, their economic life is not guided by the same principles of rationality that underlie modern capitalism. He argues that land, labor, production, and consumption are not regulated by the market principle and thus the Indian economy will always be dominated by the more rational capitalism of the national economy. The perspective developed by Aguirre Beltran is activist and political in that he advo- cates the dismantling of barriers to assimilation so that the Indians can
40 ENTERING THE FIELD
be integrated into the national economy. This, he beheves, is the only way that Indians will achieve social, political, and economic equality with other citizens of Mexico.
Indian culture, according to Aguirre Beltran, persists because it has been prevented from evolving into a more modern form that could play an active role in Mexican national life. Like Warman and Stavenhagen, he concludes that the hyperexploitation of the Indian population and perpetuation of the dual economy serve the interests of the economic elite of the country. He is in agreement with Wolf about the closed nature of the Indian community and with Redfield regarding the role of social and physical isolation in the maintenance of Indian culture. The perspective of Aguirre Beltran departs some- what from the others in attributing an active role to the Indians them- selves in closing their communities and thereby maintaining their traditions intact. In addition, he is overt about what the others only suggest: that the Indians must lose their culture to win their freedom.
Problems with the viewpoint of Aguirre Beltran parallel those sug- gested for Redfield and Wolf. Communities located near cities can retain a strong Indian character, and remote Indian villages are not always as closed as they seem. Information from Amatlan reveals persistent and substantial differences in wealth among Indians them- selves, and some individuals have become affluent relative even to local mestizos. But the most serious shortcoming in the perspective of Aguirre Beltran, and the one that is shared by the others, is the way he misconstrues the nature of the Indian economy. Village economic activity is portrayed as essentially irrational or, at best, rational within an irrational cultural system. Although it is true that land cannot be bought and sold in Amatlan, that there is no access to major credit, and that much productive activity is accomplished on the basis of reciprocity, it is a gross misconception to conclude that villagers do not, therefore, plan, economize, and participate in profit-making en- terprises. I will return to this misperception shortly and again in subse- quent chapters.
All of the perspectives presented above assume the existence of an Indian population whose cultural content differs from that of the dominant Hispanic group in Mexican society. Some scholars, however, conclude that what was left of Indian culture after the Spanish Con- quest was obliterated during the long period of colonization. What remains of the pre-Hispanic past are a few remnants of culture such as language and some widely scattered elements of dress or religious belief that have been incorporated into what is now a thoroughly
IN THE NATION AND THE WORLD 41
Hispanicized system. From this viewpoint, the whole idea of the Indian as a person of differing culture is simply an aspect of the false consciousness created by a society that succeeds through ruthless exploitation of the vast majority of its citizens.
Judith Friedlander (1975) takes this position when she writes of her ethnographic work in the Nahua town of Hueyapan in the state of Morelos. The people of Hueyapan have lost most of their Indian traditions, with the notable exception of the Nahuatl language, and yet they have been forced by government officials, schoolteachers, media representatives, and local mestizos to adopt a definition of themselves as Indians. Indians are considered by the Hispanic popula- tion at large to be backward, stupid, and inept — the antithesis of the civilized and sophisticated urban Mexican. When asked about their Indianness, most people of Hueyapan were negative, listing what they did not have or could not do. In essence, being Indian for them meant being poor. Friedlander writes that the people of Hueyapan are simply rural Mexicans who have been forced to accept an Indian identity. The government, through its various programs, has managed to "inte- grate yet segregate" the people from the national culture (Friedlander 1975:153). The purpose is to maintain the dual economy that, as we have seen, benefits urban elites.
Roger Bartra (1977) examines how interethnic relations based on forced Indian indentity are transformed into the ideological mecha- nisms that perpetuate capitalism. He claims that native culture has been so thoroughly "submerged, distorted, and dominated" by institu- tions of the ruling elites that it has been destroyed in its fundamental aspects (1977:421). The traditional economy of the Indians has been overwhelmed by the national capitalist economy, and the Indians have simply been incorporated as the poor people in the system. In fact, Bartra writes that for the new representatives of the national economy "it is sufficient for a man simply to be in rags and tatters and need to sell his labor for him to fall into the category of an Indian" (1977:442). Thus, according to Bartra, Indian culture was first destroyed and then the category "Indian" resurrected by representatives of the national culture as an explanation and justification for poverty and exploitation. In the ideology of the exploiters, Indians, due to their inferiority, have failed to succeed in the national economy and are incapable of integrating themselves into the larger society. In a tragic irony, the profound failure of the national capitalist economy to eliminate poverty is foisted on the poor by this ideology through the "myth of the non- integrated native" (1977:442).
42 ENTERING THE FIELD
Friedlander and Bartra depart from the other theorists discussed in that they see the "Indian" economy as simply part of the larger capital- ist economy of Mexico. Indians as a category of people with distinct cultural traditions simply do not exist, and, therefore, their precapital- ist economies organized along principles that differ from the national economy by extension do not exist. True, there are people who call themselves Indians, but these are people of essentially Hispanic cul- ture who have been brainwashed into believing the myths created by the national elites so that they will more easily accept their low status. In this conception, so-called Indian traits such as language, religious rituals, or dress are markers used by the national elites and the people themselves to label the rural poor as natives set apart from the larger Hispanic society. By implication, anthropologists or other scholars who study traditional cultures in Mexico are effectively in collusion with the national elites in their efforts to label and segregate the rural poor and exploit them economically. The whole concept of the dual economy is false according to this perspective, and scholars who write of the opposition between the Indian and dominant capitalist econo- mies are also contributing to the exploitation of the rural poor.
These five perspectives on the place of the village in Mexican society run the gamut from Redfield's view of the Indian as a member of a distinct culture, enclosed in a folk community with its own world view, social system, and values, to that of Friedlander and Bartra who see villagers as the lumpenproletariat in an exploitative system that labels the rural poor as Indians so as to plunder them more effectively. The differing viewpoints highlight a peculiarity of social scientific research: theoretical formulations are based upon a certain view of humanity, and they contain within them values about the human condition and, by extension, implicit recommendations for solving social problems. For Redfield, traditional Indian culture survives only because modern urban culture has not yet arrived in the remote vil- lages. In other words, it is weakly held by the people and will easily disintegrate upon contact with a more appealing alternative. Although he appeared to have a kind of romantic attachment to life in the little community, he saw clearly that the trajectory of development in Mexico is toward the city and that the loss of traditional Indian culture is all but inevitable.
Wolf ties Indian life to the closed corporate community that he views as a social entity formed in response to outside influences and subject to forces originating at the regional and national level. Inside, the community is a kind of refuge from the onslaught of industrializa-
IN THE NATION AND THE WORLD 43
tion and the brutal struggle for profits. Like Redfield, Wolf appears to see the Indian as a kind of precapitalist person, more interested in perpetuating harmony with nature and with his fellows than in winning the contest for profits. Aguirre Beltran shares much with the views of Redfield and Wolf, although he stresses the way that regional- and state-level mechanisms have blocked natural development of Indian communities. He notes the resistance that Indians have mounted against influences from the mestizo world, but he does not see this as a rejection of social and economic progress. According to Aguirre Beltran, what Indians want is to avoid being incorporated into the national system at the lowest, most exploited level. For him, Indian culture is an anachronism in a developing country like Mexico, and he actively advocates programs to integrate the Indians into the national mainstream.
Warman and Stavenhagen, along with Redfield, Wolf, and Aguirre Beltran, see the Indians and peasants as victims of an unfair system, based on the dual economy. Warman and Stavenhagen link the dual economy to Mexico's form of dependent capitalism. The rural poor have ethnic and class barriers that are impossible to overcome because of ongoing mechanisms that usurp their surpluses and redirect them to the developing capitalist sector. For them, the Indians and peasants are trapped in a quagmire and can only be extricated by a fundamental change in national development policy. Warman and Stavenhagen see the Indians and peasants as perpetual victims of exploitation, plundered first by the colonial powers and now by national elites. Friedlander and Bartra share this view but expand it to where they see Mexico as a single capitalist economy and villagers as simply a form of rural proletariat. So devastating is the condition of these people, in their view, that nothing short of radical political transformation will correct the system.
The perspectives on Mexican Indians presented here are a sample of the large number of viewpoints that have emerged since the Mexican Revolution. Even in summary form,- they convey some of the complex- ities in developing a coherent picture of Indian culture and its relation to the national whole. Human social life is extraordinarily complex wherever it is found, but the situation in Mexico is compounded by its colonial history, its relation to the more developed economies of the world, and the sheer number of diverse Indian cultures within its borders. Unfortunately, from a scientific perspective, the viewpoints presented above do not differ sufficiently for us to evaluate clearly which best explains the situation. They overlap a great deal and are
44 ENTERING THE FIELD
based on a different selection of variables. For scientific progress to occur, differing theoretical stances must provide alternative explana- tions for the same set of observations. Researchers can then devise tests based on further field research to determine the most effective theory.
Elements from each of these perspectives help elucidate the situa- tion in Amatlan and improve our understanding of how the village fits into the national and international scheme. In many ways the village is like Redfield's little community and Wolfs closed corporate commu- nity. There is no question that village surpluses are expropriated by the artificially low prices paid for village produce and village labor, as Warman and Stavenhagen point out. Aguirre Beltran is correct in characterizing the almost colonial-like conditions such as found in the southern Huasteca, that effectively prevent villages like Amatlan from developing economically. And there are villagers who do behave like rural proletarians during certain times of the year when they seek work on regional cattle ranches. But many elements do not apply in Amatlan, and some positively falsify the real situation.
One area of disagreement among social scientists surrounds the nature of the economic system in an Indian village. As suggested above, many scholars view village economics as precapitalist, meaning that it is a nondynamic system based on something other than the profit motive. Thus, for example, villagers may grow corn out of a sense of tradition rather than as a rational strategy to maximize their income. Other scholars view village economics as a kind of "penny capitalism" (Tax 1972 [1953]), identical in kind but different in scale from capitalist enterprises in the cities. These two points of view contain within them important assumptions about the nature of non- Western society and the basis of human behavior. It is crucial to reach an understanding about village economics, not only for scientific reasons but also because government programs aimed at helping the Indians succeed or fail depending on how they match up with the realities of village life.
A second source of disagreement that must be resolved is whether or not certain rural villagers are truly people with customs that are distinct from those of Hispanic city dwellers. The traditional peoples of Mexico have been ruled over by an Hispanic elite for close to 500 years, and so there is no one in the country completely free from Western European influence. However, it is wrong to conclude that Indian culture is therefore dead. Pre-Hispanic traditions have disap-
IN THE NATION AND THE WORLD 45
peared from certain areas of Mexico, and Friedlander's Hueyapan and the Valle de Mezquital studied by Bartra may indeed be two of them. But the people of Amatlan and the large region surrounding it must be considered Indian by any criteria including language, culture, village organization, and self-identification.
In my description of the Amatlan Nahuas, I will emphasize the active role they play in creating and maintaining their Indian ethnic identity. To a great extent, contemporary Nahua culture derives from pre-Hispanic antecedents, but it has played in the past and continues to play in the present a dynamic part in adapting the villagers to the opportunities, liabilities, and contingencies of life in Mexico. In this view, a significant part of Nahua culture survives and is perpetuated in the activities of villagers as they negotiate their statuses with dominant mestizos. It is neither closed villages nor distance from urban influence in regions of refuge that provide the real dynamic of ethnic Indian survival. The dynamic of Nahua ethnic identity is found in the ways that people have been able to use their traditions to succeed materially in an unfair politico-economic system and, at the same time, to create meaningful, culturally coherent lives for themselves.
I intend to show that Indian culture is far from backward or unpro- gressive and that Nahuas, despite overwhelming odds against them, work hard, engage in planning, follow strategies, and generally attempt to cut costs and increase benefits for themselves and their families. In this view I depart from researchers who see a qualitative difference between traditional Indian economic behavior and the economizing of capitalist mestizos. Indians may play the game somewhat differently from the mestizos in part to gain certain advantages in a system that is stacked against them. However, I hope to show that they allocate their resources according to rational principles. One distinction is that they cultivate their Indianness and, by thus separating themselves from mestizo neighbors, change both the rules of the political and economic struggle and the definitions by which success is measured. By showing how the Nahuas engage the world through their ethnic identity, I want to affirm the authenticity of Indian culture both as a coherent system of meanings and as a dynamic strategy for survival.
In any event, questions about the nature of the village economy, the distinctiveness of Indian culture, and the accuracy of the theoretical perspectives summarized above will best be clarifed by empirical means. The way to resolve the larger abstract issues is to describe and analyze the way real people live their lives.
46 ENTERING THE FIELD
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN MEXICO
Small villages like Amatlan are caught in shifting political, economic, and social tides that largely originate at the national and international levels. Some of the historical events and processes that directly affect the village and the southern Huasteca region will be discussed in Chapter 2. Here I would like briefly to sketch some of the global factors that have shaped village life and created the context for the sociocultural features described in subsequent chapters. Mexican his- tory is complex and not easily reduced to a few paragraphs, but some information on the development of the Mexican economy will help in clarifying the wider environment in which the villagers operate. Data presented are taken mostly from Rudolph (1985).
From the beginning of the Wars of Independence in 1810 until the Porfirio Diaz dictatorship in 1876, Mexico experienced a long period of economic stagnation. The war with Spain, internal struggles, two wars with France, and a war with the United States created unstable conditions hindering both economic development and the process of forging a nation from a former colony. During the "Porfiriato" (from 1876 to 1911 when Porfirio Diaz ruled), stability was restored, and the economy sustained a slow but steady growth. Export earnings increased by about 6% annually during this period, based mainly on food crops and raw materials derived from mining and other sources. At the same time, Indians were increasingly dispossessed of their lands as private farms and ranches (haciendas) were established to take advantage of foreign markets. In 1911, following massive civil strife, Diaz was forced to resign. The period from 1910 to 1925, which included the Mexican Revolution and the post-World War I depres- sion, saw the economy devastated, with agricultural production grow- ing a scant 0.1% over the 15-year span.
Just as the economy was recovering in the decade following the Revolution, much progress was reversed by the world depression that began in 1929. In that year and in 1930, land reform was accelerated considerably in Mexico, and many of the largest haciendas were expro- priated and the land returned to the Indians. At this time 70% of the economically active population were employed in agriculture, whereas manufacturing employed merely 12%. A short time later, the govern- ment acted to diminish the impact of the depression by establishing tariffs, devaluing the peso, and promoting agrarian reform. It created agricultural development banks, invested heavily in agriculture, and in 1938 it nationalized the growing oil industry. Finally, World War II
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN MEXICO 47
created an enormous demand for Mexican exports, beginning in 1939. Due to these and other factors, the economy grew at a rapid pace in the 1940s. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew at an annual rate of 6.7% in this period, and the population was beginning to increase following the devastation of the Revolution. At this time a change became evident in the direction of the economy. Manufacturing grew by 8.1% per year, whereas agriculture, which previously outstripped manufacturing, grew at a rate of 5.8%.
During the 1950s growth of the GDP slowed a bit to an average of 6.1% per year. But the shift toward manufacturing at the expense of agricultural production became even more pronounced as manufactur- ing increased at 7.3% annually while agriculture grew at the reduced rate of 4.3% It was in this decade that tourism expanded and became a major Mexican industry, bringing in substantial revenues. At the same time, the population was increasing at the very high rate of 3. 1% annually. The shift toward manufacturing is reflected in an exodus from the countryside. By 1960, one-half of the population was living in urban areas. In the 1960s the economy grew at the high rate of 7% per year. Manufacturing grew at 7% per year while agriculture had jfallen to a 3.4% growth rate. By 1970, Mexico was self-sufficient in food crops, steel, and most consumer goods. During the 1960s, the government promoted the use of fertilizers, insecticides, and geneti- cally improved seeds, but these programs did not reach remote villages like Amatlan. At the same time, in order to subsidize low wages in the cities, the government artificially maintained low prices on food crops. Investment and production shifted to growing commercial crops for export and industrial use, and the small producer was gradually squeezed out of the national market.
In the 1970s, the boom continued with the GDP growing at an annual rate of over 6%. But trouble in the agricultural sector was reflected in lurching productivity swings. Agriculture started the de- cade with a 5% increase in productivity, but within a few years declines that ranged from 0.3 to 2.6% were registered. Bad weather contributed to the crisis, and 10 million tons of food had to be imported in 1980. Manufacturing also showed the effects of deepseated problems in the economy. Growth varied between 3.6% and 9% per year, but by the end of the 1970s it was showing vigor. Discovery of the extent of Mexico's oil reserves caused a boom in manufacturing growth from 1978-81, but serious inflation began to appear in 1976 as the peso fell against the U.S. dollar. In 1982, Mexico experienced the worst economic downturn since the depression of the 1930s. Owing to a
48 ENTERING THE FIELD
variety of factors, including a worldwide glut of oil and a recession that affected most nations, the peso had to be devalued three times during 1982 alone. Drought conditions and the recession caused the govern- ment to import massive amounts of food in 1984 and to cancel some agricultural programs. Agrarian reform has since assumed a low priority due to the shortage of arable land available to redistribute to peasants and Indians. This has increased the occurrence of land invasions, which in turn have caused a reduction in investments in agriculture by urban financial institutions.
Despite setbacks, Mexican economic growth in general has been remarkable. In 1984, the country ranked as the world's fifteenth- largest economy. The year before, it ranked ninth in the world for productive capacity and fourth in the production and export of oil. Agriculture, for all of its problems, is well diversified, and Mexican cattle herds are among the largest in the world. But the prosperity has not been evenly divided among the population. Farms that produce food for the nation are located in rain-fed regions of the country, whereas agricultural production for export, which has attracted most of the investment money, is concentrated in the arid but irrigated northern regions. Unemployment and underemployment in the rural areas have caused the massive shift of people to the cities who go there seeking seasonal employment.
A few statistics on Mexico's unique program of land distribution will help set the context of the land struggle in Amatlan. In 1910, at the start of the Mexican Revolution, 96% of the population was landless, and 1% of the population owned 97% of the land. One-half of all agricultural land was controlled by 835 haciendas, and 80% of rural villages were tied to the haciendas through debt peonage. Agrarian reform began in 1915, and land redistribution was written into the 1917 Constitution as Article 27. Land was to be returned to the people in the form of the ejido — a parcel of land granted to communities rather than indivduals. A person was required to be a bona fide member of a village to have access to land. The largest redistribution of land occurred during the 1934—40 period when over 17 million hectares were made into ejidos. By 1983, about one-half of the cultivated land in Mexico was held in ejidos. But population growth outstripped land distribution by such an extent that there are now more landless peasants in the countryside than people with ejido rights.
In sum, economic development in Mexico has been uneven and has had little impact on large segments of the population. Those most often left out of the new prosperity are the rural Indians whose lives
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN MEXICO 49
seem little changed from pre-Hispanic days. As in so many other developing nations, Mexico's experience has laid the groundwork for deep divisions in the population that often lead groups to cultivate their ethnic loyalties. The Nahuas of Amatlan are caught up in these larger processes, and their response has been, in part, to perpetuate their Indianness in the face of continued mestizo domination. In this study I will attempt to illuminate some of the specific local factors that have made ethnic identity an effective strategy for the villagers.
CHAPTER 2 THE VILLAGE IH ITS f ETTINQ
I returned to Amatlan in 1972 for a long-term study of village life. Many months passed before I began to get an accurate picture of how the people structured their lives and to understand the meaning of the events I was witnessing. Part of the problem was overcoming an image I had in my mind about village life in general. Somehow I had pictured a group of small houses, perhaps with thatched roofs, neatly placed on either side of a trail. The people would have a strong sense of community, and there would be suspicion of all outsiders. Everyone would know everything about everyone else, and the village would be conservative, changeless, and a miniature world unto itself. I thought I would find a communal economy based on cooperation, shared work, and reciprocity, with village activities guided by tradition. I expected that there would be factionalism, feuds, and various fault lines in the social structure, but these ultimately would be overcome by the powerful solidarity produced by a simple and communal life.
These preconceptions, which derived in part from published ac- counts of villages in Mexico and other parts of the world, proved to be an impediment to understanding life in Amatlan. In reality, Amatlan is a much more complex and fascinating place than my earlier stereotypes of village life implied. Far from being bounded, closed, and change- less, Amatlan has proved to be a protean community with few clear borders, internally differentiated, active and ever changing, full of humor and pathos with its inhabitants engaged in confronting a com- plex and sometimes alien world. In this chapter, following a brief description of how ethnographers adjust to life in the field, I place the village in its geographic, social, and historical context and begin to sketch features of village life.
LIVING AND WORKING IN AMATLAN
An anthropologist must make a satisfactory adjustment to the field situation if he or she is to succeed at participant observation. The hosts
50
LIVING AND WORKING 51
in turn must adjust to a newcomer in their midst and enter into a willing alliance with the anthropologist in the description of their own culture. Everyone involved must adapt to the new, sometimes funny, sometimes painful circumstances produced when individuals from differing cultures meet. I will next examine what happens when indi- viduals leave the relative security of their own society and, risking discomfort and aggravation, choose to live and work among people from a different cultural tradition.
Working in another culture creates a dynamic that affects the quality and quantity of work an investigator can accomplish. A person may go overseas as an individual but can never totally escape his or her own cultural identity. Nor can the people in the host society escape theirs. At least initially, hosts will perceive the outsider not as an individual but as a representative of his culture of origin. The reverse is equally true. The people I first met in Amatlan appeared to me to represent Nahua culture, and I did not know them yet as individuals. Working in another culture, then, is always done in the context of powerful social definitions and forces over which individuals have little control. It is not possible to eliminate these features of contact, but by under- standing the dynamic that is created when representatives of distinct cultures meet it becomes possible to avoid many mistakes, to increase cross-cultural understanding, and to achieve our goals beyond expec- tation.
My adjustment to Amatlan proceeded in three distinct phases that seem to resemble the experiences of many other anthropological fieldworkers with whom I have talked. The first phase I call the "period of attraction." When I returned to the village in 1972 my initial awkward meeting with the Nahuas was softened by the passage of time, and I was overcome by a feeling of excitement, joy, adventure, intense interest in the new surroundings, satisfaction, pleasure, and a strong desire to see everything at once, all combined with a slight but stimulating sense of foreboding. I enjoyed adapting to life without bathrooms, running water, electricity, newspapers, or companions who shared experiences or interests. I could barely sleep at night, and I wrote dozens of pages of enthusiastic notes each day. I think that the villagers also experienced a scaled-down version of attraction as they adjusted to my presence in their midst. Everyone wanted to talk to me, and I recall being exhilarated by all of the attention.
The period of attraction with its sense of adventure and excitement is a necessary part of cross-cultural work, but it cannot be sustained very easily or for very long. This is probably good because it is based
52 THE VILLAGE IN ITS SETTING
on a fairly unrealistic view of the world. The period of attraction is part of the adjustment that individual visitors and hosts make to the new situation. One danger of this period of enthusiasm is that it will lead to a sense of disappointment as routines are established and the fieldworker settles in for the long haul. Care must be taken to balance this "honeymoon" period so that it is not followed by a kind of stunned depression that can seriously hamper successful adaptation and impair the quality of work. Interestingly, I took the best photographs of village life during this period, but my field notes were nearly useless.
During this period of attraction I committed a serious error that almost ended my ability to work in Amatlan. Often, the first people who make an effort to get to know outsiders are those searching for a means to escape from a bad personal situation. I was alone in an alien context, and I made the mistake of becoming immediate friends with three of the first people who presented themselves. I must admit that I was grateful for their company. Even so I wondered why these few men seemed to have so much leisure time when everyone else ap- peared to be engaged in work. I later learned that they were village deadbeats, and my association with them hampered my work for several weeks. Other people told me later that they avoided me simply because they knew I was in bad company. One must be especially careful to read the social situation correctly during the period of at- traction.
The period of attraction with its attendant dangers is often followed by an equally unrealistic phase I call the "period of rejection." I had established a routine of sorts, the novelty of my situation was wearing off, and I began to contemplate the long months ahead. Suddenly much of the charm was gone, the work I came to do seemed pointless, and I felt extremely uncomfortable and out of place. For one thing, I was appalled by the number of snakes I saw when bathing or walking on the trails. I felt repulsed by the scorpions and the huge tarantulas covered with silky black hair that crawled on the walls inside of houses. For another, I measured a foot or more taller than everyone else around me, and I always felt conspicuous. As I entered people's houses I had to bend down to pass under the edge of the thatched roof, and this awkwardness caused great merriment. Whenever I stood in a group I was constantly poked in the back by laughing people who were mark- ing the spot reached by the tops of their heads. Adults and children alike took no pains to hide their curiosity and stared at me wherever I went. I had no privacy at any time night or day.
I was removed from my cultural support system, and I felt isolated.
LIVING AND WORKING 53
frustrated, clumsy, incompetent, anxious, depressed, and angry; and there were moments when I feared I was becoming emotionally unsta- ble, teetering on the brink of insanity. It is at times like these that one can discover things about oneself that are not very flattering. Frustrations build and can lead to internal outbursts of bigotry, ethno- centrism, and haughty arrogance. I found I could deeply resent the people around me for being different and for their stubbornness in insisting on doing things their way. I became very disturbed at the depths I reached in self-pity and paranoia. I looked on in horror as I became alternately whiny, self-important, petulant, touchy, and uncompromising. During moments of clarity I began to feel that I harbored a monster inside and that I could no longer trust myself. At this point I contracted dysentery, no laughing matter a hundred miles from the nearest bathroom, and I rapidly became weak and overcome with feelings of despair. I felt depressed and alone, and I began to reject everything around me and to dream about how wonderful things were back home. My notes during this period became a compendium of complaints, self-serving observations, and blatant rationalizations.
This is culture shock, and it is one of the most remarkable sensations that a person can experience. It varies in intensity according to the individual and according to the extent of the culture gap. It can last for weeks or months, and some say that one never quite gets over it. Very often, culture shock strikes just when members of the host culture move out of their period of attraction and step back to observe the visitor for a while. Villagers began to ignore me, and I sometimes feared I was being shunned. Considering some of my reactions, al- though I made great efforts to keep them to myself, it is no wonder that I was not all that popular. This pattern of avoidance or period of rejection is part of the adjustment any group makes toward an intruder as it adapts to the new situation. Somewhere in my confused mind I knew this, and I came to expect that the villagers might try to frighten me away.
One day when I was feeling a little more normal, the village head- man came to tell me that cowboys at a local cattle ranch had heard about my presence in Amatlan and in a drunken rage had vowed to kill me. I shrugged off the threat, convinced that this was simply some ploy on the part of the villagers. He looked a little puzzled as I insisted that I was not afraid and that I would stay. About a week later I awakened at about 3:00 a.m. to answer nature's call and ran into a man standing in the total darkness outside my door. He was from Amatlan, and he carried a drawn machete. Apparently he and several other men
54 THE VILLAGE IN ITS SETTING
had been assigned by the headman to guard my place during the night. I suddenly reaHzed that the threat had been real, and I shuddered at how exposed and helpless I was there. At the same time it occurred to me that the villagers were willing to go up against armed cowboys with nothing more than their machetes in order to protect me. The period of rejection is mutual, but it can become exaggerated and cause poor judgment in the mind of the lone fieldworker.
Culture shock can produce a vicious cycle that obstructs work and undermines the entiie fieldwork enterprise. Culture shock makes a person feel lost, but it is in fact a hopeful sign that one is in the process of adapting to the new situation. Long-term exposure to another culture loosens your hold upon your own culture, and this alienation from all that is safe and secure is necessary if you are to succeed in embracing the new culture. One response I had to culture shock was escapism. I spent whole days cleaning my camera and checking my tape recorder. In one 3-day period I read a 1,200-page collection of stories I had brought along. I purchased books in the market that under normal conditions I would not dream of reading, and I devoured them in record time. At one point I heard myself make excuses rather than go with people who had invited me to an event.
These and many other practices our clever brains devise serve to increase isolation and abort the process of incorporation in the alien society that culture shock presages. Only knowledge and experience reduce alienation and these both take time. The field research will be as successful as the degree to which the investigator manages to put episodes of culture shock into perspective. Culture shock produces a false view of the world, a view that is distorted by the slow and sometimes painful destruction of your dependence upon your natal culture. Confronting culture shock honestly does little to reduce the pain, but it is the first step toward the development of a whole new perspective on the human condition that is the hallmark of anthro- pology.
Facing up to culture shock and to one's own shortcomings leads to the final phase that I call the "period of incorporation." In this stage of the cross-cultural encounter, both the hosts and the visitor gradually begin to look upon each other as individual people and less as social representations. When stereotypes fell away, I finally began to get to know individuals. Nahua culture appeared increasingly less strange and foreign to me, and as time passed I began to question why I was there. Local culture appeared reasonable, and I wondered what I was supposed to write about. The period of incorporation continues as long
THE REGION 55
as the outsider is in residence in the host culture. In fact, the periods of attraction and rejection are really the initial phases of an extended period of incorporation, but it rarely appears that way to the person experiencing cross-cultural contact. As incorporation proceeds most people gain a new respect for the host culture, and it is only when this awareness is reached that truly successful fieldwork can begin. Most experienced anthropologists agree that successful adaptation produces a paradox: fieldworkers always feel that they are ready to begin real work just at the point when it is time to return home.
To be successful in another culture, researchers must be aware of cultural differences on the one hand and their reactions to them on the other. Just knowing that culture shock is a normal response to long-term research in another culture helped me to cope. But this type of work is not for everyone. The romantic image of the field experience cannot be preserved in the day-to-day struggle to survive in an alien physical and social environment. When life in Amatlan became rough, I reacted by creating a kind of idealized image of what it was like back home. I pictured lazy summer afternoons, warm showers, familiar food, and a measured pace to my life that I would control for a change.
The glorious day finally arrived, and I said my good-byes. A few days after returning home I knew something was wrong. Somehow my own culture was not exactly as I had remembered it. When I first arrived from Mexico I was surprised at how rapidly everyone walked and gesticulated. I could not stop from greeting people in Nahuatl, and I embarrassed myself by standing goggle-eyed, staring down the aisles of a supermarket. I was suffering from what anthropologists call reverse culture shock. It was weeks before things began to look normal again. But I had changed, and normal was no longer very satisfying. I missed the struggle and sense of discovery that comes from surviving in another culture. It is an addiction that I think is shared by many people who have lived and worked for an extended period cross- culturally. While in the grip of darkest culture shock a month or two after arriving in Amatlan, I solemnly promised myself that I would never again return to that alien (and alienating) place. I thought to myself, "That'll show 'em." Within a few days of returning home, however, I broke that promise and swore to myself that I would go again at the first opportunity.
THE REGION: "A PLACE OF RICH CATTLE RANCHERS AND GUNMEN"
The village of Amatlan is located in the northern part of the state of Veracruz, which stretches its great length along the central Gulf Coast
56 THE VILLAGE IN ITS SETTING
of Mexico. Most of the northern zone of Veracruz is part of a larger region of Mexico covering sections of six states, known as the Huas- teca. In addition to its Veracruz component, the Huasteca includes parts of the states of San Luis Potosi, Tamaulipas, Hidalgo, Queretaro, and Puebla (for general works on the Huasteca see Bernal and Davalos 1952-53; and Stresser-Pean 1979). Experts and local inhabitants dis- agree on the precise borders of the Huasteca, although there is some agreement that, in Veracruz at least, it is bordered in the south by the Rio Cazones and in the north by the Rio Panuco. The western edge of the Huasteca Veracruzana (Veracruz portion of the Huasteca) is dominated by the massive and rugged Sierra Madre Oriental range, which extends southward to join its counterpart from the west coast and form the great central plateau of Mexico. To the east lies the Gulf of Mexico. Between these geographical features we find in the north a flat plain broken only by the island-like Sierra de Otontepec. South of the Otontepec is a vast expanse of choppy hills, the foothills of the Sierra Madre Oriental. It is in the center of this region of sharp, uneven terrain that we find Amatlan. The hills eventually flatten as they reach the coast to the east and the Rio Cazones to the south.
The entire state of Veracruz lies below the Tropic of Cancer, but because much of it is mountainous, climate in any region is determined more by elevation than by latitude. Elevations in the state run from sea level to over 5,600 meters at the peak of Mount Orizaba in southern Veracruz. Geographers as well as local inhabitants divide the state into three vertical zones: tierra caliente (hot country) from sea level to 800 meters; tierra templada (temperate country) from 800 to 1,600 meters; and tierra fria (cold country) above 1,600 meters. Each of these regions is characterized by a distinct set of ecological features which have their effect on the cultures within them (see Puig 1976, 1979).
The proximity of mountains, foothills, and the Gulf combine to complicate the climate of northern Veracruz (see Vivo Escoto 1964). Climate and vegetation vary from steamy tropical forest to cool temper- atures and stands of evergreen trees as one moves from the Gulf region to the upper reaches of the Sierra. Amatlan, however, lies squarely in the hot country, at an altitude of 180 meters above sea level. Geogra- phers describe the climate of this elevation as hot and humid with abundant rainfall in the summer (Am(f), Am, Am(w) in the modified Koppen system).
The village and its surrounding region receives 2,000 mm (about 78 inches) of rain on the average each year. By comparison, in the United States an agricultural state like Indiana receives about half as much.
THE REGION 57
However, rainfall in Amatlan is problematic because it is not evenly distributed. Rainfall can vary significantly from place to place and from year to year. Villagers informed me that it is not unusual for one locale to have too much rain, which results in flooded villages and washed out fields, whereas another area 40 kilometers away suffers from drought. This inconsistency of rainfall is one of the most frustrating characteristics of the environment, and it is a constant topic of conver- sation among villagers. Although mean annual rainfall is high, there is a marked dry season during which it may not rain for several months. The dry season, called tonamili in Nahuatl, runs from about mid- November until mid-May. During this time many of the streams and springs will dry completely or be reduced to stagnant pools. The rainy season, or xopajmili in Nahuatl, begins in mid to late May and usually continues until about mid-November. The heaviest downpours occur in June, July, and August, when rivers and streams fill to overflowing and low areas often become swamps. Gentle streams become raging torrents, trails and roads are reduced to quagmires, and travel becomes dangerous or impossible for days and weeks at a time in the southern Huasteca.
This extreme seasonality and uneven distribution of rainfall is a major obstacle for horticulturists. On maps of the region, geographers indicate that the soil in the region of Amatlan is good for farming because it retains moisture for a minimum of 1 1 months out of the year. This finding is contradicted by other geographic maps showing that a very high 24 to 30% of rainwater does not soak into the soil but runs off into the network of streams and rivers. Villagers affirm that most of the rain runs off of their steep fields and that the soil is dry for stretches of time even in the rainy season. In addition, the average annual temperature for the Amatlan region is very high, ranging be- tween 22 and 26 degrees centigrade (71.6 to 78.8 degrees Fahrenheit). Thus, evaporation from fields and the transpiration rate from crops is high, particularly under the broiling tropical sun. The people of Ama- tlan, like farmers everywhere, are dominated by forces of nature. But due to topography, latitude, and their proximity to the Gulf of Mexico they seem to be caught in an unpredictable cycle of drought and flood. The villagers do not pray for rain; they pray instead for harmony and balance in the extremes of the natural forces they face.
Soils are usually rocky and poor, except for flatlands and the flood- plains of rivers and streams that are, for the most part, off-limits to Indian farmers. Villagers recognize three basic soil types whose names in Nahuatl are: atlali ("flat earth," or "muddy place," literally "water
58 THE VILLAGE IN ITS SETTING
earth"), found along the banks of rivers and streams and excellent for planting; cuatlali ("hilly earth," literally "forest earth"), the major soil type in Amatlan and generally good for cultivation; and tepetlatl{''stox\Q mat"), rocky soil found on some hillsides and very poor for cultivation (see De la Cruz 1982:41-42). As in many tropical environments, nutri- ents are held not in the soil but in the dense vegetation that blankets the whole region. Vegetation in the hot country of the southern Huas- teca is classified as "medium sub-evergreen tropical forest." About 25% of the trees are deciduous, and most reach a mature height of less than 20 meters. In the dry season there are many trees and bushes that lose some or all of their leaves, although most plants do retain their foliage throughout the year. Indians have been practicing slash- and-burn horticulture in the southern Huasteca for many hundreds of years, and thus very little of the primary forest now remains. Because nutrients are held in the vegetation, slash-and-burn horticulture is very effective. By cutting down the forest and brush and then burning the dried vegetation, nutrients are returned to the soil for use by domesticated crops.
The forest cover, even though secondary, is thick and verdant and includes many tropical and subtropical species. Represented are species oificus or tropical fig, tropical cedar (white and red), rosewood, brazilwood, bamboo, avocado, mango, banana, zapote, fiamboyan, tropical poplar, palms, numerous types of fruit trees, and many grasses, bushes, and other plants (see Puig 1976; Romualdo Hernandez 1982:18; and Reyes Antonio 1982:97-105 for the Nahua classification of the various habitats in the region and pages 187-202 in the last work for a list of plants). Larger trees are covered with parasitic flowering plants that bloom brilliantly during certain times of the year. Plant growth is rapid and remarkably dense, particularly during the rainy season. The trails are constantly threatened by encroaching vines and branches, and most people carry a machete with them to clear a path. The climate and soil permits villagers to grow a number of tropical and subtropical crops including sugarcane, coffee, tobacco, yuca (sweet casava.^), camote, jicama, citrus fruits, and many more.
A number of animals and insects that live in the forest have an impact on village life. Those that are most sought after and consumed by villagers are mentioned in the next chapter. The region is known to contain jaguars, although I have never actually observed one. Of more immediate concern are the numerous species of snakes that inhabit the forest and that are sometimes found in the village. The most dangerous is the fer-de-lance ( mahuaquijtli in Nahuatl), a deadly
THE REGION 59
snake I often encountered on the trails or while bathing. Several people in the village were bitten by fer-de-lances while I was in residence, and I once found one on my cot. There are several other types, including the tropical coral snake (red and yellow varieties); the poisonous metlapilt (in Nahuatl), that resembles a blunt, thick grinding stone, from which its name derives; and a green species I could not identify that inhabits the brush along trails and strikes passersby in the face. Scorpions can be found under logs or rocks, and tarantulas the size of a man's hand are sometimes seen on trails or inside people's houses. In my opinion, the most disagreeable creature in the forest is a remarkable centipede {pahuaneluatl in Nahuatl) that is deadly poisonous and may reach over a foot in length. The creature is unparal- leled in its ugliness and in the fear that it causes among people. Villagers told me that the bite is treated by cutting out a large portion of flesh surrounding the wound with a machete. Finally, there are many types of biting gnats and mosquitoes, each with their season. Besides producing bloody and itchy bites, some can carry dangerous diseases such as malaria and dengue fever. The forest has a real beauty in its overwhelming greenness and its accents of exotic tropical flowers, but neither the Indians nor any visitor can forget the many hidden dangers to be found there (see Reyes Antonio 1982:21; and Romualdo Hernandez 1982:15-18).
The Veracruz portion of the Huasteca is particularly remote and inaccessible. One well-paved road hugs the coast, connecting the ports of Tampico in the north and Veracruz to the south. Roads leading to the interior are surfaced with dirt and river pebbles and are so rough that vehicular travel is restricted to a 10-mile per hour crawl. Most interior roads become impassable in heavy rain. Few bridges cross the hundreds of streams and rivulets that wind their way from the mountains to the Gulf, and vehicles carrying passengers or produce are frequently forced to turn back. Third-class buses rattle their way along many of the interior roads, although, as I discovered, a journey to most locales usually entails a long final trek on horseback or by foot. There are only two moderate-sized towns in the Huasteca Vera- cruzana: Tuxpan on the coast and Panuco, to the north.
The state of Veracruz is divided into political units called municipios, which are analagous to our counties. Each municipio is run by a local political leader called the Presidente, who is elected by the population for a 3-year term. The Huasteca Veracruzana is composed of 33 such municipios, each of which has its own Presidente and runs its own internal affairs. The state or national governments always work through
60 THE VILLAGE IN ITS SETTING
2.1. Mexico showing state of Veracruz and location of municipio of Ixhuatlan de Madero
the municipio structure, and it is this level of political authority that has the greatest direct effect on the lives of the local people. Amatlan lies in the municipio of Ixhuatlan de Madero. The Nahuatl name Ixhuatlan is translated sometimes as "place where plants are born," but in Amatlan people say it means "place oi 2ihun(\2ini hoj a de papatla" (a plant with large leaves). Ixhuatlan was the name of a former Indian village that now serves as the administrative center ( cabecera in Span- ish) for the municipio. Thus, the name Ixhuatlan de Madero desig- nates the municipio as a whole as well as the small town that serves as administrative center. The "de Madero" was appended after the Mexican Revolution to call attention to the fact that Ixhuatlan was the center of early support for General Francisco Madero, President of Mexico from 1911-13 (see map 2.1).
The most recently published national census {X Censo General de Poblaciony Vivienda, 1980) and the Statistical Yearbook of Veracruz {Anu- ario estadistico de Veracruz, 1984) tells much about Ixhuatlan and the surrounding region. The Huasteca Veracruzana contains 1,003,697
i
THE REGION 61
people, 253,506 of which speak Indian languages. This figure repre- sents about 25% of the inhabitants. Of the people speaking Native American languages, fully 67% speak Nahuatl, the language spoken in Amatlan. The municipio of Ixhuatlan de Madero has 53,883 inhabit- ants, about 1,500 of whom live in the administrative center. The census finds 39,195 speakers of Indian languages in the municipio, 26,793 of whom speak Nahuatl (68%). The remaining languages repre- sented are Otomi (18%), Tepehua (9%), and Huastec (less than 1%).
There are two sources of error in these figures that should be ex- plained. First, many of the values for Indian populations are estimated. Accurate counts of people living in remote villages are hard to achieve, and even resident schoolmasters sometimes grossly miscalculate their estimates of the local populations they serve. Second, when counting speakers of native languages only people 5 years and older are typically included in the census. This acts to underplay the number of Indians relative to non-Indians in the population because, on the average, over 25% of village inhabitants fall below this age cutoff. Taking these potential sources of error into account, we can see that the majority of people in Ixhuatlan de Madero are Indians, based on the criterion of language. The problem of isolating the other features that distinguish Indians from non-Indians will be discussed later in this chapter.
The municipio is about 600 square kilometers in area and lies in the hilly southern reaches of the Huasteca Veracruzana. The administra- tive center is 306 meters above sea level, placing it well inside of the hot country zone. In fact, despite variation in microclimatic conditions caused by the endless hills and valleys, the whole of Ixhuatlan de Madero can be classed as hot country. There are about 130 villages scattered throughout the municipio, with Nahuatl speakers occupying the northern two-thirds and Otomi and Tepehua speakers living in the southernmost third. On the dividing line between these two areas is situated the administrative center and seat of political control. The center is connected to the outside by a Y-shaped system of unpaved roads. One arm leads in a northwest direction to the neighboring municipio of Benito Juarez, while the other leads to the northeast through the municipio of Temapache and on to Tuxpan and Poza Rica almost 100 miles away. The arms of this road system meet in the market village of Llano de Enmedio {huextlahuac in Nahuatl) and proceed southward until reaching the administrative center of Ixhua- tlan de Madero. The gravel road stops abruptly in the little town, as if to cut off entrance into the wild sierra that lies beyond.
The Indian population is scattered throughout Ixhuatlan in small
62 THE VILLAGE IN ITS SETTING
villages, most of which range in population from 200 to 800 people. Many of these villages are on communally held plots of land called ejidos. These were established by law all over Mexico following the Revolution of 1910 as a way of returning the land to the large, dispos- sessed Indian population. Existing villages were allocated a fixed amount of land according to the number of male household heads living there. The holder was granted complete use rights over his land, including that of passing it on to his children or wife after he dies. He is forbidden, however, to sell or in any way dispose of the land outside of the community. The formal internal political structure of the ejido is determined by law, but this structure and the set of rules governing the ejido varies by state and region. Generally, a series of democrati- cally elected community members head various committees that are responsible for the administration of the ejido.
The land tenure situation in the Huasteca region is exceedingly complex and not amenable to easy generalization. The Indians, wealthy landowners, local political leaders, and delegations from state and national governments represent divergent constituencies that are rarely in agreement over the precise nature of various types of land holdings (see Schryer 1986). A significant number of Indians of the region live in villages that have not been officially recognized as ejidos. Most Indians would like to belong to an ejido because of the benefits membership in such a community affords them. Not the least of these advantages is that ejido land is protected by law from being purchased or usurped by local ranchers and land speculators. However, as we have seen, struggles to gain ejido status can be complicated by economic and political divisions among the villagers themselves.
Most of the mestizos in the municipio live and work on the large cattle ranches located in the tracts of land between ejidos. As a rule, the ranches occupy rich and fiat bottomland while the villages are located in the hilliest areas. The Huasteca is renowned throughout Mexico as a beef-producing area with many prosperous ranches. Often the ranch owners live in Mexico City or elsewhere, and some even fly in by private plane or helicopter. Despite the pretense of free elections, municipio government is completely in the hands of these mestizo ranch owners or their proxies. They are the ones with the necessary financial backing and connections with state and national politics to run for office. Equally important, they have the cultural and linguistic knowledge to operate among the elite groups of Mexico, none of which are Indian.
Ixhuatlan de Madero has been described by the Mexican anthropol-
LAND AND PEOPLE 63
ogist Roberto Williams Garcia as a "place of rich cattle ranchers and gunmen" (1963: 14). This description applies to much of the Huasteca Veracruzana. The mestizo ranch hands and cowboys are seldom with- out guns, and the Indians are often afraid of these local representatives of the national elites. Traveling through the region is much like re- turning to the North American West of a hundred years ago. Cowboys on horseback with Winchester rifles in their saddles and pistols stuck in their belts are a common sight. Gunfights between drunken cowboys are not unusual, and a favorite pastime is roping cattle from horseback and then wrestling them to the ground. But the illusion of living in the past is short lived. Occasionally, a traveler on a trail meets an army patrol bristling with machine guns, and this experience serves as a chilling reminder that we live in the twentieth century.
Among city dwellers in Mexico the region is known to be remote and lawless, a place where murder can go unpunished and outsiders are not welcome. A small branch bank that opened in Ixhuatlan de Madero a number of years ago was closed within a few months because it was repeatedly robbed. Little wonder that urban Mexicans were amazed and horrified when I told them that I, a foreigner, was conduct- ing field research in the Huasteca. Several years later when I returned to the area with my wife and child, people thought I was being foolish, and they recommended (in vain) that I buy a gun of my own. The Huasteca is fascinating because it is rich in character. It is a place where the strains of a modernizing Mexico are experienced by the local people and are visible to the careful observer. As the census figures demonstrate, the Huasteca is also a place where Indians live in great numbers. There they follow their traditions and live in a world closely linked to their pre-Hispanic past. They, too, are caught up in the violence of the times as they try to assert their rights in an ever- changing world that is foreign to them. But by their numbers and their very presence, they contribute what is truly unique to the character of the region.
LAND AND PEOPLE
Defining who is an Indian — and who is not — is a surprisingly difficult task. Most Mexicans distinguish between mestizos, people of mixed American Indian and European racial stock who possess a Hispanic cultural outlook, and indios, who are identified with the remnants of the traditional American Indian races and cultures that existed at the time of the Conquest. In general, urban Mexicans recognize that rural
64 THE VILLAGE IN ITS SETTING
mestizos share some Indian cultural traits, but they know that mestizo culture is basically that of urban national Mexico. The term indio has pejorative connotations for most Mexicans because many urban people consider Indians to be backward, and Indians are overrepresented in the lowest socioeconomic levels of Mexican society. A more neutral phrase in use is gente indigena, or indigenous people. Urban Mexicans generally identify these indigenous people as those who live in or originate from small villages, speak Native American languages, and have a traditional culture that differs from theirs. However, this com- monly held distinction between people of mixed versus aboriginal heritage is highly misleading.
The first problem is in the use of the term race. Virtually all Mexicans are of mixed racial stock. A few people consider themselves 'Vhite," claiming to have a pedigree going back to thcpeninsulares, or Spaniards from the Iberian Peninsula, with no Indian admixture. These individu- als are exceedingly rare and in most cases probably mistaken. People with Indian features, including black straight hair, dark-brown eyes, brown skin, and relatively short stature, can be found at all levels of Mexican society. This fact has led some observers to claim that Mexico is thus free from racism and that social distinctions are based solely on ethnic and class affiliation. Although it is true that overt racial discrimination such as that often found in the United States is rare and would be impossible to maintain in such a mixed population, definite racial biases exist in Mexico. Indian features are widely held to be unattractive and thus undesirable. Even in Amatlan I found that peo- ple admired children born with lighter skin, or brown, as opposed to black, hair. In Mexico to be guero, or light complexioned, gives a person advantages over his or her darker peers. But being darker does not necessarily mean the person is more Indian. An Indian can be guero too.
This confusion is not totally eliminated if we focus on strictly socio- cultural factors to distinguish Indians from mestizos. In one sense all Mexicans are mestizos and, in fact, scholars and writers sometimes say "we are a nation of mestizos." Indians have influenced many aspects of Mexican urban national culture including diet, art and architecture, language, religious belief, and ritual. In turn, there are virtually no Indians in contemporary Mexico who have escaped the influence of urban, national culture. Thus, from the viewpoint of the outsider, defining what it is to be Indian is a matter of degree rather than of kind. Nor can the criterion of language always distinguish Indians from mestizos. Many rural mestizo people speak Indian languages
LAND AND PEOPLE 65
bilingually, and in some cases Spanish is actually their second lan- guage. Individuals who are monolingual in a Native American lan- guage, however can almost certainly be said to be Indian by whatever criteria are applied (see Hill and Hill 1986 for a sociolinguistic study of language and ethnicity among Nahuas of central Mexico).
The difficulty of distinguishing Indians from mestizos is a problem faced by the Mexican government as it tries to settle land disputes, develop policies to encourage economic development, and deliver services to Indian populations. In the past, officials needed a quick measure of "Indianness," and they settled on the criterion of footwear as one distinguishing feature. People who wear shoes are mestizos; those who do not are Indians. This solution helps to explain an oddity about the Mexican national census. Like many countries, the federal government conducts a census every 10 years. The surveys normally contained questions regarding language affiliation that were designed to identify Indians. It eventually became obvious that language alone as a measure of Indianness is too crude to be of much use. As a consequence, beginning with the sixth national census in 1943, addi- tional cultural data were collected from people, including whether or not they wore shoes (Marino Flores 1967:17). The question was intended to keep track of the Indian population and measure its growth or decline relative to mestizos. Interestingly, by the 1980 census the question had been deleted (see Castile 1981 for a parallel discussion of Indianness in both North America and Mexico).
The example of Julio Martinez of Amatlan will help to clarify some of the problems in distinguishing Indians from mestizos. Julio was born in the village, and like all other residents learned Nahuatl as his native language. His wife is from a neighboring Indian village and she, too, is a native Nahuatl speaker. Both Julio and his wife speak competent Spanish, and in fact are probably among the most fluent villagers. Julio is a farmer like other villagers, but he is distinguished by being one of the few people who owns cattle as well. His herd is large, and he has constant dealings with neighboring ranchers to assure access to pastures and water. Out of a small counter at the side of his house he runs one of two functioning cantinas in Amatlan. He carries an assortment of dry goods, but most of his business comes from selling cane alcohol to the villagers. His wife peddles bread she bakes in a stone-and-mud bread oven, and his children wait on customers at the cantina counter. Julio is a true entrepreneur who, in addition to his village life, operates a clothing and dry goods stall at the weekly markets in Ixhuatlan de Madero and in Llano de Enmedio. In 1986,
66 THE VILLAGE IN ITS SETTING
when electricity reached Amatlan for the first time, he purchased a small refrigerator that he had transported by burro to the village. He now sells hielttos, the Spanish term for popsicle-like frozen bags of water mixed with sugar, coloring, and flavoring, in addition to cold soft drinks and beer.
When I first entered the village in 1970, Julio was one of the few men to wear Western-style clothing as well as shoes. He was curious about the United States and asked many questions about our farming practices and how much farm workers are paid in wages. He is ex- tremely well-off by comparison to the other villagers, and it is clear that he intends the same for his several children. In 1986, his eldest daughter was attending secondary school in a distant town, an expense most villagers cannot afford. In addition to his entrepreneurial activi- ties, Julio had by 1986 become an active force for change in the village. He is on a committee to petition the municipio government to have a road constructed connecting Amatlan to the outside, and he worked diligently to have electricity brought to the village. In sum, his outlook, many economic activities, dress, speech, and other characteristics would seem to link him to the mestizo world. And yet in many ways, he is thoroughly Indian.
Julio and his wife speak Spanish well and yet, for them, Nahuatl is the language of everyday use. With the exception of the refrigerator (purchased in 1986) and the cantina counter, nothing distinguishes their house from any other in the village. In addition, both Julio and his wife participate actively in the communal activities of the village. He never misses a communal work party, and he willingly serves on village committees. Moreover, Julio and his family participate actively in the traditional religion. He has an altar in his house watched over by a paper cutout of a witness spirit, and he calls in traditional curers when a member of his family falls ill. He acts as sponsor to major rituals such as the yearly ceremony to tonantsij, an important fertility spirit. Julio does not appear to engage in these activities to mollify jealous neighbors or fend off criticisms by others less successful than he. He fervently believes in the Nahua pantheon of spirits, follows the traditional customs, and actively participates in his culture. He strives for the benefit of himself and his family, but he does not remain aloof from his neighbors nor attempt to accrue power at their expense. He is one of those rare people little written about in social scientific literature: an Indian who has achieved substantial prosperity, while staying within the Indian system of values.
The complexities of distinguishing Indians from mestizos derive
LAND AND PEOPLE 67
from the fact that no clear and stable dividing lines exist between the two groups. Although the cultural orientations of the two are different, from the perspective of the outsider they shade imperceptibly into one another. As in any sliding scale, the extremes are easy to distin- guish. The in-between cases pose the difficulty. I would like to add here that the people of Amatlan do not appear to have any difficulty in determining a person's identity. Only an outsider, unfamiliar with the symbolic means of distinguishing the two groups, has difficulty (see Caso 1971:83ff. for a discussion of the complexities of defining Indians).
For the reader unfamiliar with ethnic divisions in Mexico, I would like to indicate some general features that distinguish Indians from mestizos. Ethnicity is often situational in that people decide when and how to assert their identity using different strategies at different times. x\n added complicating factor is that over time a group's self-definition changes to meet new challenges, and the symbols people choose to represent their identity may be modified, created anew, intentionally eliminated, or resurrected from a previous period. Thus, any listing of traits poses the danger of oversimplifying and thereby falsifying a complex and constantly shifting multiethnic situation. With these cautions in mind, I will identify some features of Nahua ethnicity recognized by both Indians and mestizos, and also meaningful to the outside observer.
Julio's example provides insight into how we might establish mini- mal criteria for defining Indian status that are valid for the period of my fieldwork. Such a definition should include the following character- istics: the person must (1) define himself or herself as an Indian; (2) be a native speaker of an indigenous language that is the language of choice in everyday speech; (3) participate freely in the communal activities of a village; (4) revere a pantheon of spirits and participate in rituals that, although influenced to a greater or lesser extent by Spanish Catholicism, derive from Native American traditions; (5) at- tempt through ritual and other means to enter into a balance or har- mony with the social and natural worlds as opposed to striving for strict control over them. This last characteristic is difficult to apply, but it refers to the fact that most mestizos partake of the Euro-American world view, with its injunction to master the natural and social uni- verses. Being Indian is not a state of wealth, nor is it antithetical to entrepreneurship or a progressive outlook that sees some benefits in adopting Western technology. Julio and his family are solidly Indian by their own assessment and by the five characteristics listed above.
68 THE VILLAGE IN ITS SETTING
(Reck 1986 [1978] has written a novel that seeks to illuminate the distinction between Indian and mestizo world view.)
Two features of this list are important to note. First, none of the criteria are biological. Second, with the possible exception of the first (self-definition as an Indian), each characteristic allows for a range of adherence by the participants. For example, a person may engage in communal village activities in only a minimal way or perhaps remain a background figure during rituals. Individuals divide their time and energies differently, but to be Indian, they must meet to some extent all five criteria. The characteristics cannot be applied rigidly, and each is difficult to measure. However, if one or more of them is not met, the chances are good that the person is on the way to becoming a mestizo. It is mobility from the Indian to the mestizo sector that contributes to the blurring of the distinction between the two social categories. Also, as discussed in Chapter 7, the Indians have an interest in keeping the cultural border area between themselves and the domi- nant mestizo population ill defined.
Another way to appreciate the differences between Indians and mestizos is to view the situation from a regional perspective. Indians live in villages with distinctive social structures, whereas mestizos live in ranches, towns, or cities. Wherever mestizos live in small, even isolated, farming communities they retain the basic outlook and values of their fellow mestizos who live in the towns. On a regional basis, Indians and mestizos interact under very special conditions. The Indi- ans may work for the ranchers on a temporary basis, or they may trade with mestizo middlemen at the market, but there is virtually no socializing that occurs outside of well-defined situations such as these. Even when Indians invite mestizo cowboys to their villages for a bull- riding event {jaripeo in Spanish), the cowboys ride the bulls, and the Indians simply observe from outside the corral. The line separating Indian from mestizo is clearly recognized by the people in the region, and this is reflected in the rules of engagement followed by both groups when they interact.
The people of Amatlan are fully aware of their status as Indians, and this awareness is reflected in the terms they use to describe themselves and outsiders. They call themselves by the general term masehualmej, which in Nahuatl means "Indian farmers" or "coun- trymen." This is the same term used by the ancient Aztecs to refer to commoners, and so the word has an association with pre-Hispanic Mexico (Soustelle 1961 [1955]:70ff.). When wishing to be more spe-
LAND AND PEOPLE 69
cific, the villagers refer to themselves by the Nahuatl term mexijcaj (sing, mexijcatl) that is the same word used by the ancient Aztecs to refer to themselves. They call all mestizos, whether farmers or not, by the Nahuatl term coyomej (sing, coyotl ) that has been translated by some anthropologists as "gentlemen" but which also has a derogatory connotation. Although James Taggart translates the term as "gentle- man," he does point out that the Nahuatl word coyotl ("coyote" in English) is an animal the Nahuas view as a mischiefmaker and back- biter as well as being clever and self-serving (1983:260). The coyomej are seen as aggressive and arrogant, people who exploit others when allowed (see Romualdo Hernandez 1982:27-30,158; and Reyes Marti- nez 1982:93,154 for Nahua descriptions of coyomej; also Wolf 1959:237). Older villagers will occasionally use the Spanish-Nahuatl word caxtiltlacamej ("Castilians") or the Spanish phrase gente de razon ("people of reason") to describe mestizos, obvious legacies of the colonial epoch. Villagers occasionally use the Spanish word indio ("In- dian") when describing themselves or other non-Nahua Indians, but they will modify the word by adding the diminutive suffix -ito. So they may talk about tnditos, but never indios. They use Nahuatl names to refer to their non-Nahua Indian neighbors: huaxtecatl for a Huastec, otomitl for an Otomi, and tepehuatl for a Tepehua. All of these people would be referred to as masehualmej (or "Indian farmers") as well.
The way the villagers use these terms depends largely on the context in which they are speaking. In distinguishing Indians from mestizos, they employ the general terms masehualmej and coyomej. In other con- texts they may choose to distinguish Nahuas from other Indian groups, and they will use the appellation mexijcaj . As suggested above, use of these ethnic labels is situational and depends upon the speaker's position relative to his or her listeners and upon how inclusive or exclusive the speaker wishes to be. How villagers use ethnic labels is complicated by the somewhat ambiguous distinctions between Indian and mestizo and the slow but steady migration of Indians into the mestizo world. Local people who relocate to the city always maintain their positive Indian identity in the eyes of those who stay behind. Villagers reserve the disparaging term otomtmej (sing, otomitl) for Indi- ans who disguise themselves by dressing or acting like mestizos in order to put on airs or to take advantage of other Indians (Reyes Martinez 1982:93,176; Romauldo Hernandez 1982:158). The use of the term otomtmej in such a negative context reveals the degree of hostility in interethnic relations among Indians. The most significant
70 THE VILLAGE IN ITS SETTING
social cleavage in the Huasteca, however, is between Indian and non-Indian. In virtually every situation, Indians from differing ethnic affiliations will unite to face the common mestizo threat.
The relationship that people have to the land in the Huasteca Veracruzana is a reflection of the Indian-mestizo distinction. For the most part, the Indians live on ejidos, or in other small settlements or villages. They are likely to be surrounded by several generations of their families and to farm relatively small plots of land. Mestizos may also live in villages and farm small plots, but they are more likely to use the plow and to have access to modern farming technology. For them, farming is seen as a business, an occupation. For the Indians, farming is not only a way to make a living, but it is also a coherent way of life, the central activity that serves as the focus of their social system, as well as their religious beliefs and practices. The people who own independent farms and cattle ranches in the region are always mestizos, and it is this group that dominates local political and economic decision making. Indians and mestizos can live side by side, but they inhabit different worlds. For an Indian to enter the mestizo world with its lure of opportunities for wealth and power, he or she must leave behind much of what is distinctively Indian and embrace an alien culture (see Wolf 1959:235ff. for a discussion of the nature and development of mestizo Mexico).
It is easy to see that despite problems and ambiguities in distinguish- ing the two groups, there are real differences between Indians and mestizos that have important consequences for the people of the Huasteca. One crucial difference is that Indians generally relate to mestizos from a position of social, political, and economic inequality. Low status, relative powerlessness and poverty, are not expressed directly when Indians interact with mestizos, however. Instead, these and other realities of life for the Indians are submerged in the ethnic distinctions that exist in the region. Indians and mestizos are divided by separate ethnic identities that serve to define in-group cultural values and distinguish them from cultural values of the out-group. Thus one of the most important variables that shapes Indian-mestizo interaction is ethnicity. The processes that determine the internal structures of ethnic groups or that lead to their creation in the first place are exceedingly complex and poorly understood by social scientists. Ethnicity has proven to be such a variable phenomenon with so many different manifestations that experts do not even agree on the precise definition of the phrase "ethnic group."
I define an ethnic group as a population within a larger society whose
LAND AND PEOPLE 71
members identify themselves, for purposes of political, social, or eco- nomic advantage, as a distinct group based upon cultural features, such as religion, social character, dress, and perceived common histori- cal origin, that are recognized by group members and outsiders alike. No single feature separates one ethnic group from other groups. As Fredrik Barth states, "It is important to recognize that although ethnic categories take cultural differences into account, we can assume no simple one-to-one relationship between ethnic units and cultural simi- larities and differences. The features that are taken into account are not the sum of 'objective' differences, but only those which the actors themselves regard as significant" (1969:14). The problem of defining an ethnic group can be at least partially resolved by focusing on the factors that lead people to forge and maintain a distinct identity. We must look at the advantages that accrue as a result of ethnic group membership, advantages that lead ethnic group members to establish boundaries between themselves and others regardless of actual observ- able cultural distinctions. Individual actors recognize ethnic differ- ences, and we must examine what motivates them to perpetuate those differences through their beliefs and behavior (for a current discussion of ethnicity see Nash 1989).
An important point is that ethnic groups never exist in isolation, but only in relation to other ethnic groups. Thus to some extent, Indian and mestizo ethnic identities owe their existences to one another. Because ethnic groups cannot always be objectively distinguished according to cultural content and because it is impossible to predict which aspects of their culture members will select to distinguish their group, Barth recommends that scholars focus their attention on the boundaries between ethnic groups to see how members create and maintain their identities (1969:15). According to Barth, then, bound- aries between Indians and mestizos shape and define their respective ethnic identities. To be an Indian is to participate in a cultural system that everyone in the region agrees is distinctly Indian. The same definition applies to mestizo identity, but because mestizos are more closely linked to the urban mainstream their identity tends to remain implicit. To understand the nature of the boundaries between these groups, we must understand not only what motivates Indians and mestizos to create separate identities for themselves but also how these separate identities influence cross-boundary interaction.
As I will emphasize throughout this work, one way of clarifying the complex ethnic situation in the Huasteca is to view Indian ethnicity as a response to the real-life situations confronting villagers and to
72 THE VILLAGE IN ITS SETTING
recognize that Indian-mestizo interaction is mediated through their respective ethnic identities. Ethnic identity and the formation of eth- nic groups will be discussed further in Chapter 7 (see also Tambiah 1989:335-36, for a definition of ethnic group that stresses the "prag- matics of calculated choice and opportunism").
DRESS
Besides language, the most important overt marker of ethnic identity in the southern Huasteca is dress. Clothing style can distinguish Indi- ans from mestizos as well as the various Indian groups from each other. Even within ethnic groups subtle differences in dress can often identify the village of the wearer. In Amatlan, types of dress are important symbolic markers that link the wearer to certain social cate- gories. I must state at the outset that this system of symbolic classifica- tion of people is currently in the process of breaking down. In 1970, when I first went to Amatlan, about 95% of the men and 100% of the women dressed in the traditional style. By traditional I mean dress style identified as Indian, although the styles themselves appear to be primarily based on post-Conquest Spanish peasant dress. In 1986 only 20% of the men and about 75% of the women continued the old pattern. Increasingly, villagers purchase clothes in the mestizo or Euro- American style from secondhand stalls on market day. In fact, the most favored used clothing comes from the United States. On several occasions I was taken aback as I passed someone on the trail wearing, for example, a University of Michigan sweatshirt.
In the traditional system, men and those boys old enough to be working their own fields wear loose-fitting white cotton muslin pants that tie at the waist and ankles. The pants are called caltsoj (from the Spanish calzon), and like all traditional clothes in the village they are hand sewn by the women from cloth purchased at the market. On top, men wear a very loose-fitting white pullover long-sleeved shirt that reaches to the thigh and is made from the same material. The neck opening extends for about six inches down the front from the neckline and is closed with three or four colored buttons. Some men wear shirts with the cuffs and the area surrounding the buttons embroidered with brightly colored thread. The majority of men rarely wear shoes, although some wear a kind of sandal constructed from a piece of rubber tire — the tire tread or sidewall cut into a shape for the sole — held on with criss-crossed white leather thongs threaded through heavy wire
DRESS 73
Staples. This footwear is called tecactli (sing.) in Nahuatl, huarache in Spanish. When wading through water or during particularly hot days men may roll their pants legs up above the hem of their long shirts so as to create shorts. Some men keep their sleeves up by wearing a rubberband around each upper arm.
Married women, regardless of age, wear a skirt of a bright solid color that wraps around the waist and falls to the ankles. It is tied on and is frequently made from a heavy satin-type cloth. This skirt, called an enagua in Spanish oxcueitlm Nahuatl, usually has one or two horizontal strips of a contrasting color of cloth or ribbon circling at about knee height. Women wear a short-sleeved blouse called by the Spanish term camisa . This beautiful garment is constructed from white muslin that fits tightly under the arms and, through a series of tiny pleats, almost like smocking, hangs loosely down below the waist. Blouses are usually worn tucked into the skirt. The tops of the sleeves and a large rectangle of cloth that serves as the neck of the blouse are sewn on separately. This rectangular yoke, reaching about one-third of the way down the front and back, as well as the sleeve tops are heavily embroidered before they are added to the blouse. Cross-stitch designs portray geometric patterns or flowers, and the embroidery threads used are bright red, yellow, orange, blue, green, and other vivid colors. Around the edging of the sleeves and inside the neck women some- times sew a black ribbon. The border between the embroidered panels and the plain lower two-thirds of the blouse is often set off by a narrow band of bright blue or red embroidery. The sleeves and border areas are sometimes further decorated with a lacelike filagree painstakingly added by the seamstress in white thread. The blouses are strikingly beautiful, and fine handiwork is a source of pride for women. Both women and girls go about barefooted.
Small boys, before they receive land from their fathers, are dressed in a nightshirt-like outfit called a cotoj probably from the Spanish cota ("blouse"), that hangs to the knee; cloth selected for the cotoj is either white or lightly patterned. The young children wear no undergarments and nothing on their feet. At