reciprocity, redistribution, and the transaction of value ... · mesoamerica, of a system in which...

Reciprocity, Redistribution, and the Transaction of Value in the Mesoamerican FiestaAuthor(s): John MonaghanSource: American Ethnologist, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Nov., 1990), pp. 758-774Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/645712Accessed: 12/09/2008 17:51

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reciprocity, redistribution, and the transaction of value in the Mesoamerican fiesta

JOHN MONAGHAN-Vanderbilt University

The fiesta has long been seen as a key mechanism for the circulation of goods in Mesoameri- can communities. This circulation has most often been characterized as redistributive (Aguirre Beltran 1979; Dow 1973; Wolf 1959). In the Mesoamerican context, redistribution has been used to mean a movement of goods from those who sponsor a fiesta to other members of the

community, through the serving of sumptuous meals to fiesta guests. One of the most important topics of research defined by this perspective has concerned the effect sponsorship has on the individual sponsor's household surpluses. Thus, debate has arisen over the question of the extent to which wealth is reduced by fiesta sponsorship and the impact this has on the development of class differences within the community (see Greenberg 1981 for a review of the literature on this topic). Following directly from this has been the tendency on the part of researchers to focus on the single fiesta and to calculate and analyze the expenditures of individual fiesta sponsors in isolation. This has implied that the only relationship of importance between

sponsoring household and fiesta participants is that of one-time giver and one-time receiver, where the fiesta participant's role is to receive the sponsor's distribution, which in some way contributes to the material well-being of the recipient.

As defined by Polanyi and others (Earle 1977; Halperin 1988; Polanyi 1957), however, redistribution is more than just the movement of goods from a center (in the Mesoamerican case the fiesta sponsor) out to a periphery (the fiesta guests). It also involves two other transactions. The first of these is the movement of goods from some outside contributors into the center. This transaction has not been a focus in discussions of the Mesoamerican fiesta, since it has been assumed that the sponsor's accumulation of goods through exchange is unimportant, as most

sponsors finance their fiestas out of surpluses accumulated by their individual households. The second transaction occurs between those who contribute goods into the center and those who receive these same goods in distributions. Because this transaction is mediated by the center, it may not always be salient in either the minds of participants or the mind of the analyst. But even in a complex social system like that of the United States, where those who receive gov-

The fiesta system has long been seen as a focus of collective life in native Meso- american communities and has been identified as an important device for the circulation of material goods among community members. However, ethnographic reports have tended to focus on only one kind of exchange in the fiesta: the distributions of wealth that sponsors make to participants. Drawing on recent ethnographic work in the Mixteca Alta, this article shows that the fiesta is actually a nexus of three different kinds of exchange, involving the reciprocal exchange of wealth by pairs of fiesta participants and the pooling of wealth at a center, in addition to the distributions made by sponsors to participants. The article goes on to argue that fiesta participants actively use these exchanges to create complex social meanings in each fiesta celebrated. [Mixtec Indians, Mesoamerican ethnology, gift exchange, redistribution, community]

758 american ethnologist

ernment transfer payments and those who fund those payments through wage deductions may be very far from one another, one still hears individuals complaining about who it is who receives the money they pay in taxes.

What I will attempt to demonstrate here is the presence, in at least some communities in

Mesoamerica, of a system in which the contribution of goods by members of the community to the sponsor, and the circulation of goods between the contributors and those who receive them in fiesta distributions, are significant features of the fiesta. The combination of these trans-

actions, moreover, gives the fiesta a wheel-like structure: the sponsoring household is located at the "hub" of the wheel, and a number of households on the "spokes" of the wheel pool their

goods at the hub, with the accumulated goods subsequently flowing back out along the spokes during the fiesta. I will go on to argue that this combination of transactions generates a series of overlapping rights and duties among fiesta sponsors, which serves to link each fiesta to dozens of other fiestas held in the course of the year, and I will show how these transactions give the celebration a significance for participants that is often overlooked. I will do this using illus- trative materials from Santiago Nuyoo, a Mixtec-speaking community in Oaxaca, Mexico.

ethnographic background

Santiago Nuyoo is a community of about 2500 persons, set in the rugged mountains of eastern Oaxaca. The community is ethnically homogeneous, and everyone in Nuyoo speaks Mix- tec. Almost all Nuyootecos are peasant farmers, cultivating corn, beans, and squash as well as the cash crops of coffee and bananas. The basic social unit is the extended-family household, often built around a core of two generations of related men. The household is the land-holding unit, the primary unit of production and consumption, and the unit of fiesta sponsorship. There are about 420 households in the community, scattered among six hamlets and the municipal center. Several households in the community converted to evangelical sects in the late 1980s, but their members continue to participate in the fiesta system.

In Nuyoo, fiestas are celebrated on the occasions of life-crisis events-birth, marriage, and death-and when officers in the civil-religious hierarchy are forced to sponsor fiestas as part of their official duties. A feature of most Mesoamerican communities, the civil-religious hierarchy is made up of a series of rotating offices dedicated to both civil and religious aspects of com-

munity life (Cancian 1967). In Nuyoo there are 43 fiestas (viko) celebrated by these officials in the course of the year, with roughly two-thirds of them sponsored by the religious officials, or mayordomos. When to this number is added the average of 39 major fiestas celebrated an-

nually to mark life-crisis events, the total is 82 fiestas celebrated in the community in the course of a typical year (see Monaghan 1987).1

In a fiesta, the sponsor2 is required to feed up to 200 guests as many as four meals over a two- day period. Each of these meals consists of, at the least, a plate of beans and three to five tortillas. In most fiestas the sponsoring household provides what I call the "start-up costs" of the fiesta: some ten baskets of 60 tortillas each (the tunoo, or "basket," is a standard measure of tortillas), 40 liters of beans, four to five cases of beer, 20 liters of sugarcane liquor, one to three cases of soft drinks, several liters of cooking oil, sometimes rice and pastas, and seasonings (such as tomatoes, chilies, salt, and onions). In fiestas with a strong religious component, sponsors must also provide six dozen candles, several dozen skyrockets, and large quantities of flowers for the rituals and for the adornment of saints' images.

It is clear from the amount of goods provided by the sponsoring household that in Nuyoo people do "redistribute" a part of their wealth in the course of celebrating a fiesta. It is usually the case that after the celebration little is left of the tortillas, beans, liquor, soda, and beer, although these goods are sometimes recouped in the fiesta's saa sa'a exchanges (see below).

A household has three sources of wealth upon which it can draw to meet its needs for fiesta distributions. The first is its liquid wealth, that is, cash on hand; the second is wealth stored in

the Mesoamerican fiesta 759

such possessions as animals and radios; and the third is productive wealth, or land (Dow 1973:274-275). Only rarely is productive wealth used for fiesta expenses. The liquid and stored wealth to be used for a fiesta may be supplemented in the months preceding it by in- creased agricultural production or by wage labor, often outside the community. However, in

Nuyoo, if the start-up costs the household provides are compared with the total amount of

goods distributed in the fiesta, then it becomes clear that they amount to only a fraction of what the sponsors need for the celebration. For example, in the mayordomia of the Virgen del Ro-

sario, of the 204,937 pesos' worth of foodstuffs and skyrockets "distributed" in 1985, only 35,065 pesos, or 17.1 percent, came from the supplies the sponsoring household had prepared for the fiesta. In other fiestas I examined, the total produced in start-up costs by the sponsors ranged from 12 percent to 23 percent of total expenditures.

Where do the rest of the goods come from? They come from contributions made by members of other households that participate in the fiesta, which are transferred to the sponsor through reciprocal gift exchange, or saa sa'a.

gift exchange in the fiesta system

Saa sa'a involves either the reciprocal exchange of labor between households, usually on an

agricultural project, or the reciprocal exchange of goods-that is, gift exchange. Let me illus- trate the latter with a hypothetical example. The people of household A are obliged to sponsor a fiesta because one of them occupies a civil-religious hierarchy position. The people of household B, knowing that A will sponsor a fiesta, prepare a large prestation. Several people from B arrive at the house of A on the morning of the fiesta bearing 60 tortillas, a liter of beans, the

equivalent in cash of one to two days of agricultural labor, salt, chilies, and perhaps a liter of

sugarcane liquor or a case of beer. This is considered a "complete" gift.3 The sponsor notes down the individual items that make up the gift in a special "account book" (Leslie 1960). Each household has two account books, one listing the names of and goods given by those who have come to its fiesta (that is, a list of gift debts), and the other listing the names of and goods given to households that have sponsored fiestas in the past (that is, a list of gift credits). As each debt is canceled, the corresponding name is crossed off the list. By the end of the fiesta, all those on the second list should have had their names crossed out, since all the debts owed to a household are due when it sponsors a fiesta. By the same token, the book of gift debts should be filled with the names of those who have made prestations to the sponsoring household. As this suggests, participants in a fiesta are largely made up of three groups: those who have come to repay debts they owe the sponsor, those who wish to make prestations to the sponsor and thus put the sponsor in debt to them, and those who attend for a combination of both reasons, to repay the sponsor but also to make a new gift, so that the sponsor will be indebted to them. All those who exchange gifts with the sponsor I call sa'a partners.

When the partners arrive and make their prestations to the sponsor, each item they bring is

immediately reciprocated with a countergift. For tortillas, the countergift is an average of 18

percent of the initial prestation. Thus, if a man and woman bring 60 tortillas to give to the

sponsor of a fiesta, the sponsor will take their basket, count the tortillas they have brought, and then place 10 to 15 other tortillas in the basket before returning it to them. For cash, the coun-

tergift is usually a bottle of beer or soda, but it can also be a stack of tortillas. Cash itself is never returned as a countergift. In presenting each countergift, the sponsor announces what it is for: "These [15 tortillas] are over the tortillas [you brought]" or "This [bottle of beer] is over the cash [you brought]." Depending on the number of things the partners have included in their

prestation, they may soon have several piles of tortillas sitting in front of them. The partners take careful note of what they have been given, as the countergifts are not subtracted from the initial gift. Rather, they are considered a separate prestation from the sponsor to the visitor. The


sponsor expects to have these countergifts returned to him in the future, when he travels to the

partner's house for a fiesta. Beals has noted that systems like saa sa'a enable participants to save resources, in that goods

accumulated by a household can be deposited with another household months, even years, before they will be needed (Beals 1970; see also Dow 1973:251 and Monaghan 1987; Polanyi notes that the storage of goods is often a key element in redistribution [1968:24]). This is es-

pecially important with regard to perishable processed foodstuffs like tortillas. Tortillas in Nu-

yoo are quite large, weighing on the average 100 grams, and a Nuyooteco will consume two to four at a meal. Unless they have been dried in the sun and made into totopoes, tortillas will remain fresh for no more than two days. Since Nuyooteco tortillas are so large, they require considerable effort to prepare. First, the kernels from dried cobs are shucked and soaked in lime to remove their outer husks. Then the softened kernels are ground into a dough, the dough is formed into flat cakes, and the cakes are baked on a clay griddle. It takes a woman the better

part of a day to prepare 60 tortillas if she has to soak the corn and grind the kernels by herself. Since many hundreds of tortillas are needed to make the appropriate counterprestations to sa'a

partners, and many thousands of tortillas are needed to feed the hundreds of guests who arrive at a fiesta, and since the tortillas the guests eat and are given as counterprestations must be fresh ones, no single household has the labor available to produce enough tortillas for a fiesta. To

supply the quantity of fresh tortillas a sponsor needs, 60 to 70 women would have to occupy the household, instead of the three or four who normally do. However, by depositing several dozen baskets of tortillas in saa sa'a with other households over the year or two before they will be needed, and calling them in on the day of the fiesta, Nuyootecos are able to ensure that they will have an adequate supply of fresh tortillas on hand for the distributions, even though they do not directly control the labor needed to produce all that are required.

Just as saa sa'a allows households to prepare for fiestas by depositing goods with other households months and years before the goods will be needed, it allows them to space out their

repayment of the debts incurred over a long period. While those who wish to deposit goods with the sponsor and put the sponsor in debt to them do so on the day of the fiesta, these debts need not be repaid until the partners themselves sponsor a fiesta, which may not occur for months or even years. Nuyootecos feel this is a great advantage; many express the opinion that one "hardly feels" a debt if one can repay it a little at a time. Moreover, since this is gift debt incurred outside a market context, no interest accrues over time (Gregory 1982).

In the fiesta, then, the sponsoring household calls in credits it accumulated with past surpluses of goods and labor, expends currently accumulated surpluses, and borrows against future surpluses by accepting prestations from other households. In the seven mayordomo fiestas in which I was able to identify the sources of the goods that were expended, an average of 36.4 percent of the tortillas distributed were gift credits-that is, had been deposited beforehand by the sponsoring household in saa sa'a to other households. Another 1 1.5 percent of the tortillas had been prepared by the sponsor's household in the days leading up to the fiesta. The bulk of the tortillas, 52.1 percent of those distributed, arrived as incoming prestations made by other households in saa sa'a to the sponsor on the day of the fiesta (this proportion varies somewhat with cash; see Monaghan 1987).

the sequencing of fiestas and the fiesta set

The contributions fiesta participants make to the sponsor and the distributions the sponsor makes to fiesta participants have an economic and social significance extending well beyond the immediate celebration. If, for example, the members of household A are to accumulate enough goods to sponsor a fiesta, they must begin in the year or two before the celebration is to be held to make prestations to B and C, the sponsors of other fiestas. Then, when household


A's fiesta occurs, B and C will make return prestations to A. By the same token, people to whom A has not made prestations in the past may attend the fiesta and make contributions, in order to place A in debt and force A to attend their fiestas as a contributor sometime in the future. In this way, sponsoring households are connected to other sponsoring households through an

overlapping combination of credits and debts. This has the effect of linking participation in any fiesta to a series of fiestas that took place in the past and to a series of fiestas that will take place in the future.

From the perspective of an individual in the system, as one man noted, "cargo never ends," since one "never finishes paying off the debt" one incurs. One never finishes paying off debt

because, while the sponsoring household may call in the debts owed it from the years before the celebration, it assumes debts that will keep it participating in saa sa'a for the next two or three years. People I spoke with estimated that it takes about three years for a household to pay off all the saa sa'a debt it incurs, as most households in the community are obliged to sponsor a fiesta at least once every three years. This system organizes participation in saa sa'a into several distinct stages. An average household's involvement in saa sa'a in the year after sponsoring a fiesta is largely taken up with paying off debts (many of those who make prestations do so with an eye to sponsoring a fiesta in the near future). In the next year, as the household once

again begins to plan for an upcoming fiesta, its debt-paying activities are complemented by efforts at creating gift credits, as the number of people it owes declines and it begins to make

prestations to sponsors to whom it owes nothing. Finally, in the year leading up to its next fiesta, the household dedicates itself to accumulating gift credits.

As has been noted, some 80 fiestas are held in the course of the average year in Nuyoo. Some fiestas require sponsorship by more than one household;4 in any three-year period approxi- mately 350 households will be involved in fiesta sponsorship, out of a total of 420 in the com-

munity (83 percent). Therefore, at any given time almost every household in the community is involved in the saa sa'a system in one way or another. Seen from this perspective, the fiesta can indeed be thought of as a pump, as Harris has argued; however, instead of being an extractive

pump, sucking wealth out of the community (Harris 1964; for critiques see Dow 1973; Green-

berg 1981), it is a circulating one. As individual households move through the three-year cycle of fiesta sponsorship, their credit and debt accumulating activities support the circulation, at a

relatively uniform rate, of a considerable amount of goods among the members of the com-

munity. Moreover, this system, while not independent of the market, is under community control.

The conjunction of reciprocal exchanges that serves to build up a pool of goods in the center and then the distribution of these goods during the fiesta, coupled with the fact that fiestas are

staggered, occurring throughout the year, and the fact that nearly every household sponsors one over a given three-year period, make the "fiesta cycle" in Nuyoo something more than a collection of calendrically fixed rituals that follow one another. Each household sponsoring a fiesta can do so only because its fiesta is part of a system linking the distributions and exchanges in one to the distributions and exchanges in dozens of others. A way to picture this is to return to the idea that the fiesta has a wheel-like structure, as shown in Figure 1. In Fiesta 1, household D is the sponsor and receives prestations from households E and F, who owe D for the prestations D made when E and F sponsored fiestas in the past. Household D also receives gifts from

A, B, and C, who make prestations to place D in debt and thereby ensure D's participation in the fiestas they must sponsor in the future. In Fiesta 2, held days, weeks, or months after Fiesta

1, household C becomes the sponsor, and D must return the prestations received from C. Household E also returns a prestation it received from C. Households A and B continue to make

prestations to prepare for their own fiestas and are joined by F, a household that has finished

paying off the debts it incurred and is now preparing for a new fiesta it will sponsor in the future. As households move through their three-year cycles of fiesta sponsorship, they travel around the first half of the wheel from one spoke to the next, making prestations to sponsors until they


Households repaying debt owned sponsor

Households creating gift credits through prestation to sponsor

_- A

FIESTA 1

FIESTA 2

C

F

B

A

B

Figure 1.

reach the point where they can move into the hub. After receiving prestations from the other households on the spokes, they move out of the hub and onto the second half of the wheel and begin to return these prestations. I should point out that it is only by entering the wheel at the first spokes, and fulfilling one's obligations on the last spokes, that a household secures the right to take a position at the hub. Those who do not make prestations, or who are remiss in their obligations to repay, will find themselves without the support of such a wheel, as few people will be willing to make prestations to them.

I find it useful to refer to the households that are bound to one another by overlapping credits and debts as a "fiesta set." This is not because the wheel constitutes an enduring or discrete social group. On the contrary, any particular wheel appears only for one celebration and breaks up once that celebration is over, never to be reconstituted in exactly the same form. Moreover, because the large number of fiestas in Nuyoo presents ample opportunities for people both to make saa sa'a contributions and to incur saa sa'a obligations, any household may occupy different spokes on different wheels, with different participants, almost simultaneously. Rather, I


find it useful to refer to the households that participate in a particular wheel as a "set" because the term highlights the fact that the kinds and quantities of things a household can distribute depend as much on the ability of all the members of the set to accumulate surpluses that can be "saved" through "investments" in the saa sa'a system as they do on the ability of the sponsoring household to amass surpluses on its own.

What I am suggesting, therefore, is that when we examine the amount of goods distributed in the fiesta, our unit of analysis should be a set of fiestas rather than a single fiesta sponsored by an individual household. The goods distributed, while ultimately the responsibility of the

sponsoring household and coming from the sponsoring household's surpluses, could not be

brought together if it were not for the mobilization of dozens of other households in the com-

munity, both directly in the fiesta of the sponsor and indirectly in the maintenance of a steady circulation of goods through the fiesta system as a whole.5 It is partly for this reason that Nu- yootecos tend to discuss the prestations and counterprestations of saa sa'a in terms of mutual aid and not in the accountant-like language of credits and debts, despite the precise records they keep.

gift exchange partners and the values transacted in saa sa'a

Crucial to understanding the formation of a fiesta set is understanding how participation in it is mobilized. While participation in saa sa'a is theoretically open to all Nuyootecos, in prac- tice most of the goods exchanged are with what I call the sponsor's "core" of gift exchange partners, because they are linked to the sponsor through social ties which, at least for Nuyoo- tecos, are routinely expressed through saa sa'a. This core consists of the sponsor's kindred (I include here the kindreds of both the male and the female head of the household sponsoring the fiesta and exclude those members of the kindred who are part of the sponsoring household itself), ritual kin, and close neighbors. These people are permanent members of the sponsor's core and will be present at every fiesta the sponsor celebrates. In fiestas sponsored by civil-

religious hierarchy officials, the core includes the fellow cargo holders of the sponsor. These are obligated by cargo to make prestations to their fellow cargo holders. Moreover, it behooves them to take advantage of such opportunities to "store" goods for their own fiestas.6 The individuals who hold these offices are not permanent members of the sponsor's core, because they serve for only one to three years, and the next time the sponsor celebrates a fiesta the offices will be occupied by different persons.

One of the core partners' chief responsibilities is to arrive early to aid the sponsor in prepa- rations for the fiesta. Male partners may haul a load or two of firewood; female partners may cooperate in the cooking of the food. They are also expected to pay any gift debts they owe the

sponsoring household a day or two before the celebration, to ensure that the sponsor has

enough items on hand to make the appropriate counterprestations and to serve the appropriate meals when the first guests arrive. In addition, the gifts exchanged between the core partners and the sponsor should be substantial, as befits their close relationship. Throughout the celebration the core partners should remain sober and be prepared to aid the sponsor in performing rituals, carrying water, and running errands.

It is through their participation in the celebration that the core partners manifest their special relationship with the sponsoring household. Even though membership in the core may total as

many as 50 persons, a precise, albeit informal, account is taken of who is and who is not present. Core members must have very good excuses if they are not able to attend, and should send

surrogates in their place. It is of great significance if a brother or a compadre fails to aid in a celebration. One man who had had a falling-out with his brother so severe that the two no

longer spoke to one another considered their relationship terminated when his household

sponsored a fiesta and the brother did not attend. As the man said, "He didn't even bring a load of firewood."


There is one other category of persons with whom the sponsors can expect to make ex-

changes. These are fellow hamlet (agencia) members. The relationships between households of the same hamlet are strong ones. Hamlet members sit together at town meetings, vote as a bloc, do communal labor together, own certain properties together, and are often linked by kinship and ritual kinship bonds. The ties generated by their close interaction extend to the realm of gift exchange, with hamlet members attending fiestas sponsored by one another in a

proportion exceeding the attendance of people from other hamlets, even though such fiestas

may be held miles from the hamlet, in the town center. It is interesting that saa sa'a in this case, as in the case of core members, is used by sponsors to evaluate the status of the ties that bind them to others. Just as a ritual kinsman who fails to make a prestation gives the sponsor cause to reassess their relationship, a hamlet member who fails to attend causes the sponsor to question himself: What have I done to make him upset with me? Have I wronged him in some way? By the same token, a special effort at saa sa'a on the part of a hamlet member or other person is a dramatic sign to the sponsoring household of the strength of the bond between it and that

party. Once the celebrations have ended, the members of the sponsoring household can look over the list of individuals making prestations and readily assess how their household stands

among its kin, among hamlet members, and within the community as a whole. For this reason, account books are felt to be very important and are often taken out, read, and discussed.

In addition to core and hamlet gift exchange partners, households that will sponsor celebrations in the near future may be expected to make prestations to the sponsoring household. Households with which the sponsoring household has ties of friendship may also make an effort to attend. In both cases, the partners communicate in their prestations a belief in the sponsor's integrity, as they are confident the sponsor will return an equal prestation sometime in the future. As one woman put it, "Saa sa'a is a word of honor," for no formal mechanisms exist to ensure the repayment of debt and there are always some people who will renege on what they owe. Also, all the households that make prestations to the sponsor communicate their desire that the fiesta will be successful, since their contributions will aid the sponsor in making the fiesta meals more elaborate.7

The key factor in gift exchange partnerships is, thus, the alliances the sponsoring household maintains with other households (civil-religious hierarchy officials are a special case; see Mon- aghan 1987). The sponsor's core is made up of kin and ritual kin. Neighbors also attend, as do others with whom the sponsor is on friendly terms. While subtle discriminations in the degree of participation and the nature of the exchanges mark differences between insiders and out- siders-such as those between kin and nonkin and those between fellow hamlet members and other Nuyootecos-all those who make prestations show support for the sponsor, and in a sense, through their prestations, reconstitute their relationships with the sponsor. This makes the prestations and counterprestations of saa sa'a a finely tuned means of communicating alliance, solidarity, and the essential equality of pairs of households (see Chifas 1973:76-77; Leslie 1960:8).

prestige and ranking in fiesta distributions

Mauss was the first to recognize that gifts are "total"-that is, embedded in whole bundles of transactions between human groups-and that this makes the gift not just an "economic expression" but an aesthetic, religious, legal, and, above all, moral one as well (Mauss 1967[19251:1). The transactions that compose the redistributive structure of the Nuyoo fiesta are also more than purely "economic expressions" and, taken together, make the fiesta a forum for the communication of a variety of complex social messages. Thus, in addition to using the prestations participants make to sponsors to evaluate the state of the ties binding them to kin, ritual kin, and neighbors, Nuyootecos are able to use the distributions sponsors make to partic-


ipants to transact prestige. As almost every fieldworker has pointed out, sponsors accumulate

prestige through the "transfer of wealth" to other households through fiesta distributions (see, for example, Aguirre Beltran 1979:86-87, 124-125; Cancian 1965:88; Dow 1973:274-275; Nash 1958:63, 68; Reina 1966:125; Wolf 1959:215). This prestige accrues not only to the individual cargo holder but also to the members of his household as a whole, so that each household in the community may be ranked on a scale of prestige (Wolf 1959:215).

While it is true that people in Nuyoo do acquire prestige through sponsorship of fiestas and that large distributions of foods such as beer and meat do signal the economic potency of a

sponsoring household, it would be wrong to look at this as something that is achieved by the

sponsoring household on its own. This is because the amounts and kinds of things one can distribute in the fiesta are closely related to the number of participants one can attract. The more

people who attend, the more items there will be to distribute and the more cash one will have on hand for prestige foods such as beer and meat. This gives participants a more important role in the sponsor's acquisition of prestige than is usually supposed, since they are generally por- trayed as only passive recipients of the sponsor's beneficence. Moreover, this participation places limits on the prestige a sponsor acquires through the size and quality of fiesta distributions. In fact, sponsors who boast too much of their fiesta distributions will be quickly reminded that they should not "presume" so much, as "no one can sponsor a fiesta on his [or her] own."

Although the practical connections between alliance and the distribution of goods in the fiesta limit the renown a sponsor is able to claim for a large display, fiesta sponsors are able to

signal a number of other important things through their celebrations. For example, after one

large fiesta attended by people from all over the community, a man told me that the sponsor should feel proud because the attendance indicated that he had an "understanding" with many others. This sort of "understanding" allows others to gauge the support the sponsor can claim in the community and signals, if not the economic potency of the household, then its political potency.8 Nor should this "understanding" be seen as a simple function of household wealth. One of the largest and most successful fiestas in 1985 was sponsored by a household of only modest means, while a fiesta sponsored by a relatively wealthy household one month later was

sparsely attended and judged only marginally successful. In viewing the redistributive structure of the fiesta as constituting a framework for the con-

struction of meaning, we have yet to consider the exchanges that take place among fiesta participants themselves. As I have noted, Polanyi's discussion of redistribution implies that there is a relationship between the people on the periphery who contribute goods to the center and those on the periphery who receive goods from the center. The fact that in the Nuyooteco fiesta the people who contribute the goods to the sponsor are the same ones who receive them suggests that this transaction has a special significance for the way in which these people relate to one another, as we will see below.

the household model of redistribution

The concept of redistribution is sometimes an awkward one, because it encompasses such a wide variety of transactions. Goods can be collected by a center through transactions ranging from taxation to, as in the Nuyoo case, gift exchange. Similarly, goods can flow out of a center in a number of ways, or even a combination of ways. These variations reflect the various insti- tutional frameworks in which redistribution is set. I think it is for this reason that Earle, following some of the examples that Polanyi lays out, has found it useful to speak of "models of redistri-

bution," with each model entailing a qualitatively different set of relationships between the units involved in the redistributive structure (Earle 1977).

One such model is that which Earle has labeled the "household model" of redistribution

(Earle 1977). This model is based on Polanyi's notion that the most basic form of redistribution


is the pooling of goods by producers for the common use of a group and its members (Polanyi 1957:253-254). The example Polanyi provides is that of the large peasant household, where the harvest is stored in a common granary and consumed by the different members of the household as needed. While Halperin makes the point that this is not properly redistribution, since there is no institutionalized center (Halperin 1988), Polanyi does go on to note that this basic form of redistribution may be expanded to a more highly institutionalized form, involving many domestic units (Polanyi 1957:253-254; 1968:24).

It is in light of the household model of redistribution that I would like to discuss the transactions among fiesta participants themselves, because it will help us to understand the institu- tional framework in which redistribution occurs and the significance participants attach to the overall process. This is because the household model focuses on the contribution all units make to a common pool, deemphasizing the center's power to determine the distribution of the goods and emphasizing the rights those on the periphery have over those goods.

As I have said, Nuyooteco fiestas are best seen in terms of a set of fiesta participants. This set can be pictured as a wheel, with the members of the fiesta set along the spokes contributing their goods to the sponsor at the hub. When the contributions fiesta participants make to the

sponsor at the hub are added together, it becomes clear that they provide the bulk of the goods circulated in the celebration. Depending on the fiesta, these contributions can range from 76

percent to 88 percent of the total goods distributed by the sponsor. What this means is that members of the fiesta set build up a pool of tortillas, liquor, and beans for each fiesta held in the community, which successive sponsors at the hub of the wheel distribute.

As this may perhaps suggest, the pool of goods amassed in the center has a strong, corporate dimension for Nuyootecos. What happens to surpluses that remain in the sponsor's hands once the fiesta distributions are over aptly illustrates this dimension. In the past, when it became clear that a sponsoring household would have a surplus, its members would summon all those who had participated back to the house. Mats would be laid on the floor, and one of the men would divide the surplus into piles, setting a quantity of goods in front of each participant in proportion to the amount he or she had contributed to the pool.9 While surpluses are no longer formally redistributed among participants as they were in the past, those involved tend to feel that any amount in excess of the start-up costs of the sponsor that is left over should be returned to those who have participated. Finding itself with a large surplus after the fiesta of Misericordia in 1985, for example, the sponsoring household invited the prayermakers, musicians, and others back for another large meal on the day after the fiesta ended, thus dissipating the surplus.

The pool of goods participants contribute to the celebration of the fiesta thus has a special status, being controlled by the sponsor but belonging to all the participants. This special status is also marked linguistically. The tortillas that are contributed in saa sa'a, for instance, are not referred to as shita maani, "my own tortillas," by either the persons who produce them or the sponsor who receives them. Instead they are shita sa'a, which are defined as shita kua-io ta'a, "tortillas of all of us relatives/friends/Nuyootecos." (Other things that are kua-io ta'a include communal coffee plots, the public buildings in the town center, and the community's territory.) This terminology emphasizes the fact that sa'a tortillas are seen as belonging to all those who participate in the fiesta and suggests that we might view the sponsor's role as that of coordi-

nating the distribution of the goods from a common fund. The importance of this function becomes clear when we look at the meaning the fund has for Nuyootecos.

the pool of tortillas in the fiesta

The pool of tortillas controlled by the sponsor includes, as we have seen, tortillas the women of the sponsoring household have prepared for the fiesta, about 12 percent of the total; tortillas that are reciprocal gifts to the sponsor for gifts made in the past, about 36 percent of the total;


and tortillas given in the expectation that they will be reciprocated in the future, about 52 percent of all the tortillas distributed. In his discussion of the connection between the exchange of

gifts between groups and the exchange of persons in marriage, Levi-Strauss suggests that social

categories are broadly linked to gift items (Levi-Strauss 1969). In developing this insight, a number of researchers have observed that any exchange system can be conceived of as constituting a particular system of meaning and that the patterns the various prestations take model various orders of social reality (Appadurai 1986; Bohannan 1955; Douglas and Isherwood 1979; Firth

1965; R. Foster 1986; Gudeman 1986; Sahlins 1972; Weiner 1978, 1980). In Nuyoo, the

meaningful patterns the pooling and distribution of goods take in the fiesta are central to the

Nuyootecos' sense of themselves as a people; the exchange of goods in the fiesta defines the nature of community. The basic social unit in Nuyoo is the household, and the community is

internally constituted by the relations households maintain with one another. Tortillas mediate

households, to the extent that Nuyootecos represent themselves as a "people who eat from the same tortilla." Eating from the same tortilla connotes a number of things, ranging from participation in the system that circulates women among Nuyooteco households in marriage, where

young women are closely associated with the tortilla, to the political solidarity of the heads of household who control this circulation (Monaghan 1987). But what is perhaps the most significant meaning attached to this representation is the Nuyooteco idea that their community is, in

many ways, like a household. The community as household is a theme running through a variety of ideas Nuyootecos have

about their society and institutions. The political authority of high cargo holders over other members of the community, for example, is often legitimized by being described as a relation-

ship of nakara (love or nurturance), the kind of relationship parents should have with their chil-

dren; cargo holders, like parents, are supposed to consider the needs of community members and set them on the correct path when they err. Likewise, a number of sacrificial rituals are structured so that the participants in the rituals relate to one another as members of a household do (Monaghan 1987). The fund of food distributed in the fiesta transactionally defines the com-

munity as a household, in that it is compared to the granary each domestic unit maintains for its own subsistence (see Ingham 1986 for a comparison).

Nuyootecos consider the household granary a single reserve, and they point out that no one notices which of the men of a household has planted a particular ear of corn or which of the women has cooked a particular tortilla. Everything is deposited in the communal larder, and all share in what the household produces, regardless of what their particular contribution may have been. In the fiesta, the goods received by the sponsor in prestations and the goods prepared for the start-up costs are mixed together, and no notice is taken of who brought which item. This is very important, as is the care the sponsor takes in seeing that no one receives as a

countergift or as a meal any of the items he or she has brought to the fiesta. To receive the very items one has brought would be a great insult and would undermine one of the central mean-

ings being constructed in the fiesta. It is essential that the fund of food be redistributed to participants in meals and countergifts in such a way that each person leaves the fiesta either car-

rying or having consumed the tortillas of many different households (although which households those are does not matter). As Nuyootecos point out, the consumption of tortillas without

any notice of who brought which one is an action appropriate to people "who are united," for it shows that all "eat from the same tortilla" in the same way that the members of a household share food from the household granary. In the pooling and consumption of gift items in the

fiesta, then, social action replicates commensality, an idea central to the Nuyootecos' representation of themselves as a community. Redistribution here, far from being concerned with matters of ranking, as in "transfer of wealth" distributions, or of alliance between structurally similar units, as in saa sa'a, is concerned with the solidarity of the group as a whole, united by a common vision of what their community should be.10


conclusion

In this article I have argued that the redistributive structure of the fiesta can be seen as a nexus of three different kinds of transaction, involving not only the transfer of wealth from sponsors to participants, but also the contributions made by participants to sponsors and the circulation of goods among fiesta participants, who both contribute and receive the items amassed in the center. I have also shown that if one grants that reciprocal gifts are parts of the fiesta, fiestas cannot be viewed as isolated events. Each fiesta is instead part of a larger complex of prestations and counterprestations linking any particular fiesta to dozens of others through overlapping rights and obligations on the part of participants.

It has been important to examine the various exchanges constituting the redistributive structure of the fiesta because Nuyootecos use the different values transacted within those ex-

changes to construct an overall meaning for each celebration. The size of the distribution made

by a particular sponsor signals the economic and political potency of that household. Differ- ences in the size and completeness of prestations signal the strength or weakness of the ties that bind partners to one another. Returning or not returning a prestation when due reflects on the

integrity of the household. The list could be extended, and the complex combination of these different exchanges in any particular instance makes each fiesta unique. As commentators on the fiesta have pointed out, Mesoamericans make a faithful attempt to replicate the central rituals of each type of fiesta from one celebration to another. This repetition has created a sense in the literature that one fiesta is the same as any other and has led ethnographers to describe fiestas in terms of ideal types. However, the Nuyooteco material indicates that the social meaning the fiesta has for participants is variable, as changing configurations of conflict and alliance in the wider community are expressed in the prestations, counterprestations, and distributions made during each celebration.

One question this discussion of the redistributive structure of the Nuyoo fiesta raises is that of representativeness. Are reciprocal exchange and the pooling of goods important only in the fiestas of eastern Oaxaca, or are they also significant in fiestas celebrated in other regions of Mesoamerica? In concluding this article, I want to argue that such a redistributive structure can indeed be found in other fiesta systems. For reasons of brevity, I have decided to focus on the Tzotzil Maya of Zinacantan.

The Tzotzil Maya of Zinacantan live in a region that is geographically and linguistically quite remote from the Mixteca, so any argument that the redistributive structure outlined for the Nu- yoo fiesta is specific to the Oaxaca region can be rejected. Moreover, they are the subject of Frank Cancian's Economics and Prestige in a Maya Community (1965), a classic of economic anthropology that has made Zinacantan a model for the study of the "transfer of wealth" in fiesta distributions. If the redistributive structure described here can be found in the Zinacan- teco fiesta, then this suggests that a change in perspective could lead to its discovery in other, previously described fiesta systems as well.

Let us begin our comparison by examining the Zinacantecos' amassing of goods for their fiestas. As we have seen, Nuyootecos accumulate goods by increasing household production in the year or two before the event and by participating in saa sa'a, whereby they are assured of receiving anywhere from one-half to four-fifths of what they will need in prestations. In Zin- acantan, as in Nuyoo, fiesta sponsors are unable to accumulate all the goods they need on their own. When people enter their cargos, they have about half the money required, and they finance the rest by means of loans from kin, ritual kin, fellow cargo holders, and neighbors who share their waterhole-a group very similar to the inner circle of a sponsor's gift exchange partners in Nuyoo (Cancian 1965:100-101; Vogt 1969:263-264). And, like the Nuyootecos, the Zinacantecos tend to feel that because one is able to space out the repayment of the loans, one hardly feels the debt one has taken on (Cancian 1 965:100-101).


But is what Cancian describes gift exchange? While there is certainly a term for reciprocal gift exchange in Tzotzil, pakol (Laughlin 1975:263), the most conclusive evidence for its presence is contained in a footnote in which Cancian compares different kinds of loans in Zina- cantan. There he indicates that the loans made to fiesta sponsors differ from other loans in that they are long-term (most other loans are short-term) and carry no interest charges (the interest rate on other loans is as much as 20 percent a month) (Cancian 1965:101). Moreover, the loans are only paid back when the individual who lent the money sponsors a fiesta (Cancian 1965:101). This indicates that Zinacanteco "loans" exhibit the same characteristics as gifts in Nuyoo: they are transacted among close allies of the sponsor and among fellow cargo holders; they are reciprocal, in that the precise amount borrowed must be returned; and they are made outside the context of the market. Because gifts are not made up of interest-bearing capital, there is no time value to the items exchanged, even though in the Zinacanteco case they are principally composed of cash (see Gregory [19821, who discusses why it is not useful to think of gift exchange in terms derived from the market). The system of gift-loans that Zinacantecos use to finance their fiestas thus appears to be similar to the saa sa'a system Nuyootecos use to finance their fiestas.

Ethnographers have reported that systems like saa sa'a are used to finance both life-crisis event and civil-religious hierarchy fiestas in other areas of Mesoamerica as well," and in several cases they have suggested that these are systems of reciprocal gift exchange.12 But what is

unique about Cancian's ethnography is his description of the way in which the combination of

gift-loans and fiesta distributions (that is, the transfer of goods to the sponsor and then their flow out again) ties one Zinacanteco fiesta to other fiestas in the "system":

Prospective cargoholders do not hoard the money they expect to use for their cargos, but rather lend it out to other cargoholders in anticipation of repayment at the time they will need it for their own cargos. Thus, the prospective cargoholder will loan amounts of money ranging from 50 to 500 pesos to various individuals during the years before his cargo-all with the specific understanding that he will be paid back when he needs the money for his own cargo expenses. On the other hand, the cargoholder who is borrowing money will seek to borrow from several persons who expect to be repaid at various times in the future (i.e., when their cargos come up). [Cancian 1965:101]

As this passage indicates, a Zinacanteco sponsor who "loans" money to a number of sponsors will also receive loans from a different group of sponsors in the weeks before his own fiesta, which he must then repay over the next year. Just as in the Nuyooteco system, then, the debt and credit accumulating activities of individual sponsors in Zinacantan link different fiestas to one another. And, because each sponsor finances half of his expenses through this system of

reciprocal loans and because many fiesta distributions are sponsored in the course of a year (see Cancian 1965:214-222), one can assume that the debt and credit accumulating activities of sponsors support the circulation of a considerable volume of wealth among households in the community.

But what of the relationship between those who contribute goods to the center and those who receive these goods in distributions? As I have noted, in the Nuyoo case the individuals who contribute goods to the sponsor are the same ones who receive those goods back in the

distributions, and this fact gives the fiesta a special significance for Nuyootecos. In Zinacantan, participation in fiesta banquets appears to be more restricted than in Nuyoo, as only officials of the civil-religious hierarchy and their helpers are served food. However, the cargo holders served probably include among their number the cargo holders who made loans to the sponsor or to whom the sponsor made loans in the past. Likewise, the helpers who are served food are for the most part kin, who may also have made loans to the sponsor (Cancian 1965:48, 211- 212). It is difficult to say whether or not the sharing of food by fiesta participants carries the same symbolic load as it does in Nuyoo, but Cancian notes that it is a time for the strengthening of kinship ties (Cancian 1965:49), and Vogt points out that the consumption of food and drink

purchased with the loans in the fiesta is important in this process (Vogt 1969:269). In fact, Vogt goes on to suggest that "the rituals and fiestas of the cargo system ... reaffirm the commitment


of each participant to the community religious symbols" (Vogt 1969:269-270) and that the

eating of tortillas "symbolically unite[s] Zinacantecos" and "stress[es] communality in Indian life" (Vogt 1976:42; such a relationship can also be inferred from Chifas' description of fiesta

financing among the Isthmus Zapotec [1973:73-74]; for pooling see Beals 1973:120-121; Carrasco 1961; Nuttini and Isaac 1974).

This discussion of the Zinacanteco fiesta shows that among the Tzotzil at least, there is a redistributive structure which, while not precisely like that of Nuyoo, does bear basic similar- ities to the way in which the Nuyoo fiesta is financed through reciprocal gift exchanges, to the effect these exchanges have in maintaining a system where a significant level of resources circulates among community members, and to the complex combination of meanings these transactions give to fiesta celebrations. This should not be taken to mean that I feel there is a single fiesta system for all of Mesoamerica (see Cancian 1967; DeWalt 1975; Greenberg 1981; Smith 1977). But it does show that Nuyoo is not a unique case and that, in studying at least some fiesta systems, we will have to reexamine our ideas about redistribution, about the way in which social units are linked in the community through exchange, and about the kinds of relationships that exist between fiesta sponsors and fiesta participants.

notes

Acknowledgments. This article is based on research carried out from 1983 through 1986 with grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Boyer Fund, and the Department of Anthropology of the University of Pennsylvania. I would like to acknowledge Steven Vosti, Robert Hill, Laura Junker, Arjun Appadurai, Ruben Reina, and the anonymous reviewers for American Ethnologist for their suggestions and comments.

'One might argue that the two kinds of fiesta are very different from each other, since civil-religious hierarchy fiestas are mandated by the local government and life-crisis event fiestas are celebrated at the discretion of individual households. However, with regard to redistribution, civil-religious hierarchy fiestas and life-crisis event fiestas function in the same way. In both, individual households sponsor the celebrations. Sponsors of both prepare for the celebrations by making prestations in a combination of life-crisis event fiestas and civil-religious hierarchy fiestas. Finally, the sponsors of both receive prestations from fiesta guests, which they must return when it comes time for the guests to sponsor fiestas. This process integrates a number of households, be they sponsors of life-crisis event or of civil-religious hierarchy fiestas, in a system of overlapping debts and credits, making both kinds of fiesta part of a single system of exchange. Moreover, Nuyootecos classify both kinds of celebrations as viko and see them, as I argue elsewhere, as marking important transitions between statuses (Monaghan 1987).

2While individual males are responsible for the administrative aspects of cargo, both male cargo holders and their wives are responsible for the sponsoring of fiestas. Other members of a cargo holder's household also take on significant responsibilities for fiesta sponsorship. For this reason I use the terms "sponsor" and "sponsoring household" interchangeably, since responsibility for the fiesta is shared by so many persons besides the male cargo holder.

3While people say one should bring a complete gift, most households only approximate one-bringing, for example, tortillas and beans but no liquor, or tortillas and no beans.

4Fiestas sponsored by officials on the "civil" side of the civil-religious hierarchy, which are almost always on patriotic holidays such as the birth of Benito Juarez, are frequently sponsored by more than one household. Officials whose duties closely associate them with one another, such as the president, sindico, alcalde, and treasurer, are each given a specific quota of goods to provide-say, 600 tortillas each. They accumulate these goods by increasing their own households' production and by accepting sa'a prestations from other households in the days before the celebration. On the morning of the fiesta, each of the officials brings his quota to the place where the fiesta is to be celebrated.

5This does not mean that the only analytic unit possible for the fiesta is the fiesta set. It only means that in order to examine the distribution and exchange of goods in the fiesta, one must focus on a series of fiestas. If one has other objectives in mind, then other units of analysis may be appropriate.

6As noted, fiestas are also held to commemorate certain life-crisis events, but because these are often unpredictable, they do not allow as much planning and calculation of where and when to make prestations as do the fiestas that occur on dates fixed by the civil-religious hierarchy ritual cycle. For this reason, civil- religious hierarchy officials tend to participate in civil-religious hierarchy fiestas much more often than they do in life-crisis event ones (Monaghan 1987).

7Fiesta participants also include band members and ritual specialists who donate their time and skills, as well as many others who are swept up in the good fellowship of the event and who make small prestations to the sponsor even though they would not normally contribute to the celebration. The latter usually


give only cash, since they had not planned to prepare a large prestation of foodstuffs. Everyone who attends a fiesta feels obliged to make some prestation, even if it is only a small one.

81t was probably not a coincidence that an attempt to ban a man from the community was dropped after he hosted a surprisingly well attended fiesta.

9This would not be subtracted from the debt the sponsor owed the participant, however.

'It is important to note that the solidarity transacted here is not the "between" sort of relationship of saa sa'a, which marks ties between structurally similar units, but the "within" relationship of the community, which subsumes individual households. As Sahlins notes, "pooling is the material side of collectivity" (Sah- lins 1972:188-189).

'See Beals (1970), Leslie (1960:59-60), and Parsons (197011936]:192-193) for the Valley Zapotec; Chinas (1973:74-77) for the Isthmus Zapotec; De la Fuente (1949) for the Sierra Zapotec; Dow (1973:248- 251) for the Otomi; G. Foster (1967:220) for the Tarascans; Nuttini (1968:190-191) for the Nahuas of Tlaxcala; and Reina (personal communication) for the Pokomam Maya. See also Erasmus (1961) for a gen- eral discussion of the importance of reciprocal relationships in Latin America and Isbell (1978:167-177) for a discussion of a similar method of financing fiestas in Peru.

12See Brandes (1988), Cook (1982), Leslie (1960), Nuttini (1968), and Williams (1979). Chinas (1973:76) also describes what appears to be a system of countergifts for the Isthmus Zapotec, Brumfiel (1987) discusses the importance of gift exchange for reaffirming social relationships among the ancient Aztecs, and Isbell (1978:167-177) shows the important role of a sponsor's kindred in amassing the goods needed to celebrate a fiesta in a Quechua community.

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submitted 17 March 1989 revised version submitted 2 November 1989 accepted 21 December 1989

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