wolfgang gabbert - ethnicity and the state in yucatan, mexico

Social Categories, Ethnicity and the State in Yucatan, MexicoAuthor(s): Wolfgang GabbertSource: Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Aug., 2001), pp. 459-484Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3653717Accessed: 24/11/2009 10:38

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J. Lat. Amer. Stud. 33, 459-484 ? zoo2 Cambridge University Press 459 DOI: 1o.1oI7/Soo22216Iooioo5983 Printed in the United Kingdom

Social Categories, Ethnicity and the State in Yucatain, Mexico*

WOLFGANG GABBERT

Abstract. This article discusses the development of social categories and

ethnicity in the peninsula of Yucatain, Mexico, since the Conquest in the sixteenth century. Based on the Yucatec case, it demonstrates that

ethnicity is not a ubiquitous form of social organisation, but rather a historical process related to specific techniques of social distinction. It

argues that the starting point for the analysis of ethnicity should not be ethnic collectives, but instead the ways in which individuals use ethnic

categories in social interaction. (Keywords: Yucatan, Maya, ethnicity, social inequality, state).

Introduction

The modern nation-state has existed for no more than 200 years, not much

compared to the entire history of human society.1 Nonetheless, it has been

extremely successful in inculcating the idea that every human being belongs to a cultural community separated from other such communities

by clear boundaries. Many scholars of ethnicity subscribe to this view and therefore begin their analyses by looking for such communities (ethnic communities or nations) considered to be the 'natural' form of social

organisation.2 Such ideas have clearly influenced discussion of the

development of ethnic categories in the peninsula of Yucatan, Mexico.

Wolfgang Gabbert is a Lecturer at the Lateinamerika-Institut, Freie Universitat, Berlin.

* Research for this article was supported by a grant from the Deutsche Fors-

chungsgemeinschaft. 1A nation-state is a centralised form of political organisation where legitimacy is based on the notion of nation, that is, an 'imagined community' which is conceived as bounded, sovereign and comradely. See B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, I 99 I, revised and extended edition), pp. 5-7; E. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford, 1983), pp. 1-7, 5 3-62; J. Rothschild, Ethnopolitics: A Conceptual Framework (New York, I98i), pp. I -I6.

2 See for example H. Isaacs,' Basic Group Identity: " The Idols of the Tribe "', Ethnicity, vol. I (I974), pp. 5-41; P. Worsley, The Three Worlds: Culture and World Development (Chicago, 1984), p. 248; S. Grosby, 'The Verdict of History: The inexpungeable Tie of Primordiality - A Response to Eller and Coughlan', Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 17, no. 2 (1994), pp. I64-I71; J. Hutchinson and A. Smith, 'Introduction', in John

460 Wolfgang Gabbert

The three states (Campeche, Yucatan, and Quintana Roo) which constitute the peninsula of Yucatan3 in the extreme south-east of the Federal Republic of Mexico are home to no less than 14 per cent of Mexico's speakers of indigenous languages, as the national census shows. Their tongue, Yucatec Maya, is the country's second most widely used

indigenous language and is spoken by more than 30 per cent of the

peninsula's population.4 It comes as no surprise that government institutions, the press and the

public in general, as well as many scholars, have no doubt that the regional population consists of two groups- Spanish-speaking Yucatecs and Indians. Generally, the census data on speakers of indigenous languages are used as indicators of the size of the Yucatec 'Maya Indian people'.5 Many authors consider the Maya-speaking people of Yucatain to be an Indian people or ethnic community with a 'millenarian history', presupposing a continuum of this people since prehistory, resting on an

Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith (eds.), Ethnicity (Oxford and New York, I996), pp. 3-14; R. Jenkins, Rethinking Ethnicity. Arguments and Explorations (London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi, 1997), pp. 46-7, 74, 77; F. Proschan, '"We are all Kmhmu, just the same": Ethnonyms, Ethnic Identities, and Ethnic Groups', American Ethnologist, vol. 24, no. I (I997), p. Io6. For a recent critique of this mode of thought see A. Gupta and

J. Ferguson, 'Beyond "Culture": Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference', Cultural Anthropology, vol. 7, no. I (I992), pp. 6-23.

3 Unless otherwise indicated, 'Yucatan' is used here to refer to the peninsula in general. 'Campeche' and 'Quintana Roo', however, are used for the states.

4 Instituto Nacional de Estadistica, Geograffa e Informatica, La poblacidn de Mexico en 9o90 (Aguascalientes, 1992), pp. 31, 33.

5 See, for instance, M. Bartolom6, La dindmica social de los mayas de Yucatdn. Pasado y presente de la situacidn colonial (Mexico, I988), pp. 276-7, 283, 32I-2; Instituto Nacional

Indigenista, 'Informe de las actividades realizadas de 1989 a 1994', unpubl. manuscript, National Indigenist Institute (INI), Campeche, n.d., pp. i6-I8. The indigenous language of Yucatan is maya' t'an. It has given its name to the Mayan language family which consists of 3 related languages. Languages belonging to this family and their speakers are generally referred to by a compound (e.g. Tzotzil-Maya) or by their specific names (Tzotzil, Mam, Kekchi, etc.). Both indigenous and non-indigenous cultural activists, especially in Guatemala, have recently begun to promote the development of an ethnic consciousness among the speakers of each Mayan language and, at the same time, of an overarching pan-Maya identity encompassing the whole language family. Cojti Cuxil, for example, considers the Maya to be a people consisting of different nations. See D. Cojti Cuxil, 'The Politics of Maya Revindication', in Edward F. Fischer and R. McKenna Brown (eds.), Maya Cultural Activism in Guatemala (Austin, I996), p. 21. For pan-Maya cultural activism in Guatemala see, for instance, R. Wilson, Maya Resurgence in Guatemala. Q'eqchi' Experiences (Norman and London, I995); J. Watanabe, 'Unimagining the Maya: Anthropologists, Others, and the

Inescapable Hubris of Authorship', Bulletin of Latin American Research, vol. 14, no. I (1995), pp. 3I-3, 36-9; Fischer and Brown, Maya Resurgence; K. Warren, Indigenous Movements and their Critics: Pan-Maya Activism in Guatemala (Princeton, I998). A discussion of these developments is, however, beyond the scope of this paper. Here the term Maya refers only to the speakers of Yucatec Maya unless otherwise indicated.

Social categories in Yucatdn, Mexico 461

unspecified quality of 'being Maya'. Moreover, it is generally assumed that an ethnic consciousness as Maya exists among the Yucatec Maya.6 That these views are misleading will become clear from the following two

episodes from the municipality of Hopelchen in the eastern part of

Campeche. In 1994, a Brigade of Indian Development and Improvement (Brigada

de Desarrolloy Mejoramiento Indigena) entered Chultun,7 a village of about 800 inhabitants, mostly peasants and their families. Almost all of them

speak Yucatec Maya. In the streets the government officials saw several

6 See, for instance, B. Alonso Caamal, 'Los mayas en la conciencia nacional', in Arturo Warman and Arturo Argueta (eds.), Movimientos indigenas contempordneos en Mexico (Mexico, 1993), pp. 37, 43, 56; A. Barabas, 'Colonialismo y racismo en Yucatin: Una

aproximaci6n hist6rica y contemporanea', Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Politicas y Sociales, vol. 25, no. 97 (1979), pp. 105-40; P. Bracamonte y Sosa, La memoria enclaustrada. Historia indigena de Yucatdn, 17o0-19if (M6xico, I994), p. I5; T. Sanders, 'Education, Language, and Culture among the Contemporary Maya', American Universities Field Staff Reports No. 5 o, Hanover, NH, 1979; S. Varese, 'Una dialectica

negada: Notas sobre la multietnicidad mexicana', Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Politicas y Sociales, vol. 32, no. 88 (1977), p. 49; P. Nesbitt, 'The Maya of Yucatan', in Edward

Moseley and Edward Terry (eds.), Yucatan. A World apart (Alabama, I980), p. 4I; D. Freidel, L. Schele and J. Parker, Maya Cosmos. Three Thousand Years on the Shaman's Path (New York, I993); Bartolome, Dindmica social, pp. i6, I9-20, 26-7, 29, 34-6, 262, 281. The language 'groups' shown in the census are merely cultural categories, that is, aggregations of individuals sharing one or more cultural traits whose members do not necessarily have an overarching ethnic consciousness (see below). As Barth has already shown, there is no direct relationship between shared cultural traits (such as language) and ethnicity, which he defines as a form of social organisation. Cultural differences and similarities are only important in so far as they are taken into account by the actors themselves and function as emblems of difference. F. Barth, 'Introduction', in Frederic Barth (ed.), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (Bergen, 1969), pp. I2- 4; see also M. Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Tiibingen, I980), p. 237. In recent theoretical literature several authors continue to suggest objective bases for ethnicity: shared genes, cultural sameness or a shared habitus. See P. van den Berghe, 'Ethnicity and the Sociobiology Debate', in John Rex and David Mason (eds.), Theories of Race and Ethnic Relations (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 246-63; Grosby, 'The Verdict of History'; G. Bentley, 'Ethnicity and Practice'. Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 29, no. I (1987), pp. 24-55. Nadel, however, has already aptly characterised the theory of cultural identity underlying ethnic communities. These exist 'not in virtue of any objective unity or likeness, but in virtue of an ideological unity, and a likeness accepted as a dogma,' S. Nadel, The Nuba (London, 1947), p. 3; see also F. Barth, 'Enduring and

Emerging Issues in the Analysis of Ethnicity', in Hans Vermeulen and Cora Govers (eds.), The Anthropology of Ethnicity. Beyond 'Ethnic Groups and Boundaries' (Amsterdam, 1994), pp. I4-I5; H. Levine, 'Reconstructing Ethnicity', The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. 5, no. 2 (I999), p. 173. Cultural differences do not simply preexist but are constructed within a historical process. See Gupta and Ferguson, 'Beyond Culture', pp. I6-17. A similar point has been made by M. Moerman, 'Accomplishing Ethnicity', in Roy Turner (ed.), Ethnomethodology (Harmondsworth, I974), p. 65. He suggests that ethnic labelling is motivated: 'Once a native decides to give some person an ethnic label, he finds some traits which that person has that can be used to demonstrate that the label has been applied correctly.'

7 This is a pseudonym.


women of different ages, dressed in the traditional female costume of rural dwellers in the peninsula, the ipil, a white blouse with colourful

embroidery, and the reboZo, a special kind of shawl. Women dressed like this are referred to as 'mestizas' in Yucatan. 'Mestizos', in the Yucatec sense of the word, would mean men dressed in white cotton trousers, a shirt of the same colour and material and sandals.8 Today this type of dress is regarded as a symbol of'Maya Indian' identity by the Spanish- speaking public and by many scholars as well.

The government officials established themselves in the village of Chultun and began to carry out several community development projects, including the opening of a joiner's workshop and a school for needlework to help people save money for clothing and other household necessities. The villagers willingly accepted the presence of the 'brigade', but only after one problem was solved. They refused to be identified as Indians and

urged the development workers to strike this term from the project's name.9

The second episode happened some two years later in the same region. In March 1996, a meeting was held of delegates of peasant communities. This event was part of the National Consultation on Indigenous Rights and Participation, organised by the government as a reaction to the

Chiapas uprising of I994.10 At the meeting, delegates remarked that 'Indian professionals occupy only two per cent of the jobs in question' and demanded 'that Indian professionals should be considered according to their proportion of the total population', which they estimated at more than 50 per cent. Furthermore, they complained that 'we, as Indians, are discriminated against. Civil servants treat us badly when we visit

government agencies'.11 These two episodes may seem trivial at first glance but they hint at

several fundamental practical as well as theoretical problems in dealing with ethnicity.12 First, they remind us that there is no simple one-to-one

8 Whereas the term mestizo in Latin America generally refers to the offspring of unions between Spaniards or Whites and Indians, or designates the culturally hispanised part of the population in contrast to the Indian part, in Yucatan it is used for people dressed in the folk costume. I will indicate the Yucatecan usage by adding quotation marks, i.e. 'mestizo'. In Yucatin 'mestizo/a' is also used as self-identification.

9 FN-Chultun, 19099402. The number gives the date and reference number of the entry in my fieldnotes (FN) from the municipality of Hopelchen, Campeche, where I worked some twenty-one months between 1993 and 1998 on the relationship between ethnicity and social inequality.

10 The consultation of 1994 is not to be confused with the consulta referendum on 21 March 1999 organised by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in an effort to build a broader political coalition. 1 FN-Hopelchen, 14039601.

12 Ethnicity is understood here as referring to a phenomenon of social differentiation in which actors use cultural or phenotypical markers or symbols to distinguish themselves from others. It is a method of classifying people into categories which include


relationship between ethnic categories and groupings of human individuals.13 As the first episode illustrated, people use certain terms to

identify themselves, and they are designated by specific categories by others. However, these perspectives (self-identification and ascription) do not necessarily coincide. Second, the two stories strongly suggest that the starting point for the analysis of ethnicity should not be ethnic collectives per se, but rather the ways in which individuals use ethnic

categories in social interaction. The important question, then, is not what a person is (German, Fulbe, Indian, etc.), but in which contexts and under which circumstances he identifies himself or is identified by others with reference to a certain category.14 Third, they remind us that social

categorisation (of which ethnic classification is only a part) is not simply an intellectual game. To be classed as belonging to a certain social

category means to occupy a specific status position.15 Thus, social

categories are not neutral but instead are respected and valued

differentially. Who is allowed or obliged to occupy a given social position denoted by a category is frequently as disputed as the evaluation of the

category as such. Bourdieu referred to this phenomenon as 'a forgotten dimension of class struggles'.16 Fourth, the state, of course, plays a major role in shaping ethnicity and inter-ethnic relations. The state is not merely

individuals of both sexes and all age groups using (socially constructed) origin as its primary reference. This definition builds on T. Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism. Anthropological Perspectives (London and Boulder, 1993), p. 4 and Levine, 'Recon- structing Ethnicity', p. I68. These boundary processes may result in the development of a system of ethnic categories (i.e. classificatory units) or of ethnic communities (i.e. units of action). See W. Gabbert, Creoles - Afroamerikaner im karibischen Tiefland von Nicaragua (Miinster, 1992), pp. 8, 33-7 for a more extended discussion of the term and a typology of ethnic communities.

13 See, for instance, A. Southall, 'The Illusion of Tribe', Journal of Asian and African Studies, vol. 5 (I970), pp. 28-50; Proschan, 'We are all Kmhmu', pp. 95, Ioo-o1.

14 This perspective makes it possible to treat ethnicity not as a pre-existing structure but as something continually produced and reproduced by individual actors in the context of changing circumstances; that is, as a process.

15 Social status is frequently defined as the prestige or social worth conferred upon a social position by members of a society. Thus, a general consensus on the evaluation of social positions is presupposed. Here, in contrast, status is understood as the claim of the occupant of a social position to a specific type of behaviour from other persons - e.g. respect, obedience, etc. - and the demand by others for a specific mode of conduct. It is a complex of certain rights and duties. This definition makes it possible to link the system of status with relations of power within a society so as to determine a dominant or hegemonic system of status without exluding deviant evaluations by members of less powerful groups.

16 p. Bourdieu, La distinction. Critique sociale dujugement (Paris, 1979).


dealing with already existing social or ethnic categories but, frequently, creating new ones by means of its own administrative regulations. So for

example, as widely observed, many 'tribes' of Africa and Asia are not relics of some long-ago past, but rather results of the administrative action of colonial states.17 What is more, the state tends to be a major distributor of resources and the criteria applied for the allocation of resources

frequently are of the utmost importance for the expression of ethnicity:

Many categories and groups are not even recognized by the census authorities, that is, groups are not even counted in the literal sense of the term and, in such cases, do not 'count' politically in the figurative sense of the term. Some categories and groups are singled out for special protection or privilege by the state, given or denied citizenship, given or denied proportional or extra representation in electoral constituencies or government bodies or in government service. Some categories and groups are entitled to special protection of their language or religion or personal laws, some are not.18

Government activities and programmes play a major part in shaping the

possibilities and constraints of individual actors. They may strengthen existing relations of domination by backing local elites or weaken them by directly or indirectly taking the side of subordinate groups at the local level.19 In addition, the state has much influence on the prevailing discourse on ethnicity in a society.

The following discussion will illustrate these points by analysing the historical development of ethnic categories in the Yucatan peninsula.

Yucatdn in Colonial Times

When the Spaniards began the conquest of Yucatan ( 527-47), they encountered a population which was, to a great extent, linguistically and

culturally homogeneous, but divided politically into more than 6 federations of states and petty states frequently waging war against one another. This political fragmentation and the traditional enmities between

17 See, for instance, E. Ardener, 'Language, Ethnicity, and Population', in J. H. Beattie and R. G. Lienhardt (eds.), Studies in Social Anthropology. Essays in Memory of E. E. Evans-Pritchard by his former Oxford Colleagues (Oxford, 1975), pp. 346-7; R. Fardon, 'African Ethnogenesis: Limits to the Comparability of Ethnic Phenomena', in Ladislav Holy (ed.), Comparative Anthropology (Oxford, 1987), pp. 177-8, 181-2; T.

Ranger, 'The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa', in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, I984), pp. 247-254; C.

Young, 'Ethnicity and the Colonial and Post-Colonial State in Africa', in Paul Brass

(ed.), Ethnic Groups and the State (London and Sidney, I985), pp. 73-82; Southall, 'Illusion'; Levine, 'Reconstructing Ethnicity', pp. 172-3

18 P. Brass, Ethnicity and Nationalism (New Delhi, Newbury and London, 1991), p. 271.

This differentiating role of the state has also been highlighted by M. Hechter, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, Is36-1966 (Lododon, 975); Barth, 'Enduring and Emerging Issues', p. 19 and Jenkins, Rethinking Ethnicity, pp. 68-9. 19 See, for instance, Brass, Ethnicity and Nationalism, pp. 272-4.

Social categories in Yucatan, Mexico 465

indigenous political units played a major part in the success of the Spanish enterprise.20

The imposition of Spanish colonial rule led to the disintegration of the

pre-Hispanic federations and states, for each indigenous community was treated as an independent administrative unit. These Indian republics (repiblicas de indios) became the most important focus of interaction

beyond the extended family for the indigenous population. In Yucatan even the religious brotherhoods (cofradias) were organisations of these communities.21

The colonial state established a social order which can be characterised as an estate system.22 The fundamental social categories- Spaniards (espanoles) and Indians (indios) - were legally defined. This is also true for the castes (castas), persons of presumed mixed ancestry, such as mestizos or mulattos. Each category held certain specific rights and was subject to certain duties, which pertained not only to the economic sphere of

property, labour relations and production, but also included regulations for the use of clothing and jewellery. Indians had to pay tribute and to

provide forced labour to Spaniards. They were regarded as minors and wards of the crown, were forbidden to bear arms and ride horses. Mestizos and other castes were freed from the tribute and labour

obligations of Indians, but had to pay other types of taxes and to render

military service. Only Spaniards were allowed to wear European clothing; Indians and mestizos had to dress in white shirts and trousers, straw hats and sandals. The women's dress was the ipil which was of lesser quality in the case of Indians.23 There was residential segregation, too. In the few

20 See D. Landa, Relacion de las cosas de Yucatdn (Madrid, I985, written in I566), pp. 63-5; F. D. Cogolludo, Los tres siglos de la dominacion espanola en Yucatdn o sea historia de esta provincia, vol. i (Graz, 1971, original I688), pp. I77-80, book 3, ch. 6; R. Roys, 'Lowland Maya Native Society at Spanish Contact', in Handbook of Middle American Indians, vol. 3 (Austin, I965), pp. 669, 67I; V. Bricker, The Indian Christ, the Indian King: The Historical Substrate of Maya Myth and Ritual (Austin, 198I), p. I 3; N. Farriss, Maya Society under Colonial Rule (Princeton, 1984), pp. 2 -3; S. Quezada, Pueblosy caciques

yucatecos, isjo-I80o (M6xico, 1993), pp. 37-9. 21 See Farriss, Maya Society, pp. 147-5I, 167-8; M. Restall, The Maya World. Yucatec

Culture and Society, Ifjo-i8So (Stanford, 1997), pp. 3-19. 22 An estate refers to a legally defined segment of the population of a society which has

distinctive rights and duties established by law. See G. Lenski, Power and Privilege. A

Theory of Social Stratification (Chapel Hill, I966), p. 77. Some authors call the system of social inequality of colonial Yucatan a caste system. See, for instance, Farriss, Maya Society, p. II 3. However, it is not to be confused with the system in India of rigid, closed social stratification based on notions of ritual purity.

23 See C. Gibson, 'Indian Societies under Spanish Rule', in Leslie Bethell (ed.); Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. II (Cambridge 1984), pp. 399-405; L. McAlister, 'Social Structure and Social Change in New Spain', Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 43 (i963), p. 358; Cogolludo, Los tres siglos, vol. I, p.403, book 5, ch. I9; B. Granado Baeza, 'Los indios de Yucatin', Revista de la Universidad Autonoma de Yucatdn, vol. 4, no.


cities (Merida, Campeche, and Valladolid), Indians had to live in special quarters (barrios). In the towns and villages of some importance, the area around the central plaza was reserved for the Spanish and mestizo

population.24 Within the three categories there were important differences in relation

to property, income, education and profession. In partial recognition of

precolonial social stratification, the Indian category was subdivided into native noblemen who were called hidalgos or, in Maya, almeheno'b, and commoners who were referred to as indios tributarios or masewalo'b.25 Indian hidalgos enjoyed privileges which identified them legally with the lower Spanish nobility. They were exempt from tribute, forced labour and the legal prohibitions imposed on Indian commoners.26

Affiliation to these basic social categories was held to be determined by descent or biological criteria. Yet, in a number of cases, wealth and cultural adaptation permitted mobility into categories of higher status, so that, for example, a number of mestizos or Indians with sufficient property and language skills in Spanish were legally accepted as Spaniards. As

Nancy Farriss put it:

We know that ethnic identities recorded in colonial censuses were merely legal categories based only in part on biological criteria, and highly flexible criteria, at

i68 (I989, written in 8I 3), p. 62; Farriss, Maya Society, p. I 4; R. Redfield, 'Race and Class in Yucatan', in Cooperation in Research, Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication No. 50o (Washington, I938), p. 5 17; Barabas, 'Colonialismo y racismo', p. I25. It is not completely clear to what extent the regulations for the use of clothing, arms and horses were actually enforced. Horses and shotguns appear quite frequently in Indian wills. See, for instance, Restall, Maya World, pp. 103-04.

24 See M. Bartolome, 'La estratificaci6n etnica en Yucatan como antecedente de la guerra de castas', Boletin de la Escuela de Ciencias Antropologicas de la Universidad de Yucatdn, vol. I3, no. 76 (I986), p. 7; F. Fernandez Repetto and G. Negroe Sierra, 'Las relaciones interetnicas en la provincia de Yucatan durante el perfodo colonial y su manifestaci6n en la cofradia de Campeche', Revista de la Universidad Autdnoma de Yucatdn, vol. 4, no. 171 (I989), pp. o0-II; J. Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, vol. I (New York, I963, written in 1843), pp. 154-5.

25 Masewal is a term derived from the Nahuatl which replaced winik (man) as self- identification.

26 See Bracamonte y Sosa, La memoria enclaustrada, pp. 26-7; Quezada, Pueblosy caciques, pp. z28-9; Farriss, Maya Society, pp. 98, 174-7, I85, 238; R. Roys, The Indian Background of Colonial Yucatan (Norman, 1972), pp. I32, 148-60, 171; J. Rubio Mane, Archivo de la Historia de Yucatacn, Campechey Tabasco (Mexico, 1942), p. 2I2. For a discussion of social differentiation stressing the Indians' point of view see P. Thompson, 'Tekanto in the Eighteenth Century', unpubl. Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 1978, pp. I94-234;

Restall, Maya World, pp. 88-97. The Indian and Spanish views of social inequality, however, did not completely coincide. Not all almeheno'b were recognised as hidalgos by the Spanish authorities and granted the privileges mentioned. The term hidalgo was also used in Maya language texts. See, for instance, J. Martinez Hernandez, Cronica de Yaxkukul (M6rida, 1926), pp. 5, Io, 33.


that. Mestizo could signify any genetic mix between pure Spaniard and pure Indian, and in practice the boundaries marking off the supposedly pure groups was far from fixed. The significant inequalities of privileges and obligations attached to the various caste identities created a strong incentive for upward percolation. Differences in wealth, occupation, and way of life, the accidents of legitimate or illegitimate birth, and a variety of other nongenetic criteria could determine the difference in the opportunity for light-skinned mestizos and pardos to become incorporated into the Spanish caste and for pure Indians and pure Africans to pass into the mixed groups.27

Caste defined the Indians' place in colonial society but it provided no basis for group identity and group cohesion.28 As colonial historian Matthew Restall has pointed out, there is no evidence that Indians in Yucatan perceived themselves as a cultural unit threatened by Spanish culture. Indian self-identity in the colonial period was based on the

community (cah) and the patronym group (chibal). These groups excluded

Spaniards, but they also excluded most other Indians. Beyond community and patronym group, indigenous perception of others was determined by class. What differentiated a Spaniard from an ordinary Indian community resident was 'his class - reflected in titles of address, in wealth, in cultural accoutrements'.29 There were informal contacts between members of different communities and there was also migration, as Farriss rightly points out,30 but apparently there was no consciousness of a kind that embraced the entire Indian population in Yucatan. The term indio, as well as the indigenous word masewal, which Indian commoners used to

designate themselves, referred to a social category, not to a self-conscious ethnic grouping.

The province of Yucatan played only a marginal role in colonial Mexico. Lacking precious metals, its only source of wealth consisted of the large indigenous population. Beeswax and cotton cloth remained the most important products for export. These articles as well as most of Yucatain's maize production - the staple crop - were obtained from Indian tribute which remained the mainstay of the colonial economy up to the end of the eighteenth century. State coercion ensured that the tribute and repartimiento arrangements worked to the Spaniards' ad-

vantage. As Indians retained ownership of the principal means of

production, especially land, social stratification and economic inequality

27 Farriss, Maya Society, p. I08; see also p. 98; Barabas, 'Colonialismo y racismo', p. 126; Bartolom6, 'Estratifcaci6n etnica', p. 4.

28 See Farriss, Maya Society, pp. 167-8. 29 M. Restall, 'Yucatec Maya Responses to "Modernization": The Colonial Period', in

Ruth Gubler and Ueli Hostettler (eds.), The Fragmented Present. Mesoamerican Societies Facing Modernization (M6ckmuihl, 1995), p. 6i.

30 See Farriss, Maya Society, pp. 156-7.


were mainly the result of colonialism and less of property relations. The

Spaniards' status as the elite did not depend on the exercise of economic

power emanating from the ownership of the means of production. Rather, colonists received the benefits of colonialism because the state imposed the rules of economic exchange between Spaniards and Indians.31

In contrast to other regions of Mexico, the presence of Spanish officials in the rural Indian communities was extremely limited up to the Bourbon Reforms at the end of the eighteenth century. The most important agents of Spanish rule in the rural areas were Catholic priests. Economic weakness and the limited presence of colonial administrative represen- tatives shaped a peculiar relationship which resulted in much less cultural

penetration of the indigenous population than occurred in Central Mexico. There were few intermediate social positions between Indian commoners and Spanish landowners or bureaucrats. Thus, even at the end of the colonial period the majority of rural mestizos did not differ

significantly from Indian peasants in their mode of production, diet and dress. Like them, they generally spoke only the Maya language.32 Consequently, Maya remained the language of widest use. A report to the

Spanish crown stated in 8 I 3:

The language generally spoken in this province by Indians, mestizos and pardos [people of at least partly African ancestry] ... is the Maya language.... The Maya language is the most common in all the villages even among the American Spaniards and much more among the inferior castes. What is more, in the city of Merida and the town of Valladolid it is the most widely used language even among the illustrious people...33

And Nancy Farriss notes:

More than a lingua franca, Maya was the primary language of all the colony's native-born inhabitants of every caste... Creole children spent their infancy, literally from birth, and their early childhood in almost the sole company of Maya women, suckled by Maya wet nurses commandeered from the villages, reared by Maya nurses, and surrounded by Maya servants.

Maya was in a very real sense, then, the creoles' mother tongue, the language with which they continued to feel more comfortable as adults and used by preference 'not only among the Indians but also at home with their own children,

31 See R. Chamberlain, The Conquest and Colonigation of Yucatan, if/7-izfo (Washington, 1948), pp. 333-4; Farriss, Maya Society, pp. 32, 38-9, , 5, 53; R. Patch, Maya and

Spaniard in Yucatan, 1648-1812 (Stanford, 1993), pp. i6, 86-7, 92-3; S. Quezada, Lospies de la reptiblica. Los mayas peninsulares, isjo-i7yo (Mexico, 1997), pp. I89-208. The

repartimiento consisted in the forced sale of certain articles to the Indians. 32 See Farriss, Maya Society, pp. 88, 109, II2; Patch, Maya and Spaniard, pp. 24I-2. 33 Granado Baeza, 'Los indios de Yucatin', pp. 54-5, translation mine.


giving as their reason that it is easier to pronounce'. They not only preferred to speak Maya but, according to more than one observer, they often acquired a less than perfect command of Spanish.34

As late as 8 39, American traveller John L. Stephens noted in a village in the interior of the peninsula: 'Many of the white people could not speak Spanish, and the conversation was almost exclusively in the Maya language.

35

To sum up, at least until the end of the nineteenth century (and possibly well into the twentieth) the use of the Maya language was by no means restricted to people classified as Indians but embraced the majority of Yucatan's population including a part of the local elite. Language which

today is the preferred criterion for ethnic (or, to be more precise, cultural) classification was of no use for defining the Indian part of the population at least until the second half of the nineteenth century. The social consciousness of the Indian peasantry was determined by kinship and

locality and largely confined to their communities and their surroundings.

Independence and the Caste War

Even after 1821, when Mexico gained political independence from Spain, Yucatan's population remained legally divided. The three-part division of colonial times - Spaniards, castes and Indians - was reduced to a system which differentiated people with complete civil rights, the so-called vecinos, from Indians (indios or indigenas).36 Indio and indzgena were terms ascribed

34 Farriss, Maya Society, p. I 2, citing Archivo del Arzobispado, Merida, Visitas pastorales 5, Parish report, Espita 1784; see also J. Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan, vol. II (New York, 1969, written in 1841), p. 407; R. Redfield, The Folk Culture of Yucatdn (Chicago, I94I), p. 377 note I5.

35 Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, vol. I, p. 23 1; see also D. Brinton, The Maya Chronicles (Philadelphia, I 882), p. 19; J. Solis, 'Memoria del Partido de los Chenes', La Nueva Era (Campeche, I Nov. 1878), pp. 1-4; A. Woeikof, 'Reise durch Yukatan und die siid6stlichen Provinzen von Mexiko 1874', Petermanns Mitteilungen, vol. 25 (i879), p. 204.

36 See, for instance, 'Ley de 23 de noviembre de I833 que arregle el cobro de la contribuci6n personal', in M. Gonzalez Navarro, Razay tierra. La guerra de castasy el henequen (Mexico, 1970), pp. 299-30I. The shift in social divisions is reflected in the

following quotation from i9th century historian Ancona, albeit with a racial interpretation: 'In Yucatan the name White is generally given not only to those who preserved pure their European blood in their veins but also to those who mixed it with Indian blood in any quantity. Therefore,... our population is considered to be divided into two large sections: the Indians and the Whites. The first are the descendants of the Maya who did not mix their blood with any other, and the second are the individuals of all the other races...' E. Ancona, Historia de Yucatdn desde la epoca mds remota hasta nuestros dias, vol. IV (Merida, 1879/80), p. 13 note 3, translation mine; see also p. 37 note 6; H. Cline, 'Related Studies in Early Nineteenth Century Yucatecan Social History', Microfilm Collection of Manuscripts on Middle American Cultural Anthropology, No. XXXII, University of Chicago Library. Part II: The War of the Castes and its Consequences, 1950, p. 64.


by others and used as synonyms in official documents, newspapers, novels, etc.37 The republics of Indians survived as special administrative units at least until the end of the i86os.38

The expansion of sugar cultivation into the frontier regions in the interior of the peninsula was an important factor contributing to the outbreak of the so-called Caste War of Yucatan (1847-I90o), as

commercial sugar cultivation and the production of corn by peasants entered into direct competition for fertile land.39 The Caste War was a rebellion supported mainly by part of the Maya-speaking lower classes. It claimed thousands of victims and was a traumatic event in the region's history. After initial successes in 1847/48, the rebels had to retreat to the isolated south-eastern part of the peninsula where they established

independent polities. For several decades a bloody frontier war followed. The rebels made frequent incursions into the area controlled by the

government. For their part, they had to face periodic attacks by government forces. Nevertheless, the descendants of the rebels preserved de facto political autonomy up to the first decades of the twentieth

century.40 Since the middle of the nineteenth century, economic

development has been concentrated more and more in the north-western and western portions of the peninsula. Especially the growth of the

henequen plantation economy in the area around Merida led to a massive

proletarianisation of Maya-speaking peasants.41

37 See, for instance, J. Baranda, 'Los indios', El Espiritu Piblico (Campeche, I8 Aug. I867), p. i; J. Hernandez, 'El indio yucateco', Registro Yucateco, vol. 3 (I846), pp. 425-30.

38 The liberal constitution of 841 formally abolished the reptiblicas de indios but in actual fact they continued to operate. In I847 they were re-established. See 'Ley de 27 de

agosto de 1847, restableciendo y reglamentando las antiguas leyes para el regimen de los indios', in A. Aznar Perez and R. Pedrera (eds.), Coleccin de leyes, decretosy drdenes o acuerdos de tendencia general del poder legislativo del estado libre y soberano de Yucatdn, vol. III (Merida, I849-5 I), pp. 146-1 5 I. In the state of Yucatan, they remained until i868. See V. Suarez Molina, La evolucidn econdmica de Yucatdn a traves del siglo XIX, vol. II

(Mexico, i977), p. 292. In Campeche, which had separated from Yucatan in I858, the Indian republics were abolished around 869. Cf. 'Se prohibe exigir servicios gratuitos a los indigenas', 9 April 1869, in F. Alvarez Suarez, Anales histdricos de Campeche, vol. II (Campeche, 1991), pp. 93-5. For a discussion of the republicas de indios after

independence see T. Rugeley, Yucatdn's Maya Peasantry & the Origins of the Caste War

(Austin, 1996), pp. 90-116. 39 The Spaniards were never able to control effectively the sparsely settled south-eastern

parts of the peninsula, which remained an area of refuge for Indians who had fled from colonial oppression.

40 For the Caste War see, for instance, N. Reed, The Caste War of Yucatdn (Stanford, 1964); G. Jones, 'Revolution and Continuity in Santa Cruz Maya Society', American

Ethnologist, vol. I (I974), pp. 659-83; Bricker, Indian Christ, pp. 87-1I8, I85-2I8;

Rugeley, Yucatdn's Maya Peasantry; D. Dumond, The Machete and the Cross. Campesino Rebellion in Yucatan (Lincoln and London, 1997).

41 See, for instance, Gonzalez Navarro, Ra.ay tierra, pp. 140-225.


Today, the Caste War is looked upon as a symbol of Indian resistance

by many. Bartolome, for example, considers it as a 'war of ethnic

liberation', where 'this people [the Maya] ... reacted in such a unified form

against its rulers'.42 However, although Maya-speaking peasants did form the social basis of the insurgents, a considerable part of the Indian

population in the north-west, the centre of colonial rule, remained passive or even fought jointly with the government forces against the rebels.43

Indians who fought for the government were rewarded with the honorific title of hidalgo, referring to the hierarchy of status in the colonial period. Besides this elevation in status there were other important material incentives to fight the rebels. The government gave no pay for service except booty, but it promised to pay for the debts of those held in debt bondage. The hidalgos would receive the same pensions as other soldiers in case of disability or death. Additionally, 'loyal' Indians

fighting to the end of the campaign and the re-establishment of peace in the

peninsula would be exempted from the head tax (contribucion personal).44 What is more, as Reed states, '... the servants and workers of the old haciendas in the north-western corner of the peninsula, were not involved in the rebellion, they even looked down on their less civilized eastern brothers'.45

It is easy to imagine that outside the area held by the rebels the

already negative connotations of the terms indio or masewal grew due to the Caste War. They became the quintessence of barbarism. Frequently, the rebels were labelled as 'savages' and 'wild or barbarous Indians' (indios 42

Bartolome, Dindmica social, pp. 35, I79. For a critique of this interpretation, see W. Gabbert, 'La etnizaci6n de un conflicto politico y econ6mico: La Guerra de Castas de Yucatan, I847-185 5', in Francisco Fernandez, Maria Rovira and Luis Varguez (eds.), Una guerra sin fin: Los cruroob ante el umbral del milenio (Mexico, in press).

43 See, for instance, Julian Piste et al. to secretaria general de gobierno, Homun, 23 June 1848, Boletin Oficial del Gobierno de Yucatdn, 6 July 1848, box 8, file 588 and Notificaciones del titulo de hidalgos de los indigenas de Seybaplaya, 31 March I850, box 12, file 937, both in Archivo General del Estado de Campeche, Gobernaci6n, Periodo Yucateco, 8zo20-857; N6mina de indigenas de este pueblo que se han

presentado voluntariamente a tomar las armas, Tekanto, 27 May 1848, Archivo General del Estado de Yucatan, Poder Ejecutivo, Justicia, Juzgados de Paz, box 67.

44 See 'Decreto de I4 de enero de i848, se declara hidalgo y exento de la contribuci6n

personal a Felipe Cauich'; 'Decreto de 26 de enero de 1848, premios y recompensas en favor de los indigenas que contribuyan a reprimir la sublevacion'; 'Decreto de 3 de abril de I848, concediendo el titulo de hidalgos a los indigenas que concurrieron a la defensa de Tunkas'; 'Decreto de 27 de abril de i848, eximiendo a los que se expresan de la contribuci6n personal'; 'Orden de 27 de mayo, aprobando la organizaci6n de

hidalgos para el servicio de campafia', all in Aznar Perez and Pedrera, Coleccidn de leyes, vol. III, pp. 173, 181-, 203-4, 206-9. For a fuller discussion of the motivation of the Indians fighting against the rebels see W. Gabbert, 'Ethnicity and Forms of Resistance: The Caste War of Yucatan in Regional Perspective', in M. Cipolletti (ed.), Resistencia

y adaptacion nativas en las tierras bajas latinoamericanas (Quito, 1997), pp. 205-32. 45 Reed, Caste War, p. 64.


salvajes, indios bdrbaros). Sometimes they were referred to as 'cannibals'

(antropofagos).46 The following quotations from Spanish-speaking intellectuals from the second half of the nineteenth century will illustrate these attitudes:

Which is the cry of alarm which resounds everywhere? The Indians!!! The Indians, and with this cry the frontier villages become

discouraged. The Indians, whose mere name exercises a dreadful effect on the mind of all peninsulars, to whom it signifies: conflagration, carnage, desolation, horrors of all kinds which it is neither suitable nor possible to describe.

The Indians. - It was twenty years ago ... when in my young ears this cry resounded for the first time... Since then, even though the danger has passed, thanks to the brave soldiers who contained this irruption of barbarians which threatened to destroy our country, we have periodically heard: the Indians attacked and set fire to this or that place. Always the Indians as a cry of threat, always the Indians with their machetes hanging over our heads like the sword of Damocles. Twenty years! And the civilised race of Yucatin has not been able to finish off this horde of barbarians... 47

Who, observing the present-day Indian, abject, degraded and debased, hypocritical and mendacious, without sureness in his words, without fidelity in his beliefs, without wants; ungrateful and content with a bread and one or two changes of clothes, who, we repeat, will believe that from this race there emerged the builders of Uxmal and Kabah [two famous archaeological sites of the Classic Maya culture] ?48

The terms indigena, indio and masewal continued to be ascribed by others. But the Maya-speaking lower classes tried to evade such categorisation and adopted their negative connotations (see below).49 After the Caste War, the traditional folk costume which characterised Indians and mestizos in colonial times as well as the Maya language have become

symbols of the lower class. The earlier differentiation between Indians and mestizos has fallen into disuse.50

During the colonial period the tribute and forced labour of one

segment of Yucatan's population categorised as Indians had been the

mainstay of the local economy. The colonial state guaranteed the relations

46 See, for instance, 'Exposici6n de los indigenas de los pueblos de Uci, Muxupip y Kini del partido de Motul, pidiendo marchar a la campafa', Motul, 26 June 1848, in S.

Baqueiro, Ensayo historico sobre las revoluciones de Yucatdn desde el ano de i840 hasta s864, vol. III (Merida, 1990, ist ed. I878-I887), pp. 276-9; R. Pifia, 'Revista de los Chenes', La Discusion (Campeche, 7 March 87 ), p. 3; Ancona, Historia de Yucatdn, vol. IV, pp. 14, 70. 47 Baranda, 'Los indios', italics in the original, translation mine.

48 Solis, 'Memoria del Partido', pp. 3-4, translation mine. 49 The descendants of the rebels, however, refer to themselves with some pride as

masewalo'b, whilst rejecting the Spanish equivalent, indio. See A. Villa Rojas, The Maya of East Central Quintana Roo (Washington, 1945), p. 95; P. Sullivan, 'Contemporary Yucatec Maya Apocalyptic Prophecy: The Ethnographic and Historical Context',

unpubl. Ph.D. diss. John Hopkins University, 1984, p. 91. 50 See Bracamonte y Sosa, La memoria enclaustrada, pp. 5 2- ; A. Hansen, 'Change in the

Class System of Merida, Yucatan 1875-935 ', in Moseley and Terry, Yucatrn, p. 123.


of production by enforcing social differentiation on a legal basis, creating an estate system. After independence, this system remained important for almost half a century, mainly as a result of the Caste War. But as henequen plantations consolidated as the new cornerstone of the regional economy and the threat of a coalition between the Maya-speaking lower classes and the rebels of the south-eastern parts of the peninsula declined, the need for

legal and administrative segregation ended. In the colonial period the

Maya-speaking peasants retained control of the principal means of

production and were to some degree protected against encroachments from Spaniards in order to maintain the tribute economy. During the nineteenth century many peasant communities lost their land to the

expanding haciendas. Thus, their labour force came to be appropriated not through governmental force but through the ever-expanding system of debt-peonage.51 Redfield summarises the historical process as follows:

[At the end of the colonial period] ... differences in costume between Indian and mestizo ... gradually disappeared.... The legal restrictions on the Indians were revoked or fell into disuse after independence from Spain. By the middle of the nineteenth century the mixed-bloods with Spanish names and the Indians ... with Indian surnames looked alike, dressed alike, and were treated substantially alike. ... A word for a biological hybrid [mestizo] had come to designate the lower of two social classes.52

During the Caste War the development of a socially and culturally homogeneous lower class of Maya-speakers with a localised sense of

loyalty increased in the north and west of the peninsula. In the east, however, due to decades of bloody confrontation, the descendants of the rebels developed a social consciousness encompassing different local

groups, which set them apart from Spanish and Maya-speakers throughout the rest of the peninsula.53

The Mexican Revolution in Yucatdn and the 'Indian Question' The Mexican Revolution (I 9o-I7) brought important ideological changes affecting inter-ethnic relations. Whereas most politicians in the nineteenth century considered the white, creole race to be the centre of Mexican nationality, revolutionary ideology saw Mexican nationality as

residing in the biologically and culturally mixed population-the mestizos. Indian customs, music, dances and traditions were not regarded outright as relics from barbarism but, at least in part, considered to be

51 See, for instance, F. Katz, 'Plantagenwirtschaft und Sklaverei. Der Sisalanbau auf der Halbinsel Yucatan bis 9 o', Zeitschriftfir Geschichtswissenschaft, vol. 7, no. 5 (i 959), pp. 1002-27. 52 Redfield, 'Race and Class', p. 5 8.

53 See, for instance, Villa Rojas, The Maya, pp. 20-35, 9I-6; M. Bartolome and A. Barabas, La resistencia maya. Relaciones interetnicas en el oriente de la peninsula de Yucatan (Mexico, 1977).


elements of national folklore worth maintaining.54 The central aim of the official indigenist policies was to integrate and assimilate Indians into the national population. As President Cairdenas (1934-40) put it: 'Our Indian

problem does not consist in preserving the "Indian" as an Indian or to indianise Mexico but to mexicanise the Indians.' The regime sought to subsume the Indian to the mass of workers and peasants, stressing class over ethnicity.55

After the Mexican Revolution entered the Yucatan peninsula in 191 5, the land-owning oligarchy lost some of their holdings but retained much of their wealth and power. Their day-labourers benefited from agrarian reform but became dependent on governmental administration and credits. Opportunities for social mobility increased significantly due to the economic boom of the 194os, the establishment of home industries and the expansion of the state bureaucracy. In particular, the development of the public education system and its extension into the rural areas created new mechanisms for social advancement for the children of peasants and

peons (day-labourers).56 At the same time the Maya language - slowly but

steadily - lost much of its importance as primary education in Spanish proliferated.

At the end of the I96os, US anthropologist Richard Thompson believed that Yucatain was well on the way to becoming an 'open society' where social status would be exclusively determined by education and economic success and not by descent or cultural criteria, such as language. Like Robert Redfield in the 193os, he was impressed by the extent of social

mobility and cultural change, i.e. the proliferation of the Spanish language and modern ways of life, which characterised Yucatan after the Revolution.57 But there are some factors that have prevented the

completion of acculturation and assimilation.

Firstly, cultural differences still continue to function as important status markers in Yucatan. Although social conflicts and racism are nowhere near as acute as in Chiapas, cultural markers like language or dress and descent (which is hinted at by the surname) are still important factors in

54 See C. Hale, Mexican Liberalism in the Age of Mora, I82I--853 (New Haven and London, I968), p. 223; A. Knight, 'Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo: Mexico, 1910-1940', in Thomas E. Skidmore, Aline Helg and Alan Knight (eds.), The Idea of Race in Latin America, 87o0-I940 (Austin, 1990), pp. 71-I 3. Gonzalez Navarro, RaZa

y tierra, pp. 148-9 mentions some of the Igth century precursors of Mexican indo- hispanism, as the mestizo-centred ideology has been called.

55 The quote is from T. Medin, Ideologiay praxispolitica de Ldaaro Cdrdenas (Mexico, 1975), p. 176, translation mine. For a discussion of the official indigenismo see, for example, Knight, 'Racism, Revolution'.

56 See, for instance, R. Thompson, Aires de Progreso. Cambio Social en un Pueblo Maya de Yucatan (Mexico, 1974), pp. I62-5.

57 See Thompson, Aires, pp. 189-90; Redfield, Folk Culture, pp. 58-9, 83.


the system of social inequality.58 Stereotypes linked to these status markers frequently continue to determine interpersonal relations. Dis- crimination has changed to more subtle forms. It ranges from scoffing at a limited knowledge of Spanish and the informal segregation in churches or cinemas to the exclusion from certain social circles of the elite and the

disapproval of mixed unions by the upper class.59 Light skin colour, bright eyes and Caucasian features still enjoy higher prestige than an Amerindian phenotype.60 Even many members of the Maya-speaking lower classes prefer persons of lighter skin or with Spanish surnames as

spouses.61 Often they consider a Spanish surname as 'pretty' and as 'a name of importance' and sometimes despise people with a Maya surname as indios or masewales.62 Spanish continues to be regarded as the prestige language, symbolising progress and modernity, whereas Maya is

frequently considered to be the language of the poor. As several informants have said: 'They think you are of a poor race if you speak Maya.'63 'If you speak Maya you are an Indian [indio], you are not civilised.'64 Whereas the booming tourist industry praises the extra-

ordinary achievements of the ancient Maya in astronomy, architecture, etc., the Yucatec Maya language is still associated with misery, backwardness and the poor life of the peasantry by the Spanish-speaking public. To wear sandals (alpargatas) or the ipil is still a sign of low social status.65

The association between the Maya language, the terms indio or indigena, and low social status is strengthened by several of the government's 58 For a fuller discussion of this relationship see W. Gabbert, 'Etnicidad y desigualdad

social en la peninsula de Yucatan', in Memorias del IV Congreso Internacional de Mayistas, Antigua, 2-8 August 1998, in press.

59 See interview with director of the INI, Hopelch6n, 24 May 1994; FN-Xcupil, 24099403; FN-Xcupil, 07049501; interview with Alfredo Barcel6 Mendez, INI- Campeche, 9 May 994; interview with Arturo Solis Lara, Hopelchen, 8 March 996; B. Holmes, 'Women and Yucatec Kinship', unpubl. PhD diss., Tulane University, 1978, p. 44; Sanders, 'Education', p. 6; Thompson, Aires, pp. 35, 40, 83, 99, o12-10, 139, i66-7.

60 See FN-Hopelchen, 24039502; FN-Chultun, 19099402; Redfield, Folk Culture, p. 75; R. Redfield, A Village that Chose Progress. Chan Kom Revisited (Chicago, 195 0), p. 133; Thompson, Aires, p. 39.

61 See FN-Xcupil, 24099403; I. Press, Tradition and Adaptation. Life in a Modern Yucatan Maya Village (Westport, I975), pp. 73, 75-7; N. Trujillo, 'Los "mestizos" de Yucatan', in Encyclopedia Yucatense, vol. VI (M6rida, 1946), p. 331.

62 See FN-Xcupil, 24099403; FN-Hopelch6n, IO119503; interview with clerk, Juzgado Familiar, Campeche, 3 April 1995. 63 FN-Xcupil, 02029501.

64 Interview with Jose Chan Chi, Presidencia Municipal, Hopelchen, I3 Dec. 1994. 65 See Redfield, 'Race and Class', p. 513; Redfield, Folk Culture, p. 74; Hansen, 'Change',

pp. 123-4; Thompson, Aires de Progreso, pp. 27, 144; Press, Tradition, pp. 78-80; Holmes, 'Women', p. 39; Bartolom6, Dindmica social, p. 3 I 3; P. Hervik, 'The Position of Language and Cultures in the Yucatecan Landscape', unpubl. Ph.D. diss., University of Copenhagen, Institute of Anthropology, 199I, p. 76.


policies. For example, the target group for the National Indigenist Institute's (INI) department of Indian education is defined as the

population of the isolated and marginal villages, where roads, electricity and a modern water supply system are lacking. Bilingual schools of the Indian education system thus tend not to be approved in cabeceras (district towns) in the state of Campeche, and such policies are justified on the basis that these cabeceras are 'not marginal'.66

Secondly, the development of the educational system seemed to foster acculturation and assimilation in the short run, but also induced changes in the social structure that exacerbated the politicisation and accentuation of cultural differences (at least at the symbolic level). It made social

mobility possible for a considerable number of children of Maya-speaking peasants and labourers. These people now form an educated middle-class. The results of these structural changes have tended to be contradictory. Many of the social climbers have tried to deny their origins by hispanicising their Maya surnames and denying any knowledge of Yucatec Maya.67 Another segment, growing in recent years, has developed an affirmative, and frequently idealised, view of Maya language and culture. Many of them are working in governmental institutions which are directly or indirectly related to cultural questions. They are rural

teachers, development workers, employees of the INI, etc. It is among these individuals that the term Maya is most frequently accepted as a self- identification, whereas people belonging to the lower class prefer mestizo, mayero, campesino, gente delpueblo or otsilmak (see below). Within this part of the middle class the notion of pan-Mayan ethnicity is most developed and a number of people are working to revive Maya language and culture.68 This current was strengthened by the expansion of bilingual 66 Interview with Secundino L6pez Varguez, Jefe de la Zona Escolar Indigena de la

Secretaria de Educaci6n Publica, Hopelchen, 25 May 1994; interview with Te6filo Chi Ord6oiez, Secretaria de Cultura y Deportes, Departamento de Educaci6n Indigena, Campeche, 4 April I995.

67 See FN-Hopelchen, 20039402; FN-Bolonchen, 02049402; FN-Xcupil, 2908940I; FN-

Hopelch6n, 04099402; FN-Chultun, 19099402; interview with Victor Contreras, Instituto Nacional de Educaci6n de Adultos, Hopelchen, 7 April 994; interview with Secundino L6pez Varguez, Jefe de la Zona Escolar Indigena de la Secretaria de Educaci6n Publica, Hopelchen, 25 May 1994; interview with Victor Narva6z Ku, director of the primary school 'Josefa Hurtado Trujeque', Hopelchen, 12 May I994; Thompson, Aires, p. Ioo; Holmes, 'Women', pp. 41-2; an example from Guatemala can be found in Warren, Indigenous Movements, p. 176.

68 See, for instance, the articles of 25 Feb. and 12 March I996 in the Campeche newspaper Tribuna. In this respect the results of my own fieldwork in Hopelchen are similar to those obtained by Hervik in Oxcutzcab, a town in the state of Yucatan. See Hervik, 'Position', pp. 82-3 ; P. Hervik, 'Learning to be "Indian ": Aspects of new Ethnic and Cultural Identity of the Yucatec Maya', Folk, vol. 34 (1992), pp. 66, 75-7. The pan- Maya movement in Guatemala also comprises mostly students and intellectuals, community-based professionals (teachers, agronomists, health workers), members of


education, initiated in the 1970S when the official doctrine of Mexican Indian policy changed from 'planned acculturation and integration' to

'participative indigenism'.69 Thus, the jobs of a growing number of

people became directly linked to the preservation and reaffirmation of cultural differences, especially the Maya language.70 For them, the

knowledge of Maya is not always a marker of low social status but in certain contexts an essential requirement for obtaining jobs. But the interest in cultural revival is not simply a reflection of socioeconomic interests. Many of these individuals have found that assimilation is not

always possible, that there are still limits to upward mobility and social

acceptance, and that contempt and discrimination persist even against people who have tried to separate themselves from their humble origins.71

Thirdly, a change in development policies is currently fostering the

acceptance (or at least the use) of the term Indian as a self-identification

by more people than previously. During recent years, international and national development institutions have increasingly channelled financial resources into rural areas, especially targeted at Indian populations.72 This

change in discourse has triggered a process which could be called ethnification or indianisation: peasant organisation A changes its name and becomes Indian organisation B. Many people apply the term for self- identification in a strategic way. In order to go to INI to ask for credit, one dons an Indian identity and wears sandals; women who normally do

nongovernmental organisations and cooperatives. See C. Smith, 'Maya Nationalism', NACLA, vol. 25, no. 3 (1991), p. 30; Watanabe, 'Unimagining the Maya', pp. 3 -2; Warren, Indigenous Movements, pp. II, 22, 36-8, 46, 134, 20I-2; B. Metz, 'Without Nation, Without Community: The Growth of Maya Nationalism among Ch'orti's of Eastern Guatemala', Journal of Anthropological Research, vol. 54 (I998), pp. 337-8, 342-3. As in the Yucatan Peninsula, many Indian activists in Guatemala are employed by the National Programme of Bilingual Education PRONEBI (E. Fischer, 'Induced Culture Change as a Strategy for Socioeconomic Development: The Pan-Maya Movement in Guatemala', in Fischer and Brown, Maya Resurgence, pp. 68, 70.

69 See M. Mejia Piieros and S. Sarmiento Silva, La lucha indigena: un reto a la ortodoxia (Mexico, 1987) for an overview of post-revolutionary indigenist policies.

70 Currently there are already more than 800 bilingual teachers in Campeche (Tribuna, 25 Feb. 1996). In the whole peninsula there are about 2,500. See Alonso Caamal, 'Los mayas', p. 50.

71 For similar developments in Guatemala see Wilson, Maya Resurgence, pp. 280, 283; Warren, Indigenous Movements, pp. 5 , 209.

72 See, for instance, F. Schryer, Ethnicity and Class Conflict in Rural Mexico (Princeton, I990), pp. 25I-5 and J. Jackson, 'Culture, Genuine and Spurious: The Politics of Indianness in the Vaup6s, Colombia', American Ethnologist, vol. 22, no. I (I995), pp. 3-27.


not do so put on an ipil, etc. As for bilingual teachers, being able to communicate in Maya increasingly becomes 'cultural capital.73

The ongoing insurrection of the EZLN in Chiapas is furthering this trend as the Mexican government attempts to prevent similar rebellions in other parts of the country by distributing money in marginal regions considered to be Indian. What is more, the government is prepared to make certain concessions on the legal, cultural, and political level. Thus, in Campeche a special congressional commission for 'Indian Affairs' has

presented a bill concerning the teaching of Maya in regular schools. In the state of Yucatan some Spanish-speaking people have begun to learn Maya, anticipating its becoming a second official language in the not too distant future.74 Nevertheless, the term indigena is still mainly a technical one used

by government institutions, INI, intellectuals, etc., and is rarely used by the village populations themselves in everyday speech.

Ironically, the affirmative views on Maya culture held by the ethnicised middle class reproduce many of the general stereotypes of the national

public. For example, the importance of the Maya culture is accounted for almost exclusively by referring to the great achievements in astronomy, mathematics and architecture of the ancient Maya civilisation. The

following quotation will illustrate this type of discourse:

We should be proud that not long ago it was proven scientifically by discoveries in Belize and Guatemala that the Maya race is the most ancient of the world and not the Egyptian, as was assumed before. It is well established that all Maya constructions were made based on mathematical and astronomical calculations....

They used the most precise astronomical and solar calendar ... For all this knowledge which shows the superior scientific and astronomic culture of our Maya ancestors we have the historical obligation, scientifically and culturally, to preserve and keep alive our valuable Maya language, its culture, customs, archaeological ruins, the paintings, sculptures, music, dances, rites, traditional medicine and all other activities which especially distinguish the Maya race.75

This is to some extent an elitist discourse, since only traits restricted to the upper class of the ancient indigenous society are mentioned as valuable

73 Cf. P. Bourdieu, 'The Forms of Capital', in John Richardson (ed.), Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (New York, 98 3), pp. 241-5 8. Other examples are the INI-programme for legal aid for Indian prisoners and the scholarship programme for Indian youths.

74 See Diario de Yucatan, Merida, 22 March 1996; Tribuna, 12 March I996. 75 F. Zavala Ramos, 'Estrategia para el desarrollo de la modernizaci6n de la educaci6n

indigena, 199I-I994', unpubl. manuscript, SEP, Direcci6n de Educaci6n Elemental, Departamento de Educaci6n Indigena, Campeche, I991, pp. 5-6, 6o, emphasis in the original, translation mine. For examples of this discourse from Guatemala see Wilson, Maya Resurgence, pp. 269-70; Raxche' (Demetrio Rodriguez Guajan), 'Maya Culture and the Politics of Development', in Fischer and Brown, Maya Resurgence, pp. 74-6; Warren, Indigenous Movements, p. 39.


achievements of Maya civilisation. What is more, it is backward-looking, with little relationship to the present-day culture of Yucatan's Maya- speaking peasants and workers. Instead such views favour the preservation of what are supposed to be 'the traditions'. In so doing, they strengthen the established association between Indianness and 'backwardness' and the reduction of the indigenous population's culture to folklore and allegedly timeless and static traditions. Still today, in Yucatan as in other parts of Mexico, to be modern means to share in the Westernised middle-class culture of the country. The activities of INI are

working in the same direction. INI's cultural projects are restricted to the

preservation of'holy sites', 'traditional' medicine, dances, rites and other

practices, the dissemination of myths and legends, etc. Sometimes peasant communities are given money so that they can carry out certain 'traditional' ceremonies.76

The backward orientation of many of Yucatan's Indianists is also shown in relation to language policy. They propagate an idea of Yucatec

Maya as a language purified from Spanish influences. The ordinary speech of lower-class Maya-speakers, which contains numerous elements in lexicon and grammar derived from Spanish, is denigrated as polluted, degenerate and of inferior value. Thus, Indianists are themselves

contributing to the preservation of the low status of Maya in everyday interaction. Lower-class Maya speakers would be required to laboriously learn the 'real', 'true' Maya created by intellectuals (bach maya). Confronted with the few opportunities the knowledge of Maya still offers for social advancement in the peninsula, it is no wonder that most people prefer to acquire language skills in Spanish.

Conclusion

The Yucatan material hints at several important methodological issues in relation to the study of ethnicity. Firstly, ethnicity is, pace Jenkins and

many others, not a ubiquitous form of social organisation.77 It has to be understood as a historical process related to specific techniques of social distinction. Ethnicity is strongly related to processes of social classification or categorisation. It is of the utmost importance to keep analytically separate social categories present in a specific society, groups or organisations based on such categories, and the individuals using categories in daily

76 See, for instance, Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 'Informe', pp. 170-80. 77 This point is argued for convincingly and at length by Fardon, 'African Ethnogenesis';

see also R. Astuti, 'The Vezo are not a Kind of People: Identity, Difference, and "Ethnicity" among a Fishing People of Western Madagaskar', American Ethnologist, vol. 22, no. 3 (1995), pp. 464-82.


interaction.78 It would be erroneous to conclude from the existence of a

category denoting a certain aggregate of individuals that this necessarily implies social cohesion, solidarity, and group consciousness within that

population. There are neither important ethnic organisations within the

Maya-speaking population of the Yucatan peninsula, nor is the idea of

belonging to a Yucatec Maya people rooted in this group.79 Therefore, the speakers of Yucatec Maya and their descendants should be seen as a cultural category not as an ethnic community. What there is of pan- Yucatec Mayan ethnicity today is still ethnic consciousness in the making. It is a project advanced mainly by members of the ethnicised middle class, institutions such as INI and, last but not least, Mexican and foreign intellectuals.80

Secondly, several categories denoting overlapping aggregates of people may exist, meaning that no such thing as a bounded, separate ethnic

community results. No clear-cut term exists to denote Maya-speakers and their descendants. The term mestizo is used for persons who are dressed in folk costume.81 But men wearing this type of attire are rarely seen in 78 This differs from the distinction between 'group identification' and 'social

categorisation' recently proposed by Jenkins. For him the initial process occurs inside the ethnic boundary, while the second takes place outside. See Jenkins, Rethinking Ethnicity, pp. 23, 54-5, 8i. However, this proposition, seems unfortunate since it obscures an important epistemological difference between the term category, which refers only to classes of objects or persons having one or more features in common, and the term group which denotes an aggregate of people with developed social interrelations between its members. Evidently one can identify oneself with either of these types of collective and can be classed by others as belonging to either one or the other.

79 Up to the present the descendants of the rebels of the Caste War in Quintana Roo dissociate themselves from the Spanish-speakers as well as, although less rigidly, from the Maya-speaking population of the states of Yucatin and Campeche. The foundation for this is the historical experience of fighting against the government's troops, in which both Spanish and Maya-speakers took part. See, for instance, Villa Rojas, The Maya, p. 95; Bartolome and Barabas, La resistencia maya, pp. I 7-S8; Sullivan, 'Contemporary Yucatec Maya Apocalyptic Prophecy', pp. 90-2.

80 In other regions of Mexico and Guatemala ethnic mobilisation is more developed and ethnic consciousness at the level of the language category is more rooted even among Indian peasants and workers (see e.g. for Michoacan J. Zirate Hernandez, 'Notas para la interpretaci6n del movimiento 6tnico en Michoacan', in Victor Gabriel Muro and Manuel Canto Chac (eds.), El estudio de los movimientos sociales: teoriay metodo (Zamora, 1991), pp. I I-29; for Oaxaca H. Campbell, 'La COCEI: cultura y etnicidad

politizadas en el Istmo de Tehuantepec', Revista Mexicana de Sociologia, vol. 5I, no. 2

(I989), pp. 247-63; for Guatemala Wilson, Maya Resurgence; Metz, 'Without Nation'; Warren, Indigenous Movements. In the case of Guatemala, these differences seem to be related to the experience of civil war, the intensity of the struggle for resources, especially land, the possibilities of social mobility, the extent and structure of migration and other factors. A comparative discussion of these cases is, however, beyond the

scope of this paper. 81 It is not a self-identification of an ethnic group (the Maya) as has been suggested by

some authors. See, for instance, Hervik, 'Position', pp. 4I, 6o, 65-6, 75.


Yucatan today. People who speak Yucatec Maya are referred to as mayero. But mayero may be used for any person independent of descent and social status. Maya-speaking peasants in the countryside and inhabitants of smaller towns who do not belong to the local elite refer to themselves as otsilmako'b (poor people) and in Spanish as nosotros los pobres (we, the

poor) or gente del pueblo (common people). They are called gente humilde

(ordinary people) by members of the elite, implying the expectation of certain humility and obedience. To refer to the upper class or local elite, people of the lower classes use the terms ts'ulo'b (originally the

'foreigners'), los ricos (the rich) or gente de categoria (people of rank). Social status remains related to geographical space, for in the larger settlements the elite are referred to as los del centro or centrolo'b, that is 'people of the centre' [of the village]. All these terms refer essentially to the social distance between the speaker and the person of whom he is speaking. In

contrast, the local elite and upper class see themselves as clase media

(middle class).82 Third, the meaning of social categories can only be elucidated by

renouncing analogies to organisms and taking as a starting point the use individuals make of certain terms in everyday interaction. In adopting such an approach, it should be remembered that the use and meaning of

categories may change in accordance with who is using them and to whom they refer. As Bourdieu has noted, the everyday usage of social

categories does not aim at logical coherence, the development of a system of classifications that is free from contradictions but obeys the "'logic" of partisanship'.83 It is itself part of social conflicts. Thus, self- identification and ascription by others are not indissolubly linked to a

person, as the organism analogy and the notion of ethnic identity suggest. Frequently, they do not coincide. Thus, whereas the Spanish-speaking public generally considers Maya-speaking peasants to be Indians and

Maya, these labels are frequently rejected by them.84 Even today, for many Maya-speaking peasants in the northern and western parts of Yucatan the Indians (indios, or indioso'b in Maya) are 'those who burned down the

82 This paragraph is based on the analysis of relevant written materials on Yucatan and, especially, on the results of my fieldwork in the municipality of Hopelchen, Campeche. In addition to some formal interviewing on the use of social categories, the analysis of speech acts in everyday life was of special importance. Although there may be differences in some of the details, the results by and large seem to be valid for other parts of the states of Campeche and Yucatan as well. But compare Redfield, 'Race and Class'; Thompson, Aires; Holmes, 'Women'; Barabas, 'Colonialismo y racismo'; Hansen, 'Change' and Hervik, 'Position' for earlier treatments of social categories in Yucatan. 83 Bourdieu, Distinction.

84 One should not forget that many Maya-speakers are indeed mestizos, that is, of mixed descent (as can be deduced from the Spanish surnames) and never identified themselves as Indian.


villages, those who had no compassion'.85 The terms masewal and indio are associated with ignorance, rudeness, bad manners, etc. and used - behind their back - to belittle someone.86 If somebody is poor and ignorant it is said that 'he is very Indian' (es muy masewal or es hach indio). To talk

vulgarly is called 'to talk very Indian' (hablar muy masewal, hach masewal ku

t'an).87 Because of the semantic link it has with the term indio, people generally do not refer to themselves as Maya. Maya is used instead for the

indigenous language of Yucatan or for the Indians of the past, the builders of the ruins and those who fought in the Caste War.88 Indio, indigena and

Maya do not stand for a more or less precisely defined group, rather their

meaning is highly dependent on the changing contexts of their usage (when, where and by whom they are used). The term indio has come to be what Edwin Ardener called a 'hollow category': Everybody can point out an indio but up to the present (almost) nobody calls himself indio,

notwithstanding the current trend towards 'indianisation' mentioned earlier.89

Fourth, the meaning and content of social categories is by no means static but changes over time.90 The relationship between these categories and people of flesh and blood is very often a highly complex one or, as Edwin Ardener correctly puts it:

A biological population... may not coincide in its history with the affiliations of its language or of its culture... We are concerned with continuities whose processes are only in part biological. Fulbe, Jews, and... Britons are created by definition as much as by procreation.9l

One therefore has to be explicit as to which kind of continuities between

people of different historical periods are suggested. It may be possible to show a biological relation between Yucatec Maya speakers of today and the Maya of ancient times but in Yucatan still many (especially older) 85 Interview with author, Xcupil, 7 May 1995; see also interview with author, Campeche,

29 Aug. 1998. 86 See, for instance, Redfield, 'Race and Class', pp. 5 5-I6; Trujillo, 'Los "mestizos"',

p. 336; Thompson, Aires, p. 26; Barabas, 'Colonialismo y racismo', p. 31; Sullivan, 'Contemporary Yucatec Maya Apocalyptic Prophecy', p. 90.

87 FN-Xcupil, 07049501; FN-Xcupil, 07059503. 88 See FN-Ich Ek, o6049402; FN-Hopelchen, I4099403; FN-Bolonchen, I709940I; FN-

Xcupil, 24099403; FN-Xcupil, 07059503; Interview with Jose Chan Chi, Presidencia

Municipal, Hopelchen, 13 Dec. I994; Press, Tradition, p. 72; Hervik, 'Position', pp. 58, 75-6; but cf. A. Re Cruz, The Two Milpas of Chan Kom. Scenarios of a Maya Village Life (Albany, I996), p. 79 note o0.

89 See, for instance, Redfield, 'Race and Class', p. 5 20; Holmes,' Women', p. 24. It is only lately that some Maya speakers, generally intellectuals with an indianist orientation, have begun to use the term indio to refer to themselves.

90 See, for instance, Fardon, 'African Ethnogenesis', p. 170. 91 Ardener, 'Language', p. 35 ; see also M. Mc Donald,

' We are not French!' Language, Culture, and Identity in Brittany (London and New York, I989), p. o08.


Maya-speaking peasants do not consider themselves the direct descendants of the builders of the ruins. They do not read the past as history the way Indianists (like all nationalists) do and the way schools teach it.92 For them the ruins were built by the aluxo'b, a mythical people of dwarfs wiped out

by a huge flood. The following quotation from an old speaker of Yucatec

Maya illustrates this view of the past as well as the negative connotations of the term indio:

Then there emerged another race, the race of the Indians [indios]. They did not deserve any respect and ran around naked. They did not treat the Christians well. They were a bad race. They lived in the woods all the time, with a contemptible appearance, their whole life in the woods. Then the Spaniards arrived and the Indians were exterminated.... Now, the race of today is a civilised and obedient people, educated people full of understanding, good looking, adequately dressed and adequately nourished.93

Fifth, the post-revolutionary state, as elsewhere, has played an important role in the development of ethnicity in Mexico. On the one hand, certain

governmental policies encouraged tendencies of acculturation and assimilation by strengthening the association between everything identified as Indian and low social status. On the other hand, by directing resources especially to Indian communities, they have fostered the

92 Particularly in the case of older people with little education, history only extends back to the time of the fathers of the older men still alive. Before that time 'there are only myths, the stories, moral or merely fantastic, of the acts and happenings of supernatural races, unconnected with the Maya of today'. R. Redfield and A. Villa Rojas, Chan Kom. A Maya Village (Washington, 1934), p. I2. A survey on social categories carried out in 1994 with sixteen Maya speakers in two villages of the municipality of Hopelchen showed that for most of the respondents the term Maya referred to a people in the distant past with whom they had no connection. See also FN-Xcupil, 24099403; FN- Xkanha, 26039501; M. Gutierrez Estevez, 'Mayas y "mayeros": Los antepasados como otros', in Miguel Le6n-Portilla, Manuel Gutierrez Estevez, and Gary Gossen (eds.), De palabra y obra en el Nuevo Mundo, vol. I (Madrid, 1992), pp. 424-5. For a different interpretation concerning the descendants of the Caste War rebels in Quintana Roo see Bartolome and Barabas, La resistencia maya, pp. 60-4; P. Sullivan, Unfinished Conversations. Mayas and Foreigners Between Two Wars (Berkeley, 1989), pp. 84-7.

93 Recorded in Pustunich in 1984, quoted in F. Asis Ligorred Perram6n, Consideraciones sobre la literatura oral de los mayas modernos (Mexico, 1990), pp. 96-7, I26-7, translation mine; see also A. Tozzer, Mayasy lacandones. Un estudio comparativo (Mexico, I982, ist

English ed. 1907), pp. 179-80; Redfield and Villa Rojas, Chan Kom, pp. 330-I; A. Burns, Una epoca de milagros. Literatura oral del mayayucateco (Merida, I995), pp. 60-71. Q'eqchi'-speakers in Guatemala, in contrast, seem to refer to 'ancient Maya' as mythical ancestors. However, this is only one of a multiplicity of interwoven dualist identities ascribed to the mountain spirits (tguultaq'a). These are, for example, also associated with bearded Europeans. In the past, most Q'eqchi' held a low opinion of 'the Maya' and sought to distance themselves from them. Usually Q'eqchi' referred to them as 'savages'. Recently indianist Catholic catechists have begun to selectively stress the good aspects of the tguultaq'as and to reduce their multiple and contradictory identities to an unequivocal identification with the, now idealised, ancient Maya. See Wilson, Maya Resurgence, pp. 53, 57, 6i, 74, 8i, 269-71, 324.


strategic use of this label by the country's rural dwellers. By treating Indian language categories as ethnic groupings and promoting the establishment of 'supreme councils' of these 'peoples' the state has created the beginnings of forms of organisation which owe more to the romantic nationalism (one language, one nation) of the nineteenth century than to the reality of the indigenous populations, whose social consciousness and feeling of community have generally been much more localised. By propagating these views in public schools and other institutions the state participates in the generalisation of ethnicity. Thus, more and more children of parents who speak an indigenous language are

learning to read the past as history,94 to attribute to it the force of an

argument with respect to the evaluation of present conditions and to see social organisms (peoples), not individuals, as actors on the historical

stage - a further step in the career of the nation-state concept. 94 See Fardon, 'African Ethnogenesis', p. 178.

wolfgang gabbert - ethnicity and the state in yucatan, mexico

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