Abstract
The purpose of this article is to analyze the ethnic relations which characterize the intercultural regions of Altos de Chiapas in Mexico and in Guatemala (This chapter was first published in 1965 as: “Classes, Colonialism and Acculturation”, in: Studies in Comparative International Development, I,6: 53–77. The permission to reprint this text was granted by the permissions office of Springer in Dordrecht, The Netherlands). It is not my intention to add new data presently unknown to experts in the area. My purpose is both more modest and more ambitious. It is that of reorganizing known data into a scheme of interpretation differing from those which are currently used in anthropology; and which I believe to be more fruitful for the purpose of clarifying some historical and structural problems in the formation of national societies of Mexico and Guatemala (The author expresses his thanks to Guillermo Bonfil, Andrew G. Frank, Carlos Alberto de Medina, and Roberto Cardoso de Oliveira for the comments, criticisms, and suggestions which they have contributed.).
This essay was originally published in Spanish in the journal America Latina, Rio de Janeiro, Centro Latinoamericano de Pesquisas em Ciencias Sociais, 1963, where I was working at the time. It became a chapter of my PhD dissertation at the University of Paris (1965), later published as Social Classes in Agrarian Societies (New York: Doubleday, 1975). In this text, I challenge the then prevailing view, held by many anthropologists, of Indian communities in Mexico and Central America as relatively isolated self-contained ahistorical cultural units outside the national society; a view that supported the assimilationist policies adopted by the state to ‘integrate’ the ‘backward’ Indians. Here I develop the concept of ‘internal colonialism’, as an alternative approach which has been widely used and further developed over the years by social scientists in other countries.
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Notes
- 1.
Sol Tax, 1937: “The Municipios of the Midwesern Highlands of Guatemala”, in; American Anthropologists, 39; Henning Siverts, 1956: “Social and Cultural Changes in a Tzeltal (Mayan) Municipio, Chiapas, Mexico”, in: Proceedings of the 32nd International Congress of Americanists (Copenhagen).
- 2.
By ethnic group we understand a social group whose members participate in the same culture, who may sometimes be characterized in biological or racial terms, who arse conscious of belonging to such a group and who participate in a system of relations with other similar groups. An ethnie may be, depending on circumstances, tribe, race, nationality, minority, caste, cultural component, etc., according to the meaning given to these terms by different authors.
- 3.
The global society is the widest operational social unit within which the studied relations take place and which is not a part of the immediate experience of the actors in the social system. It includes the community, the municipality, the region, the ethnic group, etc., and their diverse systems of interrelation. It is sociologically structured. The global society has been ermed a macroscopic group embracing the functional groupings, social classes and conflicting hierarchies. Generally, in this essay, it is identical to the nation (or to the colony), but it sometimes also refers to the wider economic system, in which the nation participates. See Georges Gurvitch, 1950: La Vocation Actuelle de la Sociologie (Paris): 301, passim.
- 4.
Nathan Whetten, 1948: Rural Mexico (Chicago).
- 5.
Alfonso Caso, 1948: “Definición del indio y lo indio”, in: América Indigena, 8,5.
- 6.
Sol Tax, 1953: Penny Capitalism, A Guatemala Indian Economy (Washington).
- 7.
Loc. cit., p. 183.
- 8.
Eric Wolf, 1960: “The Indian in Mexican Society”, in: Alpha Kappa Delta, 30,1.
- 9.
Eric Wolf, 1956: “Aspects of Group Relations in a complex Society: Mexico”, in: AmericanAnthropologist, 58.
- 10.
Robert Redfield and Sol Tax, 1952: “General Characteristdics of Present Day MesoamericanIndian Society”, in: Heritage of Conquest (Glencoe:the Free Press).
- 11.
Alfonso Caso, 1957: “Los fines de la acción indigenistaen México”, in: Revista Internacional del Trabajo, December, and G. Aguirre Beltrán, 1957: El proceso de aculturación (Mexico: UNAM), which stillconstitutes the most complete theoretical exposition on Mexican nativism.
- 12.
I use here the terms ‘class’, ‘class relations’, and ‘class situation’ as analytical concepts and I completely distinguish them, as shall be seen later, from the concept of social stratification generally associated with them. For theoretical justification of this methodological procedure see my article on “Estratificación y Estructura de Clases”, in: Ciencias Politicas y Sociales (Mexico), No. 27 (1962), and my paper on “as relaciones entre la estratificación y la dinámica de clases”, presented at the Seminario sobre Estrateficación y Movilidad Social, Rio de Janeiro, 1962 (which shall be published by the Pan American Union.
- 13.
Charles Wagley, 1957: Santiago Chimaltenango (Guatemala)..
- 14.
Sol Tax: Penny Capitalism, op. cit.
- 15.
Eric Wolf, “The Indian in Mexican Society”, loc. cit.
- 16.
Melvin Tumin, 1952: Caste in a Pesant Society (Princeton).
- 17.
A.D. Marroquín, 1956: “Consideraciones sobre el problema de la region tzeltal-tztzil”, in: América Indígena, 16,3.
- 18.
R. Pozas, 1959: Chamula, un pueblo de los Altos Chiapas (Mexico).
- 19.
M. Monteforte Toledo, 1959: Guatemala, monografía sociológica (Mexico).
- 20.
A. Y. Dessaint, 1962: “Effects of the Hacienda and Plantation Systems on Guatemala’s Indians”, in: América Indígena, 22,4.
- 21.
Dessaint, loc. cit., writes: to “obtain adequate supply of labor has always been of basic importance ever since the Spanish Conquest” (p. 326). And Oliver La Farge has said: “Two methods have been used to tap the great source of labor of the highlands: violence and the destruction of the economic bases which allowed the Indians to refuse voluntary work in the lowlands.” (“Etnología maya: secuencia de culturas”, in: Cultura Indígena de Guatemala (Guatemala, 1959).
- 22.
Melvin Tumin, op. cit.
- 23.
Cf. Manning Nash, 1958: Machine Age Maya: the Industrialization of a Guatemalan Community (Glencoe).
- 24.
Cf. Goubaud’s remarks in the discussion of the report by Sol Tax: “Economy and Technology”, in: S. Tax (ed.): Heritage of Conquest, op. cit., p. 74.
- 25.
Penny Capiralism, op. cit.
- 26.
Calixta Guiteras Holmes, 1961: Perils of the Soul (Glencoe).
- 27.
Ricardo Pozas, 1959: Chamula, un pueblo indio de los Altos de Chiapas (Mexico).
- 28.
Melvin Tumin, 1958: Caste in a Peasant Society, op. cit.; John Gillin, 1958: San Luis Jilotepeque (Guatemala).
- 29.
Sol Tax: Penny Capitalism, op. cit.
- 30.
Charles Wagley: Santiago Chimaltenango, op. cit., p. 67.
- 31.
Cf. Calixta Guiteras Holmes, 1961: Perils of the Soul (Glencoe), who writes: “In the course of the years more than half the land of the Pedrano Indinas were bought by rich and influential foreigners. … The man who bought the land acquired the right to exploit its occupants” (p. 14). “In 1910 the Indians had not only lost their ownlands but had also become peons” (p. 16).
- 32.
One rare exception to this historical trend in the Guatemalan village of Chitatul, quoted by Richard Adams in his: Encuesta sobre la cultura de los Ladinos en Guatemala (Guatemala: EMEP, 1956).
- 33.
Op. cit., p.63.
- 34.
Sol Tax: Penny Capitalism, op.cit.
- 35.
Charles Wagley, op. cit, p. 73, passim.
- 36.
“La situación agraria de las comunidades indígenas”, in: Acción Indigenista, No. 105, March 1962.
- 37.
When general considerations are made on the Mayan case in Chiapas and Guatemala, certain local aspects and particular situations of great interest are necessarily neglected, the inclusion of which would perhaps modify the general scheme. It is a risk of which the author is wholly conscious, yet which he had to assume, considering the limits imposed by an article. Such is the case, for instance, of the Agrarian Reform in Guatemala, initiated with the revolution of 1944, but checked and diverted by the governments subsequent to the 1954 counter-revolution. Thus, the redistribution of the lands, the law of compulsory renting and the constitution of rural workers’labor unions during the decade of 1944-54 surely affected, in diverse ways, the class relations here analyzed. Yet as the processes are no longer in force, I have chosen to ignore them, at the risk of neglecting some facts which might be important to this analysis.
- 38.
In the sense given to this sociological term by Charles Wagley and Marvin Harris in their Minorities in the New World (New York, 1958).
- 39.
Robert Redfield, 1939: “Primitive Merchants of Guatemala”, in: The Quarterly Journal of Inter-American Relations, 1,4.
- 40.
Sol Tax, Penny Capitalism, op. cit., p. 13.
- 41.
A. Marroquín, 1957: “Introducción al Mercado indígena mexicano”, in: Ciencias Políticas y Sociales, 8.
- 42.
Robert Redfield, op. cit.
- 43.
Ricardo Pozas, Chamula, op. cit., p. 111.
- 44.
The word ‘integration’ is understood in its more general sense, that of being a functional part of a whole.
- 45.
G. Aguirre Beltrán, 1954: Formas de gobierno indígena (Mexico).
- 46.
F. Cámara Barbachano, 1952: “Religious and Political Organization”, in: S. Tax (Ed.): Heritage of Conquest (Glencoe).
- 47.
G. Aguirre Beltrán, 1954: Formas de gobierno indígena, op. cit.
- 48.
Ricardo Pozas, Chamula, un pueblo indio de los Altos de Chiapas, op. cit. In an interesting work recently published, F. Cancian proves that in Zinacantan (Mexico), the prestdige of a position depends on various factors which are difficult to measure among them the cost of the position, the authority it conveys, and ‘idiosyncratic’ factors. Cf. F. Cancian, 1963: “Informant error and Native Prestige Ranking in Zinacantan”, in: American Anthropologist, 65,5.
- 49.
Ibid. Pozas attributes the principle of equality to vestiges of clan organization.
- 50.
Cancian (loc. cit.) suggests that in Zinacantan there does exist a rudimentary ‘economic stratification’.
- 51.
G. Aguirre Beltrán, 1954: Formas de gobierno indígena, op. cit., p. 103.
- 52.
Ibid.
- 53.
In Chiapas, the Instítuto Nacional Indígenista de México is training young Indians as municipal secretaries for the positions held by the Ladinos. In Guatemala, the penetration of the national political parties into the Indian communities during the democratic regimes of the 1944–54 decade modified the traditional structure. These problems have been treated in a collective work which the author was unfortunately unable to consult while working on this essay: Political changes in Guatemalan Indian communities (New Orleans, 1957).
- 54.
Richard N. Adams, 1956: Encuesta sobre la cultura de los Ladinos en Guatemala (Guatemala: EMEP, 1956).
- 55.
Melvin Tumin, Caste in Peasant Society, op. cit.
- 56.
Sol Tax, Penny Capitalism, op. cit.
- 57.
B. Colby and Van den Berghe, 1961: “Ethnic relations in the Southeastern Mexico”, in: American Anthropologist, 53.4.
- 58.
B. Colby and Van den Berghe, loc. cit.
- 59.
Robert Redfield, 1956: “The Relations Between Indians and Ladinos in Aqua Escondida, Guatemala”, in: América Indígena, 16,4.
- 60.
We use the terms ‘transculturation’ and ‘acculturation’ interchangeably, in the sense in which the latter is used by g. Aguirre Beltrán, 1957, in: El Proceso de Aculturación (Mexico)..
- 61.
Angel Palerm, 1952: “Notas sobre la clase media en México”, in: Ciencias Sociales (Washington); no. 14–15 and 16–17 (Reproduced in: Las clases sociales en Mexico, s.f. (1960)).
- 62.
On the concepts of relation of dependence and relation of order and their application to the study of class structures, see S. Ossowski, 1963: Class Structure and Social Consciousness (London).
- 63.
Pablo González Casanova, in a different and independent analysis, also brings forth the existence of internal colonialism in Mexico. The present essay bears a particular case, which may be considered within González Casanova’s general approach. See his study, “Internal Colonialism and National Development”, in: Studies in Comparative International Development, 1,4 (1965).
- 64.
Sol Tax, 1956: “La Visión del mundo y las relaciones sociales en Guatemala”, in: Cultura Indigena de Guatemala (Guatemala: EMEP).
- 65.
V. Goldkind. 1963: “Ethnic Relations in Southeastern Mexico: A Methdological Note”, in: American Anthropologist, 65,2.
- 66.
We use the term ‘class situation’ not in the sense given by Max Weber (Cf. H.H. Gerth and C. W. Mills (Eds.), 1946: From Max Weber. Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press): 181, but in the sense that the individual who finds himself in such a situation participates with others in a kind of relations having the character of class relations.
- 67.
See S.F. Nadel, 1957: The Theory of Social Structure (London), especially chapter IV. It would be interesting to do a formal analysis of the roles of inter-ethnic situation here described. Nadel’s model, nonetheless, does not seem to include a situation as that which is brought about between Indians and Ladinos when they face each other as colonizer and colonized and as belonging to opposite classes simultaneously. In there words, the same process of interaction between individuals andgroups may be understood at different levels of an analysis of roles and in varying conceptual terms. Nadel’s concept of ‘summation’ comes closest to this situation.
- 68.
Cf. Pablo González Casanova, 1962: “Sociedad plural y desarrollo: el caso de México”, in: América Latina, 5,4.
- 69.
Jaime Diaz Rozzotto, 1958: El character de la revolución guatemalteca (Mexico). Also see Richard N. Adams, 1960: “Social Change in Guatemala and U.S. Policy”, in: Social Change in Latin America Today (New York).
- 70.
Cf. Rodolfo Stavenhagen, 1963: “La réforme agraire et les classes rurales au Mexique”, in: Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie, 34.
- 71.
Eric Wolf, 1959: Sons of the Shaking Earth (Chicago).
- 72.
The term ‘national integration’ is very ambiguous. The way it is used by Myrdal, for example, referring to its economic aspects, it simply means equality of opportunities (Cf. G. Myrdal, 1956: Solidaridad o desintegración (Mexico)). When Aguirre Beltrán in: El proceso de aculturación, speaks of ‘intercultural integration’ at the regional level, he rather refers to the homogenization of the cultural differences between Indians and Ladinos, that is, to the predominance of the mestizo culture, which is why we affirm, differing from Aguirre Beltrán, that national integration may be achieved without the disappearance of the ‘cultural’ Indian.
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Stavenhagen, R. (2013). Classes, Colonialism and Acculturation (1965). In: The Emergence of Indigenous Peoples. SpringerBriefs on Pioneers in Science and Practice(), vol 3. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-34144-1_2
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