my thirty years in mexican anthropology

My Thirty Years in Mexican Anthropologyanhu_1077 36..46

CATHARINE GOOD

Graduate DivisionEscuela Nacional de Antropología e HistoriaPeriferico Sur y Zapote s/nColonia Isidro FabelaMexico, D. F. c.p. 14030Mexico

SUMMARY This article chronicles more than 30 years experience conducting field-work among Nahuatl Indians and teaching anthropology in Mexican institutions. Thetext documents four processes over time: the development of the author’s theoreticalinterests and analysis of field date; change in the villages under study; transformationsin Mexico’s political and economic policies; and the changing role of anthropologyin that context. [ethnography, Nahuatl Indians, Mexico, ethnic economy,anthropological theory]

This article presents a brief account of my experience in Mexican anthropology,first as a graduate student, then as a professional anthropologist engaged inlong-term research and teaching in different institutions. Over time, in additionto documenting native cultural adaptations in the field, I have closely observedmajor transformations in Mexico’s economic and social policy, summed up asthe implementation of nationalist, populist reforms after the Mexican Revolu-tion of 1910–20, and the subsequent dismemberment of these reforms underneoliberal economists beginning in the 1980s. Current governments promote“free” markets and the privatizing of public enterprises, while weakening therole of the state and national identity. It is impossible to separate my evolutionas a researcher and a teacher from this broader setting and I attempt to showhow these different concerns intersect in the practice of anthropology.

My fieldwork over the last 30 years has focused on a group of Nahuatl-speaking communities in Guerrero State that has successfully survived 500years after the Spanish Conquest, despite colonial, Republican, and Nationalistimpositions. Explaining this requires attention to internal historical processesand local cultural values as well as responses to changing relations of power. Asan anthropologist I wrestled with two fundamental questions over this period.First and foremost, how do we understand indigenous peoples and theirculture and history today, given that adaptation to external pressures is a con-stant process? And, second, as a teacher I frequently asked, what kind of theoryand what research problems are most relevant for Mexican graduate studentspreparing for professional life in their own country? This article touches onmany complex issues and I divided my account into three sections, based on thechronology of my development as an anthropologist in parallel with changesin the country as a whole. Most of the text centers on the evolution of my

Anthropology and Humanism, Vol. 36, Issue 1, pp 36–46, ISSN 1559-9167, online ISSN 1548-1409.© 2011 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved.DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1409.2011.01077.x.

fieldwork, and uses specific examples to illustrate changes in my interpretationsover time, but I conclude with a brief discussion of the impact of recent devel-opments on the communities and on the practice of anthropology.

The First Phase of My Fieldwork in the 1970s and 1980s

I first studied anthropology in the master’s program at the UniversidadIberoamericana in Mexico City beginning in 1976, in combination with field-work in a project sponsored by Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropologyand History (INAH). At the time I was interested in economic development,and thought that anthropology would give me effective tools for applied work.This idealistic vision changed when I discovered that so-called “development”and “modernization” were causal factors in social conflict and poverty, ratherthan solutions. The academic program emphasized cultural ecology, multilinealevolution (Steward 1976; see Glantz 1987), and peasant studies (Warman 1976;Wolf 1966). I was introduced to ethnographic work as a field assistant in a studythat used peasant economy models in a mestizo village in eastern Morelos state,where the people grew tomatoes and peanuts as small-scale commercial crops,and corn for their families (Morayta 1981). Our approach to households asproduction and consumption units seemed to work pretty well then; it reflectedraging debate in Mexican anthropology in the 1970s over the nature of capital-ism and how millions of peasants—with clearly noncapitalist forms ofproduction—fit into the world system. These concerns were a radical breakwith “official” anthropology favored after the Mexican Revolution: archeolo-gists studied the grandeur of pre-Hispanic civilizations but paid little attentionto their living descendents, while ethnographers in the National IndigenistInstitute (INI) saw Indians as victims of colonial and 19th-century historyneeding to be “integrated” into the modern Mexican nation. After the studentmovement of 1968, a younger generation of intellectuals and academicsembraced Marxism and became harsh critics of the state policies in the 20thcentury; they rejected indigenous peoples and culture as topics of study in favorof economic analysis emphasizing the working class. All rural peoples—Indians and non-Indians—were labeled “peasants” based on their subordinateposition in a stratified society, and I acquired this perspective at the Univer-sidad Iberoamericana.

My interests changed dramatically in 1978 when I began fieldwork amongNahuatl speakers in two villages, Ameyaltepec and San Agustin Oapan, in theBalsas River Basin in Guerrero State; they became specialists in making potteryand bark cloth paintings to sell directly to tourists as itinerant merchants allover Mexico. This Indian group was economically prosperous, culturally adapt-able, engaged with the market economy and urban life or modernity and yetthoroughly “traditional” in terms of language, agricultural practice, cosmology,and social organization. I found a case that contradicted all the theory I hadstudied. Within three months, I abandoned three dominant paradigms thatclearly could not explain the complex ethnographic reality I encountered—thepeasant model, the development–underdevelopment paradigm, and traditionalethnographies of Indians in Mexico—and embarked on a period of fieldworkthat eventually lasted five years and became a book (Good Eshelman 1988). I

Good Thirty Years in Mexican Anthropology 37

discovered the writings of John Murra (1975) and his colleagues and studentsworking in the Andes (Alberti and Mayer 1974). Their accounts of reciprocityand culture as explanatory factors—not just “folkloric” details or“superstructure”—helped interpret my field data, as did their emphasis onhistorical, political, and territorial organization. It became obvious to me thatunderstanding economic relations requires starting with native cultural valuesand local strategies for social organization.

In the 1970s and 1980s villagers were awash in cash from selling crafts totourists, but they continued growing corn instead of buying it. This was espe-cially significant given that farming in this hot, dry region requires exhaustingphysical labor, with a very uncertain outcome because of frequent droughts.They continued planting corn, beans, and squash, with digging sticks or usingoxen or mules to pull rudimentary plows, in small plots scattered throughmountainous terrain far from home. The produce from farming gave house-holds food security and a cushion against downturns in the crafts market; theircornfields provided grain and fodder to sustain a growing animal population.At the time I saw farming in economic terms but I did note several other things.Performing agricultural rituals was as important to them as carrying out physi-cal labor in the fields; people genuinely enjoyed working the land despite thehard work, and they had a strong preference for locally grown food. Mostremarkable, in contrast to peasants in Morelos, I found no wage labor but,rather, reliance on reciprocal work and the loaning of animals. And because itwas clearly not a commodity to them, farmers did not sell their corn. I will citea few statements I collected then, by villagers that show how I interpreted theethnographic data, and will return to them later to illustrate how my perspec-tive evolved after more time in the field.

One of the most successful merchants at the time, whose family plantedseveral large cornfields every year, explained. “Sometimes I think about notplanting corn because I am doing well with my sales. I think about my wife,who works all day in the fields with my daughters and my sister. . . . One day Isaid to them, ‘I think we should stop farming. I can buy our corn.’ All of themgot really mad at me! They said that we won’t have anything to eat, that wewon’t have squash, green beans, melon. I was thinking about corn, but we doget beans, squash seed, tender squash, animal fodder (zacate), lots of things. Itwould be expensive to buy it all. We are a big family and our animals have to eatas well. I have about thirty pigs, five burros, and I have mules and cows. Mywife told me she likes to farm, that she will be sad if she doesn’t have her cornfield,that no one will be contented in our house. She wants to see her work. My mothercried, and she said, ‘Ay, my son, why are you talking like this? What will we usefor offerings if we don’t farm? You will never rest from selling.’ She said we haveto grow corn because God gave it to us. I told them, ‘Alright, alright! We willkeep farming.’ I said I was only thinking of them, that they tire themselves outfrom working so hard. My wife said that she isn’t lazy, that she is strong, andthat she has never complained about the work to me. So, now we all agree . . . ”(Good Eshelman 1988:147–148). Although this statement highlights economicreasoning, it reflects other values I explored later with more ethnography,particularly the emotional connection to corn and the Nahuatl concept of work.The merchant also demonstrated genuine appreciation for women’s work

38 Anthropology and Humanism Volume 36, Number 1

common in these villages, which is contrary to the widespread assumption thatmacho disregard for women prevails in rural Mexico.

I presented several examples of the preference for reciprocal work over wagelabor; the one I choose here also reveals domestic conflicts based on values I didnot understand at the time. A widow sent a son-in-law who lived with her tohelp a married son who lived separately. A few days later she asked her son toreturn the labor in her cornfield, and discovered that the son-in-law hadaccepted cash payment. She said to me: “I am furious with that jerk. I sent myson-in-law to help my son because I need someone to help me, too. And he tookmoney! Who is going to work with me now? I don’t have money to pay, andanyway, no one here wants to work that way. My son-in-law received the moneybecause he is a stupid fool, and he likes to drink, and he doesn’t think. But theothers aren’t crazy like he is. Now what am I going to do? Don’t you see, my sondoesn’t love me. He could come and help me, he could be a good son and say,‘Yes, Mother, I will help you.’ But he doesn’t want to, all because of that stupidjerk of a son-in-law. He doesn’t respect me either, he doesn’t want to give me hiswork. It really hurts because I gave him his wife, my daughter . . . he turned outto be a bad one” (Good Eshelman 1988:144). I used this case as evidence of howlabor relations are handled in the community, but other issues are at playsurrounding the meanings of love and respect, as I explain later in this article.

In the earliest stages of my fieldwork in Ameyaltepec and Oapan, I discov-ered that the civil religious hierarchy was not central to the very active ceremo-nial life in the region, calling into question the models used by manyanthropologists at the time. In addition to celebrations for the Catholic saints, Ifound agricultural rituals, pilgrimages to sacred places in the landscape orregional shrines, as well as life cycle events such as baptism, weddings, burials,and ceremonies for the sick and the souls of the dead. All these celebrations donot require formal fiesta sponsors and they absorbed money and otherresources from crafts sales in ways that strengthened reciprocal labor obliga-tions, cultural identity, and community cohesion.

I also noted that Nahuas emphasized the benefits of serving or “working for”the village—referred to as the pueblo—by giving monetary contributions andcollective labor to maintain roads and public buildings, by celebrating fiestasand holding positions in local government. These actions secure householdrights to communal resources such as farmland, house lots, water from wells orthe river, burial grounds and so on, as well as support from local authorities intime of need. One village elder who had given major service throughout his lifeexplained: “It is a lot of work when the pueblo calls on you, and you think thatyou really don’t want to serve because you are going to tire yourself out, andyour family will, too. But then you think, ‘Someday I am going needsomething—for me, for my wife, for my children—and I am going to ask thepueblo. And the pueblo is going to know that I worked, that I listened when theycalled on me and I know they are going to help me out, too.’ So you go, knowingyou are going to tire yourself out, but you go knowing that then you have theright to petition the pueblo when you are in need” (Good Eshelman 1988:97).This statement illustrates that giving service is seen as exchange with the villageas a collective entity; it contradicts the stereotype that Mesoamerican cargosystems impose onerous and costly obligations on the unwilling.


The Second Phase of My Fieldwork

The second phase of my research in Mexico began in 1987, when I returnedfor more fieldwork for my doctoral dissertation, and when I first taughtMexican students at the Universidad Iberoamericana as a visiting researcheruntil 1991. In this period I benefited from a better understanding of spokenNahuatl and from already established relationships in the villages. I also had adifferent objective: I wanted to develop a new approach to indigenous andother rural populations in Mexico, using theoretical and topical interestsapplied by anthropologists working in other ethnographic areas. As a doctoralstudent at Johns Hopkins University, I had studied cultural creativity and localforms of history making among Afro-American populations in the Caribbean(Mintz and Price 1992; Price 1983), which helped me rethink theories of cultureas applied in Mexico in three ways. I saw culture not as descriptive traits, but ashistorically rooted relations and processes that require continual innovation andchange for a group to maintain continuity and cohesion, while facing constantchallenges. I wanted to explore how the villagers filled their material life withmeaning, ideas, and expressive acts, for example, in art, social organization, andritual. And I began to examine historical memory as a cultural constructionessential to Nahuatl identity in the modern world. My inquiries went deeper,from simply documenting what was happening in the villages to exploring theunderlying reasons behind their collective action. Literature on exchangesystems from Melanesia broadened my understanding of why the Nahua usedtheir cash income from crafts as investments in their communities through thefiesta system, house construction, and farming, all of which stimulate reciprocaland collective work. I went beyond reciprocity as a feature of production to seecomplex exchange systems based on local values and principles of social orga-nization that underwrite both economic and ritual life; this led me to into localunderstandings of the person, the community, and the natural world.

Mexican neoliberal economic policies began under President de la Madrid(1982–88), but their full impact was only felt at the end of the Salinas de Gortariterm (1988–94). Meanwhile the Nahua flourished economically and culturallyand my writing from this period (Good 1993, 1996) reflects this positive situa-tion, but after 1994 everything began to change, as I note at the end of thisarticle. Traditional agriculture was important until after 1994, and the villagescontinued to receive substantial income from their crafts. After more fieldworkit was obvious that standard economic explanations fell short in accounting forthe Nahuas’ strong attachment to working the land and to their ritual cycle. Ialso saw that fiestas were more than mechanisms for securing rights toresources. The reciprocity system, that generates social structure and economicsecurity, also expresses the interdependence that is essential for the correctoperation of the cosmos. This involves the natural world and its parts includingplants, corn, birds, springs, caves, and so on; the supernatural order consistingof saints, the Virgin, souls of the dead, and other entities; internally differenti-ated human communities comprised of households, ritual specialists, villageelders, musicians, cargo holders and so on.

The most important breakthrough in understanding this came in 1991–92when I left Mexico to finish my dissertation. I began with two related problems:


how villagers moved so capably both in “traditional” villages and in urbansettings as merchants, and how they constructed a worldview integrating com-mercial success with Nahuatl cosmology. I discovered several key concepts thatlink these apparently discrete spheres of action: work or tequitl; “vital energy”or chicahualiztli; love and respect or tlazohtlaliztli and tlacaitaliztli, as synonymsfor reciprocal exchanges of resources like land, labor and animals, materialobjects, and intangible skills such as singing, curing or giving advice. Work(tequitl) always benefits others and everyone works with others as well as forothers—never alone or for oneself. Giving the benefits from work to others—inthe form of more physical labor, money from commerce or wages, loaning ofwork animals or other personal property—constitutes love and respect (GoodEshelman 2005). What we think of as abstract emotions are, to the Nahua,actions produced as tangible expressions of a person’s fundamental nature andintentions. This explains the widow’s anguish over her son-in-law’s behavior inthe earlier example.

“Working together” is the central cultural metaphor; it defines households,social networks larger than households, and the collective entity called thepueblo. “Working together,” and love and respect expressed in ritual offeringsand fiestas, integrate into one system living people and powerful personifiedbeings that impart life force, such as the earth, corn, rain, the souls of the dead,and the Virgin. The flow of vital energy through this complex constellationassures the correct functioning of the cosmos; corn grows, workmanship isaccomplished, commerce is successful, children are plentiful and healthy,animals reproduce, households live in harmony. Ceremonial action of all sortsultimately stimulates the circulation of life energy to create wealth, social rela-tions, and collective and individual well-being.

I looked at farming again, seeing corn as an extension of personhood andvital force as productive energy. The meaning includes but goes far beyondsimple formalist economic considerations. The same widow expressed thiswhen I accompanied her to her cornfield.

She had not been there for several days, and we arrived at dawn afterwalking about an hour.

It had rained, and the plants were tall and vigorous, with broad, deep greenleaves. She clapped her hands with delight and addressed the standing corn,saying: “Ay, my daughters, you are already awake, you have already stood up.Just look at you. My lovely ones, how beautiful you are. You are so tall andstrong. How fine and pretty you are. . . . Grow up and give me the food I willeat. I love all of you very much.” Later she explained to me: “You might thinkI am crazy. Every day I come here, and I wear myself out here. But I like it. I likeit. I like to see my plot of corn. And I am contented in my heart to see my work.I am strengthened when I see the plants, just as I like to look on my children”(Good Eshelman 1993).

Earlier I observed that corn was in a special category and not a commodityand, with insights from more fieldwork, I pursued this in depth. Nahuas referto all produce from their fields as “my work” or “our work,” as an embodimentof their productive energy. At the harvest they exchange products from thecornfields in almost daily informal gifts. I noted that people said, as they offeredthem, “Have this little ear of corn, here is my work (notequiuh),” or “Eat this, my


work.” At first I didn’t understand the intention and sometimes refused becauseI couldn’t eat any more after visiting several houses. This brought the inevitableresponse, “Yes, you have had plenty, but not my work. . . . I want you to eat mywork.” With more understanding, I saw these gifts as the circulation of vitalenergy and expressions of love and respect. Accepting the work of others meansestablishing ongoing social relations and acquiring obligations, while refusalcommunicates anger.

The principles of exchange and the flow of life force also explain the strongcommitment to rituals. Nahuas use a special term, tonacayotl, or “our suste-nance” to speak affectionately about corn as grain. One man explained hisreasons for making offerings as follows. “Totatzitzihuan [our gods, saints, fore-bears] gave us tonacayotl to eat, and it gives us its strength. For this reason werespect it, because it is our life force [chicauhualiztli]. Without corn we cannotlive; even an animal cannot live without corn. But we must work. Here every-one plants because that is the work [tequitl] that was taught us, and from that wesustain ourselves. Here we still respect Totatzitzihuan, because we know andremember what we were given.” While studying agriculture I noted thatfarmers made offerings on household altars, in the church, on hilltop shrinesand other places in the countryside. Finally I understood this as “remember-ing,” “gratitude,” love and respect (for in-depth analysis, see Good Eshelman1993, 2005; Broda and Good 2004).

All this new material allowed me to reinterpret earlier field data. It was notthat I was mistaken in emphasizing economics, just that I lacked necessaryelements to dig deeper. When the wealthy merchant explained why his familycontinued to farm, he explained that his wife wanted to see her work—a statementI didn’t fully comprehend then—and that the women would be sad, that no onewould be contented in the house if they didn’t have a cornfield. His mother weptbecause she would have nothing for offerings and gifts that were products of herown labor and hence, constitutive of herself. All these actions involving corn arecentral to realizing oneself as a person in the Nahuatl value system and assuringconnection to other people, the earth, and supernatural beings. The widow’sanger at her son-in-law had more to do with his failure to value his wife and“work together” as a household member, than with the difficulty of hiring labor,which was what I thought at first. With a deeper cultural understanding, I sawthat her pain was caused by the refusal of her son and her son-in-law to give hertheir labor as expressions of love and respect. Not long after this incident theson-in-law abandoned the household and his wife and child.

Anthropology in Mexico in the Era of Neoliberalism

After receiving my doctorate, I returned to Mexico in 1994 to work at theNational School of Anthropology and History (ENAH), and begin teachinggraduate students and supervising their master’s and doctoral research. Thishas included continuing my own work and writing, and close collaborationwith colleagues in team research and teaching focused on ritual life in differentregions of Mesoamerica (Broda and Báez-Jorge 2001; Broda and Good 2004).The indigenous uprising in Chiapas in 1994 drew national and internationalattention to the cultural and political situation of indigenous peoples just as the


North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect with dire conse-quences for the economic fortunes of almost all Mexicans. Finally, 1994 broughta currency collapse and revealed the fundamental weakness of the neoliberaleconomic model while everyone’s standard of living plunged.

The ongoing social dislocation presents new challenges to professionalanthropologists in several ways. The structural transformation of the country’seconomic and political organization directly affects the peoples and regions westudy, making the perspective of long-term fieldwork particularly important.Policies ushered in with NAFTA destroyed the rural economy and the smallmanufacturing sector that provided most employment in cities. This began inthe 1980s with increasing public debt and major devaluations of the peso(national currency). Spiraling inflation and strict wage controls wiped out twogenerations of gains from the 1950s through the 1970s and today the minimumwage is 58 pesos (about $4.65) a day. All these factors, coupled with populationgrowth and violent crime fuel migration to the United States.

The wholesale abandonment of social policies implemented after the Revo-lution of 1910–20 means that current regimes no longer consider anthropologyand history to be important for Mexico’s future. The INAH where I work is justone example of an institution that was created when national pride and historylegitimized the modern state during most of the 20th century. The INAHmanages archeological sites, colonial monuments, research centers, andmuseums throughout the country and supports three schools at the universitylevel. Neoliberal economic policies sharply undercut support for public educa-tional and cultural institutions, and many officials in the federal governmenttoday view the INAH as an obstacle to privatizing cultural property of greatinterest to investors. I will briefly describe what has occurred in my researchregion, and finish with some thoughts on teaching anthropologists who willwork in this new and hostile environment.

I documented successful economic and cultural strategies from the 1970sthrough 1994, but recent events dramatically affected the villages in the BalsasRiver Valley, and I am startled with how rapidly things change. Crafts sales aredrying up, and merchants now receive only about 20 percent of the earningsthey enjoyed 20 years ago. While in cities or traveling they are increasingly atrisk from violent crime, and sometimes lose their merchandise and cashthrough armed assaults. Subsistence farming has declined for several reasons,among them persistent, severe droughts from deforestation and climate change,and the loss of work animals to rustlers who move into their land with truckson newly cut roads. Falling income from crafts spurred migration to the UnitedStates from villages that had none during the 1970s and 1980s. This diminishesavailable labor for farming, tending animals, and village projects. A few familieshave joined Protestant sects, generating conflict within some villages if theyrefuse to give service or support fiestas. Ironically, structural changes in thenational economic policies undermined a highly successful, locally controlledenterprise, and now the villages are bombarded with “development projects”and “charitable programs” to promote “social welfare.” These initiatives areculturally inappropriate and frankly pernicious because they channel minimalresources to selected individuals and families, in ways that undermine collec-tive work and reciprocal assistance.


Faced with these problems the Nahua continue to adapt to new challengeswhile maintaining economic stability and a viable local culture. They aregenuinely sad when they remember that once everyone had large cornfields,but I observe generalized efforts to produce at least some corn and squash ontiny, shared plots near the villages and in house yards. Some merchants useborrowed farmland to grow corn near the urban markets where they nowmust spend more time trying to sell. Families still operate on the principles of“working together” and retain structural unity even with members scatteredover great distances for extended periods of time. Significantly, unlike 20years ago when everyone had ample income from crafts and labor exchangeswere more valued, money is now more frequent as payment for work,because cash is scarce. Today people speak of money as a physical bearer ofthe work that produced it, even from wages; this allows them to integrate itinto their value system based on the circulation of work as an expression oflove and respect.

Out of necessity the pueblos are redefining the rules governing service, col-lective work, and monetary quotas to accommodate new realities. Alternativesfor Protestants who refuse to contribute to Catholic rituals may include sup-porting schools, health centers, or organizing basketball or soccer matches assecular accompaniments to village fiestas. People who are absent for prolongedperiods as undocumented migrants give monetary contributions and payothers to fulfill their service obligations to their village. Despite economicallytrying times, and some religious conflicts, the fiesta cycle surrounding theCatholic ritual calendar and offerings for the souls of the dead continue to bemajor collective activities. Certain lifecycle events, especially weddings, involveall village members, regardless of religious affiliation. In these areas, I see thecontinued salience of reciprocal exchange and ideas surrounding the flow ofvital energy between the living, the dead, the earth, and other beings.

I frequently think that had I begun my fieldwork in 1998 instead of 1978, Iwould have a completely different and more pessimistic view of the currentsituation. Or, had I come to the region in 1958, before the advent of craft salesto tourists, I would have envisioned a grim future for the Nahua, then in direeconomic straits for other reasons (Good Eshelman 1988:184–188). This casedemonstrates the importance of a long-term view. The peoples we study have ashared history of confronting recurring external threats to their cultural andphysical survival, whether from the European Conquest, demographic collapse,repeated loss of resources and the destruction of economic strategies, wars, andmodern development projects. The current crisis presents new features andfamiliar ones from the past, and it is impossible to predict the long-termoutcome, but the villages will probably maintain a local, indigenous culturalidentity that will express itself in surprising and unforeseen ways.

I have covered a lot of ground in these pages since referring to my youthfulidealistic interest in anthropology as a tool for effecting social change. I closewith a few remarks about what I try to teach my Mexican students, in hopes ofhaving a modest impact through training another generation of researchers.First I emphasize the importance of careful, in-depth ethnographic fieldwork.Documenting and analyzing empirical realities, from the “local point ofview,” are extraordinarily powerful, in the sense that all good ethnography is


subversive. I emphasize theory that includes historical process and promotes aculture concept that integrates ecology and material life with cosmology, ritual,and meaning. As a partial antidote to the neoliberal view of scholarship, inwhich academics are treated as individual entrepreneurs, expected to markettheir work and follow the latest intellectual fad, my colleagues and I stresscollective models for research and teaching and speak often about the socialimpact of our work.

There is a new, unexpected audience for anthropologists in Mexico, theindigenous peoples themselves. Younger members of the communities westudy now wish to learn about their own culture and history from academicwriting. For them it is vital to argue for the viability of indigenous cultures inthe modern world, and emphasize their fundamental differences with Westernideas about persons, work, the natural world, and social relations. Mesoameri-can traditions and social networks are excellent starting points for critiquingmodernity and the dysfunctional society it has generated, and for implement-ing models of social life based on other values than those of Modernity. Thesolutions to the many problems confronting Mexico can only come from stra-tegically deploying the knowledge and historical understandings of its people,especially those who are not integrated into the current power structure.

References Cited

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my thirty years in mexican anthropology

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