Social Stratification in Central Mexico, 1500-2000

Conclusion

I n the course of this book, we have portrayed the evolution of Central Mexico’s social stratification system from the moment of the Spanish Conquest through the end of the twentieth century. The major turning points were the de jure abolition of estate stratification on independence from Spain in 1821 and its de facto replacement with social class stratification following the 1910–1920 Revolution. This was so even in most of the countryside, although in a few relatively isolated zones— so-called refuge regions—vestiges of the estate system survived up to the end of the twentieth century. Following the Revolution, social mobility resulted in a substantial middle stratum but not the middle-class majority that social philosophers have proclaimed as the national ideal ever since the Reform period of the 1850s. Instead, Central Mexico finished the twentieth century with a lower-stratum majority. In this chapter, we explore two aspects of social class in Central Mexico at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The first is the erosion of many of the visible hallmarks of class membership during the second half of the twentieth century, especially in the middle and lower strata. Thus the middle and lower classes that social scientists delineate today are mostly nominal distinctions that facilitate social analysis rather than “real” groupings with distinctive lifestyles, class consciousness, and internal social cohesion (see Portes 2003). The second matter we entertain here is the persistence of a poor, lower-stratum majority in Central Mexico despite considerable geographic and social mobility during the twentieth century. To anticipate, we envisage a lower-stratum majority in Central Mexico for at least the next several decades. CONCLUSION C O N C L U S I O N 228 Real versus Nominal Social Classes In Mexico, as well as in the rest of the Americas and in Europe, the social classes that replaced the estates and subestates of the previous stratification system were initially as readily visible as the estates had been. In other words, they were real (rather than nominal) classes with clear differences in occupation, formal training, diet, wardrobe, house type, residential zone, and expressive culture. During the second half of the twentieth century, however, many of these once-clear differences were eroded or even erased. Mass education, mass communications media, mass production of goods and services, mass geographic mobility, and substantial social mobility led to an unprecedented extent of cultural blending, or hybridization, across social systems, countries, even whole continents (see García Canclini 1990). In the process, many of the formerly reliable and readily visible signs of class membership either disappeared or became unreliable indicators of social placement. In terms of wardrobe, for example, the lower classes dressed up, adopting the garments or styles of the urban middle classes, while many members of the upper classes dressed down by adopting those same garments or styles in daily life. Denim jeans and khaki pants became Mexico’s (and much of the world’s) everyday wear, first for men and then, although still to a lesser extent, also for women. In the Córdoba area of central Veracruz, for instance, we know several wealthy men, each worth U.S.$10–50 million dollars, whose daily wear is faded blue jeans and print work shirts, probably purchased at Wal-Mart (Walmex) or equivalent stores, and whose daytime vehicles are roadweary pickup trucks. In other words, in their informal, workaday public presentation, they are difficult to distinguish from many members of the lower-middle and working classes. Of course, if we followed them home at the end of the workday, we would be confronted with their obviously upper-class residential style and expensive expressive culture that would be beyond the financial reach of the nonrich. At the same time, however , many of the kitchen appliances and much of the home entertainment equipment found in these elite homes are now also present in most homes in all classes, although usually in less expensive models. The comparable melding of consumption patterns and even of worldviews within the United States has led some social scientists to proclaim C O N C L U S I O N 229 the death of social classes in postindustrial societies. For example, the anthropologist Walter Goldschmidt (1999: 64) has asserted that “social classes do not exist” in the present-day United States, a position he first espoused a half century earlier...