Chocolate and Corn Flour: History, Race, and Place in the Making of "Black" Mexico

Chapter One: The Lay of the Land

| chapter one | the lay of the land San Nicoladenses use the terms white, moreno, and Indian in reference to the three broad “types” of Costa Chicans, which is why I use them too. As discussed in the following chapter, that terminology can become more complex. But for the purposes of imagining the geography of the coast it works because the locations of the communities associated with whites, morenos, and Indians largely coincide with socioethnic stratification. Thus at the macro level race can be spatially mapped onto place. The Costa Chica’s hot and humid savannah zone, or the “coastal belt” closest to the ocean, is historically home to morenos and continues to be one of Mexico’s most important agricultural regions (Valdez 1998:19).The belt’s temperatures range from 68 to 93° F (20 to 34° c), the soil is deep and fertile, the land quite flat, and production yields, especiallyof corn—the staple crop—relatively high (Bartra 1994:132). If theweathercooperates, “you can just plant any little sapling and it grows—here there’s always fruit—maybe mangos , coconuts, then watermelon, cantaloupe,” José mused as we discussed how few go hungry in San Nicolás. Indeed, the land is so fertile that white planters from Mexico Cityand foreigners from abroad (today including Japanese) buy or rent it for agribusiness. From the colonial period on, Spaniards and whites were the 16 | chapter one large landowners (hacendados, latifundistas, or terratenientes), and white professionals, traders, and businesspeople still dominate the Costa Chica’s larger cities and towns, which embody “national [mestizo] culture” and control trade to and from moreno and Indian communities (Cervantes 1984:39–40, 44–45; Flanet 1977:212; Valdez 1998:44–49). These cities and towns cluster around or have easy access to federal Highway 200, which runs just north of the coastal belt. Part of the Panamerican Highway, it is one of the only upgraded thoroughfares on the coast.With the exception of stretches near Acapulco, it has one lane in either direction. Indian communities are located north of Highway 200 in the cooler Sierra Madre del Sur foothills, and theyare populated in the main by monolingual Amuzgo and Mixtec speakers,1 the majorityand linguistically related Indian groups on the Costa Chica today (Así somos 1994). Amuzgos live in and around the municipal seat of Ometepec (population 18,000), which is dominated by whites and reachable from Cuaji (population 10,000) via an upgraded branch of Highway 200, as well as in the neighboring municipalities of Xochistlahuaca and Igualapa. Mixtecs live in the Mixteca de la Costa, which includes the municipality of Pinotepa Nacional, Oaxaca, the coastal belt’s largest city (population 35,000), and around Ayutla (de Los Libres) north of Cruz Grande. Land in most Indian communities is less fertile than on the coastal belt. Typically, it is far from the villages to which it pertains, has been illegally usurped or leased to outsiders for minimal payments, lacks irrigation, or is located on deforested hillsides where erosion rates are high and soil quality poor (Bartra 1994:132; Flanet 1977; Valdez 1998:21, 36–37). Residents are forced to frequently rotate land as they are displaced into the mountains, further and further from their villages (Cervantes 1984:48; Flanet 1977:49). Much of it produces only one crop a year—mostly corn, hot peppers, or beans, which are staples of both Indian and moreno diets. Moreno villages are socioeconomically sandwiched between white and Indian ones. Most are not as impoverished as the latter, but even though morenos speak Spanish as their native language, they do not have the material and political capital of whites. Inequalities also exist within and between moreno villages, due in large part to irrigation access. Thus, poorer San Nicoladenses, morenos from neighboring villages, and outside Indians work as peons in San Nicolás or for the region’s whites. In San Nicolás, moreno peons are paid a bit more than Indians because the former live nearby, the lay oF the land | 17 bring their own food, and return home each day. “Indian peons don’t even bring tortillas,” Rodrigo explained, “so they are paid and given food. They stay the whole week working in the bush, removing branches and the like.” Because Indians stay for long periods, lodged with theiremployers, Rodrigo added that they sometimes keep “one or two small calves” in San Nicolás. Highway 200 was completed...