Knowing History in Mexico: An Ethnography of Citizenship

9: A Successful History: What Did Not Change

125 Chapter Nine A Successful History What Did Not Change T he previous chapter was all about change—the remaining two chapters are about continuity. I have just traced how the history told of Tapalpa’s founding changed during the twentieth century, but here I show that one crucial piece of that history did not change. González and Cedeño wrote in 1879 that Atacco “already existed and was the principal town, made up of pure indigenous people,” and in 1992 people still stressed that Atacco was (already) the town when Tapalpa was founded (Camarena y Gutiérrez de Laríz 1987 [1879], 24–25). That might seem a faithful reflection of the historical fact that Atacco was older, but suffice it to say that Tapalpa and Atacco are both listed as “Indian towns” in the first census conducted by the Spaniards, the 1548 Suma de Visitas. It might also seem like a simple case of inertia—the idea that Atacco was already the town survived in spite of far-reaching changes in the social context. But, following Greg Urban’s work (2001), I find that inertia is not a sufficient explanation. The idea that “Atacco was the town” was carried through the period on the back of the interests of different groups and of the authority of the individuals to whom people turned for their history. I begin this chapter by trying to explain how the idea that Atacco was the town endured from 1879 to 1992. It is partly guesswork, again, and I go Chapter nine 126 on to focus on the period of my fieldwork, from 1992 to 2005, when I could observe the transmission of history at close quarters. I look more closely at the agreement among Tapalpans about this history. Rather than take this consensus for granted, I ask why so many different people gave such a similar history, and kept doing so from 1992 to 2005. Atacco was the Town, 1879–1992 How does one explain the persistence of the idea, from 1879 to 1992, that Atacco was older than Tapalpa? It is no easy task. For one thing, the idea was transmitted through diffuse channels, which are hard to reconstruct. There was no single source to which people turned between 1879 and 1992. I have mentioned, for example, that the 1879 survey seems to have gathered dust in an archive in Guadalajara and was not cited in print until the 1980s. Neither was Tapalpa’s history offered in schools (and regional history was not taught until the 1980s). That makes it hard to explain the reproduction of this history , and it also makes it difficult to trace. Tapalpa’s elites, while pushing a new history that foregrounded Tapalpa’s “old” Spanish families and the place of the hacienda, remained interested throughout the period in the idea that Atacco was older, especially because it served to set in relief a modern, progressive Tapalpa. I said in the previous chapter that there was some uptake from Mexico’s history into what was told of Tapalpa’s history, even if Tapalpa’s history was otherwise quite insulated. We have seen that post-Revolutionary propaganda introduced the new idea of mestizaje as well as using the emblem of the hacienda; it continued with the nineteenth-century accent on progress. González and Cedeño were keen to play up Tapalpa’s progressiveness in the 1879 report, and the idea that Atacco was older helped them by setting Tapalpa’s progress in relief. The image of Tapalpa as a progressive place was important to the town’s elite. González had successfully petitioned the state government in 1878 to raise Tapalpa’s civic status from pueblo to villa (a status between pueblo and city) on the grounds of its progress and potential. That accounts for the celebratory tone of the 1879 survey, which they had titled “Villa de Tapalpa” even though it was supposed to represent the whole municipal district (Camarena y Gutiérrez de Laríz 1987 [1879]). In another section of the survey, the authors locate only “traditional” industries (such as cactus-fiber crafts) in Atacco, as opposed to the modern industries and mining that they linked to Tapalpa A Successful History 127 (42–45). Tapalpa’s elite continued after 1879 to show Tapalpa’s progress, and continued to use Atacco to set Tapalpa in relief. The idea of progress was evident in...