Elusive Unity: Factionalism and the Limits of Identity Politics in Yucatán, Mexico

1. Peasants and Maya, Solidarity and Factionalism

1 1 Peasants and Maya, Solidarity and Factionalism This book is a study of the dichotomous nature of identity politics. It documents how the same forms of politicized self-labeling that members of local communities use to build large-scale coalitions can also fuel factional disputes. The rural inhabitants of Oriente, a region of the Mexican state of Yucatán, have had some of their most important dealings with their nation’s government as self-identified “peasants” and “Maya.” In the early twentieth century, peasant identity played a key role in a series of institutions through which communities secured title to collectively held lands and free public schools, and asserted their rights as a special class of Mexican citizens. Today, amid vastly different economic and political realities, the descendants of these same people are experimenting with the use of Mayan identity as a means of securing other concessions and collective rights (see Figure 1.1). Yet both of these periods also DOI: 10.5876/9781607322399:c01 peasants and maya, solidarity and factionalism 2 involve a second dimension of identity politics: the narratives and labels that help local people to imagine different forms of collective action and solidarity also figure in intracommunity feuds that fragment larger coalitions. Throughout this book, I will argue that this dual tendency is an element of local experience that transcends the differences between the agrarian politics of the early twentieth century and contemporary mobilizations of Mayan identity. My goal in stressing these parallels is not to provide a comprehensive linear history of the evolution or transformation of identity politics in Oriente. Rather, I will use ethnography, oral history, and closely targeted archival research to examine how local experiences of peasant and indigenous politics are shaped both by ambiguities built into the vernacular language of identity and by tensions within the social organization of rural communities. In some cases, the parallels between agrarian and ethnic politics are due to a direct historical continuity in certain institutions or ideas. For example, the collective memory of political processes associated with the agrarian reform of the 1920s and 1930s has shaped the expectations that many people have for newer forms of indigenous identity politics. The heritage of early twentieth-century institutions is less evident in other political phenomena, such as the new importance given to the term “Maya” by the market for cultural tourism. Even in these cases, however, processes of factionalism and solidarity—like those that shaped the agrarian reform— are also shaping multicultural politics. In my comparison of these two periods, I will use a fairly expansive definition of phrases such as “identity politics” or “politics of identity.” That is, I will use these terms to refer both to the negotiation of older state-sanctioned social identities such as “peasant” and to more contemporary uses of Mayan ethnic identity. This approach runs somewhat against the grain of a tendency in contemporary literature, which often draws a contrast between the “class-based” peasant organizing of the early and mid-twentieth century and the explicitly ethnic “identity politics” of post–Cold War indigenous movements (Alvarez, Dagnino, and Escobar 1998; Castañeda 1994; Hale 1994;Yashar2005).ButassocialhistoriesofotherpartsofMexicohavedemonstrated (Boyer 2003; Purnell 1999), the meaning of the term “peasant” was as ambiguous to rural agriculturalists in the 1920s and 1930s as notions like Maya are today. In many ways, early twentieth-century peasant-based organizations were also experienced by local communities as a form of identity politics, in which rural people and urban bureaucrats negotiated a working definition of these politically resonant labels. Then and now, who can claim specific rights and privileges often hinges on local disputes over who “counts” as a member of a given social or ethnic category. This kind of ethnographic history, like the expansive definition of identity politics that I will use throughout the text, helps explain how the ethnic movements of post– peasants and maya, solidarity and factionalism 3 Cold War Latin America are understood by their rank-and-file constituents. Changes in political culture that seem significant from a top-down perspective can—but often don’t—have a significant impact on the everyday speech and common sense of rural people. Especially since the 1990s, anthropologists have demonstrated how the application of a broad identity label such as “Maya people” tends to obscure a range of localized identities and loyalties that have a more tangible presence in the everyday life of rural communities (Gabbert...