Land, Livelihood, and Civility in Southern Mexico: Oaxaca Valley Communities in History

4. San Sebastián Teitipac: Metateros and Civility

88 Land, LiveLihood, and civiLiTy in souThern mexico chaPTer 4 San Sebastián Teitipac: Metateros and Civility The most direct route to San Sebastián was by an unpaved road that departed from the Pan-American Highway at the 559-kilometer marker 3 kilometers east of Tule and wound its way through the pueblos of Güendulain, Rojas de Cuauhtémoc, and Santa Rosa Buenavista. After departing Rojas, located about 2.5 kilometers from the highway, the road gradually rose from the valley floor as it skirted the range of mountains to the west for the roughly 3 kilometers to Santa Rosa Buenavista. Before reaching Santa Rosa, high up on a mountain to the southwest a white area was visible on the green slopes. This was an extensive complex of quarries on the Mesa Grande (Map 2) that I would visit many times in the company of metateros. Just beyond Santa Rosa, as the road briefly turned eastward, the entire expanse of the Tlacolula arm of the Oaxaca Valley was on panoramic display. As the road curved southward, again hugging the slope of the nearby mountains, a formidable expanse of agricultural land was visible to the east along the Río Salado basin belonging to the pueblos of Guelacé, Abasolo, Tlacochahuaya, Lachígolo, Guelavía, Papalutla, and San Sebastián itself. Continuing in a southerly direction for a short distance, only several hundred yards from the road and midway up a hillside to the west, another quarry area came into view where men could be seen cutting stone in open patios. At that point in the trip the habitation area of San Sebastián became visible in the distance, some 9 kilometers or so off the Pan-American Highway. After arriving in San Sebastián in early June 1965, I chatted with men sitting around the village plaza, one of whom, Luis Gutiérrez, happened to be a metatero who would later become my first field assistant. I learned from him that the quarry I had passed on the road, the Mesa Chiquita, belonged to San Sebastián, and that the men I had seen working there were metateros . I decided then and there that this would be an ideal community for a san sebasTián TeiTiPac 89 summer fieldwork project, so I met with Presidente Municipal Wenceslao Gutiérrez Marcial, a serious, soft-spoken, intelligent, and friendly man, to see if the community would be receptive. He showed interest and promised to consult with his village council (regidores) regarding my request. To make a long story short, official permission was granted during a subsequent meeting with the ayuntamiento (village council), and I rented a spare room in the municipal president’s casa de adobe, where I took up residence within a few days. I resided there during that summer and, also, for twelve months in 1966–1967 when Pablo Rojas was municipal president. My research plans in San Sebastián in 1965 and 1966–1967 did not involve random sampling, but followed a method that relied heavily on the social networks of my field assistants: first, Luis Gutiérrez, and later, Filomeno Gabriel. Luis and Filomeno both shared similar backgrounds of extensive experience as braceros in U.S. agriculture, especially in California and Texas, and also work experience in Mexico City and Oaxaca City. Their map 2. Territorial Limits of San Sebastián Teitipac Showing Physiographic Sectors and Parajes 90 Land, LiveLihood, and civiLiTy in souThern mexico life experiences bridged the traditional peasant-artisan culture of Oaxaca Valley Zapotec speakers and the wider urban-industrial cultures of Mexico and the United States. Owing to their personal experiences of adapting to unfamiliar cultural contexts in distant places, and to their relatively successful stints as migrant laborers, they were flexible, friendly, and quick to grasp my purpose in being in their community. They were amenable to cooperating with my project as part-time field assistants and as key informants, especially after I clarified that my policy would be to pay them for the time they spent doing so. Each of these men in his own way seemed to be genuinely interested in the history and culture of their community and craft, and in helping to communicate this to outsiders through my project.1 Luis, like his father, Gregorio, a maestro metatero and retired quarry boss, was especially important in introducing me to the culture of the hardcore , essentially full...