In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Preface This book was written to document and explain how nine communities in the Oaxaca Valley of Mexico have endeavored over centuries to secure land, livelihood, and civility.1 There is nothing remarkable about this theme for anyone familiar with rural life in the central valleys and mountains of Oaxaca . Three facets of this region’s social life have been interconnected and interactive from colonial times to the present: community land as a space to live and work; a civil-religious system of community service requiring expenditures of labor-time and money to meet obligations of citizenship, office, and festive sponsorships by means of reciprocity and market activity ; and occupation. Without land for agriculture and resource extraction, occupational options were restricted, livelihood was precarious and contingent , and civility was jeopardized. In short, land, household maintenance through occupational practice, and community reproduction through civility were intimately bound together in a historical embrace.2 In the grips of this embrace, agricultural and nonagricultural occupational cultures have been passed down from generation to generation in local communities with shared historical identities. Intergenerational continuity of craft cultures is the rule, as implied in popular expressions by peasant-artisans throughout the Oaxaca Valley emphasizing that “our craft comes from our ancestors” (nuestro oficio viene de los antepasados). Nevertheless , occupational cultures are not immutable, as will be shown by case studies in subsequent chapters. In the Zapotec and mestizo communities of central Oaxaca in the second half of the twentieth century, there were relatively few indigenous-language monolinguals; most Zapotec-speaking villagers also spoke Spanish. Zapotec was spoken in many households, but few households lacked Spanish speakers. Most rural communities in the Oaxaca Valley have economies with a mix of agriculture, animal husbandry, and other forms of livelihood or employment , including crafts and other nonagricultural occupations. Differences between them relate to such variables as size, location, topography, role in the regional division of labor and specialization, degree of adherence to “traditional ” cultural practices (usos y costumbres), and receptivity to outsiders and outside influences. A major difference in the twentieth century was between communities in which Zapotec was still widely spoken and those that were exclusively Spanish speaking. In the district of Tlacolula, this indígena-mestizo divide was illustrated by several communities historically related to Hacienda Xaagá, like San Lorenzo Albarradas, Maguey Largo, and the congregation of Xaagá, that were identified collectively as “castellano” and were surrounded on all sides by Zapotec-speaking communities. These castellano/mestizo communities did not have civil–religious hierarchies, a cycle of mayordomía (saints’ cult) celebrations, or institutionalized reciprocity (guelaguetza), all of which characterized Zapotec communities. The passage of time complicates generalizing about fieldwork experiences in an “ethnographic present” (the time when fieldwork was conducted ). Changes inevitably occurred between the 1960s, when I first began fieldwork in the region, and 1990, when my last fieldwork was conducted. Rural electrification, the introduction of potable water, school construction , and road improvements, to cite a few major events, were symptomatic of changes in demographics, culture, and material well-being over the decades.3 Migration has been both a cause and a consequence of change in rural Oaxaca, even to the point of leading to the formation of communities of expatriates throughout the United States. Migration has given rise to a wide gamut of transactions and processes that have transformed communities on both sides of the border—demographically, economically, and culturally. Arguably, such transformations in Oaxaca Valley communities had already assumed measurable proportions in the 1940s and 1950s as a consequence of significant participation by male villagers in the Bracero Program. Still, evidence from communities like San Sebastián Teitipac and Xaagá showed that migratory labor did not lead to the abandonment of craft occupations such as metate making and weaving by return migrants. Indeed, in Xaagá’s case, remittances and saved earnings fueled the expansion of family weaving enterprises.4 The most serious risk for fieldworkers in Oaxaca Valley communities, aside from roaming dogs, derived from the consumption of mezcal by villagers in local stores/cantinas and in connection with fiesta-cycle celebrations (birthdays, weddings, and saints’ days). Most of my bad experiences during fieldwork were due to random encounters with drunks, who could be cantankerous, disruptive, and violence-prone. Accordingly, I developed a strategy to assure undistracted fieldwork by avoiding places or events where heavy drinking was occurring. When I saw a drunk staggering down the street, I went in the opposite direction or got off the street (cf. Dennis 1987, 11...

Share