Histories and Stories from Chiapas: Border Identities in Southern Mexico

Chapter 2 The Modernizing Project: Between the Museum and the Diaspora

Chapter 2 THE MODERNIZING PROJECT BETWEEN THE MUSEUM AND THE DIASPORA The 1950s are remembered by Soconusco finqueros as times of plenty, when agroexport products reached their highest international price as a result of the rapid economic recovery of post–World War II Europe. For Sierra peasants, it was a time of darkness in a literal sense, for these were the years when onchocercosis, known locally as the ‘‘purple disease,’’ reached alarming levels, causing blindness in thousands of peasants. If ‘‘the burning of costumes’’ marked the historical memory of old Mames during the 1930s, the trauma of the purple disease marks the testimonies of the 1950s. Although they share the same geographic space, finqueros and Mam peasants reconstruct their pasts with very different narratives. Some finqueros refer to Miguel Alemán (1946–1952) and Adolfo Ruíz Cortínez (1952–1958) as the Mexican presidents who brought real progress to the region; their testimonies refer to the construction of the Pan-American Highway, which made it easier for them to convey their products; the electri fication of the Soconusco and Mariscal regions; the so-called Green Revolution, which brought improved seeds and fertilizers; and respect for ‘‘private property,’’ which was finally supported by the federal government . During the 1950s, Chiapas coffee growers produced a yearly average of seventeen thousand tons of coffee, with an international demand well above local production, thereby living up to the expectations of modern Mexico (Renard 1993). But peasants talk about a different reality, and although names are Tseng 2001.4.30 17:41 DST:103 6289 Hernandez / HISTORIES AND STORIES FROM CHIAPAS / sheet 71 of 317 50 The Modernizing Project absent from Mam testimonies, facts are remembered. They recall when the government announced that there were no more lands to be distributed and gave finqueros papers stating that nobody could touch their properties and when the government, through the CNC, distributed seeds and fertilizers to those who joined them; but, above all, they remember when the purple disease blinded their children, relatives, and friends and when going to plantations meant returning with a swollen face, dark skin, and lumps on the neck that little by little took away the light. It was a time of fear, which has not quite passed, for the purple disease is still there, hidden in the mosquitoes that are endemic to coffee plantations, able to manifest itself at any moment.1 These stories reveal two views of modern Mexico, in which the socalled stabilizing development of the 1950s and 1960s was perceived by the peasants from the Sierra and by the finqueros of the Soconusco coast in strikingly different ways. In this chapter, I analyze how Mam peasants appear once more in the ‘‘official history’’ by being included in the ‘‘national heritage’’ displayed in the new National Museum of Anthropology. In the 1950s and 1960s anthropologists created an image of the Mam for national consumption; organized expeditions with the aim of ‘‘ethnographic and archaeological rescue’’; and wrote museographic scripts. During these decades, Sierra inhabitants were confronted by a modernizing project that, while ‘‘recovering the national heritage,’’ simultaneously promoted modernization through road construction and through the Green Revolution. Tradition and modernization were not opposed in the new political discourse that used the reconstruction of a common past for ‘‘all Mexicans’’ as a means to maintain its hegemony, while also promoting a development project that excluded the great majority of the Indian population. I also analyze the exodus of the 1960s, when hundreds of Mam peasants abandoned the Sierra and settled in the southwestern region of the Lacandon rain forest, following the colonizing campaigns promoted by the government. In the context of migration, new religious identities and new forms of self-conception as a collectivity began to emerge. Ironically , while anthropologists were freezing in time the reality of Chiapas indigenous peoples with static representations in the Ethnographic Hall of the museum, the diaspora to the rain forest was beginning. The Mam have migrated, converted to new religious ideologies, and developed new contesting discourses against a nation-state that has excluded them. Tseng 2001.4.30 17:41 DST:103 6289 Hernandez / HISTORIES AND STORIES FROM CHIAPAS / sheet 72 of 317 The ‘‘Stabilizing Development’’ 51 The ‘‘Stabilizing Development’’ The 1950s began with a new collaboration between Soconusco finqueros and the federal government. In the preceding decades, Chiapas landowners had faced President Lázaro C...