Tonalà: Conservatism, Responsibility, and Authority in a Mexican Town

By May N. Diaz

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1966.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Nov 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9780520314023

May N. Diaz

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Conservatism, Responsibility,

and Authority in a Mexican Town

MAY N. DIAZ

University of California Press

Berkeley Los Angeles London

1970

University oí California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press

London, England

© 1966 by The Regents of the University of California

International Standard Book Number 0-520-00321-7 (clothbound edition)

0-520-01750-1 (paperbound edition)

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 66-14566

Designed by Theo Jung

Drawings by Steven Johnson

Second printing

First paperbound edition

Printed in the United States of America

PREFACE

The research for this book was undertaken as part of a larger study of culture change which was directed by Professor George M. Foster of the Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley. My own phase of the project was concerned with an examination of the effect of industrialization of an urban center upon a nearby small community—of the expanding city of Guadalajara, Mexico, upon a conservative village or town within easy commuting distance. The field research from August, 1959 to August, 1960 was supported financially through a grant of the National Science Foundation. For an additional summer’s fieldwork in 1962 I received financial assistance from the University of California Committee on Faculty Research. Funds for the preparation of the manuscript were made available by the Institute of Social Science of the University of California.

My debts of gratitude are many: to Professor Foster for his help and suggestions as well as for his willingness to allow his students to be independent in developing their own ideas and making their own mistakes; to Professor Robert F. Murphy who was an unfailing source of encouragement and intellectual stimulation and whose wit brightened the years of graduate training; to my patient students who listened while I developed and crystallized the analysis in lectures. I wish also to thank Richard Currier for his help in editing the final version of the manuscript. My debt of gratitude to the members of my family —who were participants, critics, and co-workers—is greater than I can express.

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

I. WE GO TO FIND A VILLAGE

II. OF TIME AND THE SEASONS

III. CITY AND TOWN

IV. THE PLACE WE LIVE IN

V. THE POTTER TAKES A WIFE

VI. WITHIN THE WALLS OF THE HOUSE

VII. IN THE BOSOM OF THE FAMILY

VIII. THE SOCIAL WORLD OUTSIDE THE HOUSE

IX. TO MAKE A LIVING

X. BE BORROWER AND LENDER

XI. THE CHANGING TOWN

GLOSSARY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

I. WE GO TO FIND A VILLAGE

ONE OF THE MOST significant developments of the second half of the twentieth century has been the emergence and growth of industrial economies in parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, regions traditionally viewed as sources of raw materials for the West rather than as producers of manufactured items. Equally significant have been efforts of nations to move themselves into the industrial world through economic and social planning. These efforts have been marked by varying degrees of success and of unrest and conflict; they have affected sectors of society in multifarious ways and to differing degrees. The changes wrought by rapid industrialization have provided a challenging area of study for social scientists from many disciplines.

The major aspects of the process of industrialization have been studied primarily by economists and sociologists,

1 while political scientists have concerned themselves with the dynamics of new national politics. Anthropologists, on the other hand, have joined with other social scientists in examining the nature of culture change in general and of industrialization in particular, but from somewhat different perspectives. One group of studies has been concerned with ascertaining the social and cultural changes which come to traditional societies around the world as a response to economic growth. Other studies have examined in detail the responses of individual communities.

The large literature on community development bears witness to an increasing awareness of the cultural factors that aid or impede programs of technical assistance. Anthropologists have pointed out in study after study the discrepancy between the traditional ways of life of rural people all over the world and the goals and methods employed by planners trained in industrial societies and socialized in an urban culture.

Industrialization begins in the city, is developed by city people, is part of the city culture, and as it proceeds, goes hand in hand with urbanization. For these reasons anthropologists working in peasant villages have seldom found it necessary to ask why villages do not industrialize, why villages seldom develop themselves, and why many of them are only marginally involved in the national industrial system as either producers or consumers. The first question has come to the mind of countless travelers from the nineteenth century on, who, in the face of stagnation in the provinces, have answered that the sloth, ignorance, and shiftlessness of the peasants are to blame for the lag in development. The second question is implicit in the very idea of working out a community development program, while the last is of increasing concern to national-policy makers. Political officials, technical-aid specialists, and economists are faced with the need to accelerate the process of transforming the byways of their own country to main roads of national development. Max Weber (1947: p. 167) outlined the central feature of the problem:

A high degree of traditionalism in habits of life, such as characterized by the labouring classes in early modern times, has not sufficed 10 prevent a great increase in the rationalization of economic enterprises under capitalistic direction. The same was, for instance, true of the socialistic rationalization of the taxation system of Egypt. Nevertheless, this traditionalistic attitude had to be overcome in the Western World before the further development to the specifically modern type of rational capitalistic economy could take place.

Although a nation’s industrialization and economic development can proceed despite the traditionalism of some of its people, when the gap between urban and rural sectors widens beyond a crucial (if undetermined) point, nations find themselves in a crisis. What can be glossed over verbally as a lag becomes the basis of political controversy as, for example, in Italy. It becomes the source of difficulty in socialist nations with planned economies, and one of the underlying causes of populist revolts elsewhere.

In a study of a south Italian village Edward C. Banfield raised the question: What are the elements in the village which impede its development? His conclusions were that the difficulty lay in the villagers’ inability to organize themselves and to act for the common good (Banfield, 1958: PP- 7-12). The lack of political organization stemmed in turn from the ethos of amoral familism, that is, the absence of responsibility and commitment to indivduals and groups outside the nuclear family. The ethos was a response to a high death rate, certain land tenure conditions, and the absence of the institution of the extended family.

Although the analysis fits the behavioral data as well as those obtained by projective tests, it falls somewhat short as an answer to the question originally posed. Two questions, neither of which completely invalidate the study, suggest that further analysis is necessary. First, the argument is circular. Amoral familism leads to a lack of solidarity which in turn leads to the maximization of the nuclear family, and around we go again. The problem here is a logical one and is a problem only if we are concerned with analysis or generalization. Circular statements about empirical events need not be invalid even though they violate the canons of Western logic, for, indeed, human institutions are often tautological, human activities often insist upon themselves, and culture is often redundant, though not superfluous. One is reminded of an episode in an old Sacha Guitry movie in which three robbers, having stolen seven pearls, sat down to divide the spoils. One begins the distribution, "One for you and one for you and one for me; one for you and one for you and two for me."

The two who were shorted protest, Why do you get three pearls when each of us gets only two?

Because I am the leader.

And why are you the leader?

Because I have three pearls.

At an analytic level we encounter the second difficulty: namely, that amoral familism is not of itself an identifiable phenomenon, but a category useful as an intermediate step in the construction of paradigms or hypotheses. It should not be invoked as an explanation. It has been suggested that it might be useful to reverse the paradigm: a series of historical events led to the development of a particular kind of economic and political power structure; consequently, generations of villagers learned from similar kinds of experiences that they must maximize the nuclear family, for to do otherwise was to sacrifice it.

This study is directed toward Banfield’s kind of question. What are the elements in a Mexican peasant village which impede economic development? Or to phrase it differently, how does the village function to preserve its traditional ways despite the exploding industrialization of the surrounding region? The corollary question must also be touched on: by what means and in what ways is the village affected by the urban and national economic system?

The particular case under examination is that of Tonali, a town of peasants and potters located ten miles from the city of Guadalajara in west central Mexico. Perhaps the case of Tonalá is not a unique one. Some of its structural features may well be typical of other rural and provincial entities in Latin America, so that by looking at one town closely we may begin to find the regularities which not only characterize and define villages, but which maintain them as villages while cities expand, explode, and dominate the life of nations.

My first view of the village which was to be my home for a year came at the end of the summer of 1959 when my husband and I were touring small towns and villages within a twenty-mile radius of Guadalajara in the state of Jalisco to find a suitable location for the study. The tour was time-consuming and both exhaustive and exhausting, for the choice of place in which to work is a delicate and crucial matter. The final success of the fieldwork may hinge upon the happy selection of a community both willing to tolerate strangers and appropriate to the requirements of the study. Several villages which had looked feasible when we pored over maps and censuses in Berkeley had to be ruled out: they had been swallowed up by the city or were surrounded by subdivisions and could no longer be considered self-contained communities, they were too small or too large, and a few had been left neglected or abandoned as history passed them by, so that a year’s stay would have been a period of penance among the eroding remains of a forgotten community.

The greatest problem, however, was what seemed like a simple matter: finding a village with an available vacant house. Our plans were for our entire family to move into the community—my husband, my two boys, and myself— and try to become insofar as possible another family unit living in a community of families.

Professor George M. Foster of the University of California at Berkeley, under whose supervision I was working, had suggested that we try to settle in a pottery-making town, for often it is easier to gain entry into a town of craftsmen, who are interested in talking of their skills and selling their wares, rather than into a community of farmers, wary of tax assessors and suspicious of possible government agents. Pottery work also provides a built-in framework for interviewing. On the basis of three criteria—the village must still exist as an independent entity, there must be a house available, and there must be some means of getting to know people—we choose the town of Tonalá.

We moved into the village in October, 1959, and remained there until the beginning of August, 1960. My field staff was my family. Although mine was the final reponsibility for gathering all materials, since I was the only anthropologist, on many occasions we were able to work together as a team, thus obtaining data usually considered men’s material, as well as women’s, adults’, and children’s. Information on the life of village children when unobserved by adults, interesting and plentiful at first, was gradually reduced to a trickle as my sons became Tonaltecan, rather than Berkeley, children. Fortunately, our house remained a favorite playground of the neighborhood, so there was still an avenue whereby hypotheses on the behavior of children could be checked against observations in several contexts.

Our methods of study were primarily the time-honored anthropological field techniques. We were as much participants as observers. Villagers who were curious about our presence were told that I was studying their potterymaking, for indeed I was very much interested in it. A few people assumed that I was doing some kind of historical research, for many villagers are proud of the fact that Tonalá already existed when the Spaniards came. I tried to do my work without upsetting the status quo and without being associated with any particular set or faction. Often the attempt to remain neutral in the shifting alliances and conflicts in the town was like walking a tightrope stretched over a cataract, but on the whole we managed to remain on friendly terms with school, church, and town hall. I doubted, however, whether it would be possible to maintain one’s neutrality for very long, and by the end of our stay I was beginning to feel that eventually a showdown would come when we would have to take sides.

We participated in several spheres of Tonalá life. My children were enrolled in the town school and went through the usual course of instruction for their ages. Although they knew only a few sentences of Spanish before their arrival, within a month or so they were able to get along quite well in class and on the playground. Stephen (age seven) joined the drum and bugle corps and was allowed to lead the school parades. Robert (age ten), along with the older boys in school, helped with the many chores which fall on the shoulders of Tonaltecan students: going to the city to buy foodstuffs sold to the pupils during morning recess, sweeping the earth play yard, and watering down the dust in the corridors and patios.

Before the end of the year they had the good fortune of participating in many of the activities we look on with nostalgia as belonging to the lost age of the last century. They had helped water the elephants of the traveling circus, they had gleaned peanuts in the fields and eaten them warm after roasting on a bonfire, and they had been cowhands and goatherds. But most fully of all, they had taken part in the constant small commerce and trade of the village. They had sold lemonade on our doorstep to passersby, and they had peddled oranges at the soccer game at the edge of town. Like other village boys, they had rented out their comic books on Sundays in the plaza and had carried bundles for elderly ladies getting off the bus. Their activities revealed nuances and flavors of town life that adult observers might miss.

As members of a functioning household we found ourselves plunged into another set of activities. Like any Tonalá family, we had to cope with the problems of buying food and supplies, of obtaining water, and thereby we became aware that such seemingly simple problems are both time-consuming and difficult to solve. Much of my daily round was that of the Tonaltecan housewife, as I traveled from church to kitchen to tortilleria (tortilla shop). Like the average man of the town, my husband spent less time in church and more time in the plaza listening to talk about village affairs.

It was from the latter kind of informal fieldwork that we became involved more directly with municipal affairs. Many townsmen were convinced that local political officeholders could never function effectively as leaders because of their multiple commitments to relatives and friends. They were ready, many even enthusiastically concerned, to ferret out some outsider who would be willing to take the initiative as a leader in municipal affairs, and approached my husband, a Jalisciense himself, to persuade him to take an active role in local politics. He decided to cooperate to the extent of attending committee meetings, participating in discussions, going along on deputations to the governor of the state, and generally acting as chauffeur when necessary, but he felt that it would be unfair to the townspeople for him to assume a role he could not continue later through a period when projects that had been initiated would have to be maintained. It would be wiser to try to bolster local leadership. From my point of view it also seemed more advisable, for I would be watching Tonaltecan politics in action.

A great deal of my working time was spent in informal social affairs. I regularly visited about fifteen households. Although these families did not comprise a random sample, they did represent different social ranks, typical Tonalá occupations, varying age groups, the literate and the illiterate, native villagers and strangers, and residents from all four barrios (neighborhoods) of the town. Several times a week I attended a sewing and gossip session. In addition, during the course of the year we were invited to almost the full roster of life-cycle ceremonies and other festivities as well.

Much of the information reported on was obtained during the course of visits, fiestas, and informal conversations. Since I wanted to keep things as relaxed as possible, I gradually learned the technique of memorizing the content of conversations and then writing up notes immediately afterward. With some practice one can reproduce fairly good transcripts—at least of occasions last ing no longer than an hour, a fact which in part accounts for the growing restlessness of the anthropologist when a gathering drags on and on. Imminent mnemonic confusion threatens him.

For many kinds of information, however, it is necessary to use regular informants (or advisers, as my husband suggests). Although many townspeople had the patience and courtesy to put up with my questions, I am particularly indebted to Magdalena Covarrubias, Isidoro Ramos, and the Melchor family—Salvador and Alejandra especially. Like most anthropologists, I feel that the informants I worked with were most remarkable people. They combined intelligence and perceptiveness with the warmth of true friendship, and I am grateful to have known them.

Our interviewing techniques were varied. Sometimes I asked open-ended questions which I hoped would call forth answers revealing attitudes, interests, and emotions rather than simple informational responses. Some interviews were more tightly structured. These were of two kinds. The most successful procedure was one whereby my husband and I played complementary roles, he guiding the conversation into the channels of interest to me and I mentally noting responses and reactions of others to them. This system worked particularly well because he was able to employ the parables, riddles, jokes, and anecdotes dear to the heart of the rural Mexican to elicit frank and free discussions. In a second kind of structured interview, I worked alone, having prepared a schedule to remind me of the questions I wanted answers to; but I tried to keep the setting informal enough to allow the digressions and parenthetical remarks which are often the most revealing part of an interview.

Questionnaires were used only in taking a census. During the second half of our stay I decided it was necessary to know the exact composition of households and to obtain fairly accurate occupational data, for the published federal census did not cover such matters as residential patterns. We then embarked on a census, a rather ambitious ethnographic undertaking, for Tonalá has a population of more than 5,000. The census had three phases: preparation, blanketing, and mop-up. First I had to find a compromise between what I wanted to know and what the villagers were willing to respond to. In order not to prejudice the entire project, I omitted questions on such matters as land tenure and income. During the preparation phase, the census sheets were printed in Guadalajara,