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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2009
Among students of Latin America, the existence of sizable Indian communities within the region has provoked a lively debate about the relationship between ethnicity and social class. Such communities have failed to become part of class society, it is often said, because they retain those customs and traditions which arose under colonialism, because in some sense they remain encapsulated to this day within the feudal social order. A few experts even claim that these customs have themselves become the primary agent of economic and political exploitation in various rural areas.1 According to this view, native people have accepted more or less passively a culture which was designed for them by Spanish missionaries and administrators, a culture which emphasized ethnic difference at the expense of class solidarity.2 In contrast to these ideas, contemporary events provide us with many indications that such people did not simply resign themselves to the fate which colonial authorities elected for them, Of primary importance, native uprisings and rebellions, messianic movements and religious heresies occurred in Latin America with astonishing frequency throughout the centuries which preceded Independence. By analyzing these movements, then, and particularly the convictions which moved their participants to action, we may formulate a more coherent view of Spanish colonialism — a view which also helps us to understand the question of ethnicity among Indians today.
1 See Pozas, Ricardo, Los indios en las clases sociales de México (Mexico, Siglo XXI, 1971);Google ScholarBeltrán, Gonzalo Aguirre, Regiones de refugio (Mexico, Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 1967);Google ScholarOlivera, Mercedes, ‘The Barrios of San Andrés Cholula’, in Nutini, Hugo et al. , Essays on Mexican Kinship (Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1976).Google Scholar
2 Such views have recently been expressed by Friedlander, Judith, ‘The Secularization of the Civil-Religious Hierarchy: An Example from Post-Revolutionary Mexico,’ unpublished Ms., 1978.Google Scholar
3 Pozas, Ricardo, Chamula, un pueblo indio de los altos de Chiapas (Mexico, Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 1957);Google ScholarVogt, E. Z., Los zinacantecos (Mexico, Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 1966);Google ScholarStavenhagen, Rodolfo, Las clases soeiales en las sociedades agrarias (Mexico, Siglo XXI, 1969);Google ScholarCollier, George, Fields of the Tzotzil (Austin, University of Texas Press, 1975).Google Scholar
4 See Hobsbawm, Eric, Primitive Rebels (New York, Horton, 1959);Google ScholarWorsicy, Peter, The Trumpet Shall Sound (London, MacGibbon and Kee, 1957).Google Scholar
5 Sáchez, Hermilio López, Apuntes históricos de San Cristóbal de Las Casas, México (Mexico, published by author, 1960), p. 714.Google Scholar
6 Klein, Herbert S., ‘Rebeliones de las comunidades campesinas: la reptública tzeltal de 1712,’ in McQuown, Norman A. and Pitt-Rivers, Julian (eds), Ensayos antropológicos (Mexico, Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 1970), p. 153.Google Scholar
7 Sáchez, López, op. cit., p. 704.Google Scholar
8 Archivo General de Chiapas (ACG), Gutiérrez, Tuxtla, Boletín 2, 1955, pp. 25–52.Google Scholar The alcalde mayor (governor) of Chiapas purchased his office for a term of five years, during which he frequently realized a profit of as much as 100,000 pesos. In so doing, he forced native communities to purchase from him on credit a wide variety of goods which they often did not need and to repay these goods with highly valuable commodities such as cacao or cochineal. It was this system which in local parlance came to be known as the repartimiento. For further discussions of the colonial economy, see Wasserstrom, Robert, White Fathers and Red Souls: Indian–Ladino Relations in Highland Chiapas, 1528–1973, Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1977;Google Scholar‘Population Growth and Economic Development in Chiapas, 1524–1975,’ Human Ecology, Vol. 6, No. 2 (1978), Pp. 127–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9 AGC, Boletín 2, pp. 53–66.Google Scholar
10 It would be fair to say that, as long as they settled their accounts with the royal treasury, local governors could count upon the audiencia to turn a blind eye upon even the legitimate complaints of native communities. Only when their activities seemed likely to provoke a breakdown of public order were such officials investigated by superior authorities.Google Scholar
11 Sánchez, López, op. cit., p. 690. In fact, the Council appears to have been less impressed with Zabaleta's innocence than with the possibility that much of the evidence presented against him was perjured or of doubtful veracity.Google Scholar
12 Trens, Manual, Historia de Chiapas (Mexico, Talleres Gráficos de la Nación, 1957);Google ScholarKlein, op. cit., p. 254. Ciudad Real (now San Cristóbal) served as provincial capital of Chiapas.Google Scholar
13 Ximénez, Francisco, Historia de la pro vincia de San Vicente de Chiapa y Guatemala (Guatemala, Biblioteca Goathemala, 1939), Vol. 3, 261–2.Google Scholar
14 Ibid., p. 257.
15 Op. cit., pp. 153–4.Google Scholar
16 Hidalgo, Manuel, Breve explicación de la lengua tzotzil (original 1735), Copy in the Parish Archives of San Cristóbal.Google Scholar
17 Ximénez, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 454.Google Scholar
18 Eric, JThompson, S. (ed.), Thomas Gage's Travels in the New World (Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1958), pp. 142–3.Google Scholar
19 Marcos Bravo de la Serna y Manrique, Carta pastoral, Guatemala, 1679, p. 47–8, copy in the Biblioteca Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, San Cristóbal.Google Scholar
20 Sánchez, López, op. cit., p. 684n.Google Scholar
21 de la Serna, Bravo, op. cit., p. 4.Google Scholar
22 Ibid., p. 34.
23 Ibid., p. 33.
24 Trens, op. cit., p. 181.Google Scholar
25 Naturally, such practices were condemned by Dominican authorities as idolatrous and pagan. It is ironic that many modern scholars accept these views, which hold that Indians in Chiapas had never truly understood or accepted Christianity and that they continued to practice their old rites whenever they could. In fact, native conversions appear to have been quite genuine, whereas allegations to the contrary almost invariably served to justify the misbehavior of their pastors. See Ximénez, , op. cit., Vol. 3, p. 261.Google Scholar
26 de la Serna, Bravo, op. cit., p. 34.Google Scholar
27 ibid., p. 29.
28 Ximénez, , op. cit., Vol. 3, p. 266.Google Scholar
29 ibid., p. 263.
30 Ibid., p. 268.
31 Ibid., p. 270.
32 Ibid., p. 272. Cofradías were religious brotherhoods which collected funds to pay for communal religious celebrations. By the mid-16th century, they also permitted local priests to engage in a sort of ecclesiastical repartimiento. For a more complete discussion of this phenomenon, see my ‘Population Growth and Economic Development in Chiapas, 1524–1975,’ and also ‘Religious Service in Zinacantan, 1793–1975’, unpublished manuscript, 1978.Google Scholar
33 Ximénez, , op. cit., Vol. 3, p. 280.Google Scholar
34 Sánchez, López, op. cit., p. 720;Google ScholarXimnéz, , op. cit., Vol. 3, p. 281.Google Scholar
35 Ximénez, op. cit., pp. 281–2.Google Scholar
36 Ibid., p. 284.
37 Ibid., p. 287.
38 Ibid., p. 287.
39 Sáanchez, López, op. cit., p. 716.Google Scholar
40 Orozco, Francisco y Jiménez, Documenios inéditos relativos a Ia Iglesia de Chiapas (San Cristóbal, 1901), vol. 2, 152.Google Scholar
41 Ximénez, op. cit., pp. 282–3.Google Scholar
42 Ibid., pp. 333–4.
43 Hidalgo, Manuel, op. cit.Google Scholar
44 Klein, op. cit., pp. 152–2.Google Scholar
45 In fact, Klein's view of Indian life and social organization in 1712 is anachronistic. To be sure, native officials such as alcaldes, mayordonzos and alféreces had by that time assumed a variety of civil and religious functions within their communities. But these functions do not aopear in the least to have been organized in a hierarchical fashion. Rather, they represent complementary and interdependent offices through which indigenous peoples undertook the critical task of reconstructing Indian life and custom after the Conquest.Google Scholar
46 Taylor, William, Landlord and Peasant in Colonial Oaxaca (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1972).Google Scholar
47 Cf. Semo, Enrique, Historia del capitalismo en México (Mexico, Editorial Era, 1973), p. 88.Google Scholar
48 Varese, Stéfano, ‘El estado y lo multiple’ unpublished manuscript, 1978.Google Scholar
