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Rethinking Mexican Indigenismo: The INI's Coordinating Center in Highland Chiapas and the Fate of a Utopian Project

2019; Duke University Press; Volume: 99; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-7787522

1527-1900

Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt,

Indigenous Cultures and Socio-Education

In this book, Stephen Lewis marshals his vast knowledge of Mexican history to provide a thorough and deeply researched account of the pioneering Centro Coordinador Indigenista Tzeltal-Tzotzil (CCI), formed in 1951 in Chiapas by the Instituto Nacional Indigenista (INI). Covering developments in education, health care, consumption, agriculture, the arts, and economic development more generally, the book concentrates on the application of state policies and also provides ample and intriguing evidence of Native people's responses to those policies and the workings of indigenous communities.Lewis's account chronicles the heady optimism of the CCI's early years, when it sought to dismantle stifling ladino economic and political dominance in the Chiapas highlands and overcome the signs of indigenous poverty and backwardness. This “mística” nonetheless gave way quickly to a less ambitious project that was less threatening to Chiapas's powerful ladino elite. The key episode, in Lewis's telling, was the conflict unleashed by the CCI's effort to curtail the abuses of a local alcohol monopoly that sold posh (which means “medicine” in Tsotsil and is known as aguardiente in Spanish). The monopoly sold posh laced with toxic chemicals at outlandish prices. When local communities that relied on the liquor for a host of ritual and mundane uses responded by distilling their own brew, the monopoly mobilized its patrons in local government to confiscate distilleries, extract fines, and dole out other forms of punishment, including brutal beatings and jailings. Villagers confronted guns with machetes and clubs, and the CCI urged an end to the state's campaign against local distilling, which it ultimately won.But having won the battle, the indigenistas lost the war. Following negotiations with Chiapas state officials, the INI rolled back efforts to improve labor conditions for hacienda peons. Later, beginning around 1958, funding cutbacks forced the INI to cede control of programs to other agencies that were more corrupt and less sensitive to the specific needs of Chiapas's indigenous communities. Unable to find high-quality staff who would suffer the paltry wages, indigenista initiatives bureaucratized and ossified. The INI was decisively weakened during the populist government of Luis Echeverría, when indigenista programs expanded too rapidly and without adequate vision and foresight.Lewis details policy successes and failures. He charts indigenista efforts to force assimilation and indigenista respect for difference, along with indigenous accommodation and resurgence. Following existing accounts, he presents evidence of indigenista hubris and criticizes the indigenistas' coercive modernization schemes. Yet he is sensitive to indigenista learning, such as when the CCI abandoned aggressive health campaigns staffed by ill-prepared medical personnel in favor of medical pluralism. Eventually, the CCI even allowed local healers into medical facilities. In addition, Lewis lays out the distinct histories of communities that interacted in differing ways with ladino society, thereby giving us insight into the variety of indigenous responses to modernizing projects. Most notably, Tseltal communities that had been exposed to Protestant missions were for the most part more open to schooling in part because some residents of these communities who were peons gained ownership of land through INI initiatives. Perhaps most captivating is Lewis's description of the Petul puppet theater, which supported medical as well as educational and economic campaigns. Led by Tsotsil puppeteer Teodoro Sánchez, the puppets spoke Tseltal and Tsotsil, dressed in local garb, learned about the localities they traveled to, and engaged in improvisational dialogue with village residents. As the puppets displayed varying attitudes toward modernization efforts, communities responded with unparalleled openness, arguing with and confiding in the puppets. According to Lewis, indigenous audiences saw Petul, the puppet who represented the INI's vision, as a kind of shaman of modernization, and they asked him about intimate matters such as birth control and infertility. Overall, Lewis's discussion of INI campaigns and community reactions provides important insights into how indigenous communities selectively incorporated elements of modernizing campaigns. The evidence Lewis offers is not conclusive, but it appears that local residents also remember the CCI as having had a positive impact on indigenous communities.Lewis's analysis of INI campaigns teaches readers a good deal about Mexican politics during the post-Cardenista years. His account of the training of cultural promoters and the formation of consumer and transportation cooperatives allows us to see how and why the INI campaigns created an indigenous elite that mobilized tradition and its familiarity with Mexican and ladino culture to enrich itself and cement its political authority. Although, as Lewis rightly notes, the INI cannot be blamed for caciquismo, it certainly helped shape it. In the 1970s, Chiapas's local caciques mobilized their supporters to violently expel from their communities a cohort of younger community members seeking to democratize local politics.Overall, Lewis has provided a rich, exhaustive account of indigenismo from the 1940s through the 1970s that will become required reading for anyone trying to understand Mexican rural politics during this time period. The book will give scholars of Mexico, indigeneity, and development a good deal to think about and should spawn new studies of this era. Teachers will fruitfully use sections of the book in their undergraduate classes.