3
San Juan Mixtepec
Ñuu Vicu, the Land of Clouds1
The Municipio
The municipio of San Juan Mixtepec is one of the most studied communities in the Mixteca region of Oaxaca. Federico Besserer has spent the better part of the last twenty years documenting and tracing the travels of the transnational community of Mixtepec (Besserer 2002, 2004, 1999). Before Besserer, Steven Edinger (1985) published a very informative book on the community and the path of the migrants to Baja California and the United States. Together, these works comprise the most research done in a single Mixtec community in the contemporary age. In other words, there are literally thousands of communities in the region that have not been studied. Because of this, I had determined before arriving in the Mixteca that I would not work there. My idea was to expand on the extremely small number of existing studies. However, circumstances dictated that I conduct research in the community.
I had met a family with relatives in the village of San Juan itself.2 These relatives were able to provide me with a Mixteco-Spanish interpreter and knew a great deal about the municipio. Also, if my work was to be on the effects of immigration on communities in the region, Mixtepec was ideal. It has an established network of transnational communities that includes at least twenty-five of the fifty US states and several states in Mexico (Besserer 2004). Finally, the work of Edinger and Besserer provides much more background on Mixtepec than exists for any other community in the Mixteca. In any event, my plan was to work in two of the agencias of Mixtepec rather than in the municipio village itself. And no one had done any research on religious conversion or on non-Catholics in the municipio as a whole. I decided I could use the existing information as a backdrop for my research.
The Setting
The town of Tlaxiaco is the district seat of the district of Tlaxiaco, the closest town from Mixtepec that is on a paved road. Tlaxiaco also has the closest gasoline station, the closest landline telephone, and the closest buses to places beyond the Mixteca. Buses leave regularly to connect to the places that Mixtecs travel to: Sinaloa, Sonora, Baja California, and into the United States.
There is basically one circular paved road around the region where Mixtepec is located (see figure 1.1), and it is of a low grade of asphalt. There is no regular bus service in any part of what might be called “the great unpaved,” the area within and around the paved road. Many of the villages in the municipio of Mixtepec remain reachable only on foot. In any event, the vast majority of people in this region usually walk to their destinations; when possible, they get rides in passing vehicles, some of which charge for the lift. The only regular transportation between San Juan and Tlaxiaco are vans run by private companies and individuals. Rather than having a fixed timetable, the vans leave when they are full. Taxis are available in Mixtepec. They are used mainly on market day, when customers who do not own other means of transportation need to transport pigs, chickens, and large amounts of food purchased at the market from San Juan to their home villages.
One reason for my initial reluctance to work in Mixtepec is the difficulty of reaching it. Even finding the road from Tlaxiaco is difficult; there are no signs, of course. Look for the road that goes past the junkyard called “el freeway.” It is twenty-five miles on a dirt road from Tlaxiaco to San Juan village; it takes two hours to drive it. The road goes through varied terrain for about five miles. Then, where Mixtepec’s territory begins, the road winds wildly through and over the enormous pine forest that is now the municipio’s most valuable resource. The Mixtepecos understand this and have banned anyone—Mixtepeco or not—from cutting green trees.
One of the cargos that people are expected to serve, in order to maintain their membership in the community, is as guardians of the forest—it is part of the bienes comunales cargo. The bienes comunales committees are responsible for preventing forest fires and extinguishing them when they occur. The committees are also charged with preventing poaching, much of which is done by people who are not from Mixtepec. Meanwhile, the vast majority of cooking in the community is done over wood fires. This fact, along with the large market for pine wood in Tlaxiaco, has resulted in some outsiders—and a few Mixtepecos too—cutting pine trees that are still green.
Eventually, the road from Tlaxiaco to Mixtepec goes through several villages surrounded by sparsely vegetated grazing land and fields where corn is planted by some. Finally, the road leads to bluffs that overlook the municipio village of San Juan. This community has some of the few lands that are almost flat. In addition, the Mixteco River runs through the village. A few families have built a dam along part of the river and use the water to irrigate their cornfields. Still, in 2004 the price of corn imported from the United States was cheaper than corn produced in Mexico (see chapter 2).3
The village of San Juan is somewhat unusual in that it has maintained much of its traditional fiesta system. In this village, the job of mayordomo, the sponsor of the fiesta, along with all the lesser cargos, is voluntary—people volunteer rather than waiting to be elected. In 2004 some villagers had been waiting up to five years to take on their posts. Many of these people are not actually resident in the village but will return to complete their cargos when the time comes. The fiesta system is being maintained by the contributions of migrants; this is true of all the communities in the Mixteca, but San Juan seems to have a greater commitment on the part of its members to the maintenance of the traditional culture. The village is also distinct in that most of the women wear the traditional dress, consisting of a long skirt decorated with lace, a peasant blouse, and a rebozo—the standard shawl worn by Mexican women in many other places as well. The women also carry baskets using a tump line on their heads, a distinctive Mixtec touch.
Residents of the village of San Juan maintain their traditional customs in spite of the fact that most people spend time in El Norte.”4 I estimated that 40 percent of the vehicles in the village had license plates from the US. They represented twenty-two different states. Evidence of migrants and the remittances they send to their families is clear from the houses in the village. Many house sites have at least two structures: the old, original house, and the new house built by migrants. In many cases, the residents actually occupy the old house. They prefer to cook over wood fires rather than on gas stoves. Amenities such as gas stoves, running water, and indoor plumbing are present in most of the new houses. The people who build the houses are not usually in the village, but in the United States. In a few cases, the relatives of the owners rent out rooms to non-villagers such as schoolteachers. I rented such a room during my fieldwork in Mixtepec.
San Juan has a high percentage of people in the migrant stream. There are new vehicles on the dirt streets. Many members of the village have stereo systems and televisions, though reception is minimal. Some play videos—commercially produced or made in the village. There is an Internet café where young people go to chatear (chat). The village has a webpage. Yet the fiesta system is still very strong. Here we see one example of selective modernity—people go to the Internet café in their traditional clothes. They decide what aspects of modernity to embrace and what to reject. One such element is Pentecostalism, which the people of San Juan have so far roundly rejected. There are not many non-Catholics in the pueblo: about 9 percent,5 a figure similar to that of Oaxaca as a whole. I decided to do fieldwork in the two agencias of San Lucas and San Pedro Yososcuá, where there are more non-Catholics. Although I took in events in the municipio village, my main focus was actually on these two agencias.
Two Agencias: San Lucas and San Pedro Yososcuá
These two villages are about equidistant from San Juan, and they have approximately the same number of inhabitants (200). There were no non-Catholics in either of these villages until the 1990s, when members of the communities who had been converted elsewhere returned and began to hold services. They then began converting members of the villages. In both cases, these behaviors were met with anger from the Catholics. The hermanos have tried to fit into their communities as well as possible. They claim that they have never refused to accept cargos in their villages; they only reject the religious cargos. They report for tequio as required. Both of these points have been challenged by Catholics, but I saw non-Catholics in both capacities in both villages.
The Catholic aspects of the fiesta system have become much less extravagant in both communities. While the nonreligious cargos are filled (sometimes by non-Catholics), the religious cargos are not receiving the support that they used to. In each village there traditionally were two fiestas. Each fiesta had two mayordomos, who depended on their extended families in the village, as well as the migrant population, to contribute to their fiestas. In this way, the burden of the cargo was spread over kin networks in an ongoing system of reciprocity (Monaghan 1995). Now there is only one fiesta and only one mayordomo in each village. Both mayordomos for 2004 had spent many years outside the village; they had saved money to be able to host the fiestas. They had very few kin in the villages and they were expected to take on all the expenses of the fiestas. This is very different from the traditional ways. The lack of interest on the part of village members in sponsoring fiestas is an indication that the fiesta is less important than the nonreligious cargos, which people willingly maintain in order to continue being members of the village.
In many ways, San Lucas and Yososcuá are very similar. But they differ in how the members of the two communities have dealt with the increasing numbers of non-Catholics.
San Lucas
San Lucas is to the southeast of San Juan Mixtepec, along the road to Santa María Teposlantongo. The public buildings—the Catholic Church, the ayuntamiento—are clustered at the entrance of the village. As in many Mixtec villages, the cluster tends toward the vertical. The public buildings and many of the houses are backed up against a steep hill. The Catholic church, the school, and the ayuntamiento are all at somewhat different heights.6 The basketball court/dance floor is next to the school, which is located in the flattest part of the village. The houses are in two groups: on two roads along the hillside behind the ayuntamiento and spread out behind the school. While there is plenty of room around and between the houses, they are aligned along the roads, in rows.
San Lucas has lost many members to emigration, but the migrants have not contributed significantly to the upkeep or improvement of the village. In other communities, migrants pay for various projects decided on by the leaders. These projects vary from a new basketball court to potable water for all residents. In many villages migrants pay to maintain the cemetery or improve it with walls and chapels. This is not the case in San Lucas, where individual households tend to spend money on household expenses rather than on community development.
Non-Catholic Churches in San Lucas
The two non-Catholic churches are located far from the center of the village. The Trinitarian church is in the area where the houses spread out behind the school. The Iglesia de Jesucristo de las Américas sits on a promontory overlooking empty land and a few houses.
According to the members of the village, there were never any hermanos in San Lucas before migrants began returning. The first migrant convert to return to San Lucas arrived in 1991. I will call him Hermano Hermilo. He had been baptized in the name of the Trinity in the United States. He had converted in Oregon, when he was sick. He was alone, with no one to help him. I asked him if he had prayed to San Lucas, the village patron saint. He said, “Yes, I clamored for him [clamé por él ]. But how could he travel so far? [(i.e., to Oregon from San Lucas)]? But Jesus is everywhere.” This statement is a window onto the convert’s view of the saints. Each village has its own saints, rooted in the village. These saints (the physical objects) are seen as the ones who help when people pray to them. But the saints are in the village, far from the places people migrate to. Jesus, who is not perceived as a sacred object in a village, is more reachable from the migrant stream than the village saints.
When Hermano Hermilo returned to San Lucas, he began to hold services in a private home for people who were interested in the message he brought. Eventually they built a church. There are now about twenty members, all converted by him. He does not baptize people, however. This group is affiliated with the Iglesia Pentecostés in Jamiltepec, to the south of the region of San Lucas; the pastor of that church goes to San Lucas for baptisms as they are needed. The pastor (“si usted dice,” “if you say so”), is not formally the pastor of this church, but he obviously is the leader of the group, who call him “the pastor.”
The church in San Lucas has no name; Hermano Hermilo is happy about this. He pointed out that there are no denominations in the Bible. The group is affiliated with other Trinitarian congregations in the municipio, all of which are at approximately the same stage of growth as the one in San Lucas. There seem to be no established churches or congregations outside the Mixteca region that contribute money or other kinds of help to the members of this church. Despite the fact that one of the themes of the sermons in the church was that God will help the members “salir adelante” (get ahead), there were no significant wealth differences between the Catholics and non-Catholics. The pastor, for example, lives in a one-room house with a dirt floor.
Three years after Hermano Hermilo returned to San Lucas, another convert returned. This man, Hermano Felipe, had left the village in the 1970s, one of the first to do so. He never went to the United States, but worked the fields in Culiacán and Baja California. He had been baptized in the name of Jesucristo in San Quintín, Baja California, in 1988. When he returned to San Lucas in 1994 he found that there were already seven or eight other people in San Lucas who had been baptized in the name of Jesus Christ during their years of migration.
Although they converted in different communities, they had all been baptized into the Iglesia de Jesucristo de las Américas (IJA). By the 1990s, this church was already an established, transnational community with churches in many parts of Mexico and the United States. The largest Mixtec IJA church in Mexico is located in Juxtlahuaca, the seat of the district that includes Mixtepec. This congregation was founded by returning migrants in the 1980s. There are congregations of the church in the nearby village of Santa María Teposlantongo and other communities in the region, including Yososcuá. Thus Hermano Felipe’s congregation is part of a larger group of people close by as well as far away from the Mixteca region; more sources of economic and social support from other church members are available to him than to Hermano Hermilo’s congregation.
Figure 3.1. Iglesia de Jesucristo de las Américas, San Lucas.
Like Hermano Hermilo, Hermano Felipe became known as the leader of his church because he was the one who offered to hold services in his house. Unlike Hermano Hermilo, he could count on help from other, more established congregations of his church. The IJA churches in Santa Maria, California and Lázaro Cárdenas, Baja California, sent money to help the hermanos in San Lucas build a church. Although Hermano Felipe receives no pay for leading the church, the donations from the local members, combined with money from other congregations, have made it possible to establish a growing congregation of the IJA in San Lucas. In 2004, there were about forty members of the church, including twenty who were outside of the village. This is twice as many members as Hermano Hermilo’s church, and Hermano Hermilo returned to the village before Hermano Felipe.
Discussion
The two non-Catholic churches in San Lucas have a great deal in common. Both were founded by returning migrants in the 1990s. The members of both are not significantly better off economically than their Catholic fellow villagers. Together, the members of the churches have managed to remain in the village without being expelled. However, there are some distinctions between the two. The IJA is part of a large transnational network of churches with Mixtec members. The smaller of these churches, such as the one in San Lucas, receive monetary support from the other church congregations. There are congregations in many of the agencias of the Mixteca region. In Juxtlahuaca, there is a huge confraternidad every year, with thousands of people in attendance from all parts of Mexico and the United States. There is a sense of being in a much larger, supportive entity than in the small congregation with no name. Although the pastor of the Trinitarian church is affiliated with a Trinitarian pastor in Jamiltepec, there does not seem to be any larger group that contributes to the San Lucas congregation. Perhaps for these reasons the church with no name has a smaller congregation than the IJA. However, there is evidence that Mixtecs convert to the IJA because they find other Mixtecs in the IJA congregations throughout the migrant stream. They have developed their own “wing” of the church, where they congregate with fellow villagers in the communities to which they migrate. This sense of solidarity within the larger church is somehow missing from the Trinitarian churches in the Mixteca.
Relations between Catholics and Non-Catholics
At first, the Catholic members of the village were unhappy about the hermanos. The Catholics repeated what the priests say, which is that a Catholic must never change religion. There were heated arguments about the refusal of the non-Catholics to participate in religious cargos. Eventually, the village held an assembly in the ayuntamiento building. There were arguments and disagreements. Finally, they reached an agreement to live and let live. One non-Catholic said to me, “los padres no pueden obligar a la gente de ser católicos” (the priests cannot oblige people to be Catholics). Some of the Catholics wanted to move the saint from the church in San Lucas to another community, where presumably there were fewer non-Catholics. The assembly voted and decided to keep the saint in the San Lucas Catholic church and continue holding the fiestas as always. The non-Catholics see the preparations for the fiesta as tequio, not a cargo. They clean around the school and the agencia building but not in the Catholic church. At the same time, non-Catholics assume more of the nonreligious cargos.
The Catholics accepted this ajuste (adjustment). One member of the IJA said that the Catholics and non-Catholics in the village “no se llevan bien” (don’t get along very well), but still, “ya se acostumbraron la gente” (the Catholics have become accustomed to the non-Catholics). Thus, calm arrived in San Lucas. As one non-Catholic said, “aquí estamos en paz” (here we are at peace). Several people, both Catholic and non-Catholic, told me that there is a law saying Mexico has freedom of religion. One Catholic man commented that the reason there are so many hermanos is that the priests don’t go to the villages. They only go once a year (for the fiesta). If the priests lived in the villages, as the leaders of the hermanos do, there would be fewer converts.
In San Lucas, non-Catholics now give service in the secular cargos such as the water committee, the committee in charge of roads, and bienes comunales—the guardians of the forest and other community resources. In fact, the agente—the most powerful cargo—was held by Hermano Hermilo in 2004. He was nominated at the assembly, but he pointed out in the gathering that this cargo has religious aspects: the agente helps organize the annual fiesta, for example. He said he would only be agente if the people did not require that he change his beliefs, or act in a supportive role toward the Catholic Church. The assembly elected him. One of the reasons people give for this, I was told, is that they know a convert will not drink and is less likely to divert money from the community to himself. And although Hermano Hermilo said there were some things that he would not do, I saw him helping out during the fiesta in the village. For example, in spite of the opposition to fireworks among the non-Catholics, he was in charge of the fireworks set off from statues of papier-mâché bulls. He said his role was to make sure no one got hurt, to maintain peace and order among people who were drinking and feasting. In that sense, his overseeing the fireworks was part of his job of maintaining order. He did not seem to have a problem with this obvious blurring of the line between the religious and secular duties of the agente. These are the ways that the members of the community have resolved the earlier conflicts and agreed to get along as best they can.
When I asked people in San Lucas why there are more hermanos in San Lucas than in other villages, one explanation was that the members of the village knew that in the nearby community of Santa María Teposlantongo, several converts had already returned and refused to take on the religious cargos. Evidently, the community formulated an idea of what might happen when people returned to San Lucas from the north. This, in turn, is offered as the reason why there is not a great deal of conflict in San Lucas today. In addition, I have heard from many members of the village that migrants to Baja California, and especially the United States, have seen many non-Catholic congregations beyond the world of San Juan Mixtepec. Knowing that there are religions other than Catholicism has become a part of the migrant experience. One man, a migrant who normally lives in Baja California, commented that in the villages from which there is a great deal of migration, the Catholics adjust more quickly than those communities with only a small rate of migration.
San Pedro Yososcuá
This village is about the same distance as San Lucas from Mixtepec but toward the West, in the direction of Tlaxiaco. Unlike San Lucas, it is extremely dispersed. The main buildings—ayuntamiento, school, Catholic church—are spread apart over a distance of about 400 yards. Also unlike San Lucas, the village has quite a lot of flat land, though not much is planted. The houses are also separated by large spaces. Where the houses in San Lucas can all be reached easily on foot from the center of the village, the houses in Yososcuá require a vehicle to reach them. The houses, and the roads and paths they are on, are arranged in a seemingly haphazard pattern. the The two non-Catholic churches are each separated from the ayuntamiento by large spaces.
In Yososcuá, migrants have made more investments in the community’s buildings than migrants have made in San Lucas. In Yososcuá, there is a newly constructed ayuntamiento, and the Catholic church has been significantly refurbished, all with migrant money. The cemetery is very well maintained, also due to migrant funds.
Non-Catholic Churches in Yososcuá
Like San Lucas, Yososcuá has a congregation of the IJA and a Trinitarian congregation, the Templo Evangélico de Agua Viva. This latter church is affiliated with a congregation in Baja California called La Trinidad. It is not affiliated with the Trinitarian church in San Lucas. There are other congregations of this church in northern Mexico and in the United States; there are also some in the nearby Mexican state of Guerrero. The pastor of the church in Yososcuá, Hermano Tiburcio, was baptized in Baja California. He was the first non-Catholic to return to the village, in 1996. This man had leaflets from the main church to pass out as he went from door to door. In 2004 there were about forty members of this church. About fifteen had converted in the village. Some of the members were in Baja California, but they still are counted. As the pastor said, “some people convert elsewhere, but it doesn’t matter what church they are baptized in, when they return, if they are from this pueblo, that’s their identity.” As long as they are Trinitarian and Pentecostal.
This congregation is still considered a mission, so the members are not required to send money to the church in Baja California that is sponsoring them. They do send letters reporting their activities. Sometimes hermanos from the churches in Baja California visit the church in Yososcuá to convey the encouragement of the Baja California groups in Yososcuá’s project. The church itself is a large, two-story structure in a village of one-story buildings. It is evident that this congregation has received quite a bit of help from outside. During the services, the leaders ask the people to pray for the agente, the members, the village council, and all the members from the village in various places, including Baja California, Oregon, and Washington. Unlike the Trinitarian church in San Lucas, the one in Yososcuá clearly sees itself as part of a much larger group.
In 1997 a man whom I will call Hermano Francisco returned to Yososcuá. Since 1975 he had migrated to many parts of Mexico and the United States. He was baptized in the IJA in Baja California in 1992. He was the first member of the IJA to return to Yososcuá. He began proselytizing in the village immediately. According to him, three people converted on the first day. Like Hermano Hermilo in San Lucas, Hermano Francisco does not think of himself as a pastor. He says he is the pastor “si usted dice” (if you say so). Other members of the church see him as the leader. Hermano Francisco has been a US resident since 1987, and he returned regularly to the US to maintain that status. Although other church members asked him to stay in Yososcuá, he kept going back to the United States. In 2001 or 2002, he was injured on a job in the United States. Then he went to Yososcuá to get better. Although he said that he still wants to go to the United States to work, he has remained in Yososcuá since his return in 2002. In 2004 there were about twenty members of the IJA, half in the village and half in the United States.
Figure 3.2. Iglesia de Jesucristo de las Américas, San Pedro Yososcuá.
Discussion
In Yososcuá, the economic situations of the churches seem to be the reverse of those in San Lucas. The Trinitarian church is large and well appointed, while the IJA church is still under construction. The Trinitarian members are much better dressed than those of the IJA, and they have more musical instruments. Unlike the Trinitarians in San Lucas, this church has affiliations with churches in Baja California and other locations. These churches have clearly been very helpful to the congregation. The IJA congregation, while enjoying the support of the Santa Maria, California, church, as well as the church in nearby Juxtlahuaca, is still struggling. The only musical instrument in the IJA church is an acoustic guitar, played by the pastor. The members, including the pastor, dress very poorly.
Relations between Catholics and Non-Catholics in Yososcuá
In contrast to the situation in San Lucas, there has been no agreement between the Catholics and the non-Catholics in Yososcuá. When I interviewed the agente (a Catholic), he stressed the fact that “ya no somos unidos” (we are no longer united). He demonstrated with two of his fingers: first, he held them together, then he separated them. He pointed to the Catholic church, and said, “that is the church of the pueblo,” implying that the other two churches were not part of the pueblo. Other Catholic residents of the village reported that some of their relatives had converted, but now all the converts do is try to convert them. Now Catholics and non-Catholics in the same families no longer talk to each other.
The agente said that the non-Catholics “no cooperan” (don’t contribute) to the upkeep of the village. They only do things to help themselves, not the community. He said they do not participate in any of the cargos or in tequio. However, I saw all the adult members of the Templo de Agua Viva working on the road in the village, and there are several non-Catholics in secular cargos, such as the school committees.
It seems clear that there is conflict between the Catholics and the non-Catholics in Yososcuá. However, 2004 was not the same as 1978, when the first Evangelicals returned to the Mixteca only to be expelled from their communities. In 2004 it was unlikely that the Catholics would expel the non-Catholics; at that time, both groups knew that there is a law of religious freedom in Mexico, while in 1978, most did not. The members of the village will have to come to some kind of an agreement at some point.
On the last day I was in Yososcuá, the agente told me that the hermanos were planning to establish another community, still within the agencia of Yososcuá but far from the village itself. I had heard of no such plans from the non-Catholics, who had already invested considerable time and money in constructing their church buildings in the village. Evidently, the Catholics were looking for ways to encourage the non-Catholics to take up residence somewhere else. The agente went on to criticize the non-Catholics. He said they want to live in the village for free, that they do not contribute, that they are very hard, very difficult. He said they hate the Catholics. He also said that the hermanos had said that the Catholics did not have the authority to expel them. It is true that the Catholics do not have legal authority to expel the non-Catholics, but without the support of some entity outside the agencia (the presidente municipal of San Juan Mixtepec, for example), as long as the Catholics maintain a large majority in the village they will have the power to expel the non-Catholics. The Catholics seemed to assume that they would be able to do so and were planning to do so.
The first step in the expulsion process was to try to prevent the non-Catholics from burying their dead in the village cemetery. The right to bury one’s dead in the community graveyard is basic to all of the villages in the Mixteca; being denied this right is equivalent to denial of membership in the village. By October 2004, the Catholics had not succeeded in keeping non-Catholics out of the cemetery. The Catholics said they were trying to take it slowly, but they seemed intent on expelling the hermanos, if not from the agencia as a whole, at least from the village.
Migration and Religious Change
The process of conversion in both the agencias is clearly derived from migration. All of the non-Catholic congregations were made up at first by returned migrants who had been baptized outside the Mixteca. Migration has resulted in there being two non-Catholic congregations in each village. However, migration in and of itself does not lead inexorably to conversion. There are many residents of the two agencias who have left and returned without converting. In San Juan pueblo, furthermore, there is a very low incidence of non-Catholics despite the large percentage of residents who have been in the migrant stream. In fact, San Juan is the focus of Besserer’s work, which demonstrates that members of this village are maintaining strong ties with the community despite being far away from the home village. These villagers, the great majority Catholics, are still participating actively and extensively in the religious part of the cargo system (Besserer 2004). There has been no reduction in the number of fiestas in San Juan. Thus, there is no easy explanation for the relationship between migration and religious conversion in the Mixteca region. The relationship is there, but it varies from one community to another, depending on the experiences of the members while in the migrant stream. And now, unlike in the 1970s, returned migrants have converted some villagers who have never migrated. So the picture is much more complicated now than when Mixtecs first started going north in large numbers.
Social and Economic Indicators
From the perspective of an outsider, the two villages might seem essentially the same: both are poor, small, far from a paved highway, and inhabited by Mixtecs. In fact, on the issue of non-Catholic members of the village, they are quite different. One has accepted the non-Catholics, and the other has not. How did this come about? Upon taking a closer look at the two communities, several differences appear. These distinctions are made evident in tables 3.1 and 3.2.
Table 3.1. Socioeconomic indicators: San Lucas
Inhabited houses | 47 | |
Using gas to cook | 5 | 11% |
Using wood to cook | 42 | 89% |
With indoor toilet | 29 | 61% |
With indoor water | 42 | 89% |
With drainage | 3 | 6% |
With electricity | 45 | 96% |
With no water, drainage, or electricity | 0 | 0% |
Marginalization level* | high |
Source: INEGI 2000.
* Dirección General de Población de Oaxaca (General Board of the Population of Oaxaca, DIGEPO). The marginalization rate of each community is based on nine indicators derived from the general census (INEGI 2000). These indicators are: illiteracy, incomplete primary school, dwellings without piped-in water, dwellings without drainage, dwellings without electricity, crowding, community of fewer than five thousand inhabitants, and employed population with two minimum wage salaries or less (DIGEPO 2002, 125).
Table 3.2. Socioeconomic indicators: San Pedro Yososcuá
Inhabited houses | 58 | |
Using gas to cook | 0 | 0% |
Using wood to cook | 58 | 100% |
With indoor toilet | 18 | 31% |
With indoor water | 32 | 55% |
With drainage | 2 | 3% |
With electricity | 47 | 81% |
With no water, drainage, or electricity | 8 | 14% |
Marginalization level | very high |
Source: INEGI 2000.
First of all, while both villages are poor, Yososcuá is the poorer one: it is characterized as having a very high degree of marginalization, while the level of marginalization in San Lucas is merely high. The details of this differential marginalization include, for example, the fact that all the households in San Lucas have either water, sewage, or electricity, while in Yososcuá, 14 percent of the households have none of these. In San Lucas, 11 percent of households use gas to cook, while all of the households in Yososcuá cook with wood. It is unlikely that the money to pay for any of these amenities came from working in the village, so these differences indicate differences in migration and remittance patterns.
In Yososcuá, 48 percent of the population is monolingual in Mixteco, while this is true of only 31 percent of those in San Lucas (see tables 3.3 and 3.4). These differences, while small, are indications of different rates of emigration, or at least of return migration. Returning migrants usually arrive loaded down with goods from the United States; they also tend to have saved money, which they spend in the village. In addition, migration in many cases forces people to learn at least some Spanish in order to be able to operate outside the Mixteca region. The lower score of marginalization and the smaller percentage of monolingual Mixteco speakers in San Lucas implies that there has been more return migration there than in Yososcuá. This in itself leads to a greater willingness to accept non-Catholics.
Table 3.3. Language and religion: San Lucas
Population over 5 years old | 219 | |
Mixteco only | 66 | 30% |
Mixteco and Spanish | 153 | 70% |
Spanish only | 0 | 0% |
Catholic | 129 | 59% |
Non-Catholic | 87 | 40% |
Source: INEGI 2000.
Table 3.4. Language and religion: San Pedro Yososcuá
Population over 5 years old | 200 | |
Mixteco only | 88 | 44% |
Mixteco and Spanish | 105 | 53% |
Spanish only | 7 | 3% |
Catholic | 149 | 75% |
Non-Catholic | 51 | 25% |
Source: INEGI 2000.
In general, migrants who are away from the villages send money to their families, but they also send money for the upkeep of the community itself. Clearly, there is a difference between the ways that migrants from Yososcuá spend their money and the spending behavior of the inhabitants of San Lucas. While the investment of migrants in the maintenance of the community buildings is lower in San Lucas, apparently the migrants are using their money to improve their own homes. Thus, the larger percentages of amenities such as gas stoves and toilets in San Lucas. This indicates a greater value on individual or family well-being over that of the village as a whole. This, in turn, implies a greater number of non-Catholics in San Lucas. Although the non-Catholics strive to point out that they contribute tequio and sit on the non-Catholic committees, they do not contribute to the upkeep of the Catholic church or any other sites associated with Catholicism. While there is little evidence overall that non-Catholics are wealthier than Catholics, it appears that they prefer to spend their incomes on nonreligious expenses.
And indeed, there are more non-Catholics in San Lucas: 40 percent as opposed to 25 percent in Yososcuá. This is one reason that there is more conflict in Yososcuá. There is evidently a tipping point at which the Catholics give up trying to expel the non-Catholics: when the number of the latter approaches half the population of the village. Another mediating factor in the different levels of conflict in the two communities is that the first non-Catholic returned to San Lucas in 1991, while the first arrived in Yososcuá in 1997. San Lucas has had six more years to work out the differences between the two groups.
These two communities can be compared with Santiago Asunción, a Mixtec village that now has a majority of non-Catholics (Espinosa Hernández 2003: 52–57, 70–71). In Santiago, all the autoridades are Seventh-day Adventists. The Catholics have been relegated to very minor roles in the village. Even the Catholic church, which is still in the center of the village, is marginal compared to the much larger Adventist church, which dominates the road into town. One might speculate that, given the realities of migration and return migration, Yososcuá might be moving in the direction of San Lucas and San Lucas might be moving in the direction of Santiago Asunción.
Modernity and Usos y Costumbres
The civil side of the community organization has remained largely unchanged despite emigration and conversion, but the religious aspects of the fiesta system are declining in both villages. This is not only because non-Catholics refuse to participate, but because Catholics too are refusing to assume religious cargos. The reluctance of the villagers to support the Catholic rituals really has not so much to do with religion as with the introduction of the market economy into the social relations of both villages. Clearly the expenses associated with sponsoring several fiestas a year come to be seen as extravagant by Catholics and non-Catholics alike. It is possible to remain Catholic, and a member in good standing in the community, if one supports only one fiesta. At the same time, the civil cargos remain necessary to the orderly running of the villages. The fact that some communities in the Mixteca have not gone completely over to the market is unusual; indeed, it is the source of much of the interest of anthropologists. Many out-migrants contribute money as a replacement for their labor toward the cargos today. There has to date been no withdrawal from the secular cargos—Catholics and non-Catholics alike are still willing to contribute their time and labor to the community. This pattern has been reported by Espinosa Hernández (2003) in Santiago Asunción, and can be found in the communities of the expelled in Huajuapan de León (see chapter 5).
Increasingly, Catholics and non-Catholics alike are less enthusiastic about participating in the religious fiestas than in the day-to-day running of the community. In Yososcuá and San Lucas, this is clear from the fact that while the secular cargos are being filled, the religious cargos have now been reduced to only one individual in each village, and there is only one yearly fiesta. In other words, the migrants are rejecting only some of the Catholic aspects of the system of usos y costumbres. It is one thing to reject the entire cargo system; it is another to change the system so that it conforms to the realities of the present day. It seems quite possible that the migrants’ identification with and participation in the political and economic life of the villages might continue, even though the religious beliefs and behaviors come to be left to individual choice.
Here is an example of selective modernity, or modernities, as discussed in chapter 2. Mixtecs respond to the responsibilities of hosting fiestas by reducing the number to a manageable level. Indeed, most communities in Mexico celebrate the annual fiesta for the town’s patron saint. However, most communities in Mexico do not embrace other aspects of usos y costumbres such as tequio and voluntary service in the secular cargos. Collective ownership of village land is also absent from most communities. The members of San Lucas and San Pedro Yososcuá have decided to maintain the aspects of usos y costumbres that work to integrate individuals into the community regardless of religious beliefs. The remarkable continuity of the system, despite the fact that about half the villagers are outside any village at any given time, is what makes Mixtec villages unusual, perhaps unique. The maintenance of collective ownership of land, while cumbersome, has allowed villages to retain control of their land because outsiders cannot buy it and members of the community cannot sell it except to others in the village. There is no way for development or tourism companies to make inroads into the villages or for logging companies to make off with the pine forest. Poaching exists, but there are cargos to prevent or at least restrain it. Thus, Mixtec villages have found a way to remain Mixtec villages while embracing those aspects of modernity they want to accept. These include large, modern houses as well as non-Catholic religions. As we have seen, the religions are more contentious than the houses, although both stem from modernity. And both villages are dealing with non-Catholics in their own way. They are not abandoning usos y costumbres entirely, however.
While the non-Catholics appear to be modern in that they hold the individual responsible for his or her salvation, separate from any church or clergy, they still participate in the village system, which is basically nonmodern. The willingness of all the members of the villages to perpetuate the traditional village structure indicates an active participation in the creation of a new kind of village, with one foot in the modern world and another in the traditional world of the Mixteca.
Notes
1. The name Ñuu Vicu, the place of clouds, was the name the Mixtepecos gave to their territory before they were defeated by the Aztecs in 1504 (Edinger 1985 :19). The Aztecs imposed the name Mixtepec, which means “place of Mixtecos” (Edinger 1996:10; Dahlgren de Jordán 1966:56). The present-day residents call the place Ñuu Vicu.
2. In order to reduce confusion over place-names, I will use the terms San Juan or San Juan village when referring only to the village of San Juan, and Mixtepec or San Juan Mixtepec when referring to the municipio as a whole.
3. In a clear indication of how NAFTA influences the lives of the poor, consider first that in 2004 the price of subsidized corn produced in the United States was lower than that available to Mexican corn farmers. This outcome may have contributed to the increasing numbers of Mexicans in the United States. Next, consider that in 2007, production of ethanol from US corn caused the price of corn in Mexico to explode, leaving the poorest worse off. This situation doubtless resulted in more Mexicans in the United States.
4. Although the term El Norte means “the north,” in Mixtepec it refers almost universally to the United States.
5. Unless otherwise stated, all figures are from the Mexican census department, INEGI.
6. This is the name given to the community government building. It houses the offices of the agente and the various cargo holders.