Elusive Unity: Factionalism and the Limits of Identity Politics in Yucatán, Mexico - Softcover

Armstrong-Fumero, Fernando

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1607323532 ISBN 13: 9781607323532

Verlag: Univ of Chicago behalf of UP Colorado, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

In Elusive Unity, Armstrong-Fumero examines early twentieth-century peasant politics and twenty-first-century indigenous politics in the rural Oriente region of Yucatán.

The rural inhabitants of this region have had some of their most important dealings with their nation's government as self-identified "peasants" and "Maya." Using ethnography, oral history, and archival research, Armstrong-Fumero shows how the same body of narrative tropes has defined the local experience of twentieth-century agrarianism and twenty-first-century multiculturalism.

Through these recycled narratives, contemporary multicultural politics have also inherited some ambiguities that were built into its agrarian predecessor. Specifically, local experiences of peasant and indigenous politics are shaped by tensions between the vernacular language of identity and the intense factionalism that often defines the social organization of rural communities. This significant contribution will be of interest to historians, anthropologists, and political scientists studying Latin America and the Maya.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Fernando Armstrong-Fumero is an assistant professor of anthropology at Smith College. He has conducted research in Maya-speaking communities in Yucatán, Mexico, since 1997.

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Elusive Unity

Factionalism and the Limits of Identity Politics in Yucatán, Mexico

By Fernando Armstrong-Fumero

University Press of Colorado

Copyright © 2013 University Press of Colorado
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-60732-353-2

Contents

List of Figures, 
Acknowledgments, 
1. Peasants and Maya, Solidarity and Factionalism, 
2. "How It Happened That We Fomented This Town": Tensions between Family Autonomy and Community Solidarity during the Agrarian Reform, 
3. "Back Then, There Was No Order": The Early Twentieth Century in Collective Memory, 
4. "Now There Is More Culture": Rural Schools as Monuments to Revolutionary Culture, 
5. "When I First Went to Study": Pedagogy, National History, and Bilingualism, 
6. "That Time of Change": The Limits of Agriculture and the Rise of the Tourist Industry, 
7. "What Does 'Culture' Mean?": Progressivism, Patrimonialism, and Corporatism in Vernacular Discourse on Maya Culture, 
8. The Realpolitik of Yucatecan Multiculturalism, 
References, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Peasants and Maya, Solidarity and Factionalism

This book is a study of the dichotomous nature of identity politics. It documents how the same forms of politicized self-labeling that members of local communities use to build large-scale coalitions can also fuel factional disputes. The rural inhabitants of Oriente, a region of the Mexican state of Yucatán, have had some of their most important dealings with their nation's government as self-identified "peasants" and "Maya." In the early twentieth century, peasant identity played a key role in a series of institutions through which communities secured title to collectively held lands and free public schools, and asserted their rights as a special class of Mexican citizens. Today, amid vastly different economic and political realities, the descendants of these same people are experimenting with the use of Mayan identity as a means of securing other concessions and collective rights (see Figure 1.1). Yet both of these periods also involve a second dimension of identity politics: the narratives and labels that help local people to imagine different forms of collective action and solidarity also figure in intracommunity feuds that fragment larger coalitions.

Throughout this book, I will argue that this dual tendency is an element of local experience that transcends the differences between the agrarian politics of the early twentieth century and contemporary mobilizations of Mayan identity. My goal in stressing these parallels is not to provide a comprehensive linear history of the evolution or transformation of identity politics in Oriente. Rather, I will use ethnography, oral history, and closely targeted archival research to examine how local experiences of peasant and indigenous politics are shaped both by ambiguities built into the vernacular language of identity and by tensions within the social organization of rural communities. In some cases, the parallels between agrarian and ethnic politics are due to a direct historical continuity in certain institutions or ideas. For example, the collective memory of political processes associated with the agrarian reform of the 1920s and 1930s has shaped the expectations that many people have for newer forms of indigenous identity politics. The heritage of early twentieth-century institutions is less evident in other political phenomena, such as the new importance given to the term "Maya" by the market for cultural tourism. Even in these cases, however, processes of factionalism and solidarity — like those that shaped the agrarian reform — are also shaping multicultural politics.

In my comparison of these two periods, I will use a fairly expansive definition of phrases such as "identity politics" or "politics of identity." That is, I will use these terms to refer both to the negotiation of older statesanctioned social identities such as "peasant" and to more contemporary uses of Mayan ethnic identity. This approach runs somewhat against the grain of a tendency in contemporary literature, which often draws a contrast between the "class-based" peasant organizing of the early and mid-twentieth century and the explicitly ethnic "identity politics" of post–Cold War indigenous movements (Alvarez, Dagnino, and Escobar 1998; Castañeda 1994; Hale 1994; Yashar 2005). But as social histories of other parts of Mexico have demonstrated (Boyer 2003; Purnell 1999), the meaning of the term "peasant" was as ambiguous to rural agriculturalists in the 1920s and 1930s as notions like Maya are today. In many ways, early twentieth-century peasant-based organizations were also experienced by local communities as a form of identity politics, in which rural people and urban bureaucrats negotiated a working definition of these politically resonant labels. Then and now, who can claim specific rights and privileges often hinges on local disputes over who "counts" as a member of a given social or ethnic category.

This kind of ethnographic history, like the expansive definition of identity politics that I will use throughout the text, helps explain how the ethnic movements of post–Cold War Latin America are understood by their rank-and-file constituents. Changes in political culture that seem significant from a top-down perspective can — but often don't — have a significant impact on the everyday speech and common sense of rural people. Especially since the 1990s, anthropologists have demonstrated how the application of a broad identity label such as "Maya people" tends to obscure a range of localized identities and loyalties that have a more tangible presence in the everyday life of rural communities (Gabbert 2004; Hervik 1999; Restall 1997; Gabbert 2004; Hervik 1999). The fact that grassroots movements have begun employing the idea of Maya culture and other broad ethnic rubrics in new ways seems to imply that these essentializing "Mayan" identities are transforming older localisms. In the Mexican case, this shift in local forms of identity has often been explained in terms of a dynamic between the decline of twentieth-century welfare institutions and peasant organization, and the rise of ethnic mobilizations that have sought to adapt to new neoliberal realities (Mattiace 2009; Yashar 2005).

Presbyterianism to the community of Pisté. His other grandfather was the first tour guide at Chichén Itzá. He himself has helped to administer Pisté's collective landholdings as director of the local agrarian committee (comisario ejidal). He and his family are active participants in an organization of local vendors of handicrafts who have asserted their rights to sites of sale in the ruins of Chichén Itzá as descendants of its ancient builders. The range of engagements with peasant, Mayan, and other identities that are implicit in his and his family's experience is typical of the complexity of self-labeling in the political life of Oriente. Photo by author.

Although a top-down analysis of large-scale mobilizations and formal political institutions suggests that post–Cold War identity politics is changing local forms of identity, these processes can seem more fluid and ambiguous in the conversations that take place at the kitchen tables, agricultural fields, and storefronts of rural communities. In these spaces, people make sense of new political possibilities with oral narratives that commemorate earlier...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Univ of Chicago behalf of UP Colorado
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1607323532
• ISBN 13: 9781607323532
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 220
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland