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This is to certify that the

dissertation entitled

"SOLO TENIAN LA VOLUNTAD":
INDIGENOUS TEACHERS OF PUEBLAIMEXICO

presented by
Francisco J. Téllez Ortega
has been accepted towards fulfillment

of the requirements for

Ph . D . degree in Anthropology

 

 

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LUNTAD: INDIGENOUS
A, MEXICO

so'Lo TENI'AN LA V0
TEACHERS OF PUEBL

By

Francisco Javier Te’llez Ortega

in partial fulfill
for the degree 0

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Anthropology

2001

 

 

ABSTRACT

so'Lo TENIAN LA VOL UNTAD:
INDIGENOUS TEACHERS or PUEBLA, MEXICO

By

Francisco Javier Téllez Ortega

The study focuses on the process of identity formation of indigenous schoolteachers who
attended the Teacher’s University in Puebla, Mexico. Puebla is located in Central Mexico
and has a significant number of indigenous people (the 5th largest number in Mexico).
The percentage of indigenous teachers is equally as high. In 1997-1999, they represented
10.6 percent of the total number of teachers in the state.

The research examines both influences of structural factors and of individual
action in the processes of ethnic membership. For this study, ethnographic data of various
types was collected including narrative material produced by the teachers (writings and
interviews to create life narratives) and observations (of teacher’s interactions at the
University, workplaces, and private environments).

The study concluded that identity is formed in the interaction between agency and
structure. Structure is conceptualized here as sedimented action. Structure cannot be
understood as a general or abstract context, but as historically Specific. The case of
Puebla’s teachers is a good example: they form a heterogeneous group with different
features. Some of them are acculturated; others are more oriented towards native culture.
State programs for training indigenous teachers have a differential impact depending on
the type of teachers. This Shows precisely that even in the case that individuals can

manage ethnic ascription, they do not do so freely. Context is the scenario where teachers

have to negotiate their action.

The study shows ethnicity as a historical term. Ethnicity is not a timelessness
element but on the contrary, it gets its meaning from the context. In Mexico this is related
to the particular history of the country, where Indian symbols and culture have an old
tradition of being appropriated by the State to create a national identity. Teachers have to
deal with the consequences of this process.

In the end, although teachers are not puppets of their circumstances, and their
actions show this, they do have finite possibilities to act, and the results do not

necessarily help them obtain a better social position as a group.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In any human action, however small it may be, many other contributions are condensed,
sometimes involuntarily. We know this, and yet we hardly ever stop to think of our debts
to the great number of people when the work is finished. A review of each of these
contributions allows us to really perceive the nature and depth of these collective
enterprises.

The work I present in these pages can never be at the level of the contributions I
received in order to carry it out. Many have helped, some perhaps unknowingly. I hope to
include the most important.

Above all, I sincerely give my greatest thanks to the teachers who are the
participants in this endeavor. Without them, this simply couldn’t have been done. They
had to endure me not only when I discovered a second vocation (teaching), but also when
I reaffirmed the first (anthropology). They gave me much of their time and personal
confidence; they shared their memories with me, as well as their friendship and college
activities. Some of them saw the stubborn or disconcerting questions of an outsider with
distrust, but it is fair to say they never reacted negatively and always Showed more
openness than some colleagues I know. This exercise of acknowledgment may perhaps
not be of much help, but I have the feeling that I tried to pay my debts to them in the
classrooms and in other places.

Ana Laura Me’ndez Rivera, then an undergraduate in social anthropology, helped me with
the field work. Her research capacity is reflected in the fine ethnographic reports that

appear in some of these pages.

My professors were at all times of invaluable help. They encouraged me to carry
on since university. I am especially indebted to the director of my dissertation committee,
Dr. Scott Whiteford, who did everything in his power to make the work go on, in spite of
all the obstacles that came in the way and others that were my responsibility. A great part
of what I learned in the classroom was the product of Dr. Ruth Hamilton’s example. She
has been an ever-present reference for my academic activity. Dr. Alice Littlefield helped
initiate this adventure by encouraging me to travel to Michigan for the first time. Dr.
Joseph Spielberg and Dr. Helen Pollard part of my committee, and professors in the
doctoral program, were always very supportive and patient with my slow learning. Dr.
Manuel Chavez, a good mexicano friend and also member of my committee was essential
as an intermediario between Anglo and Mexican cultures and helped me a lot in the last
and difficult step of the defense with friendship and wisdom.

In Puebla, the support of Lie. Julio Antonio Jimenez Montiel, first at the
Universidad Pedago'gica Nacional and later in the state’s Secretarz'a de Educacio’n
Priblica, was always unconditional. The fact that the research could be carried out and
completed depended in large measure on this support. Feliciano May Reyes, a good
friend, helped a lot with the nightmare of scanning and computer problems.

This work has been a process that began Since I initiated the doctoral program,
and that would not have been possible without the help of the Ford Foundation and the
Mexico’s Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologr'a (C ONACYT) and their scholarships
for my doctoral studies. From the Consejo Nacional de la C ultura, through the Seminario
de la Cultura, I received a financial grant that enabled me to carry out the research.

Finally, the Programa para el mejoramiento del profesorado (PROMEP) gave me a

scholarship for the termination and presentation of the thesis. In this last effort, the help
provided by the authorities of the Facultad de Filosofia y Letras of the Beneme'rita
Universidad Auto'noma de Puebla has been fundamental.

There are two women who also played an important role, since they were
deprived of a large part of the time invested here: La Maga, my companion of sleepless
nights and many joys, and my daughter Valentina.

There are always many others who cannot be named, not for lack of gratitude but
forgetfulness. To all of them my most sincere apologies.

With so much help, it would seem impossible to fail. However, the correctness of
the results do not depend on these generous contributions, but on the infinity of things

one still has to learn. Thus, all errors are my responsibility alone.

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES
LIST OF FIGURES

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION.

Individual action and social context: the case of ethnicity
A proposal for the study of ethnicity

The Mexican case

Ethnicity as a social construction

Action and structure in ethnicity

Indigenous teachers and ethnicity

Methodological and research strategy

On the limits of this study

On work organization

CHAPTER 2. ETHNICITY IN MEXICO
Establishing terms

Indigenous population in Mexico: the origins
Present conditions

The indigenous people, the national imaginary and the really existing relations

Political situation
Conditions in Puebla
Summary

CHAPTER 3. STATE POLITICS AND THE CONFORMATION
OF SOCIAL SUBJECTS

Indigenism, indigenous education and teachers in Mexico
Teachers’ training at the Universidad Pedagogica Nacional

In search of the group

The indigenous teachers: round trip

CHAPTER 4. RECOMPOSING MEMORIES: THE SEARCH FOR
IDENTITY

Identity as a travel: the departure

Memories of “lived” life

Identity as travel: the return

Other memories, other experiences

Rationalizing: controlling the contradictions

Performances

Teachers: narrative of word and deed

vii

50

72
72
82
95
l 12

114
118
119
139
145
150
160
165

CONCLUSIONS 167

BIBLIOGRAPHY 171

viii

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 Number of indigenous populations in the 20‘h century

Table 2 Entities with a major proportion of speakers of indigenous languages
In 1990

Table 3 Macro-languages in 1990

Table 4 Medium languages in 1990

Table 5 Micro languages in 1990

Table 6 Indigenous population in the state of Puebla in 1970
Table 7 Indigenous population in the state of Puebla in 1999
Table 8 Percentage of INI’S budget devoted to personnel 1962-1970
Table 9 Context of Spanish learning Class 1990

Table 10 Context of Spanish learning Class 1992

Table 11 Ethnic origin of teachers from Class 1990

Table 12 Native language of the teachers from Class 1990
Table 13 Ethnic origin of the teachers from Class 1992

Table 14 Native language of the teachers from Class 1992

41

42

44

44

45

63

63

78

87

87

116

116

116

117

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 Geographical location of the State of Puebla

Figure 2 Indigenous regions in Mexico

Figure 3 Location of the communities visited

Figure 4 Areas of concentration of indigenous population in Puebla
Figure 5 Peasant and teacher in the Sierras

Figure 6 Elena’s wedding

32

33

34

62

164

166

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Individual Action and Social Context: The Case of Ethnicity

This study analyzes the processes of identity formation in a group of indigenous
schoolteachers who studied for their licenciatura degree in indigenous education at
Universidad Pedago’gica Nacional in Puebla, Mexico (cf. Figure 1). More specifically,
the purpose here is to examine both the influence of structural factors and individual
action in the processes of ethnic membership formation.

The explanation of the contribution which human action has, or does not have, in
the production and reproduction of social structures, and how this happens, are central
issues in social theory (Archer 1982; Giddens 1986 and 1990; Foley 1990 and Elster
1996). In ethnic studies, although these problems are not always mentioned directly, the
production and reproduction of social structure are implicit within the fundamental
theoretical-methodological problems of the field. The discussion of the nature of
ethnicity has primarily revolved around the mechanisms through which individuals
identify themselves, and are identified by others, as members of specific social groups,
and the role played by the action of individuals within the changing social context.

Scholarly work in this field falls into four positions in this respect. First are
authors who claim that ethnic membership is the result of factors situated beyond human
will and action, and that those factors are not strictly structural. These scholars assume
that the processes of identity are localized on levels outside of the social realm, be it in

the biological (Van den Berghe1978) or in an undefined field, prior to the social

experience (Geertz 1973; Isaacs 1989). The primordialists are found in this group.
Human action does not fit into this perspective nor is it completely minimized, and the
actors are presented as completely, or mostly “determined” by pre-existing forces, in
ways seldom ever explained.

The second school includes scholars who believe that identities are results of the
manipulations carried out by the actors, be it through self-association (Barth 1969) or by
means of rational (Schiller 1977) or conscious (Leach 1965) choice. Among these
scholars, great importance is given to the search for more or less immediate interests that
are clearly defined. The instrumentalists, who reacting to the lack of explanatory power
and to an excess of structuralism of the primordialists, are situated in this second group.
Unfortunately we also find limitations in their model and an excessive emphasis on
individual will, and failure to recognize mediations and obstacles of the context.

A third position is a reaction to voluntarist excesses of the instrumentalists. The
authors of these critiques base their arguments on the importance of taking into account
the role of social context -be it institutional- a framework within which are situated the
so-called “other ethnics” or “other powerfuls” (Yelvington 1991) or the State (Bodemann
1990), the capitalist class structure (Bonacich, E. 1980), the geopolitical system of
Capitalism (Worsley, P. 1984) or the system of nation-states (specifically for the case of
Latin America, cf. Diaz-Polanco 1988; Urban and Sherzer 1991; and Medina 1992).

A fourth position holds the problem of ethnic identification lie within the horizon
of activity of the actors. This position assumes that identification is not a question of a
strictly voluntary decision, but rather the result of social practices that have been

mediated through social mechanisms, predispositions, following Bourdieu concept.

These predispositions would be situated beyond immediate individual conscience
(Bentley 1991), so that there is a greater interaction between actors and context.

In spite of all the ongoing debates, the discussion is far from being resolved, and
what is still under discussion are the concrete forms by means of which ethnic identities
are produced and reproduced, and the manner in which social conditioning and the
subjects’ activities are introduced into the process. In the extent that identities seem to be
a result of the interaction between actor’s actions and social conditions, the fourth
position offers more and better possibilities. This study is therefore based on this
perspective. However, it is essential to make some observations as to the way in which

this study faces the problem at hand.

A Proposal for the Study of Ethnicity

The focus of this investigation is the form in which individual action and social context
intervene in the formation of ethnic identity of a particular group. For this purpose the
general model of Anthony Giddens (1986) is drawn upon, specifically his formulation of
action and structure along with other contributions that highlight the historical elements.
Although Giddens takes into account power and refers in a more concrete sense to the
context, his model still remains located in a very abstract level.

In this sense, the bases are mainly the studies by Douglas Foley (Foley 1990) and
William Roseberry (1989). Both scholars put into frame class analysis and a historical
Perspective. Using all these approaches, I have tried to develop a view that combines a
detailed but formal approach to both individual agency and social structure with a more

historical perspective where actors exist in concrete settings.

I am defining ethnicity as a specific form of social identity, a definition that
requires some explanation. To begin with, identity refers both to internal and external
processes of the identification of social groups. Internal identification comprises the
forms by which the actors “know” of their belonging to specific groups; in other words,
this is a question of the processes of self-assignment derived from the mechanisms of
formation of social groups. This self-assignment does not necessarily imply a conscious
decision, since it can be said that it includes various levels of consciousness and
manipulation, which may span the range from the practical to the strategic.

The practical level is derived from the concept of practical consciousness
proposed by Anthony Giddens, which is a “tacit knowledge that is skillfully applied in
the enactment of courses of conduct, but which the actor is not able to formulate
discursively” (1986: 57). In other words, these are mechanisms that permit action and that
base their efficiency on their non-conscious and automatic nature. This characterization
captures precisely the fundamental features of what I conceive of as identity at a practical
level: everyday practices that permit the subjects to form part of distinct groups, but
which do not reach the level of a clear rationalization. They are part of a stock of
knowledge (ibid. 56-57) situated in individual and social memory of the groups and that
can be recovered or identified through action or inquiry.

The concept of the strategic level, on the other hand, is taken from the ideas of
Judith Stein, who writes that “Popular identities, whether racial or nonracial, are
constructed as people define their social and political objectives,” and “The ways people
define themselves are determined by their history, politics, and class. They change. The

same words conveyed vastly different meanings and encouraged diverse actions. They

mean less and more than they seem. People employ strategic fictions that can be
understood only in a context” (Stein1989: 77 and 78. Italics are mine). Thus the strategic
level indicates a more conscious and instrumental, and therefore more rationalized, form
of identity. On this level actors can make use of the elements of group traditions or
invented traditions. This generally happens in a Situation of confrontation between
groups, when identity turns into a defense mechanism (Hobsbawm1989).

External identification, on the other hand, alludes to the role the social context
plays in the definition and acknowledgment of groups. It is clear that creation processes
are not only a question of self-identification, but also one of social sanction which may
help or hinder, validate or invalidate such self-identification, so that the result is a process
of social negotiation. This context is composed of more or less precise elements, among
which the other powerfuls mentioned above stand out, i.e. those instances which have
more weight in social categorization. What stands out most among these other powerful
entities are the institutions and especially the State.

Thus identity appears to be the result of the action of both processes: internal and
external identification on the one hand, and as part of the existence of social groups on
the other. In other words, identity is a phenomenon which forms part of the formation,
conservation and transformation of social groups that in themselves must be understood
as processes. To understand these groups as processes means to consider first of all their
dynamic nature and the possibility of interpenetration of social components (Clifford
1988). This will also be discussed further below.

Returning to the definition of ethnicity, it must also be clearly defined how this

tJ’Pe of social identity distinguishes itself from others, or what it is that makes it specific.

Here I return to the historical nature of social concepts. For the case at hand this means
that the ethnic question is not a transhistorical or universal phenomenon, but is, quite to
the contrary, defined in very clear terms from a standpoint of time and space.

Based on the above expositions, it may be said that ethnicity is the set of
processes that permit the identification of distinct groups, either by their own members or
by external observers by means of fundamentally cultural criteria and in a precise socio-
political context, namely the system of nation-states.

It is essential to analyze the ethnic component within the process of the creation of
new socio-political units that took place during the 18‘h and 19th centuries. However, it
must be pointed out that the ideas associated with nationalism begin to appear before that,
in the transition from absolute monarchy to bourgeois democracy by means of illustrated
despotism (Woolf 1989; Hobsbawm 1991). This process involves, among other things,
the appearance of a new State that becomes secular, more centralized, and in general
monopolizes more efficiently a series of attributes which up to this moment had been
dispersed in more decentralized political bodies (Giddensl 990; Hobsbawm 1991).

This new political core developed a new form of territorial power based on an
ideology that combined pre-existing notions, such as the claim of ancestral rights to
territories, with completely new ideas, such as popular sovereignty and citizenship. It is
precisely in this growing national territory where new forms of political legitimization
were developed, which involved new forms of group membership.

This is how a new demarcation line emerged between us and the others, where the
former were identified as those who maintained a common origin, blood ties, or who

possessed natural rights over ancestral territories, and who were now, above all,

represented by a State. The others were those with whom there was supposedly nothing
in common and who, in practical terms, were subjects of other political units.

As part of this process of creation of new national communities, elements and
practices appeared that encouraged real or imagined homogeneities: national languages
that imposed themselves on dialect varieties or other languages that from this moment on
became less prestigious and were considered marginal (Anderson 1991). Also State
religions were imposed on regional, local and family cults. In short, the physical
prototypes that would create the illusion of physical distinction were associated with
socio-cultural particularities (Dikotter 1990).

Nonetheless, diversities inside the national body often persisted, and a variable
number of populations —immigrants or natives— differed to a greater or lesser degree from
the national prototype. This is the modern sense of ethnicity. Ethnic populations hence
came to be those that maintained a distinctive contrast in features such as language,
religion and/or physiognomy as compared with the national models, while these
populations were not necessarily foreign, although this could be the case.

The sense of the ethnic, i.e. the meaning and characteristics it has acquired, differs
from one nation to the next, from highly homogeneous countries to nations with ample
diversity. Under these conditions, the ethnic does not have a unique and general sense.
On the contrary, it may be said that it is situational: it depends on the historical processes
of national composition.

In the case of the Americas (a similar classification can be found in Ribeiro 1977),
there are four general trends. First, are nations where populations from Europe have

displaced, by conquest and annihilation, the indigenous populations. In these cases

national features were defined by means of transfer and acclimation of the European
mold, which became criollos (in regional terminology, Spaniards born in the Americas).
In some places populations survived or arrived at a later time, but were “invisible” in the
national imagination. Argentina and Uruguay are examples of this situation. The ethnicin
appears in these cases as a marginal element in the nation and has been used above all to
describe the European heritage of the colonizing groups more than that of the aboriginal
populations, which are almost always disappeared and imperceptible to the dominating
view.

The second type comprises those nations where native populations maintained
themselves as important components of the total population. In general terms, these
nations can be grouped around the so-called pre-Spanish high cultures, i.e. Mesoamerica
(Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua), and the Andean region
(Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and Chile). In these regions the dominant groups from the
beginning of national emancipation were criollos who implemented, with changing
fortune, national standards in which the American aborigine, without being absent (which
was near impossible), was combined with elements of European origin. Here the groups
of different origin —such as Africans and Asians— had a greater weight, and their
influence has almost always been regional or local. Thus ethnicity in those countries has
generally designated those native groups that continue maintaining an important
presence. Frequently ethnicity, by means of the appropriation of symbols and practices,
has been an important component of the nationalist ideology that supports the State.

A third variant is exemplified by nations in which the African component has

played a fundamental role in the building of the nation. It may be said that some

demographic components in these countries are a product of the processes of US.
expansion at the beginning of the 19th century and of the plantation economy (Hamilton
1988). Brazil, most of the Caribbean countries, Honduras, Panama and Costa Rica form
this category. Ethnicity in these contexts is understood as something characterized by
racial elements.

The fourth case is constituted by those countries where a total extermination of
native populations has taken place, hand in hand with the transfer of other populations,
leading to a difficult national coexistence. Under these conditions ethnicity has meant an
amalgam of groups and characteristics that maintain a complicated form of living
together. Some authors (F urnivall and Kuper 1978) have defined this kind of situation as

a plural society. Here, Jamaica and Surinam are the most known examples.

The Mexican case.
In Mexico ethnicity refers initially to a contrast between the national culture and a group
of native populations referred generically as indigenas or indios. Beyond this line, a
careful examination shows that it is not possible to talk about a dual scheme with two
well-defined sets of populations. One the one hand, the group representing national
culture is the outcome of four and a half hundred of years of biological miscegenation
and cultural blending among native populations, Africans, Asians and Europeans.

The result has been a great mestizo group with remarkably cultural and physical
differences: some strata are more Westemized and have a “white” appearance and
allegiances, while other have strong indigenous influences in culture and physiognomy.

Additionally, even though there is not a mechanical relation between social class and

ethnicity, upper classes tend to be whiter and more westemized than working classes.
Also working class culture seems to be more influenced by ethnicity: social practices
with indigenous roots such as the dead’ day ceremonies and native symbols, among
others features (Medina 1990b).

It is important to emphasize that these categories are historical based and
contextually defined. Mestizo has changed in its meaning and context from a colonial
usage referring only to the mixed descent of Europeans and indios to a current use,
designating the overall non-indigenous population. Moreover, mestizo seems to be mostly
an observer category used mainly by scholars and politicians. Examined more carefully,
both sociologically and anthropologically, it would be difficult to find features common
to the overall mestizo group aside of the Spanish language. Some authors have mentioned
that the strongest link among Mexican mestizos is an ideological and political one,
provided by the State through nationalism (Bartra 1987).

For actors the most common term probably would be mexicanos. However, this
term is not part of everyday social relationships in Mexico in the extent that it is a
contrasting category that only makes sense in distinguishing situations and it only arises
for instance when international soccer games take place or during the national
celebrations. Interestingly, some nahua groups identify themselves also as mexicanos or
mexicaneros not meaning Mexicans but members of mexicano ethnic group, that is
nahuas (Corte's 1990).

On the other hand, indigenous populations also have a very wide range of
Variation in terms of culture, language, external links, social conditions, and so forth. It is

possible to find communities with high distinctiveness (physical, cultural and linguistic)

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such as the case of lacandones in Chiapas (but even among them it is possible to find
European and African genes and indigenous cultural elements. Manrique 1994: 4) but
also those groups practically similar to their mestizo neighbors, such as the case of kiliwa
and paipai of Baja California (ibid.). It is important to emphasize that indigenous
traditional culture is basically the result of colonial contact. Many elements recognized as
traditional ones (such as the civil-religious cargo system, religious beliefs, and dress)
were brought by Spanish missionaries in the early years of colonization and blended with
Prehispanic features (Manrique op. cit; Medina 1983a).

Also in terms of economic activities it is possible to find variation among
indigenous peoples. Although the majority of Indians live in rural communities and many
of them are smallholder peasants (Manrique op. cit.), this is not always the case. In some

areas, Chiapas for instance, many of them are jornaleros [wage agricultural workers]
related to capitalist agriculture. In other areas, they migrate massively abroad, like the
case of mixtecos who find jobs in services and in agriculture (Medina 1983a; Nagengast
and Keamy 1990).

In other places they have urban occupations, like zapotecos of Oaxaca Isthmus
Who work for the State oil company (PEMEX), in trade (especially women), and in the
local government. In Mexico City, triques of Oaxaca and mazahuas of the state of
Mexico, among others, are part of informal sectors earning their livelihood as artisans
and street vendors; nahuas can be found as bureaucrats in State institutions, and otomt'es
in construction labor force (Arizpe 1979).

In terms of geographical location, although migration has spread indigenous

Populations practically throughout the national territory, they tend to concentrate in the

traditional area of Central and Southern Mexico called Mesoamerica. In this area, several
regions can be distinguished: 1) Huasteca, highland zone in the confluence of Veracruz,
San Luis Potosi and Hidalgo states. 2) Mezquital Valley, in central Hidalgo. 3) Tarascan
region, in Michoacan. 4) Sierra Norte in northern Puebla. 5) Mexico basin, in the
surroundings of the capital city. 6) T oluca Valley, in the state of Mexico. 7) Mixtec-
Tlapanec area in southern Puebla and northeast Guerrero. 8) Mixtec-Zapotec area in
Oaxaca. 9) Chiapas Highlands. 10) Mayan area in Yucatan, Quintana R00 and
Campeche states. These regions are identified in Figure 2.

In these areas, indigenous populations are basically located in rural communities.
Communities themselves Show a range of variation from the most traditional ones, where
native language and practices are well alive, to those where ethnicity exists without
Indians. Several causes are behind the nature of all this variation: regional social
structure, economical development, and historical interethnic relationships, among others.

In summary, although to a certain extent ethnicity in Mexico can be depicted as a
contrast between a “national” non-indigenous group and native populations, social
relationships are much more complicated.

Many Indian expressive practices and beliefs are broadly spread among many
non-indigenous groups; also, biological miscegenation has produced a mixed population
that exhibits many physical indigenous features. Additionally, social class usually is
linked to ethnic markers but not in a mechanical way. In rural indigenous areas, ethnicity
(Signalized through a multitude of social diacritics) is the crucial difference to locate

individuals in social structure. A mestizo peasant usually is located at a higher level than

an indio peasant, and even Indian caciques are in lower places than their mestizo
counterparts.

In urban settings, ethnicity tends to be more linked to social class. Migration and
the possibility of reinventing oneself with a new identity allows the people to mask and
change traditional markers of indigenous identity. In some cases, the new identities draw
on mestizo working class characteristics. The result is a highly discriminated sector
labeled naco; a term that unifies in a single category stigmatized features attributed both

to working class and Indian sectors (Ortiz Pinchetti 1989a and b).

Ethnicity as a social construction.
The Mexican case exemplifies the process of “making ethnic populations”, a process that
is far beyond an automatic or a general one. Nor are the features employed to this end by
nature immediately objective or perceptible for the external observer. On the contrary,
what is found is the social construction of ethnicity, namely, a political negotiation by
which ethnic characteristics are constantly defined by actors in a Specific social context.

Furthermore, it must be pointed out that ethnic distinction is not a neutral fact or a
Simple indication of cultural differences, but this differentiation under the conditions of
contemporary capitalist society is adjusting to the currently existing global system of
stratification.

Even though a discussion of contemporary social inequality goes much beyond
the limits of this study, in order to conclude this specification of ethnicity it is necessary
to mention some points regarding the relationship between ethnicity and the global

stratification system. I believe it is usefiil to think of this system as a network in which

13

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social class, gender, physical and ethnic features are fundamental systems to situate
certain groups within the social structure. These systems do not operate in isolated form,
but jointly in order to reproduce social life. This result can be thought of as a social
algebra in which values are provided by each system, and where these values are not
corresponding to each other perfectly, i.e. there may be contradictions between them.

In the specific case of ethnicity, this aspect can be seen as a marker which in
general terms situates certain populations in a position of subordination, although with
the combination of the other systems there could be ethnic populations or segments
thereof which maintain a privileged position in certain societies. It must be underlined
here that these are not formal operations, where all alternatives are possible, but political

processes determined by the concrete conditions in which the social actors develop.

Action and Structure in Ethnicity
A fundamental part in the study of ethnicity is the elucidation of the manner in which
action and social context intervene in the creation and reproduction of identities. The
different positions existing in this respect were mentioned, and it has been pointed out
which of them appear to be the most promising. Now it is necessary to determine the
manner in which action and structure will be understood for the purpose of this study. As
previously mentioned, Anthony Giddens’ model (1986: 55 et passim) will be used in
order to understand both elements. It is important to state again that this author will try to
overcome the fruitless separation that has been created between these terms.

Thus agency will be viewed as a flow of causal interventions of human beings in

the facts of the world, which furthermore implies a) a concept of the acting agent; b) a

14

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theory of the institutions; c) a notion of the intervention of temporality; and d) a proposal
on the role of power. For the integration of these elements, Giddens proposes a stratified
model of action, in which four components must be acknowledged: l) the reflexive
monitoring of action, which alludes to the intentional nature of all human activity, and
which, however, rarely implies the rationalization or the conscious nature of that activity.
Giddens also says that the most distinctive characteristic of this monitoring is the
possibility the agents have to give account of their behavior, based on a common stock of
knowledge; this stock of knowledge is what Giddens calls practical consciousness. 2) The
rationalization of agency is the agents’ ability to explain their acts. Giddens affirms that
just like the intentions, these reasons only form discrete accounts in the context of
questions asked by others or by the actor himself as part of a self-reflexive process. 3)
The unknown conditions of action include all unconscious motives and all motives
foreign to the agent’s understanding. 4) The unintended consequences of action are
consequences that escape the initial propositions of the actor; Giddens points out that
they are of central importance, since they are systematically incorporated into the process
of reproduction of the institutions, and also form part of the conditions of agency as they
become part of social reproduction.

AS far as structure is concerned, Giddens mentions that this term is applied to a
set of properties which permit the binding of time and Space in social systems and refer to
rules and resources used in recurrent form in the reproduction of social systems. On the
other hand, these resources are what Giddens identifies as power and understands more as
an ability than a state of things. According to him, all this implies a) A certain type of

knowledge, which appears as traces of memory of how things should be done by the

15

actors. b) Organized social practices, by means of the repetitive mobilization of this
knowledge. c) Finally, the abilities which presuppose the production of these practices.

An important issue that must be pointed out is the distinction Giddens establishes
between structure and system. He frequently mentions that both terms have been
confused in social theory. For Giddens, system refers to the set of relations of
interdependence between individuals and groups, which are repetitive and can best be
analyzed as recurrent social practices. Consequently, social practices are understood as
systems of social interaction that achieve a self-regulation by self-reflection.

A second fundamental element in this proposal is the definition of individual.
According to Giddens, this concept has generally been considered in the specialized
literature with enough clarity and thus does not warrant a major explanation. For him,
however, it is essential to define what is meant by individual, underlining that it may not
be understood in the trivial sense of the human organism. Consequently, individual is a
synonym of agent, subject or actor; concepts that are used to emphasize the mediations
existing between individual activity and social results. It is clear that his model of agency
and structure allows a better understanding of these mediations. It is also important to
underline another characteristic of the individual as agent, derived from the stratified
model of agency, namely the knowledge that all actors have, albeit not always
consciously, of the society of which they are members. Giddens refers here to the concept
0f penetration proposed by Paul Willis, in order to emphasize knowledge, however
minimal it may be, held by the subjects about social structures that oppress them.

Giddens states that this knowledge must be understood in terms of practical and reflective

 

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consciousness, since even where there is a substantial penetration of the subjects, this is
not necessarily or normally expressed in the manner of a proposition.

Lastly, and in order to overcome the dichotomy between agency and structure,
Giddens comments on the structural properties of agency, namely that the results of
agency become conditions of the same.

All of this permits a better approach to the object of study, because not only does
it give clarity to fundamental concepts, but it also helps to derive methodological

strategies that allow empirical access to the problem of the definition of identities.

Indigenous teachers and ethnicity.

In Mexico, ethnicity is a multifaceted phenomenon displaying different meanings and
uses depending on the levels where ethnic contrast takes place, and the actors involved in
the process. By levels, I understand the social contexts where actors interact between
them and with institutions. In the case of indigenous teachers, these levels of ethnic
identification are working place, University, neighborhood, family, and community of
origin. In each of these levels, ethnic identification comprises different elements, actors,
meanings, and ethnic performances.

Working place goes from the Subsistema de Educacio'n Indigena (Subsystem of
Indigenous Education) to school. At the Subsistema, teachers are a distinctive group with
particular practices, culture, and identity that is a mixture of general teacher culture, with
SPecific ideology about the Indian heritage. Here, teachers face a twofold Situation; on
one hand, they find Indianess as the core of official educative discourse and ideology and

representing a positive value. Indianess encourages a display of ethnic attributes but in a

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very restricted way: it is a narrow cultural view that detaches ethnicity from its social and
class context. On the other hand, they find the usual negative connotation attributed to
ethnicity and discriminatory practices in everyday interactions with non-indigenous
teachers and officials. At this level the role of State institutions appears crucial for group
definition in the extent that these institutions actively encourage group distinctiveness.

At the school level, ethnic identification depends greatly on the location of the
working place. In rural, indigenous settings, teachers, in spite of their origins, tend to
form a different group from the Indigenous, rural population: they behave and dress
differently, and generally live outside of communities. A combination of causes accounts
for this: their very job, change of activity, State policies of job location‘, and even
communities and teachers’ strategiesz. In urban schools, teachers are not very different
from the mestizo working class people living in the places where schools are located.
Additionally, teachers look and behave as any mestizo teacher; they interact with mestizo
parents in mestizo fashion. In classes they teach a normal, national curricula, always in
Spanish.

At the University, indigenous teachers form a different group from the rest of the
teachers. Although they speak in Spanish and dress as mestizos, indigenous teachers show
subtle differences discernible for local observers. For instance, they are generally more
Shy than other teachers, they are not active in the University’s student organizations, and
they tend to separate from the rest of the non-indigenous teachers during recesses and

other general activities.

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2 AS a rule, new teachers are located far away from their origin communities in their initial position.

Some teachers commented that they preferred to work in different communities than those where they
came from, in order to gain respect from the villagers.

l8

In the neighborhood where teachers live, generally they are not different from
other working class mestizo inhabitant of suburbs. Many of these settlers are themselves
newcomers from elsewhere in the country.

At the family level, ethnicity appears in practical fashion combined with strategic
elements. Teachers, in Spite of their mestizaje, retain attachments, food preferences,
beliefs, religious practices, and even the use of social space3 that have clear ethnic
references. But, at the same time, teachers almost never teach native languages to their
children or teach them to take part in native practices. It iS as if they could handle those
more visible and conscious features but remain filled with ethnic predispositions.

At the level of the community of origin, when teachers return for holidays, they
are members of the group again: many of them give away of more urban clothes, using
the rural attire and participate in festivities and agricultural work. The stock of knowledge
that remains latent in memory becomes active and allows them to regain ethnic
attachments and indigenous teacher identification is put in a “stand by” condition. Of
course, this depends on the fact that the community itself has strong ethnic structure with
cultural practices and beliefs alive.

All of these levels show that different ethnic performances and allegations are
possible for the same individual, depending on the level where s/he is situated and to the
individuals to whom s/he is related. Also, there must be common information available
context bounded (ethnic markers) to actors (indigenous and not indigenous) that allows

them to know how to interact and keep social relations flowing.

 

3 Teachers’ houses frequently have a “rural look” with domestic animals as turkeys and chicken and other
objects.

19

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Methodological and Research Strategy

As can be shown, the phenomena of ethnic membership is the result of the processes of
interaction between self-association and external identification, which can be best
understood in terms of negotiation, i.e. as a political process in which various actors
participate, mobilizing resources and media with the not always explicit object of
creating an identity. This process may or may not have the form of direct confrontation,
but must always be defined over and over again.

In this negotiation the agency of the subjects and the intervention of the structural
elements appear with the aforementioned characteristics. In this self-ascription the
subjects thus establish their membership in certain groups by means of certain facts that
in general terms are not rationalized or put in discursive form, but are acted practically
and automatically, since identity is an element that permits the preservation of social
relations. This does not mean that the individuals are completely unable to discourse
about the processes created by their actions, since at the same time there is a level of
rationalization that can be accessed by the actors under the necessary conditions, for
instance in the course of a reflexive action, initiated by themselves or by others, or when
social conditions make the recovery of certain facts necessary, as is the case in the course
of a social mobilization.

Besides this, it must also be taken into consideration that the actions of agents do
not take place in a social vacuum, but on the contrary will always be complemented by
the participation of other wishes and actions, namely those of other actors who intervene
in the process, mainly institutions and the State, due to their role in the configuration of

these contexts. Thus the inclusion of the unintended consequences of action must be

20

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taken into account, i.e. those results which are not contemplated in the original
propositions of the actor, but do represent the result of the activity of all actors. These
consequences may come to acquire a greater importance than the initial intentions.

There is yet another element to be considered in this process: the factor of time.
History, understood as temporality in social matters, is a component of social
phenomena. In this context I only wish to mention one particular aspect of the impact of
temporality on the creation of identities: the process which permits groups to preserve
their coherence over long periods of time. This phenomenon may be called
sedimentation" of social facts, which means a process through which actions become
permanent, essentially by their repetitive nature.

This sedimentation consists of both objective elements, such as collective
practices or material records, and of subjective elements that give meaning to the former,5
such as the common stock represented by social memory.

Paul Connerton (1989) points out that memory is a fundamental component of
social groups. As a matter of fact, he distinguishes three types of memory: personal
memory, which includes recollections associated with individual experiences; cognitive
memory, when we speak of remembering the meaning of words, jokes or the layout of a
city. He writes that this memory exists because there is the knowledge of a cognitive past
or a sensorial state distinct from the first type, since it is unnecessary to have any

information on the context or episode of learning in order to retain and use the memories

 

4 This term was apparently first used by Paul Ricoeur in the context of his discussion of the autonomization
of the action of his producer agents, and of the way it is being transformed in institutions. Paul Connerton
then uses this concept in his analysis of social memory, specifically when he reviews how the positions and
movements of the body are transformed (sedimented) in corporal shape. Giddens himself uses it to refer to
institutions understood as practices that are deeply rooted in time and space. Connerton 1989: 94. Giddens
1986: 80; Ricoeur 1989: 206-207.

21

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of this class. And finally there is the habit memory, defined as the ability to reproduce
certain actions, such as reading or riding a bicycle. Often one does not remember how or
where certain knowledge was acquired, and only when the action is performed the ability
to remember is shown (Ibid: 22-23).

Insofar as the building of identities is part of temporal processes, mechanisms like
memory, which allow the fixing or sedimentation of certain collective practices becomes
fundamental. The analysis is conducted in accord with this methodological direction. It is
assumed that teachers’ recollections are a good key to the processes of identity formation
in the extent that memories condense common experiences even in the case of personal
recollections that finally acquire their meaning through collective practices.

This research is a case study carried out with two cohorts of teachers who were
studying for a licenciatura" in indigenous education. In the case reviewed, there are
formally two licenciaturas: one in pre-school education, and one in primary education,
according to the level at which the teachers were teaching. In real terms both study
courses operated with the same plan of studies, the same programs, and the teachers in
both courses of study formed unique groups that attended the same classes. The creation
of this program was the result of the demands of a group of indigenous people who were
working in different governmental programs and asked for an expansion of educational
services provided to indigenous populations (centered in preschool and elementary
education). The result was not entirely satisfactory in the extent that the program was
designed just for teachers and as a compensatory nature, namely, designed for those

teachers who were working without educational training.

 

5 The distinction between objective and subjective elements is merely methodological and does not mean
that an absolute separation between the two is assumed.

22

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Among teachers who attended the university, two classes were chosen for this
purpose: class 1990 (N=31) and class 1992 (N=3l). This means that one of them was
relatively advanced in their studies (in fact, this was the first class to study this
licenciatura at the Puebla campus), and the other had entered during the course of this
research (the third class in this specialty). My fieldwork was conducted from 1993
tol995, when I was their professor.

In order to clarify the conditions of the study I need to examine the process of the
representation of the other. Specifically I am interested in two aspects of this process:
first, the influence on the depiction of the indigenous teachers of my dual role as a
professor and as a researcher. Secondly, a description of how I ended being a teacher and
how this relates to the conditions of conducting fieldwork in Third World countries and
its implications in terms of anthropological knowledge, a subject that also has been
pointed out by Mexican anthropologists. Both aspects are related (Medina 1996).

Beginning with my double role, I have to say that appealing to participant
observation makes perfect sense in the extent that I was deeply involved in part of the
process through which teachers performed, reenacted, displayed, in sum, elaborated,
their identities: the school experience. At the same time, this involvement clearly
influenced my perception of teachers: not infrequently I found myself pursuing my own
ideas about what “must” be ethnic, sometimes against the readings or against teachers’
ideas. Some of these problems were worked out through the discussion and analysis with

the help of two-research assistants7 in which I tried to become self-aware and pinpoint

 

:Licenciatura is a college degree roughly equivalent to a Bachelor’s degree in the American system.
These assistants were at that time undergraduate students of anthropology at Universidad Auto'noma de
Puebla: Ana Laura Mendez Rivera and Ana Maria Cuautli.

23

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them. In the end, as Geertz says, I realize that I have produced an interpretation of second
order, about teachers but one that, I presume, it is possible to argue reasonably.

I recognize my sympathy for the teachers. The title of this study Shows this: “The
only thing they had was their will” refers to a phrase quoted to me by a teacher in the
course of a conversation about his parents, but which I found perfectly applicable to
indigenous teachers. To me, teachers are in the midst of a process initiated by structural
forces and constantly struggling against things that put them in a disadvantageous
position. This process made them an intermediate, new group not entirely Indian but not
entirely mestizos, having only their will to negotiate their identities. Reading my
fieldwork diary, I discover a closeness to teachers (being in the Sierra) contrasting with a
more negative image I had of teachers when I was doing research, in the early eighties, in
the Mezquital Valley in the state of Hidalgo (Coronado, Ramos and Téllez, 1982). At that
time, schools and teachers seemed to me to be agents of national acculturation, displacing
otomi culture and language. Today I found both images complementary, depending on
the perspective used, encompassing the diverse levels (and meanings) of social life. At
that time teachers were partially blurred in the landscape of communal practices. In this
study, they appear with all their strength.

I became involved with the subject of education and indigenous teachers while
teaching at the University, but in a different program. I was looking for a research
problem related to ethnicity (my academic interest). At that time, it seemed to be a
“logical” solution for me to study indigenous teachers who were attending one of the
programs offered by the University as I did not have time to go far away from my job

duties. Initially, I wanted to study topics related to urban ethnicity but I found myself

24

“trapped” by teachers and their problems (I was having informal conversations with them
in order to find a good research place). So, the decision implied more than a matter of
convenience and underscored deeper issues related to the question of ethnic dynamics:
how groups transform and persist across the time. Additionally, there were other
advantages related to the conditions of conducting anthropological research in a country
as Mexico. Andre's Medina (1996) has pointed out how Third World conditions depart
from the ideal situations portrayed in textbooks. The point here is not a mere complaint or
a confessional description of a Specific situation, but to disclose of theoretical
consequences of these conditions. Third World anthropologists because of their Situation
have needed to develop different methodological strategies in order to fulfill academic
requirements, by allowing the subjects to come to the anthropologists, instead of the
opposite, and to use classroom teaching as a means of eliciting procedures.

In the case of this study, several conditions influenced the selection of research
subject, location, and strategies. It is possible to find traces of them in the overall results
Shown here. This is not to say that the study is circumstantial, but that it is important to
put circumstances into context in order to get a better picture of indigenous teachers.

Narrative materials produced by the teachers for my classes were used in this
study to reflect their perspectives on different aspects of their lives. Through the use of
writings and interviews, the purpose was to create life narratives, as opposed to life
histories insofar as they do not pretend to be a total reconstruction of the history of the
individuals under study, since they are based on shorter periods of elicitation.

These written materials are very important in this research, because they allow a

fairly adequate approach to the self-reflection of identity. First, the teachers were asked to

25

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write their biography in their own terms. Additionally they were asked to write about a
personal experience associated with their work and which they considered important, as
well as an explanation of their choice. They were also asked to describe the communities
where they were working. Finally they were requested to describe how they would define
their identity on the grounds of their personal experiences.

Twenty—eight biographies were obtained in this manner, as well as 27 written
statements on identity, 54 descriptions of work communities, 25 narratives on personal
experiences, 18 descriptions of how the Spanish language was acquired, and 28
statements on their ethnic association. Other materials could not be used, either because
upon first analysis they did not shed any light on the questions related to the study, as in
the case of stories written by the teachers (23), or because of insufficient numbers, as in
the case of descriptions of their home communities.

The general goal of obtaining all these materials was to have different ways to
access both personal and group memory and to set in motion an argumentative
organization of personal definition, that is to say access to the forms of ascription of the
individuals.

The interviews were conducted with 17 teachers, who were chosen on the basis of
knowledge acquired in the course of the work. Two kinds of interviews were used: the
open interviews in which the subjects were asked to speak freely of their lives and, based
upon this material, a semi-structured interview addressing those elements which
remained unclear or which were considered interesting.

This approach, combined with the picture obtained through the writings and

interviews, can be defined as a narrative recovery of identity, Showing in an efficient

26

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manner the ways in which individuals make decisions with the help of context, not
always based on a conscious decision. All of this was combined with observations of
different contexts.

Three types of environments can be distinguished in which the observations were
made: university, work, and private life. In the first environment, teachers were observed
in some of the classes they attended and in their interaction outside the classroom. In the
classroom, observation was systematic during one semester in which the subjects were
students in my classes. I was helped by the research assistants who recorded, in writing
and on audiocassette, classroom events and discussion. The object was mainly the
observation of interaction between the teachers and myself, especially in the forms of
discourse and, above all, the types of behavior that would appear in important situations
for the topic of this study.

Observations outside the classroom were less systematic and were undertaken to
identify interactions among the teachers during the breaks, namely, how they behaved

among themselves and with the rest of the people at the university.

Insofar as the work environment is concerned, the work situations of seven
teachers were observed. This included a two-week research stay in each of the two
Communities: San Miguel Jojupango and Santa Maria Xoyatla. Both communities are
Shown on Figure 3. Jojupango is a Totonac village in the Northern Sierra of Puebla,
Where one of the grade-school teachers of the 1992 generation worked, whereas Xoyatla
is a Nahua community in the valley of lzr’rcar de Matamoros, situated in the southern part
Of the state, where a pre-school teacher of the 1990 generation worked. These two

Villages Show the diversity of the teachers who were the subjects of this study, and on the

27

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other they display the variety of characteristics that can still be found today in the Puebla
region.

Since a number of the teachers work at urban schools in the areas of Puebla and
Atlixco, a few were also selected from these work contexts. Several visits were
performed to the schools Potreros del Sur and San Jose’ Los Cerritos at the pre-school
level, as well as San Baltazar Resureccio'n, La Nueva Resureccio’n and Santa Anita at the
primary level. These are working-class neighborhoods situated in the periphery of the
city of Puebla, nearly all of them characterized by a population who has recently arrived
in the city from other parts of the state and the nation. There were few children who were
speakers of an indigenous language. Children were always speaking Spanish among
themselves, and their ethnic situation was only discovered by the inquisitive curiosity of
the teachers. At some point San Baltazar and Nueva Resureccion had a concentrated
indigenous population, which was displaced by arriving migrants (the former occupants
sold their land to the recently arrived migrants). I have no data of the places where those
families moved.

In these cases, as well as in the community of San Bernandino Chalchihuapan, a
Nahua community in the Atlixco region (where pre-school institutions and primary
schools were visited), observations were made in the course of one-day visits to the
schools of these places.

The object of observation during all these visits was to study the manner in which
the teachers communicated with their students and the relations they established with the
environment of their professional activities. I was searching for those elements that were

linked to the questions of identity. For instance, to determine if the teachers made their

28

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ethnic affiliation known or not. At the same time, data were obtained to complete the
characterization of these indigenous communities and mestizo neighborhoods.

Finally, in the private field, I participated in an excursion to the city and port of
Veracruz, organized by class 1990 on May l3, l4 and 15, 1994. Also, there was an
opportunity to observe the weddings of a male teacher of class 1990 who got married in
the city of Puebla, and of a female teacher of class 1992 whose ceremony was held in the
nahua community of San Pedro Benito Juarez in the Atlixco region.

All of these observations had the purpose of identifying elements that would
identify the ethnic origin in the teachers’ everyday life, for instance through the use of an
indigenous language, dress, or other distinctive practices. The information obtained both
from the narratives and the observations has the same objective: to propose an
interpretation of how the teachers conceive of themselves within the historical context of

their lives.

On the Limits of This Study

The present thesis is a case study, and therefore does not aspire to produce a
representative description of the situation of indigenous teachers in Mexico, not even of
the teachers in the state of Puebla. The strategy of explanation goes in a different
direction. Here the intent is to Show a micro-social process, which cannot be described or
explained, in an autonomous form and in the local realm. In this process it is possible to
find intelligibility in good measure by means of connections with what happens beyond

the immediate contexts of daily action.

29

I believe that the analysis of action and Structure teaches us, among other things,
precisely how social facts of diverse caliber are linked, how diverse actors, collective and
individual, interact on the same level. Teachers’ experiences, even those comprised in
personal memories, call for the incorporation of wider locales, actors and processes.
Through their recollections, their doubts, and their ideas, teachers Show the actual
presence of the State and its various institutions and agents, of the dominant classes and
their odious forms of control and contempt, and of the national groups which turn culture
into folklore. In short, this encompasses everything that is not created entirely by
themselves in their villages, in their schools or in their families) but Significantly
influences their lives.

No, I do not believe this to be a representative image of the indigenous teachers. I
rather believe it to be a story and a history of some of them, which allows a contribution

to the comprehension of all of them.

On work organization

After this introductory chapter, Chapter Two describes the situation of ethnicity in
Mexico, showing that the phenomenon is multidimensional and comprises aspects as
diverse as linguistics, history, ethnography, sociology and politics. The following
chapter, deals with the indigenous teachers on the national and local stages, Showing how
they appeared, linked to national processes and, more specifically, to the actions of the
State. At the same time it is demonstrated how the group changed, and to affirm the
description of the case in hand, it contains the characteristics of training at the

Universidad Pedagégica Nacional during the years of this study and their relation with

30

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the studied group. To round off this description, the cases of three teachers are included,
contributing additional elements to this small aspect of the group.

Chapter Four presents teacher’s narratives, Showing that there are some recurring
topics that exist behind the particular experiences of the individuals. These narratives are
above all built on the basis of recollection and reflection.

Finally, the fifth chapter contains an abstract of the work and establishes the

conclusions for the case.

31

Figure 1 Geographical location of the State of Puebla

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

32

Figure 2 Indigenous Regions in Mexico

 

 

 

 

 

l. Huasteca.

2. Mezquital Valley.
3. Tarascan Region.
4. Sierra Norte.

5. Mexico Basin.

6. Toluca Valley.

7. Mixrtec-Tlapanec Region.
8. Mixtec-Zapotec Region.
9. Chiapas Highlands.

10. Mayan Area.

33

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Figure 3 Location of the communities visited

1 San Miguel Jojupango
2 Santa Maria Xoyatla
Note: The State is divided by Municipalities.

34

CHAPTER 2

ETHNICITY IN MEXICO

“Now I knew that I had the worst name

one can have in this country: indio”
R.C.C.

Establishing terms

In order to be able to situate the processes of formation of ethnic identity, and thus also
the identity of the teachers, their actions, memories and rationalizations, it is necessary to
Show the ties between the individuals and the larger context, that in this case refers to the
nation. Although an initial overview of ethnicity in Mexico has been presented in the
former chapter, it is necessary to go into more detail, including those historical, symbolic,
political, sociological and ethnographic aspects that give ethnic contrast its particular
features in the country.

It was argued in Chapter one that ethnicity is a form of social identity, made from
the interaction (negotiation) between a self-ascription and an external identification.
Additionally, self-ascription is seen as involving a range of situations that go from the
more automatic and unconscious (practical) to more conscious and manipulating
(strategic).

Applied to the concrete case of Mexico, the model allows a good understanding of
the nature of ethnicity. Concerning self-identification, ethnic contrast initially arises from
specific conditions of indigenous populations, namely, communal structures linked to a
particular socio-political organization based on a cargo system and an accompanying
worldview. A native tongue is also important, in the extent of its association to

worldview but is not a sine qua non condition.

35

”4n
Wu

..'
Cu”.

MI

0111

Re}

This double structure of worldview and organization seems to be the core of
ethnic distinction among native peoples in Mexico (Medina 1983a and b). In urban ethnic
enclaves, individuals, or more frequently families, who keep ethnic elements, are those
coming from communities where a worldview and the socio-political organization are
alive, and frequently preserve links to these nuclei (Arizpe 1979; Molina 1992). Also,
communities, or even small cities, that can still be labeled as ethnic without having a
distinctive Indian population, Show the existence of this core or at least part of its
structure (Bonfil 1988; Romano 1998).

These conditions represent the basic elements of self-identification among
indigenous populations. Consequently, individuals recognize their position in social
space and are recognized by others.

However, self-identification is just one aspect of ethnic ascription. Social context
and more concretely the role of the other powerful is crucial. In the case of Mexico,
ethnic markers are not only circumscribed to those individuals who actually are linked to
ethnic communities but to all individuals who display some sort of feature identified as
indigenous, specially if they also are identified as working class members.

However, links between social class and ethnicity are complex (Ortiz Pinchetti
1989a and b). Sometimes, it is possible to find that working class Indians and mestizos in
rural areas tend to identify and even more, to act politically together (Medina 1983a). In
other moments, working class mestizos situate themselves (and are recognized as such) in
at a level above than Indians. Also it is possible to find Indian caciques that use ethnic
features to their benefit against the majority of their Indian fellows (Pineda 1993;

Robledo 1987). Although in regional terms these caciques are at the top of social

36

structure, in a wider context they would be situated in lower levels. On the other hand,
middle class Indians are an important sector (indigenous teachers are a good example); in
general, they live in mestizo cities and towns and do not deliberately display ethnic
diacritics in everyday interactions. Ethnic features among them are kept latent until
collective celebrations are held, within the family or in their villages.

The current position of Indian peoples in Mexico comprises a diversity of
situations that is the result of the evolution of interethnic relations over the Span of more

than four centuries. The following section is a general historical overview.

Indigenous population in Mexico: the origins

After the Conquest1 and as a consequence of the demographic catastrophes suffered by
the native population, the Spanish crown established a new set of laws (the so-called
Nuevas Leyes de Indias, 1542). These laws assured the conservation of the Indian
communities by means of the abolition of slavery of indios, with the exception of those
who were at war with the Crown (Toscano 1980).

These laws included the spatial and social segregation between the blocks of
European colonizers and natives, and the protection of the latter, and lead to the
development of the so-called Republicas de Indias, a semi-autonomous political system
of Indian communities. This system was developed in order to provide the Spanish
society with a work force, and was fairly well adapted to the existing tributary systems in
central and southern Mexico before the arrival of the Spaniards.

The structure ensured a relative development of the Indian communities in many

parts of Mexico, for example in Oaxaca and Tlaxcala (Carmagnani 1988; Florescano

37

109'";
11315 ;

Euro:

1997; Taylor 1972). It must be pointed out, however, that the communal structures that
were preserved were not simply pre-Spanish survivals, but a complex firsion between the
European and the native culture.

Importation of African Slaves was another colonial group created to block some of
the effects of conquest and colonization. Although the number of slaves was not that
much higher than in other countries of the Americas, their offspring became one of the
important groups in New Spain (Aguirre Beltran 1972).

Spaniards created a system of social segregation in colonial Mexico to keep each
group isolated from the others; this separation, however, was not absolute; miscegenation
among the major groups (Indians, Spaniards and Afiicans) existed and gave origin to
new, mixed groups. In order to control colonial society, Spaniards created a system of
classification, the so-called castas [castes] to categorize these mixed individuals in a
proper and convenient way (Aguirre Beltran op. cit.: 153 et passim). Miscegenation,
however, was not a homogeneous process throughout the colony; on the contrary, it
depended on the geographical distribution of the different groups of population and on
their figures. Generally speaking it happened in a more accelerated way in those places
where colonial activities were concentrated such as in cities, reales de minas (mining
places) and haciendas. Although mestizaje was a growing process, Indian populations
remained as the majority group during the colonial period (1521-1821).

AS part of these processes, in New Spain some communities were able to maintain
themselves as semi-autonomous groups. This happened mainly in the traditional areas of
prehispanic settlement (the center-south of Mesoamerica and the north-western part of

the country), where the social structure and culture were recreated with the incorporation

 

' 1521, the year of the fall of Tenochtitlan but later on northern territories
38

T.
0‘

It;

113

.
LIL

Ill;

Uffl

mh'rl

I 1‘“

of elements brought by the Europeans. In some instances indigenous nobility was
reconstituted, and on various occasions at certain points in time, especially during the 17th
century. This process included hispanization. In any event, the majority of indigenous
populations maintained its position as peasant smallholders (Carmagnani 198 8).

This situation continued during the first years of Independence, although in those
years the protected status that the Indian Republics had enjoyed during colonial times
was terminated. All this does not mean that the colonial era was a period of peace. There
is a documented history of social discontent in those years, which included “native
insurrections, movements of defense of the threatened indigenous communities, peasant
rebellions, urban mutinies and messianic and millenarian movements” (F lorescano 1997:
243 et passim).

The political turmoil of the first independent years allowed the communities
certain tranquility; but as early as the decades of 1820 and 1830 there were attempts to
undermine communal property on behalf of the authorities in different states of Mexico.
These policies gave rise to the agrarian rebellions of the following decades (ibid.). This
trend culminated with the enactment of the Ley Lerdo in 1856. This Law aimed basically
at undermining the political and economic predominance of the Church and attacked the
Property of corporations, but which also was applied to the indigenous communities. The
PUFpose was the development of a class of small agricultural producers, but the final
result was the expansion property of great estates (latifundia) which grew at the expense
0f Community lands, especially towards the end of the 19th century.

From this period until the agrarian reforms of Cardenas (1934-1940) indigenous

p0pulations suffered a decreasing capacity for social reproduction; although in many

39

places the haciendas depended upon a seasonal workforce, which permitted a relative
stability for the communities. The agrarian reform of President Lazaro Cardenas allowed
a certain recomposition of the smallholding peasant class by creating the so-called ejido
[communal property], restoring part of the land that had been taken away from the
communities. However, at the same time communities became ever more dependent in
economic and political terms. The following regimes returned to anti-agrarian policies.
AS a result peasant villages depended more and more on external activities to guarantee

their subsistence, particularly on paid labor, which was generally sought by way of

migration.

Present conditions

Today the indigenous population is a highly complex entity: on the one hand, it has
common elements of the social, cultural and political type especially in the
Mesoamerican area. These elements include a series of beliefs, communal nuclei, social
subordination based on ethnic elements or regional historical events of diverse historical
depth, which give the entity a certain homogeneity. On the other hand, there is also a
great diversity in aspects such as geographical distribution, demographics, linguistic
Situation, and economic conditions.

Both state policies and the development of the country had diverse effects on the
indigenous population, favoring their decrease in relative terms over the centuries, even
though this trend encompasses some particularities that are worth mentioning. For

exarriple, in some cases the pace of their reduction was Slower than in others.

40

Demographic changes in the indigenous population in the country during the 20th century

can be seen in Table 1.

Table 1 Number of indigenous populations in the 20"I Century

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Year Total population in Indigenous Percentage of indigenous
the country population population
1930 16 552 722 2 251 086 13.6
1940 19 653 552 2 490 909 12.7
1950 25 791 017 2 447 609 9.5
1960 34 923 129 3 030 254 8.7
1970 48 225 238 3 111415 6.5
1980 66 846 833 5 1 81 038 7.8
1990 81 249 645 6 406 154 7.9

 

 

Sources: Valdés and Menéndez I987; [NEG] (National Institute of Statistics, Geography and
Informatics) 1993.

Although some scholars (Manrique 1994; Medina 1990b) have stressed that
governmental figures concerning indigenous population must be taken cautiously,
because of the mistakes and deficiencies of the criteria and methodologies used to raise
data, generally speaking the diminishing trend shown is acurate. This, of course, does not
allow speaking of an inevitable disappearance of Indian population in Mexico. AS a
matter of fact, the meaning of demographic tendencies for the indigenous population is a
cOmplex phenomenon and comprises different patterns depending on specific groups
(Manrique op. cit).

In terms of geographical distribution, indigenous population shows an uneven
Pattern, although it tends to concentrate in the traditional areas of Central Mexico.

Currently, 81 percent of the total indigenous population is concentrated in eight states:

41

Oaxaca, Chiapas, Veracruz, Yucatan, Puebla, Hidalgo, Mexico and Guerrero. Table 2

contains the specific data:

Table 2 Entities with a major proportion of speakers of indigenous languages in

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1990
State No. Of speakers % In relation to the total in
the entitL

Oaxaca l 018 106 39.1
Chiapas 716 012 26.4
Veracruz 580 386 10.7
Yucatan 525 264 44.2
Puebla 503 277 14.1
Hidalgo 317 838 19.5
Guerrero 298 532 13.4
San Luis Potosi 204 328 11.9

 

 

 

 

 

Source: [NEG] 1993.

Data used in Table 2 are native language spoken, a fact that must be to take into
account, especially when it has been argued that ethnicity in Mexico is not reduced to
language, but censuses use language spoken as the main criterion to identify indigenous
peoples.

On the other hand, within each of the entities where an Indian population is
lOcated, its distribution is not even (with the exception of Yucatan, where the indigenous

People occupy 92.5% of the total of the municipalities). Indian settlements tends to be
Concentrated in certain municipalities, generally the most rural and those which lack
PUblic services. Thus, traditional form of settlement has been combined with an unequal

deVelopment and tendencies to proletarianization and social differentiation.

42

In terms of native languages, taking as a basis the number of speakers, three types
of groups has been detected in the 1990 census within the indigenous languages: in the
first place are those that can be called macro-languages, with more than 200,000
speakers. In second place are the intermediate languages, which are those that have
between 100,000 and 200,000 speakers. Macro and intermediate languages encompass
most speakers and comprise a total of 81.4 percent of all speakers of indigenous
languages, representing languages with a great viability. Finally, there is a group
composed of what could be called micro-languages. These languages together only
comprise 0.07 percent of the total speakers and with all reason may be considered as
endangered or practically extinct languages (Manrique, 1994). These languages are

shown in the following tables.

43

Table 3 Macro-Languages in 1990

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Language Amount of speakers
Nahuatl 1,197,328
Maya 713,520
Mixtec languages 383,544
Zapotec languages 380,690

Otomi 280,238

 

 

 

Source: [NEG] [993.

Table 4 Medium Languages in 1990

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lanm Amount of Speakers
Tzeltal 261,084
Tzotzil 229,203
Totonac 207,876

Mazatec 168,3 74

Chol 128,240
Mazahua 127,826
Huasteco 1 20,73 9

Chinantec languages 103,942

 

 

Source: [NEG] [993.

44

Table 5 Micro Languages in 1990

, Amount of
Ocuiltec 971
' Po luc 773
Seri 629
or Low Pima 347
Ki 271
Cochimr’ 182
Hi Pima 157
C 153
Lacandon 130
Teco 126
Kumiai 1 l2
Kiliwa 47
22
Rincén tec 22
o 10

P Chinantec 1
Source [NEG] ] 993.

 

Another circumstance that must be taken into account related to the linguistic
factor is that by itself it is not a decisive element for the identification of significant
ethnic units. The reason is that even though it might be argued that each language
represents one community of speakers, this community does not represent an ethnic unit.

Nahuatl, the largest indigenous language in the country with the greatest
geographical distribution, represents a good example of this. Nahuatl has a great variety
of dialects, which is particularly underlined by the speakers. Thus the “Nahuatl group”
actually consists of a series of communities which are Spread out over various states and
which have no more sense of an affiliation to a supracommunal entity than the speakers
of the Spanish language of the different Latin American countries would have. Besides,
Nahuatl speakers [nahautlatos] do not have any common institutions beyond the

community level, nor are there extensive ties (in geographical and temporal terms)

45

it

beyond the region. Among Nahuas themselves there are cultural, social, political and
economic differences that make it impossible to see them as a unique group, especially
under the currently prevailing conditions where communication between the Nahua
communities is not encouraged. The State has attempted to create some forms of
supracommunal organization, like the so-called Supreme Councils, but these attempts
failed. Additionally, other forms of organization have not always followed ethnic lines, as
in the case of the agrarian organizations (Cortes 1990; Medina 1983a).

This goes to Show that the smallest ethnic and social unit is the community
(sometimes located in a Single or in various settlements), understood as a socio-political
nucleus which articulates the practices of a certain group. In fact, what appears to be a
good indicator for ethnic change of a community is the profound transformation of this
nucleus. On the other hand it must also be acknowledged that it is necessary to define the
term community in a more concrete manner, since it has undergone constant changes.
Perhaps it would therefore be more adequate to speak of communities, or types of
communities.

One apparently essential element is the internal ethnic composition. Communities
Vary immensely and it possible to identify at least three types of communities:
monoethnic, mixed and communities with ethnic roots. Monoethnic communities, are
those where the entire community—or an immense majority of its residents—are
indigenous. In these type of villages, culture is not the determining element in the social
differentiation of the community. These communities may be divided by age groups,
Whether they are migrants or not, who begin to develop alternative cultural forms. Ethnic

homogeneity, however, neither ensures social homogeneity nor the absence of conflict,

46

since there may be an acute economic differentiation, and the existing relations between
the indio caciques and the indio peasants may be just as violent as among the mestizos. A
perfect example for this is the events of Chamula in highland Chiapas (Medina 1983a;
Robledol987).

Mixed communities,2 on the other hand, are those which are dominated by groups
of mestizos who generally have monopolized the upper positions in the local social
structure. Here the community relations reproduce those from the outside, and the social
distance between economic and cultural groups is greater. Ethnic distinction is crucial for
social stratification, because individuals who have the same economic position occupy
different social positions, if there are ethnic differences between them. Non-indigenous
have a higher position than the indigenous. Thus it appears that even though upon first
glance, these nuclei seem to be indio communities, the insertion of a mestizo population
which controls the most important resources changes its nature radically and turns them
into inter-ethnic communities.

The study of this type of community helps us to understand the operation of social
differentiation in a local context. Despite their small size, these social nuclei are
characterized by an internal cleavage in cultural, political and economic terms. This
fracture causes the existence of various types of systems of social differentiation that
often function both separately and jointly. The most important of these systems are
cultural, economic (including occupation and income), gendered and physical. Here I am

not only referring to the indigenous or mestizo appearance according to local patterns, but

 

2 This passage has been prepared using fieldwork data collected on one of the communities visited: San
Miguel Jojupango.

47

also to the possession of some type of physical handicap which, at least in the referred
community, was another element of segregation of individuals.

These systems are important because their Situation as a whole defines whether
the individuals have access or do not have access to the total assets of the community
(understood not only as economic resources but also others, less tangible, such as ties of
friendship). Starting from an initial division between gente de razo'n [people of reason,
non-indigenous people in local jargon] and gente de calzon [people of cotton trousers,
indigenous people], other systems begin to appear which operate in different directions.
For instance, women in the community are situated in a lower position than men are;
however mestizo women are in a better position than Indian men are; young girls,
regardless of their ethnic origin, frequently are the target of discriminating practices
(including brushes) from local boys. Even my two female research assistants, both of
them urban mestizo young women, were victims of this behavior from boys.

Thus each individual participates simultaneously in various different systems,
whose sum (in the algebraic sense) determines their Situation within the local social
structure. The final result is the conservation of subordination, in which contradictions
and points of friction are ever present. This suggests the insufficiency of dichotomy
schemes that describe subordination on the basis of two main groups (sometimes in a
Manichean fashion). Individuals find themselves in a network of advantages/benefits, but
also at the same time of disadvantages/losses; in other words, an individual can be at the
same time dominant and dominated with respect to other individuals in the community

and in the region.

48

Other elements to consider in this type of community may be called micro-
advantages, understood as the ability to obtain benefits on the basis of small factors
which are used to reaffirm social position. These advantages, which in broader contexts
would be insignificant, acquire great importance in the immediate local space.3
Friendships and acquaintances are such an example. Although they do not guarantee an
immediate and necessary profit, they are strategic elements that must not be
underestimated. In San Miguel Jojupango mestizos attempt —and generally achieve— to
monopolize the contacts of all the external agents who come into the community: doctors,
teachers, engineers, and the occasional absentminded anthropologist. Even though these
relations do not always imply real benefits, within a global strategy the final balance is
positive, because at least some of these relations will be fruitful. There is also the
willingness with which the external agents let themselves be monopolized or even look
for this monopolization, thus helping to weave these nets of social differentiation beyond
the community, which causes an articulation between the local and regional/national
SYStem of subordination, and often follows the same rules as the former.

Other micro-advantages that appear in the community are certain possessions,
Which can be qualified as minimal, of elements that again are decisive in the local
COntext: the number of rooms in a house, the amount of draft animals, the number and
gender of the children, among others. All these factors combine to form the mechanisms
that institutionalize inequality.

The third type of community is the one that could be called of ethnic roots. This

term alludes to the ethnic change this community has undergone: a large part of the most

3\
fl} Could be assumed that these advantages are also important in other contexts, for instance the importance
0 COHIacts in the processes of informal politics such as lobbying.

49

3|

51:

011

visible elements of ethnicity have disappeared (language, clothing, and considerable
segments of social and political organization). Despite all this, however, there are still
elements that indicate the weight of the ethnic structures. These almost always include
segments of the system of tasks or charges associated with civil or religious festivities,
and a worldview that can be identified in indigenous communities.

One example of the difficulty of understanding these communities, where
apparently there is an ethnicity without indigenous people, is the concept of the post-
Nahua community proposed by Eileen M. Mulhare to characterize the village of San
Bemardino Contla, a Nahua community in the state of Tlaxcala. According to this
debatable notion, the post-Nahua are “those persons who have Nahua ancestors but have
adopted new life forms in the 20'” century” (Quoted by Romano 1998: 61, note 1), which
additionally implies that the ethnic aspect is understood as something static. What can be
concluded from this is that the ethnic phenomenon has deep roots that are not easy to pull
up and are tied to a heritage involving multiple cultural aspects that are still present in

many mestizo communities.

The indigenous people, the national imaginary and the really existing relations

Apart from these more ethnographic and sociological aspects, the indigenous population
is important in the country as part of national culture. From this standpoint the weight of
the indigenous phenomenon is much more than solely the quantitative issue, since in the
case of Mexico the building of the nation has included the incorporation of ethnic
elements; the case of nationalism would be an example, insofar as it is broadly based on

our indigenous heritage.

50

If we assume with Benedict Anderson that a nation is basically an imagined
political community, to the degree to which it is able to imagine itself as a Specific entity,
it can be understood why the indigenous has been a privileged element in this process.
Indeed, ever since the earliest stages of Mexican nationalism during colonial times, the
search for the American specificity was based on the Indian heritage. Simplifying a
complex process, what can be seen is a considerable continuity in this incorporation of
native elements in national projects in the course of history.

The recovery of indigenous elements within national projects may be defined as
ideological work, understood as “the role of the State in the construction, deconstruction
and reconstruction of ethnicity” (Bodemann 1990: 37),. i.e. taking into account the
political component ethnicity has had for the State. This ideological work shows how
“minority groups can be considered as constructed in benefit of the State by means of
labor performed by the minorities for themselves, in spite of doing it involuntarily”
(Ibid.).

Thus the indigenous phenomenon forms part of an official ideology created
mainly by the State, which uses those aspects of the indigenous that have sufficient force
to be socially accepted, as for example in the case of the national emblem, which
symbolizes the foundation of Tenochtitlan. This appropriation by the State is a process
that has taken place in other Latin American countries, as pointed out by Greg Urban and
Joel Sherzer, which mention the processes of folklorization and exotization of indigenous
CUItures. In these processes the recovery of indigenous symbols operates using a process

of reduction of the complexity of the cultures to their most superficial aspects.

51

Another feature of the process of folklorization as witnessed by Mexico is its dual
nature: it combines an idealized image of the indigenous, almost always linked to the
past, with another negative or at least opaque image. This double representation creates
the original culture and people, negating any association with the living indigenous
people.

In this fashion the indigenous phenomenon is exalted by means of its most
superficial and attractive elements, or else by those elements with a mystified past,
whereas at the same time and on the level of social relations and interaction, indigenous
peoples are tied to discrimination and denigration. This combination has been a recurrent
theme in recent history, both in Mexican culture in general and in the culture of
indigenous teachers in particular (cf. F lorescanol997: 329 et passim).

With regard to the manner in which the ethnic phenomenon fits into the social
relations of the regions and the country, it must be pointed out that ethnicity functions
effectively like a system of social stratification. This system situates the identified groups
and subjects as indigenous people in positions of subordination within the global social
structure. Although Mexican social structure cannot be defined on the basis of ethnic
lines (Since the processes of intermarriage do not allow clear distinction between the
groups), the ethnic phenomenon contributes decisively to the establishment of
mechanisms of distribution of social goods.

In the more immediate contexts, ethnicity (together with other elements) guides
social interactions between individuals and between groups, establishing forms of
Conduct, treatment and discriminatory ties using ethnic markers or diacritical aspects.

Among these markers can be mentioned language and. forms of speech, physical

52

appearance, manner of dressing, place of origin, place of residence, and patronymics,
among other elements. It is important to point out that none of these markers are exact or
self-sufficient, and their functioning is contextual, i.e. linked to the place where
interaction occurs.

How this operates has been demonstrated in the teachers’ narratives and a series
of experiences that abound not only in the areas of interaction between mestizos and
indigenous people (the areas where the indigenous population predominates, the so-called
interethnic regions), but in any context of Mexican society. The following examples
illustrate this point. The first is part of the testimony of a bilingual mestizo teacher who

clearly identifies a difference in social condition between his family and the natives:

“... my relatives are of humble origin, but they... are situated in a circle
which is a little different from the others; and the same people really put
us there, I mean we were the family with a certain difference, because in
those times we dressed in trousers and shirts, and our language... in the
family has always been Spanish, although I could say that my relatives are
speakers of Ndhuatl, or rather bilingual, because in order to communicate
with the people of my village, they had to do it in Ndhuatl.” J .L.H.

The second example is from another mestizo teacher who describes the

community where he worked, pointing out the local criteria for social separation:

“The population is clearly divided by the only street that goes through
nearly the entire urban nucleus. Nearly all the Spanish Speaking people
live on this street, with the exception of two bilingual families (who also
live there). The rest of the people, monolingual or bilingual of Totonac
origin... we can find in the lower part where the bus comes through, or in
the upper part; upon first sight it can be observed that these are the worst
parts of the village and that... the people of reason, be it for better or
worse, are situated in the... better part of main street.” J.M.A.

53

The following additional information was obtained about the same community,
regarding distinction and segregation, sometimes subtle and sometimes blatant, made on
the basis of manner of dress and use of language. This shows again the existence of

systems of social stratification which operate Simultaneously:4

“Among the girls... the elements that can differentiate them in a
discriminatory fashion are the dresses they use and the language(s) they
Speak... The dress marks a mainly economic differentiation [sic]: those
who use the tetixtle (indigenous attire consisting of a skirt of white
unbleached cotton, embroidered blouse of the same material, and an
embroidered belt in the colors orange, red and blue) and speak Totonac are
looked down upon by those who use a dress of different color and fashion;
these [the latter] girls can speak Spanish and Totonac, although sometimes
they deny being able to speak or understand it. In some cases, when the
girls use the same type of dress, the differentiation can be made by the
kind of dress their mothers use. In fact they used to ask me if my mother
used a tetixtle or a dress... Some of the girls who speak Spanish as a first
language are forbidden to... have any relationship with Totonac-Speaking
girls; but they themselves say that sometimes they don’t obey and still
speak to them. Apart from that the boys generally discriminate against the
girls. Among the boys there is also a rejection of those children who speak
Totonac; and the Spanish speakers also deny understanding or speaking
that language. On the other side the insult the Totonac-speaking children
use against the Spanish Speakers is the word ‘monkey’ in Totonac
(muxni).”

Finally, the last testimony is by an anthropology student from Puebla who is of
indigenous descent. This shows once more the violent discrimination to which the

indigenous people are submitted once their ethnic features are detected:

“... I was severely criticized by some people of my community for being
one of the first of the village to go on studying in the nearby city of
Puebla. The change of environment caused a strong impact in me; it was
like waking up from a beautiful dream to a reality I didn’t understand well
at all; the secondary school in which I enrolled was the most prestigious
and had in its bosom the children of the proud and racist criolla middle
class of the city. After having lived like a fish in the water with my

 

4
The SOUI‘ce of information is the field report by Ana Laura Mendez Rivera, one of my research assistants.

54

P0

lit

[13:

the

rel

schoolmates who had considered me as one of them, in my new situation I
had to endure, together with another boy with the last name of Totolhua,
the contempt and mockery of my new fellow students. The Sin was to be
different or appear different; that’s when I learned that I wasn’t just
another citizen, inserted into a democratic country and lord of great riches
generated by the ‘horn of plenty,’[an allusion to the idea that Mexico has
the shape of a horn of plenty or cornucopia] as the textbooks said. Now I
knew that I had the worst name anyone can have in this country: indio...
and pinche indito, which was even more pejorative, just as if being little
could be reduced to being nothing. I also endured the jeering of some of
the workers at the carpenter’s Shop where I was working, and for whom
the worst thing that could happen to them was to be from the country...
And you, what are you, poblano o pueblano? [a game of words: from
Puebla or from the country]. That’s how a Short time ago a creole from the
southern part of the city insulted me, and this sentence contained the entire
charge of discrimination and racism that fills the livers of the Puebla
elite.” R.C.C.

This is the context, then, in which the everyday interaction of the indigenous
population is situated and from which also emerges the idealized conceptions, and it is

precisely here where the indigenous teachers are situated as well.

Political situation

It must be pointed out that historically the indigenous population has by no means been a
passive protagonist, but on the contrary, indigenous people have agency and have resisted
the structural violence and discrimination in many ways over time. From innumerable
rebellions that abound throughout their history to more indirect resistance strategies, the
indigenous peoples’ actions have been visible, forcing the State to mediation. In the post-
revolutionary era, these State development programs have been directed towards the
creation of institutions that were intended to aggregate the villages and to control their

mdigenous demands integrating them into the political and economic system.

55

In the immediate context, in 1975 the Confederacién Nacional Campesina (CNC)
[National Peasant Confederation], the official party’s campesino branch, the
Departamento de la Reforma Agraria [Department of Agrarian Reform] and the National
Indian Institute organized the [st’ Congress of Indian Peoples in Patzcuaro, in the state of
Michoacan. In this Congress, the Carta de las Comunidades Indigenas [Charter of the
Indigenous Communities] was established and the Consejo Nacional de Pueblos Indios
(CNPI) [National Council of Indian Villages] came into being, the first indigenous mass
association. This Council, which was composed of by 56 Supreme Councils, was created
by indigenist policies under the assumption that the councils would represent each of the
ethnic groups existing in the country (Medina, A. 1983a y b). In the case of Puebla, these
Councils did not have any impact at all.

These policies attempted to control the demands, but had no real support in the
population. The Supreme Councils ended up being ghost organizations. However, as on
other occasions, these actions encouraged the creation of sectors of intermediaries who
characterized themselves by their verbal radicalism oriented towards restricted demands
of the cultural type. This group was closely linked to the apparatus of the State (Barre, M
1985; Medina A. 1983b).

On the other hand, as part of international events in world economy in the
eighties, especially those related to recession in central countries and debt crises in Latin
America, the Mexican State introduced a series of economic measures. These actions
imtluded privatization of State enterprises, elimination of subsidies, decreasing of social
expenditure, and opening of national market. Economic reforms took place in the

framework of the discussion of the reorganization of the General Agreement on Tariffs

56

and Trade (GATT) in the so-called Uruguay Round in 1986 and culminated with the
creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 (Harvey 1994;
Ritchie 1998).

These policies had a direct impact on Mexican agriculture. A great number of
small peasant producers (especially those producing maize) found themselves in a very
difficult economic situation, aggravated by changes in price supports and other subsidies
to basic grains. Additionally, the Mexican State developed new agrarian policies that
included reforms to Article 27 of the Constitution and approval of a new Agrarian Code
in 1992. The core of these reforms was the modification of the ejido structure. Ejido, a
form of collective land possession that could not been sold, had been regarded a peasant
gain (Harvey op. cit.).

As a result of these actions, in addition to a continued diminution of State
credibility led to the development of a multitude of agrarian organizations with diverse
ethnic-social composition. Some of these organizations that have been taken up by the
national press are the F ederacio'n [ndependiente de Comunidades Indigenas Mayo
(Sonora), the Comité de Defensa y de Desarrollo de los Recursos Naturales de la Region
Mixe (Oaxaca), the Confederacio'n Obrero, Estudiantil del Itsmo (Oaxaca), the
Coordinadora Nacional Plan de Ayala (several states), the Consejo de Pueblos [ndios de
la Montana de Tlapa (Guerrero), the Consejo de Pueblos Nahuas del Alto Balsas
(Guerrero), the Frente Ct'vico de Amatan (Chiapas), the Movimiento de Unificacio'n y
Lucha T riqui (Oaxaca), the Comité de defensa por la Libertad [ndigena (Chiapas), and

the Union de C omunidades Indigenas de la Selva de C hiapas (Chiapas).

57

An important issue about these movements is that their demands, in contrast to
those set forth by the official organizations, alluded to the ethnic and the cultural in
implicit form. Ethnicity appears in the organizational forms or in the manner in which the
principal claims are presented, which are agrarian, political, commercial or referring to
social development. (Medina, A. 1983a y b.) This is sewn trough the copious journalistic
information published since the decade of the sixties to date in the newspapers Excelsior,
Uno mtis Una and La Jornada).

Another significant element has been the great geographical dispersion of
conflicts. However, there are concentrations in certain areas, among them Chiapas. This
state has witnessed the most important indigenous movement of the last decades: the
movement instigated by the Eje'rcito Zapatista de Liberacio'n Nacional (EZLN). This
movement started with the uprising in January of 1994 and is the culmination of the
whole of all the fights that were going on in the region.

What distinguishes the Zapatista movement from others has been its ability to
pass from an armed stage to a more political stage, in which it was able to call national
and international attention to its demands, showing that these to a large extent represent
national interests. The difference between the two stages may be traced by means of the

Comparison between the First Declaration of the Lacandon Forest and the Fourth
Declaration of the Lacandon Forest. The comparison Shows a transformation from a call
to an armed uprising to a more political strategy. This last stage culminated in the
formation of a national front, the Frente Zapatista de Liberacio'n Nacional (FZLN).
F ZLN has operated through a series of national quests on different topics; one of these

quests was programmed for March 21, 1999 and focused on indigenous rights and the

58

protest against the war of extermination (Ejército Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional 1995
and 1998).

The Zapatista movement has achieved great advances, although the final result of
its actions is still completely uncertain. It was capable of stopping the generalized
military action of the State. Although militarization and selective aggression in the region
continued Zapatistas were also capable of establishing negotiations whose most
important achievements were the so-called Agreements of San Andre’s, named after the
town of San Andre’s Larrainzar where they were signed (Hernandez and Vera 1987). The
points of coincidence between the Zapatistas and the government were collected by an
official body of mediation, composed of legislators of different parties, the Comisio'n
para la Concordia y la Pacificacio'n (C 0C OPA), by means of a document which contains
the proposals for the amendments of the text of the Constitution. This document was
completely accepted by EZLN after having consulted its bases.

Even though the agreements did not take into consideration all of the aspects the
EZLN considers essential (like the amendment of Article 27 of the Constitution dealing
with land reform, the discussion on regional and local political autonomy, and the
acknowledgment of the indigenous legal systems), they have represented significant

advances for indigenous demands. However (perhaps because of their importance) the
government later refused to subscribe to them as they were, arguing that they violated
national sovereignty and attempted to impose an adulterated version.

Given the fact that a large-scale military intervention would bring national and
international condemnation for the State, this has opted for a policy to wear down,

iSOIation, and intimidation. The Zapatistas, in the face of this strategy, can only try to get

59

out of this restricted environment in which the government intends to place them by
means of the discussion of topics that are taken up by the broadest sectors of Mexican
society.

Thus, in spite of all the obstacles it encountered EZLN succeeded in creating new
political alternatives not only of the indigenous peOple, but also of a series of social
sectors that see the imperious need to introduce changes in a clearly deteriorated
economic and political system. On the level of the indigenous populations the movement
rendered obsolete the indigenist approach, which in any case had entered a state of laissez
faire. It is clear that the influence EZLN has had on Mexican society has been decisive,
for because of their popularity and diffusion, their exposition has had an extenuating
impact on many sectors (even the more popular ones).

The movement leaded by the EZLN is the most important in Mexico. Other
mobilizations, probably influenced by the example of Zapatistas (they have explicitly
denied any link with other armed groups), have been made by the Ejército Popular
Revolucionario (Popular Revolutionary Army), ERP. This group appeared in June 28th,
1996 in Aguas Blancas, in the state of Guerrero. ERP chose the date of commemoration
of the assassination of a group of peasants linked to the Union de Organizaciones de la

Sierra del Sur (UOSS), an influential independent organization that has been active in
Guerrero since 1995. ERP seems to have branches in Oaxaca and in northern Puebla. In
any event, the government has declared that ERP has been successfully dismantled with

the capture of some of its leaders (Mendoza 1999).

60

Conditions in Puebla

This complex national context acquires particular nuances in the Puebla region. This state
occupies the fifth place in the country as far as indigenous population is concerned (cf.
figures on Table 2, page 43), although in relation to the total population of the state, the
indigenous people represents 11.60 percent. Puebla, demographically speaking, Shows an
important indigenous presence. AS in the rest of Mexico, the indigenous populations are
unequally distributed in the territory, and are basically concentrated in three zones. This
can be seen in Figure 4. These zones are the Northern Sierra with a predominant
population of Nahuas and Totonacs (1); the region of Tehuacan to the Southest of the
state, where there are mainly Nahuas y Popolocas (2), and the central-southern region of

the state with a basically Mixtec population (3).

61

Figure 4 Areas of concentration of indigenous population in Puebla

Note: the State is divided by Municipalities.
1. Northern Region.

2. Tehuacan Region.
3. Mixtec Region.

62

On the other hand, indigenous population in the state has undergone changes across time.

The following tables Show part of the evolution of indigenous population in recent years.

Table 6 Indigenous population in the state of Puebla in 1970

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Langggge Total population %
Nahuatl 266 181 77.2
Totonac 52 806 15.3
Mixtec 8 124 2.4
Popoloca 6 7 97 2.0
Otomi 5 533 1.6
Mazatec 2 931 0.9
Zapotec 629 0.2
Other languages 2 010 0.6
Total indigenous 345 011 100
Total population in the state 2 507 437 13.8
Sources: Barbosa [980; Olivera et al. [982.
Table 7 Indigenous population in the state of Puebla in 1999
Langu_ag§ Total population °/o
Nahuatl 428 131 74.47
Totonac 114 384 19.90
Popoloca 11 805 2.05
Otomi 6 895 1.20
Mixtec 6 880 1.20
Mazatec 4 727 0.82
Tepehua l 976 0.34
Other languages 104 0.02
Total indigenous 574 902 100
Total population in the state 4 955 409 11.60

 

Source: Section of statistics of Indigenous Education of the Department of Elementary Education,

SEP I 999.

 

 

These tables Show some facts. First of all, a change in importance of Popoloca,
Otomi and Mixtec groups. In 1970 Mixtecs occupied the third place in the state with a
total of 8,124 persons and in 1999 they occupy the fifth place with 6,895 individuals.
This shift is remarkable and there are two possible reasons explaining it. First, there could
be a mistake in data employed; second, that data can reflect the impact of migration:
mixtecos are one of the most important migrants groups. In 1995 there were around
372,000 migrant mixtecos from Puebla, 126,000 in different Mexican cities and 246,000
in the United States: 156,000 in New York City, 30,000 in Los Angeles, 12,000 in New
Jersey and 18,000 in other cities. (Cortes 1995; Nagengast and Kearney 1990). I Shall
return to this point later. Another difference is the inclusion of Zapotecs in 1970 data, but
they are not mentioned in 1999 anymore. Additionally, figures show that although
indigenous population has increased its absolute numbers, in relative terms it has been
decreasing in the state, a trend similar to the national tendency.

In general, in spite of the differences, it is possible to distinguish in the state five
significant groups, two major groups, Nahua and Totonac, and three minor ones,
Popoloca, Otomi, and Mixtec.

On the other hand, beyond the demographics, in Puebla indigenous population has
not reached the levels of social organization as in other states, for instance Chiapas.
Probably this is the result of a combination of several factors. Among the most important
the following can be pointed out. First, a regional development that combines a scattered
rural hinterland (where Indian communities are located) with a modern sector with one of
the most important cities in the country (Puebla). This creates a more complex social

Structure that reduces the political presence of indigenous population and conflict

64

generally involves other social actors such as industrial workers, middle classes and
urban settlers.

Secondly, migration: in the north, people are involved mostly in national
migration, and in the Mixtec area in international migration. Migration modifies the focus
on communal conflict; frequently, migrants begin to struggle for communal power and
majors of municipalities are elected abroad (Corte’s 1995). This political conflict does not
follow ethnic lines, in the extent that is an intra-ethnic situation.

As indigenous teachers become more acculturated, they tend to play a greater role
in the teachers’ union. Indigenous teachers in Puebla, have become more integrated to the
educational system. Even though many of them have developed an ethnic awareness, this
consciousness is linked to governmental positions. In other states, some sections of the
national teachers’ union have become more radicalized and sometimes this has room for
ethnic demands. This happened in Chiapas in 1993: indigenous teachers demanded to
increase the number of teachers enrolled at the Universidad Pedago'gica (Rodriguez
1993). Additionally, among teachers migration is an important phenomenon: it was
reported that in 1992, more than 2,000 schoolteachers from the Mixtec and Sierra Negra
areas were working in the United States. Probably the figure is higher because the report
only included those schoolteachers with official permits (Santin 1992). Indigenous
teachers then, are less involved in ethnic oriented activities than in other places. Electoral
behavior coincides with this pattern too. Analysis of 1991-1997 elections shows that
Puebla displays a great deal of quiescence in Indian municipalities. There is not a great
presence of any of the major political parties among indigenous communities (Ruiz

2000)

65

IN I also had not an important presence in Puebla probably because the institution
began its activities by the time that indigenismo was becoming less important, in 1969
(INI n.d.).

Additional data on San Miguel Jujupango, and Santa Maria Xoyatla, two
communities where teachers from my case study worked, can help to complete this view
on the situation of indigenous population in Puebla. Jojupango, as I said, is a Totonac
community located in the humid, semi-tropical highlands of the Sierra Norte, close to
Zacatlan. In spite of its size, Jojupango shows a complex social differentiation resulting
from the existence of a mestizo group (los blanquitos) in the community who occupy the
higher position in the local structure.

The initial line that divides the population is based on ethnicity: on one side are la
gente de razon (non-indigenous), on the other, la gente de calzén (indigenous people).
Joined to this, but with a certain degree of independence, is class position: in general la
gente de razon are in a better economic position. Also they are the owners of the best
land and the means of production, but it is possible to find poor blanquitos who
nevertheless, in terms of status are in a better position than their indigenous counterparts.

Among indigenous people, tradition is also a factor of differentiation. More
traditional individuals can have more prestige, but also can be situated in worse economic
positions. Migratory experience also has an effect in the population, especially if this is
connected with age: as in other rural communities, young people with this experience
tend to be more separated from the community, becoming a kind of marginal individuals
that can develop antisocial behavior (in Jojupango it was not infrequent that these young

men vandalize the school) and also display a different attire and musical tastes.

66

Gender is another line that runs along a different direction but directly related to
the local social differentiation. Thus, women occupy subordinate positions in the
community but both ethnicity and class influence their final situation. Non-indigenous
women, especially those related to blanquitos at the upper positions in the community,
have better status than indigenous women.

The fact that a segment of the local population is not indigenous seems to be the
main factor giving the community its main features. Non-local individuals, such as
schoolteachers, engineers, and medical doctors, tend to be associated with local non-
indigenous people. They also occupy higher paying jobs and more prestigious jobs. In
summary, ethnic lines not only guide daily interactions but also fundamentally establish
the mechanisms for the distribution of communal wealth and the reproduction of local
social structure. Then, Jojupango is a good example in which rural communities in
Mexico never have been isolated settlements, but on the contrary, open scenarios have
been built through the interplay of the different levels of social organization.

Santa Maria Xoyatla (population 1,780 at the time of fieldwork), on the other
hand, lies in a dry environment in the Atlixco Valley in the south of the state. Xoyatla is a
Nahua community highly homogeneous in cultural terms: practically all the population is
nahua the non-indigenous people are the teachers, the nurse and the medical doctor in
charge of the communal clinic. Yet Xoyatla is not an isolated community, but quite the
contrary. It has a high rate of international migration, mainly to New York.

The fact that there is not a mestizo nucleus seems to be the main reason for a
higher communal control over its affairs, especially the internal government for external

institutions. A couple of examples illustrate this better: the community built the clinical

67

center and later the inhabitants went to Puebla city to get the doctor and the nurse. This is
not a common situation among rural communities that usually wait for the government to
fulfill their needs. The doctor said to me that sometimes people of the Health Committee
(in charge of feeding the doctor and the nurse and cleaning of the building) want to stay
during the doctor’s examination until he asks them to leave.

The second example has to do with the school. In Xoyatla the people have a lot of
control over the different schools existing in the town; in preschool for instance, by the
time I was doing fieldwork, everyday I saw a lot of women in the school yard, outside of
classrooms. The principal said to me that it was common, especially in the first days of
classes to help children to get used to the school, but some women stay all year long. I
saw some of them going frequently into the classrooms to “help” their children, another
infrequent situation in Mexican schools: usually teachers have the command of the
institutions and keep parents out.

A teacher of the secondary school, that is not part of the indigenous system,
complained how in her opinion teachers do not teach what is directed by the Secretaria
de Educacio’n but what “they” (the community) want: English courses and other practical
knowledge that can be useful in migration. Again this example shows a strategy that is
possible because the community keeps an important control over external institutions.

Divisions within the community complicate this. At that time there was a struggle
between two groups (one faction included the preschool principal, and the other faction
was led by the mayor of Municipal government). The dispute was over the control of
Municipal offices and the use of community resources. However, these conflicts were not

inter-ethnic in nature, all parties were Nahuas. Also the economic differences, although

68

present, are not extremely acute and an important part of the income coming from the
migrants is used for communal and familial festivities.

Obviously, neither Jojupango nor Xoyatlacan be pointed out as representative of
indigenous communities in Puebla, but both inform processes that link groups, regions
and activities. To this extent, the description allows a better understanding of the nature
of ethnicity in the state.

Another important element in this picture of the region is the city of Puebla. AS in
other areas where ethnic boundaries keep their significance, this city exemplifies the
racist thought of non-indigenous centers proud of their supposedly Spanish heritage.

One example of this was given in 1998 with the election for governor and major
in the state and the capital city. The candidates of the ruling party for the two offices that
were elected display indigenous features and for this fact they were nicknamed
“Huarachin and Huarachon”, the name of two well-known comedians in Mexico who
parody indigenous speech and attires.

Puebla has served as the colonial center par excellence, where the state powers are
installed and the colonial image is concentrated to maintain a clear-cut separation from its
indigenous hinterland, traditionally represented by Cholula29 and Tlaxcala. Part of this
ideology is embodied in the new and the old celebrations (for instance the procession on
Good Friday which was just recently invented —in the sense Hobsbawm gives the term—in
this metropolis, as well as the bullfights). These rites indicate and enact the economic and

ethnic differences between the social classes (Florescano 1996: 232-238).

g

29 . . . .
Even though Cholula, because of its development, may today be characterized as a community of ethnic
roots in the terms mentioned above.

69

Under the administration of governor Bartlett (1993-1999) this cultural policy was
strongly supported through the office of cultural affairs and its director at that time, the
archaeologist Eduardo Merlo, who encouraged several activities linked to these cultural
inventions such as food exhibits and cultural contests.

In Puebla this ideology is part of a hegemonic view that goes beyond the
dominant classes and is shared by other social sectors, including the working class which
ends up frequently sharing discriminatory attitudes with criollos poblanos, even though
they share many features, physical and cultural, with the indigenous people.

Daily speech has plenty of examples of this. Derogatory expressions used by
mestizos identifying supposedly indigenous features such as the one “pareces indio” [you
behave like an Indian] to criticize any behavior regarded incorrect”. The disrespectful
treatment of It) [thou] instead the usted [you] given by mestizos to indigenous persons in
almost all interactions between them. The pejorative terms naco or meco, that scholars
identified with totonaco and chichimeco, to describe a rude person (Manrique, 1994;
Medina, 1983a). The popular saying that no tiene la culpa el indio sino el que lo hace
compadre [it is not the fault of the Indian person but of who trusts him]. All of these are
examples of discriminatory practices widely scattered among all social groups.

This situation shows that discrimination is a very complex process that goes far
beyond an imposition by élites of their views over the society. It is more a process where
several sectors get different advantages from an unfair situation, although these
advantages could be minor or immaterial (the feeling of being part of superior groups, or

that there are others in worse situations than one’s own).

30 I actually saw a working class man, who easily could be identified with an indigenous person, saying that
expression to his son who did not put money in his pants’ pockets.

70

Summary

This overall view puts in context the situation and the action of the indigenous teachers:
in Mexico ethnicity, represented by indigenous populations that are to a great extent a
product of a long process (and not a simple reminiscence of Prehispanic past) and highly
heterogeneous. In Mexico, the ethnic factor has been a crucial part in the nation building
process. The modem Mexican State has actively and constantly used indigenous symbols
and images in order to create the idea of a united country linked by our common past.
However, this process is only discursive. In reality, indigenous people as a whole face
everyday discrimination at all levels. In some regions Indian movements have began to
defend a series of claims.

Indigenous teachers are a good example of the complexity that ethnicity has in
Mexico. They are part of a population differentiated but, homogeneous at the same time;
with a high self-perception of themselves, their situation and trapped in social cliches. In
so doing, the dynamic relationship between the mosaic of different groups is an important

fabric of Mexican society.

71

CHAPTER 3
STATE POLITICS AND THE CONFORMATION OF SOCIAL

SUBJECTS

“the only thing they had was their will"
S.C.M.

This chapter analyzes the processes that led to the creation of the group of indigenous
teachers, which must be mainly identified with State actions. Additionally, programs of
the Universidad Pedagogica will be described in order to find their contribution to the
same phenomenon. Finally, I shall see the additional significance of this group on the
microsocial level of the case under study, using some of the ethnographical information

provided by teachers.

Indigenism, indigenous education and teachers in Mexico

The indigenous teachers represent today a distinctive group within the indigenous
population in Mexico, and this is one of the results of contemporary politics developed by
the State and directed towards this population sector, in which education occupies a
privileged position. On their part, these politics form part of the process of creation of the
modern Mexican State, which arose in the wake of the revolutionary process of the
second decade of this century. One important element in this was the acknowledgment of
education as a function and task of the State, that is to say the creation of the concept of
public education. The foundation of the federal Secretaria de Educacio’n Ptlblica (SEP)
[Department of Public Education] in 1921 was a key factor in this process. At the same

time, to speak of public education and educational policies during these years was in

large measure to speak of rural education and indigenismo [State’s policies towards
indigenous population]. It must be remembered that a large part of the Mexican
population in those years was rural, and within this sector the indigenous population was
significant.

In the same year of the foundation of SEP the Departamento de Educacio'n y
C ultura para la Raza Indigena [Department of Education and Culture for the Indigenous
Race] was created, one of the forerunners of the modern institutions dedicated to
indigenous education (Barre 1985). This concern for indigenous education can be
understood when it is remembered that the post-revolutionary Mexican State was trying
to consolidate national unity, and the indigenous population was considered as one of the
principal obstacles to the achievement of this objective. Part of this view was the result of
the lack of the Spanish language, its parochial affiliations and local loyalties, as well as
its relative geographical and social isolation. It must also be taken into account that apart
from the political intention of contributing to national unity, it was at the same time
necessary to support national economic development, to create efficient agriculture and to
develop an ad hoc work force. Several years would have to pass before these economical
aspects would be realized. Therefore, following a common practice of the 19th century,
people were still talking of an indigenous problem.

Anthropology and anthropologists contributed significantly to the performance
of these tasks. Manuel Gamio, who in fact is considered as the first professional
anthropologist in Mexico, was Undersecretary of Education from 1921 to 1925, during
the period in which José Vasconcelos served as Secretary of Education. It was under his

administration that the so-called Casas del Pueblo were founded, which were part of a

73

modern concept of rural schools as spaces of total education. They attempted to influence
the communities in which the schools were Situated in holistic fashion, and this included
the idea of the teacher as guide and missionary for the community (Medina 1988; Noyola
1987)

Another crucial figure in rural education was Moise’s Séenz, who replaced
Gamio as Undersecretary of Education in 1925. Salem perfected the model of the
Mexican rural school. In 1932 he founded in Carapan, in the state of Michoacan, an
Estacio'n experimental de incorporacion del indio [Experimental Station for the
Incorporation of the Indian] with the support of an important group of anthropologists
and other professionals.

Under these circumstances, two political strategies were used to attack the
problem: incorporation and integration (Loyo 1978). The former, which was
predominant in the period of Gamio, considered that the best strategy to achieve national
unity would be to strip the natives of their distinctive features; i.e., to wipe out ethnic
culture and to impose national culture. As may be expected, this strategy encountered
strong resistance in the indigenous regions and failed. On the basis of Séenz’s
experiences the concept of integration was created, which was a less aggressive form that
sought to arnalgamate Western culture with those aspects of indigenous culture that were
deemed positive, such as communal work and handicrafts. It was, of course, the State that
determined what was positive and what was not.

In both schemes education was the most favored instrument to achieve the

objectives of national unity, since it pretended to homogenize the population culturally

74

and socially, and because the educational promoters and the teachers were the favored
agents for this homogenization.

During the era of Lazaro Cardenas (1934-1940) the Departamento Autonomo de
Asuntos Indigenas [Autonomous Department of Indigenous Affairs] was created, which
remained operational until 1947. Into this department were incorporated in 1938 the
Departamento de Educacion Indigena [Department of Indigenous Education] and the
Departamento de Misiones Culturales [Department of Cultural Missions] in a movement
to centralize functions, culminating in 1948 with the foundation of the Instituto Nacional
[ndigenista (INI) [National Indigenist Institute]. IN I has been the most important instance
of government policies directed towards the indigenous population. This institute
developed the strategies of nationalization of indigenous communities even further by
means of the creation of a more refined theory and methodology, developed mainly by
Gonzalo Aguirre Beltran. Aguirre Beltran designed a strategy in which education, among
other media, was considered a key factor for change (Espafia 1987; Medina 1988; Téllez
1987)

During the sixties, indigenismo received its strongest critique as part of the
student movement, and it was marked by a profound polemic that went into the following
decade. By the seventies, indigenist policies experienced a shift within the framework of
a process of social and political reform that was brought about to deal with the situation
inherited from the social unrest of the previous decade. The concept that was set in
motion was called indigenism of participation, which basically implied the incorporation

of individuals of indigenous origin into intermediate jobs in some of the institutions

75

dedicated to the indigenous population, especially those related to education]. Although
this policy of participation was severely criticized from its beginning (Frente
[ndependiente de Pueblos [ndios 1990), it was a milestone that initiated a new era, and
one of its results was the amendment of Article 4 of the Constitution, acknowledging the
plural ethnicity of the country.

It is precisely this policy of indigenism of participation that brought forth the so-
called bilingual and bicultural education. AS a consequence of this, an independent office
dedicated to indigenous education was established in 1973, the Direccién General de
Educacio'n Extraescolar en el Medio Indigena [General Department of Out-of-School
Education in the Indigenous Medium]. This office was ultimately transformed in 1978
into what is now the Direccién General de Educacio'n Indigena DGEI [General
Department of Indigenous Education], located within the Subsecretaria de Educacio'n
Basica [Undersecretary of Basic Education]. This is the central organ for everything
concerning indigenous education on the national level, and its functions were outlined as
follows: 1) to propose educational contents and methods, as well as the technical-
pedagogical standards for education provided to natives who do not speak Spanish. 2) To
organize, develop, operate, supervise and evaluate the programs for the teaching of the
Spanish language in the indigenous communities; and 3) To attend to those programs and
services of basic education, particularly in predominantly monolingual indigenous
communities where no Spanish is Spoken (Pineda 1993:134).

Through this institution the following programs for primary and pre-school

education were created, always with the view of providing formal education in diverse

 

' It is important to point out that so far no native has been director of the main institution dedicated to the
indigenous population, the Instituto Nacional [ndigenista; however, two of them have been in charge of the

76

indigenous languages, and with the final purpose of offering an education that would
comply with and cover the national standards: Pre-school Education, Bilingual/Bicultural
Primary Education, Boarding Schools, Medical Assistance and Health Education in
Boarding Schools and Centers for Social Integration, Training for Bilingual Personnel,
Production of Bilingual and Support Materials, Educational Programs for the Indigenous
Woman, Bilingual Radio Support, Supervision and Evaluation of the System of
Indigenous Education, Training for Bilingual Promoters in Indigenous Language, and
Special Programs (Ibid.).

Recently, in the decade of the nineties, the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas in the
beginning of 1994 has affected the panorama of indigenism and educational policies
towards the indigenous population, like other sectors of Mexican society as well. AS a
matter of fact, this uprising of a series of Indian communities in the highlands and the
Lacandon Forest of Chiapas has made Mexican indigenismo even more invalid. One of
the effects of this movement has been the radicalization of the demands made by
indigenous peoples, as well as their polarization among themselves. At the same time this
has led in some places to the development of more progressive postures within the State
in an effort to avoid being overtaken by the indigenous peoples. One example is the Ley
de Derechos de los Pueblos y Comunidades Indigenas del Estado de Oaxaca of 1998
[Law of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Communities of the state of Oaxaca],
which iS a rather advanced proposal in the matter of policy towards the indigenous
people.

The effects of these policies on the indigenous population have been quite

contradictory. On the one hand there can be no doubt that many of the objectives set forth

 

General Department of Indigenous Education, and others have occupied intermediate posts.
77

by the strategy of the State, which identified national unity with ethnic homogeneity,
have been achieved. When considered as a whole, as it was shown in the former chapter,
indigenous languages have diminished in relative terms over the course of this century,
and some of them have even disappeared.2 A large part of the Indian population has
acquired mestizo conduct and features. Yet on the other hand the presence of the ethnic
aspect in many parts of the country is heightened and, most importantly, the goal of a
reduction of poverty within the Indian population has never been reached. It is safe to say
that a good part of these results cannot be considered as having had the desired effect of
State policies, but rather as the outcome of “Spontaneous” processes derived from the
social and economic development of the country. And, finally, there were a series of
effects that were not foreseen,or at least not explicitly. First, there was the creation of an
immense bureaucracy that ultimately came to absorb most of the budgets destined to the
sector. Figures given by an important INI administrator and anthropologist ilustrate this

for the years between 1962 and 1970 in the following table.

Table 8 Percentage of INI’s budget devoted to personnel 1962-1970

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Year Percentage of the budget devoted to
salaries of INI personnel

1962 41.0

1963 45.4

1968 42.0

1969 48.0

1970 51.0

 

 

 

Source: Marroqut’n [977, adapted from Table 8: [04.

 

However, historical data are not entirely reliable because, as Leonardo Manrique mentions, the criteria
used in the censuses have been variable.

78

Another effect of indigenista programs was social differentiation, contradictions
and interior conflicts within the indigenous communities (Medina 1983; Pineda op. cit.)

All these policies, with their distinct nuances, involved individuals of indigenous
origin who have been incorporated since the beginning of the different official
government programs. These individuals developed different technical and administrative
activities and skills related to education. Nevertheless, their final destiny was varied:
some went back to their communities after the disappearance of the programs. Some went
to the cities to work in different jobs. Finally, there were others who were absorbed into
the indigenist apparatus on different levels, where most of them perform jobs related to
educational areas: cultural promoters and teachers as well as support workers (cooks,
superintendents, secretaries etc.). According to Mexican census of 1990, 50, 213 of the
total of individuals identified as indigenous (1,807,350), i.e. 2.8% of this population,
indicated educational workers as their main occupation. This amount includes the
aforementioned support personnel (Manrique 1994: 85, Table 7).

These State policies have consequently been decisive in the creation of the new
social group of indigenous teachers. This has been done by means of the selection,
training, and in good measure also through the indoctrination of a number of individuals.
These individuals when joining the educational service develop and reproduce common
characteristics, which distinguish them both from the indigenous population and from the
main set of teachers in other systems. At the same time, this group is also heterogeneous.

The distinctive characteristics of the group are both products of the objective
conditions under which they develop, and of elements that are actively induced by the

State. Among the objective conditions, labor conditions play an important role, since they

79

provide a salary that might not be outstanding in quantitative terms when compared with
the incomes of migrant workers or other subjects in the rural environment.3 These
earnings are still important because they are a reliable source of income that also provides
a medical insurance program and retirement benefits.

Part of the job involves educational and administrative tasks, which are basically
routine activities, but are at the same time sources of a differentiated culture. These
elements are reinforced by practices, instruments and an ideology developed by the State.
The main characteristic of the State’s ideology is a positive but abstract, if not
demagogical, recovery of the indigenous, and which are transmitted and maintained by
the distinct components of the educational system to which the teachers have ties in
different moments of their professional career.

There are important differences within this group. Above all are those which
denote social and economic differentiation. It is possible to find among indigenous
teachers both workers of scarce incomes (the majority) and others who become a
privileged sector by means of control of administrative posts in government offices, the
economic and political control in their native communities, or a combination of both4.
This differentiation has greater effects on the regional level. In the Highlands of Chiapas,
for instance, one of the most extensively studied zones, it has been reported that the
teachers often started using the knowledge acquired in official institutions for their own
benefit (the Spanish language, administrative procedures, and contacts). Thus turning

into cultural brokers, if not into caciques in their communities by means of controlling

 

3 Nowadays various processes have modified the appearance of the rural areas of Mexico, most importantly
migration and drug trafficking, which have introduced a new set of income strategies for an important
sector of the rural population. Together with the continuing deterioration of all workers’ salaries, the figure
of the teacher, in terms of prestige and income, has lost many of the advantages it formerly had.

80

posts in the local administrations, especially as secretaries and mayors, and in this way
obtaining power over land and resources (Pineda op. cit.).

In other instances, the teachers actually acted as critical elements and
transformers of their cultures of origin in a sense planned by the theorists and indigenist
functionaries, as mentioned in the case of the Chinantecs of Oaxaca (Acevedo 1984). In
other cases, acculturation served as an element of resistance, as happened among the
Mazatecs and Zapotecs of the Sierra of Oaxaca, or it has allowed them to combine
national and native aspects, as in the case of the Zapotecs of the Isthmus of Oaxaca
(Ibid.).

In the state of Puebla everything seems to indicate that the teachers will not turn
into those who control the resources of their communities. Probably this is the result of a
different social structure where there are other sectors involved in controlling rural
resources, even though some of them came to occupy jobs of a certain level in the
administration of indigenous education in their respective communities. This control,
which could be called administrative caciquism, has been relatively fragile if not tied to
other, more permanent, elements like the economical aspect, and when political-
administrative changes took place in SEP, they lost their influence. During the Six years
of former governor Manuel Bartlett’s administration (1993-1999), the Department of
Indigenous Education at the state level disappeared from the Board of Education, and this

contributed conclusively to the loss of control.5 It is interesting to see, though, that this

 

4 Unfortunately there are no concrete data available on the topic of social differentiation for the entire
country.

5 During this six-year period the tasks of the former Department of Indigenous Education were absorbed by
the Direccio'n de Planeacio’n and the Coordinacio’n de Proyectos de Educacién [ndigena belonging to the
Direccio’n de Educacio'n Elemental [Department of Planning and Project Coordination of Indigenous
Education of the Department of Elementary Education].

81

differentiation also took place along ethnic lines: the teachers who occupied these posts
are of Nahua origin.

Another element, which contributes to regional and local fragmentation of the
group, is the absence of organizations acting on a nation-wide level. This seems to be the
result of great incorporation of indigenous teachers to official structures. As indicated
above, only in the seventies was such an organism founded, the Asociacio'n Nacional de
Profesionales Indigenas Bilingues A.C. (ANPIBAC) [Professional Bilingual Indigenous
National Association], which was really neither representative nor able to have any
decisive influence among the teachers. ANPIBAC slowly disappeared. Besides, recent
educational policies have emphasized the so-called federalization of educational services,
i.e. the higher control of educational processes by the states, which has led to a major
regional segmentation of the teachers.

Other factors must be considered in order to characterize this group and which
come to bear in a more local sphere. It is especially important to take into account the
concrete actions of the institutions charged with the training of the teachers. What stands
out in this study is the description of the programs of the Universidad Pedago'gica
Nacional, with their special emphasis on the manner in which they were put into practice

in the city of Puebla during the years the teachers were studying there.

Teachers’ training at the Universidad Pedagégica Nacional
The Universidad Pedago'gica Nacional (UPN) is one of the institutions with a direct
influence on the formation of indigenous teachers through its licenciatura programs in

indigenous education. The program at UPN has its immediate antecedents in the policies

82

of the seventies. A study course of ethnolinguistics was created in 1979 at the Centro de
Investigacio'n y Estudios Superiores en Antropologia Social (CIESAS) [Center for
Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology]. Also in 1982 a program of
indigenous education was established at UPN, for which groups of teachers were selected
to study for a licenciatura degree at the central campus of the UPN in Mexico City.6

In 1990 two other programs in indigenous education were initiated: the study
course in pre-school education and primary education, conceived as courses of
professional standardization, i.e. as a strategy of pedagogical formation for those
individuals who were working as teachers without having previously gone through a
teaching program. Since these teachers are in active service, these courses were designed
with a special modality in that the teachers only attended university on Saturdays. This
also gave the program a semi-open character. It is assumed that the teacher-students must
study autonomously on their workdays. Teaching material is designed for this purpose,
with considerably detailed lessons and activities which must be studied during the week,
whereas the Saturday sessions are consulting opportunities to clear up doubts
(Universidad Pedagégica Nacional 1991a). Formally there are two different programs
with two different degrees, one in pre-school education and the other in primary
education. Actually, teachers of both levels work in the same spaces, with the same
subject matters and the same materials.

Both study courses consist of eight semesters, divided into two great blocks

called basic areas from the first through the fifth semesters and a terminal area

 

6 UPN was conceived as an alternative to higher education for the teaching profession of the country, and
with this idea in mind it offers various licenciaturas and Master’s programs as well as specializations.
These programs are offered at the central campus in Mexico City and in the different campuses situated in

83

comprising the sixth throughout the eighth semesters. In the basic area the courses are
organized into four curricular subjects: psychopedagogics, social history,
anthropology/linguistics, and methodology. In the terminal area subject matters are
organized into four so-called fields of knowledge: nature, social matters, language, and
mathematics; the idea is that in this last area the teachers develop a pedagogical proposal
for teaching in one of these areas. This proposal is a requirement that serves them to
obtain the licenciatura degree (Universidad Pedagogica Nacional 1991b and 1993).

The basic criterion to be admitted to this program is to be a teacher in the service
of the Subsystem of Indigenous Education of Secretaria de Educacio'n delica. It is also
assumed that the teachers working in this area must have a sufficiently adequate fluency
in the indigenous language of their group of origin. Ideally, this mother tongue is the
same of the region where they will work. The linguistic criterion has been the principal
element that was used in Mexican society to identify indigenous populations. Therefore,
it is also implicitly assumed that the teachers who study these licenciaturas are
indigenous, or are at least working in areas of indigenous settlement where a minimum of
one native language is spoken.

Although the formal proposal is evidently attractive and addresses an existent
deficiency, there are many problems that have not yet been adequately solved.

Perhaps the first and most significant of these problems is the result of the
history of indigenous education in Mexico itself, which has largely been a political and
not so much a pedagogical project. As indicated above, indigenous education has from

the beginning been part of the policies of national integration of the Mexican State.

 

various states of the Republic. Recently the university has opened courses for students of preparatory
schools. The aim is to train professionals in the field of educational sciences.

84

Educational projects developed in such a manner were essentially determined by political
interests and by interests of the groups that formed around them. Thus the major part of
the educational programs created for indigenous populations put political before
educational aspects, and in many cases even replaced them.

This problem was also reflected in the study courses at UPN. However, it must
be underlined that the obstacles faced by these study courses are diverse and are not only
a product of institutional matters, but also include much more comprehensive problems.
Here I shall mention the conflicts the Puebla campus of UPN was faced with, but it must
be added that they are not presented as a representative sample. However, it may be
assumed that in general terms there are probably no significant variations, since the
institution functions according to a general model that is applied in the entire Republic.7

These problems may be classified into two major categories: a) those related to
the proper characteristics of the teachers; and b) those of the institution.

The cultural antecedents of the teachers fall in the first category, their culture of
origin and in particular their academic preparation. As far as their cultural antecedents are
concerned, they become an obstacle to university learning when they are not adequately
taken into account in the university training programs. One example for this is the
linguistic ability of the teachers. Spanish has a significant presence among the teachers;
however, the Spanish they use may be called popular Spanish. This language is distinct
from academic Spanish as used in scholarly interactions and which has its clearest

expression in the materials used in the study courses and the standards demanded by the

 

7 Perhaps the exceptions come from those regions where indigenous communities have proposed
educational alternatives, like in Chiapas and some parts of Oaxaca.

85

advisors of the university. University Spanish is highly specialized and not easy to use,
even in the case of the Spanish-speaking mestizo teachers.

Because of the existing social conditions in Mexico, Spanish has acquired a
status of language of power with respect to the indigenous languages. Under the
conditions for the formation of this country, the knowledge and employment of the
Spanish language has been an element that showed the affiliation with a dominant group,
contrasting, especially in certain regions, with the discriminated populations. Therefore,
its use, compared to the indigenous languages, has never been a neutral fact, nor was it
used under equal conditions, which points to one of the criteria of social inequality in
Mexico.

A large part of the indigenous teachers, regardless if their native language was
indigenous or Spanish, are not only incapable of managing adequately the academic
Spanish required by the university, but often even speak what may be called indigenous
Spanish; i.e. they have a double disadvantage in scholarly interaction. It must be pointed
out that the data obtained from the total of Group one and 64.2 percent of Group two
show that a great number of them had learned Spanish in the context of the family.8 This
should actually account for a better fluency than has been indicated here. However,
according to the narratives of teaching experiences and other recollections of everyday
life, it is possible to conclude that the family teaching of the Spanish language, in the case
of those teachers who may be identified as indigenous, must have been deficient. This is
the result of a rather precarious mastery of Spanish of teachers’ parents and the use of the
indigenous Spanish referred to above. The following tables show these contexts of

Spanish learning in the two groups under study:

86

Table 9 Context of Spanish learning Class 1990

 

 

 

 

 

Context No. %
Family 12 38.7
School 9 29.0

No data 10 32.3
Total 31 100.0

 

 

 

 

 

Source: teachers ' narratives.

Table 10 Context of Spanish learning Class 1992

 

 

 

 

Context No. %

Family 12 66.7

School 6 33.3
Total 18 100.0

 

 

 

 

 

Source: teachers ' narratives

This learning in the context of the family, of a version of Spanish that is not the

dominant one, becomes evident in the recollections of some of the teachers:

“The second language [Spanish] I learned at home from my relatives, and
little by little I was learning it from other persons, because my father took
us to sell things at markets, and... it was there where I heard how they
communicated among themselves [the Spanish speakers].

When I was six I entered primary school, where some of the words... I
already understood them... but for me it was difficult, because my parents
spoke to us in Nahuatl...” F.C.H.

“Even though my parents speak Spanish, they don’t speak it with
perfection, and I learned to understand them since I was a little girl...
When I entered into other schools I was forced to speak with more
precision, and when I made mistakes I was laughed at and I felt bad, and
the only thing I did was listen...” D.A.M.

 

8 it must be remembered that these data also include the Spanish-speaking mestizos.

87

Based on previous quotes by teachers who learned Spanish at school, there are
still major problems because of the hostile context they were generally exposed to,
especially if they weren’t fluent in the national language. One example, though perhaps
extreme, of the problems the teachers faced linguistically, is pinpointed by one-woman
teacher who speaks about a “halfway” situation between the loss of an indigenous

language and a deficient acquisition of the second language:

“I learned Spanish in the family... from my dad. Since we were little he
spoke to us in both ways, Spanish-Nahuatl or vice versa. For all my
brothers and sisters and... for me it is difficult to speak Spanish; maybe
because of the lack of practice, many words in Nahuatl we can’t
pronounce... clearly. For me, personally, in Spanish it was a little difficult
to know exactly how things are pronounced.” L.J.P.

Thus, it becomes evident that it is not exceptional to find teachers who had a
deficient initial introduction to Spanish, even though it may have taken place within the
family context. Besides, this deficient learning was maintained during their school years,
all of which has repercussions in their university performance. In the university not only
fluidity in academic Spanish is required, but also a certain ability for the use of academic
materials, which are, moreover, extracted from texts for specialists in social and
educational sciences.

Another cultural antecedent that affects the academic performance of the
teachers negatively is the aspect of the concepts of person, time and space. These
concepts are the basis for the ethnic differences that remain beyond the change of other
cultural characteristics that can be more volatile and may lead one to believe that the

individuals have been homogenized.

88

My data on this topic is limited, but the issue remains as an important line of
investigation. It is possible to make some observations, which point in that direction.
One example is the difficulty faced by many teachers with respect to concept of time; for
many of them the identification of centuries and their own situation in the progress of
time is extremely difficult. In other words, conceiving historical events in a large time
frame is an abstract and highly difficult operation for them.

It might be concluded that this is part of a series of deficiencies shared by all
those students who have received a deficient education in history, but there are also
different historical concepts, in which the past is associated with concrete facts, and tied
to personal experience.

In this fashion we would find a somewhat paradoxical fact: a university study
course that presents a planned and organized program, taking into account the ethnic
differences of the students; in fact, it ignores them.

As far as the problems arising from the institution proper are concerned, the
following five must be mentioned as the most important: a) format, b) didactic materials,
0) study plans and programs, d) academic personnel, and e) organizational structure.

Regarding format, it must be remembered that this is a partially distance-
learning program, with strong emphasis on self-study. A system of this kind needs for its
successful realization various requisites: first of all, a student who has assimilated certain
academic characteristics, such as habits and strategies of study and reading. In this case
the students have to work on their own during the week, reading and performing the
activities indicated by the texts, and only come to the Saturday sessions in order to

resolve their doubts. After mentioning some of the teachers’ characteristics it is difficult

89

to assume that these conditions will be fulfilled. This becomes obvious observing the
forms of work, because in the best case the Saturday sessions have been transformed into
regular classes, where the professors present their topics. The teacher-students, on the
other hand, read very little and also do not perform all the activities marked in the
workbooks.

The materials used show what is probably the greatest deficiency of the study
course. They basically consist of a series of anthologies, complemented by workbooks
that direct the readings and describe the objectives and activities of each course, as well
as the units into which they are divided. Most of the selected readings, as mentioned
above, are taken from specialized books and journals on the social and educational
sciences, and were notiwritten for readers like these teachers. It must be emphasized that
this is not an underestimation of the teachers’ ability, but the acknowledgment that many
of them had to face acute problems in their preparation, and it is therefore evident that
this kind of reading is not very helpful in their training. This shows the need for
textbooks written for the type of reader at hand.

In some curricular subjects, the problems become obvious, for example in the
anthropological-linguistics, which supposedly should provide the difference of the
teachers’ program through a cross-cultural perspective. A brief survey of each of the
courses, their objectives, contents and readings, shows one of the reasons why the
teachers face so many problems in their formation at the university, and why many of
them leave during the first few semesters.

These anthropological-linguistics courses show that there is more interest in

providing a political discourse than in strong fundamentals to confront the cultural

90

differences in the processes of teaching/learning. This can be seen when the general
objectives of this group are reviewed: “... responds to the acknowledgment of cultural
diversity in the indigenous zones of our country, the valuation of the variety of its
manifestation, and the importance of its conservation” (UPN 1992a: 9).

When an adequate pedagogical training does not complement these intentions,
then they are no more than just that: good intentions. Some scholars have already pointed
out that cross-cultural training for teachers focused on “humanism” frequently fails to
educate them adequately for an actual cross-cultural school teaching (Jordan 1994). In
our case we find the same needs, only this time the lack of attention to the
pragmatic/social perspective is fundamentally the product of the institution in charge of
the training of the teachers.

All of this is related to the ethnicist9 discourse and romanticism the teachers
develop in the course of their university studies. Returning to the line of analysis, it
should be pointed out that the courses that are part of the program10 show problems in
their objectives, contents, or in the lack of bonds between each other. For instance, the
course on Culture and Education mentions as its general objective: “To present a space
of reflection on the forms in which the cultural aspect is present in the teaching practice
and in the specific manifestations culture has in the indigenous communities” (UPN,
1992a: 21). This objective is correct, but the problems arise when the specific contents of

the units are reviewed.

 

9 Ethnicist is the term that is used in Mexican anthropology to describe the positions that see the ethnic
aspect from an essentialist viewpoint, i.e. as a nature which remains invariable in spite of historical changes
that affect the groups and their contexts.

'0 Culture and education; the ethnic-historical question in schools and communities; language, ethnic
groups and national society; interethnic relationships and indigenous education and ethnic identity; and
ethnic identity and indigenous education.

91

Thus Unit 1 proposes to “acknowledge the different conceptions of culture and
some of their theoretical and social implications.” Upon close inspection of the readings,
however, it becomes obvious that this concept remains in the abstract, since there are no
exercises at all to demonstrate how in terms of teaching practice culture may be an
obstacle or support for teaching. Besides, these readings are quite obsolete (they include
texts by Kluckhon and Herskovits), or rather meant for students of the social sciences
(Gime’nez), and are replete with terms of difficult access for the teachers who take this
study course. The teachers mentioned as an example that they did not understand the
following concepts found in the readings: unconscious, supraorganic, reification,
evolutionary line, endoreproduction, natural selection, extrabiological, genetic
endowment, determinism, imponderable, paleoanthropology, material culture, assertion,
the universals, categories, secular, cultural dynamics, agraphic, and continuum.
Teachers literally have to fight for comprehension of a text full of new terms, and finally
the understanding of the text consumes all their time, energy, and desire to read, and they
drastically discover that there is no easy way to tie all this to their everyday teaching
problems. One of them summarized this as follows:

“Here they’ve only taught me rollo [rhetoric, words without real content]

and nothing to really solve the problems I face with the children in the
classroom.” M. RR

The work guides, on the other hand, although especially designed for this study
course, are narrowly tied to the anthologies, and are elements that try to adjust the series
of readings to the context of the teachers and their work.

As far as the teaching staff is concerned, it does not comply with the profile a

program of these characteristics should have: on the one hand, the assessors generally do

92

not have any training in intercultural education, nor any knowledge at all of the
educational difficulties in indigenous contexts. On the other hand, they also lack
knowledge on remote or weekend education. The only thing we had during the years of
field research were regional meetings with the intention of following up and evaluating
the plans and programs of the study course. However, they did not contribute to any
effective modifications of the program. In the reality of the university, the assessors
applied the programs mechanically and without any real sensitivity for the cultural
differences of the teachers.

Finally, the problems derived from the organizational structure are due to the
form in which the university is organized. Until 1992, the institution was coordinated by
the central campus, where plans and programs were established and materials prepared
and distributed. In 1992 the so-called Acuerdo Nacional para la Modernizacio’n de la
Educacion Bdsica (ANMEB) [National Resolution for Modernization of Basic Education]
was adopted, which formally sought the decentralization of the national educational
system. This meant, in effect, that all educational systems, without losing their national
character, would operationally remain in the hands of the state governments. Behind this
stated intention, various other elements came into play, for instance the attempt to
neutralize the traditionally influential Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la
Educacio'n (SN TE) [National Union of Educational Workers].

As far as UPN is concerned, this resolution led to a rift in the internal structure
of the university: on the one hand, since that time the labor aspects have been in the
hands of the state governments, and the academic aspects were maintained in the central

campus. This did not improve conditions, at least as far as the study courses in

93

indigenous education are concerned: the central unit is still not considering regional
conditions and needs in a program that has its bases in local and regional differences.
During all this time the strong centralization of processes was responsible for the fact that
traditionally any aspect, for instance even the distribution of materials, was extremely
slow and full of problems.

An additional problem directly related to this lack of sensitivity to local and
regional differences, ironically present in Mexico City, is the issue of indigenous
education in the urban context. In the case of Puebla, various schools of the subsystem
are located in urban or suburban areas, where local indigenous groups settle or used to
settle, only to be surrounded by urbanization or migrants. In 1999 it was reported that in
the city of Puebla there is one institution for initial education, 23 for pre-school
education, and 9 for primary education pertaining to the Subsystem of Indigenous
Education and those considered Nahua by default. (Secretaria de Educacion Publica,
Seccion de Estadistica de Educacio'n Indigena de la Direccion de Educacio’n Elemental,
manuscript, 1999).

The university’s programs simply have ignored this fact and continue to pretend
that the only education is that which is imparted in the traditional regions, where social
and cultural conditions are clearly different.

Thus the training of the teachers at UPN suffers from a series of problems, and is
more directed towards political than educational objectives. In this case it can be said that
the university has had more effect on the indigenous teachers in the local and regional
sphere, due to their actions of cultural reproduction. This permits the transmission of

images generated by State ideology, and reinforces concepts they already have. Didactic

94

materials used in the study are the most important mechanisms of this process. This

becomes obvious, for example, when the teachers talk about their lives.

In search of the group
State policies have led into an intensification of the social differentiation of the Indian
population. This may have been explicit or not, nevertheless policies and politics
intensified the contradictions inside the communities. As a part of this process
government actions encouraged the creation of a group that, due to its ties with State
institutions, decided to try to acquire knowledge and advantages that would distinguish
them, sometimes more, sometimes less, from the rest of the Indian population. At the
same time they acquired a distinctive ideology, characterized by the exaltation of the
ethnic elements. The group has been reinforced by a series of images and institutions that
operate in society. Among the former are those, which exalt the indigenous past, and its
cultural values (to which the anthropologists have actively contributed), beginning with
the creation of the modern Mexican State as part of its nationalist ideology. The latter are
headed by all the institutions related to education and to which the teachers are tied by
means of their profession (institutions where they were formed, and institutions on which
their jobs depend). These institutions allow teachers to develop certain identification
among them and create and spread common languages, ideas and practices.

At the same time the group is characterized by a regional and local
differentiation, reflecting both the diversity of the indigenous population of the country (I
shall return to this issue in the following chapter) and the dynamics of institutional and

social development. The characteristics teachers of the different regions present (for

95

example the degree of cultural and personal separation with respect to their native
communities, their internal social and economic differentiation or their political attitude)
depend on different elements. Among these factors are ethnicity (the vitality the
communities have), the social and economic structure (the other social groups with whom
they interact, existing resources and their distribution), institutional context
(administrative and work divisions of the Department of Education) and the political
conditions that exist in these areas.

According to data provided by the Department of Public Education for the 1997-
1998 school year, there were 3,741 teachers in the Subsystem of Indigenous Education in
the state of Puebla, placed in the different levels of basic educationH (initial education,
pre-school education, and primary education).12 These teachers represented 10.6 percent
of the total number of teachers in the state. '3 Additionally, there are nine sector managers
and 104 zone supervisors, while other teachers are working in administrative tasks in the
offices of the Department (Socorro Betancourt, member of Basic Education Direction,
personal communication). On the other hand, not all the teachers who are working for the
Subsystem are of indigenous origin; there are also mestizos, though probably not in very
large numbers. However, there are no data available in this respect. The indigenous
teachers belong to the indigenous groups existing in the state, but are predominantly

Nahuas, Popolocas, Mixtecs, and Totonacs. As mentioned before, they also have different

 

” Indigenous education in Mexico only covers initial educational levels like pre-school and primary school,
whereas university education has only been designed for the formation of teachers.

'2 As in other cases, information on teachers is contradictory. According to the document, the number of
teachers in each of these levels is as follows: 41 in initial education, 1,527 in pre-school education, and
2,173 in primary education. Other data from the same source indicate that there are 3,460 or 3,486
indigenous teachers. Estadisticas de inicio y fin de cursos. Typescript. Department of Public Education of
the State of Puebla.

96

degrees of acculturation and have reached different social positions, without really
distinguishing themselves in the accumulation of financial power. Some of them have
obtained a certain amount of political control, which has diminished over the last few
years.

Thus we find within the group of teachers some variety of ethnic origin, degree of
acculturation, and social and administrative position. In addition, the teachers who
attended the Puebla campus of the university (i.e. the subjects of this study) worked
mainly in the city of Puebla, its surroundings, or in nearby cities, and hardly any of them
lived in the city, but rather in outlying working class neighborhoods. In general terms
they did not distinguish themselves from the working class mestizo population in their
appearance. They normally used Spanish as their everyday language and did not live in
any of the ethnic enclaves of the city. However, at the same time they maintain the
common underlying elements that have been mentioned above and which are activated in
decisive contexts (such as their workplaces, the university, and their groups of origin), or
when they are specifically asked about this issue. There are also institutions, especially
the schools, where a certain teachers’ culture is encouraged and reproduced which allows
interaction between the subjects.

There are other dimensions in the process of creation and reproduction of this
group that emerge in the recollections. In the family environment, for instance, the weight
of cultural traits, such as native language and particularly the attitudes of the family
regarding indigenous heritage (negative, positive, or ambivalent), influences decisively

the way in which the subjects develop this feeling of affiliation to or rejection by a group.

 

 

'3 The data of the Department of Public Education show that during the 1997-1998 school year there were
35,426 teachers in the Basic Education levels, where the Subsystem of Indigenous Education operates as

97

The manner in which they use the resources to manipulate these affiliations is decisive in
the formation of ethnic identity. However, the weight of the context where the teachers
grow and continue their development appears with all its force to modify and reinforce
these trends.

Below are the life narratives of three teachers. All three are Nahuas, belong to
Class 1990 and are exceptionally lucid and reflexive. Each story shows these additional

facets of group formation.

S. CM.

S.C.M. is a primary school teacher who has always been a classroom teacher with a
group, although he was the principal of a school at one time. During his career he has
worked in different places until he came to work in a semi-urban part of the city of
Puebla where he currently lives with his wife (who is also a teacher in the subsystem) and
their three children. He was one of the best students of his class, although he didn’t finish
his thesis. In his group he had a certain degree of influence, especially among the men,
whereas some of the women teachers viewed his leadership with displeasure. What
follows is a rather extended narrative of his life, which shows both personal and social

factors that play a role in the formation of ethnic identity:

“I was born on a little farm where only my parents lived, that is to say my
family, my dad’s family, my mother, and... among my siblings I am the
fifth of six brothers and sisters as well as two outside my father’s
marriage. I entered school when I was about four years old, into pre-
school, what they used to call castilianization. I received classes from a
bilingual teacher, one of the first in indigenous education. But when I was
five, we moved to the village; a village my father took us to... one of his

 

 

Well. Ibid.

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ideas were that we shouldn’t live among the natives. My grandmother
spoke a lot to us in Nahuatl, that is she only speaks Nahuatl... and, well,
we all had this way of speaking, the typical way of speaking bilingual,
where you confuse “0’s” and “u’s” and all that, and that’s what he didn’t
want, and partly also because of his business, and so he took us to the
village. There he put me into primary school, practically starting when I
was five years old. I wasn’t even six yet, and even though they don’t admit
you before six, and I wasn’t six yet, and they put me into school because I
had a year of castilianization and, well, I was more or less apt for primary
school.

I stayed there through fifth grade and they took me back once more to the
farm, but when I came back there was a change, but totally. I was out of
place there at school with the kids, because there were only classmates
who spoke Nahuatl. I did speak in Spanish with the teacher, but Nahuatl
was their language, and I remember, there I do remember details. How I
began to suffer because of my classmates who spoke Nahuatl: they
despised me, they discriminated against me like when an indigenous
person is among the mestizos; but there it was the other way around, and I
felt real bad, I mean I started to hate the natives because they despised,
criticized and discriminated against me like that.

Once they made us work in the corn fields, to loosen up the earth around
the plants, I didn’t know how to do that, with the hoe you have to clean
out the weeds, and there are the little corn plants, but since I had no
practice I chopped down a plant; well, there goes the little snitch and
denounces me. The teacher didn’t say anything, we continued and I
chopped down another one, and they go and tell on me again, and here
comes the teacher, mad as hell: ‘But how can that be possible! I know
you’ve been in the village, but that’s not normal for a boy!’ I mean, he
declared me stupid and that hurt like mad. He didn’t admit that it was for...
for lack of practice I committed this kind of error, and I felt like a kicked
dog.

So I finished fifth and sixth grade and they wanted to send me to a
boarding school, which was a boarding school for primary, secondary, and
teachers’ training. That was in Tantoyuca, in Alseseca, but since I was
very young, that is I had entered primary school very young, well
obviously I left very young, too, even before I was eleven, and they didn’t
accept me. At the same time one of my brothers also entered, my half-
brother, and my dad said: ‘No, well, then do sixth grade over again,’ and
he puts me in, but this time into a boarding school, one of these boarding
schools, and there things were even worse; you had to be together with the
others day and night, and I still had that problem with Nahuatl. I didn’t
master it, I mean I spoke it but with cuatros [errors].

99

I’ve told some anecdotes in the group of errors that I made. Once we went
to school—we went on Sundays and came back on Friday—and this one, I
only understood very recently that it was me who said it, because my
schoolmates thought it was really funny; there were four of us, the other
three laughed a lot. There was a man on horseback, and I said to him,
‘plai’, which means ‘haunches’; literally, ‘flai’ is used as an adjective, a
noun for ‘mister’; in Nahuatl that means ‘uncle’, but it is used for ‘mister’;
‘asfii plai’ is a term like ‘listen, man,’ ‘listen, brother’, something like
that, but in Nahuatl. Literally I was telling him, ‘Mister, take me behind
you on the horse,’ but what I was really saying was that he should push me
at the haunches, from behind... imagine the laugh they had on me, and I
never dared to tell this to anyone, not even my brothers, because my
brothers all speak better Nahuatl than me, even my sister who is younger
than me, because when we got to the farm, while I went to primary school,
my sister spent a lot of time with my grandmother, who lives there, and
during this time she learned everything, nearly all of Nahuatl and how it
should be expressed, and I didn’t...

So I got out of the boarding school pretty frustrated, I mean, I still thought
that my world was the mestizo world, that I didn’t have anything to do
with the indigenous, it absolutely did not pass through my mind that I
should be a native, and my dad placed me into a boarding school for
secondary school where there was also a group from my region from
Chicon [Chicontepec, Veracruz] and there as well the manner of
expressing ourselves, I mean the way of speaking distinguished as from
the others. The ‘nacos’, they called us ‘nacos’, ‘chicones’, and how I hated
that. I began to run around with the guys from there, those that were the
tougher ones, the little leaders, and I wasn’t dumb in my classes... ahl, but
before entering boarding school, excuse me, I studied one year in a
commercial secondary school, that was a technical private school, and
well, logically when I came to the boarding school I had an advantage
over the others, and the same thing happened at the boarding school, when
I repeated sixth grade.

After that, in the boarding school, I repeated the first year of secondary,
and then I had this advantage in knowledge, and this gave me a certain
leadership in the group, because of the advantage. Besides, my behavior
was somewhat mestizo, I wasn’t so indigenous, and my way of expressing
myself as well, I mean... in a certain way it was distinct, and they always
asked me where I came from, I was trying to say that I was from... from
Chicon, and above all, to pronounce the word Chicon, because speaking of
Chicontepec is speaking of natives. What I told them was ‘no, well, I’m
from Chapopote [a nearby mestizo town], because on my birth certificate it
says that I was born there... I was born on the farm, but since my dad
brought us when we were little; I believe he intended to bring us here
because he registered me in sixty-three, no... he registered me in sixty-

100

four, and we came to the village in sixty-nine, but he had already
registered me because I was born in the village, and on my birth certificate
it says that I was born there. And then I stubbornly said that I was born in
the village and that I wasn’t born in Chicon; I was from the village and
more or less knew places next to the city of Alamos, the nearby places,
and therefore I could then, as you say, lie and say that I was from there, in
reality I wasn’t from there, but I knew more of that place than I knew of
Chicon.

At the bottom of things, what I was trying to hide is that I was indigenous,
that ’s what worried me most because I sometimes took part in what they
did to the indigenous, to our indigenous schoolmates. I mean, since I ran
with the crowd of boys from that village there where the boarding school
was, well, we even discriminated against them, and I partly tried to get
even for how they had made me suffer when I was on the farm, because
they really made me suffer, even the teachers, and I think that was a... I
don’t know what difference it would have made in the physical
development, but sometimes I talked about that with my sister, and she
told me the same. When I was eleven or twelve years old, they took us to
collect firewood, for instance, and the other guys, I saw them, they carried
a third of a roll of wood, but really big, and I just couldn’t, man.
Sometimes the teachers wanted to make me do it, but no, I definitely
didn’t carry that, and if I did I threw it down and I simply couldn’t do it... I
even cried from rage, and then they considered me very weak, and
physically I was very skinny, because I don’t know if they were older, I
was one of the smallest boys there... molonche [small one] they called me
there and all that; in secondary school we played pranks on them and all,
no? of the natives, I got even for what I had suffered.

I leaved secondary school and I went on to preparatory school in Tampico,
and I’m still with the same group of schoolmates, but there in preparatory
school there were no indigenous students, so I practically forgot that stuff
about being indigenous, if I was or wasn’t indigenous, because for me that
was a world apart, because one classmate with whom I had a friendship, I
took him to the farm and he told me that indeed my life was somewhat
double, when I came to the farm, my behavior changed, because in the city
I appeared to be very much up-to-date, very a la mode, or at least I tried
to... and on the farm I behaved like I should have, naturally, and he said
‘Well yes, what happens is that you change your way of being, and when
you get to the farm, that’s another thing.’ By then I spoke Nahuatl well, I
could communicate with all the adults, above all with the adults, no, not
with the children, they were...

But I kept thinking that the indigenous did not, for me I had nothing to do

with it, but since some of my sisters were already working in the
subsystem, when I couldn’t find work in my profession, I signed up for

101

indigenous education, and there I began to... I don’t know, re-evaluate
my... my identity as an indigenous, I mean when you go to the Sierras and
you work there with the natives and you begin to realize that they, that
there is not much difference between them and yourself When a child that
is monolingual indigenous, or bilingual and has practically no Spanish,
well, if they study and progress, then maybe their conduct will be equally
great, and they will hate the indigenous. So it makes no sense, on the
contrary, you accept it, revalue it and take the best of it, no? I mean, it’s a
kind of pride, therefore I have the photos here of my sister, because she
thinks it is in bad taste, yes, because she says, ‘It’s alright that you are a
native, but you don’t have to show it’ and sometimes I intend to
demonstrate it because of all I have lived through, for all I have suffered.
I’ve had colleagues in indigenous education who’ve told me that they’ve
experienced situations similar to mine... I haven’t told them mine, but
they’ve told me this, that because of their physical appearance they don’t
feel themselves to be indigenous, and that they’ve been mistaken for
mestizos, but that all of a sudden they are indigenous again and don’t
know their role and all that, what decision to take, to make themselves
noted as real Indians or simply forget that, and then I begin to analyze, no?
There’s no sense in that, if you are indigenous, you don’t have to deny or
hide it.

I have some friends today, now, who are joking about the natives, but that
doesn’t offend or anger me, I mean, for me, joking about an Indian is
making fun of any kind of person, mestizos or Indians, I mean, no? Before
it was like this, anyone indigenous was someone to make fun of; anything
I did as a mestizo among natives they used to make fun of me because I
was a little different, and now that’s not so... Now it appears to me that
we’re all equal, that to be an Indian is... it has advantages and
disadvantages, it has qualities and deficiencies in this sense; and for the
rest... revalue it, teacher, feel proud about it. I wouldn’t want, for example,
for my son to feel one day ashamed of his grandmother, my mother,
because that would make me very sad, no? So it’s to instil that into him
from now on... because that’s how I feel about that.

To be in indigenous education, now that was crazy, buddy... my ideas
have always been reactionary [sic] of... about changing things that
sometimes couldn’t be changed, but it bothers me a lot that there are
people who... very aligned, what we call very bent-over. You know there
are times when they’re not... you don’t agree with what your boss says,
but in order to keep yourself in the grace and because you know what’s
right for you financially, you accept it... That bothered us like hell, from
the very beginning, and I’ve had to deal with various supervisors; some of
them explained, some told me: ‘Look, it’s not about... it’s not like that;
there are things that you can’t change.’

102

I’ve had some that tried to suck up to me, trying to pull me, to win me
over: ‘You can go a long way, you can do something... you can be
someone here, indigenous education, but you have to line up with
someone, you can’t go it alone.’ For them it’s anarchism, it’s... my
position is totally anarchic, because I’m neither with God nor with the
devil; but in reality what bothers me is that there’s... that someone would
abuse his power to put down the others, although they don’t agree; that’s
what I don’t like. In politics, for example, in all the elections in which I’ve
participated for union questions, they’ve always talked to me in order to
tell me that it’ll be so-and-so... no, I’ve never liked that, they even invited
me to participate: ‘It’ll be so-and-so, and we want you to be such-and-
such,’ and I don’t like that... I don’t give a damn, there may be things that
I can’t change, but I won’t try to change sides, and it’s not like they’ve
told me sometimes, that I like the side of the weaker ones, of the assholes,
of the losers, that’s not true. I like the side of the weaker ones, because
since I was little, when my dad mistreated my mom a lot, beat her and
above all insulted her a lot; he offended her saying we were a bunch of
Indian assholes, that we would never change because... that’s why we
would never change, because we were a bunch of Indian assholes, and he
lamented sometimes, drunk, he lamented and said: ‘I’ll be damned, I don’t
accept, I don’t know why I man'ied your mother who was an Indian; I
didn’t deserve to marry her.’ So I think that my inclination to... take the
side of the weak was born back then, those that have no way of defending
themselves, because the only thing they had was their will. And finally it
was my mom who saved my dad from everything, from... morally and
financially things could be done because she worked, he was an alcoholic.
The only thing he’d given my sisters was secondary school, for two of
them; so my mom, working and baking bread and sewing and all that, she
made it possible for them to go to the course for bilingual teachers, and
later they helped, they were the ones who supported my dad. But if it
hadn’t been for my mother’s willpower, who had the willpower to do it,
she wouldn’t have been able to do it.” Emphasis added.

T.M.B. is primary school teacher who has held various jobs as principal and supervisor in
the Department of Indigenous Education, which came under his charge. He has great
experience in various educational and administrative tasks. While he was studying at the
university, he appeared in his group as an important figure, but isolated from the so-

called philosophy of indigenous education, probably because he held on to his executive

103

role, and many of the teachers remembered him in this role. The fact that he was the
oldest among them may also have contributed to this. After his retirement he apparently
returned to his native community in the Northern Sierras. A man well-versed in

educational questions, he performed well in the study course, but did not finish his thesis.

“I was born on December 28th of 1937, in the indigenous village of
Tzinacapan, which belongs to the municipality of Cuetzalan del Progreso,
state of Puebla. The name Tzinacapan comes from two words of Nahuatl
origin: ‘tzinaca’, bat, and ‘pan’, place; which etymologically makes it
‘place of the bats.’ My parents were M.M.F. and M. P. B. D. When I was
nine years old I entered the rural secondary school ‘Ignacio Zaragoza’,
established in the community. This school changed its name after some
time, and when I graduated, it was called ‘Profesor Raul Isidro Burgos’.

On my first day of classes I went to school with enthusiasm, surely
because I wanted to know what they did there, but this spirit, this
enthusiasm only lasted a few minutes, then I wanted to go back home as
soon as possible. However, I had to endure my first day, but the next one
and the following days I refused to attend. When I had to go back it was
because my tutor forced me; the motive of my resistance was the fear it
caused me to hear an unknown language, of which I learned after some
time that it was called Spanish. At my age I had never heard this language,
that’s why I was so afraid, although I was also impressed hearing the bitter
weeping of children who attended against their will, these were the only
motives why I had no wish to attend spontaneously; I must point out that
because of the fact that I was forced to attend school, I suffered
irreversible traumas that I don’t want to remember.

In the midst of psychological problems and after seven years I finished
primary school and went back to my family, which consisted of my
mother, M.P.B.D., and my brother, H.M.B.; all of them now deceased. My
family, like most indigenous families poor in the extreme, made me at the
age of twelve work in the field like a peasant at the side of my older
brother P.M.B. He was my tutor and as such taught me and guided me at
work. I remember that my pay or my salary when I started to work was 50
percent of what an adult made. Unfortunately my brother to whom I am
referring, died in a water accident when I started sixth grade of primary
school, and this situation stopped my going through the last grade of my
primary education, because this situation obliged me to assume the place
my brother had occupied in the bosom of the family.

104

My mother, understanding my difficult situation to continue with my
schooling, spoke with the principal of the primary school and arranged
with him that in order to continue attending school and finish my primary
studies, I had to work Thursday and Friday of each week, of course
including Saturday and Sunday; only in this manner was it possible to
finish my primary education one day. This education which I received
along the entire process of primary school was in every sense insane and
traumatic, with damages which are still present.

It was in the year of 1955 when I graduated from primary school and had
to go back full time to agricultural activities, now in my character as tutor
to support my brother H.M.B. and my mother, because my older brother,
as I indicated, had died, and a brother by the name of L.M.M.B. had died
as well, when he was more or less one year and one month old, which I
forgot to mention.

When I was completely involved in my agricultural occupations, in the
month of May of the year 1957, a commission of parents from the
ranching hamlet of Tepetzintan, belonging to the same municipality of
Cuetzalan, situated to the east of my community, presented itself
unexpectedly at my private home in order to extend me the invitation to
work as a private teacher of the newly created school of said hamlet. After
contemplating the content of the invitation with my mother, with the
school inspector and with some persons of my confidence, upon the third
visit of the representatives I gave them my answer in affirrnative form,
arranging at this moment the date of my presentation.

I had a time margin of some forty days to make my preparations. The first
thing I did was to consult with my sixth-grade teacher N.D.H., who was
employed by the municipality. He unconditionally did me the favor of
advising me by means of an intensive course during two days of every
week. With this superficial training I presented myself on the first of July
of the year 1957 at the mentioned hamlet of Tepetzintan, with my
appointment as private teacher, issued by the school inspector no. 27 with
its official seat in Cuetzalan, Puebla, where 35 school—age children were
awaiting me, as well as a goodly number of parents. After two months I
was integrated into the Technical State Council of Literacy Campaigns
with a monthly compensation of $200 pesos.

The aforementioned ranching hamlet of Tepetzintan is at a distance of
approximately six kilometers from my village, and the people were
monolingual in the indigenous Nahuatl language. At a distance of 37
years, the people are bilingual, although communication in the native
language still predominates.

105

Due to the monolingualism, and taking into account my experience as a
speaker of the ethnic language because of my passing through primary
school, I did not hesitate to utilize our maternal language in the process of
teaching-leaming of my pupils. The school year at that time was
determined by the calendar A and B, and the state of Puebla belonged to
A, which began in February and ended in November. Therefore I started in
the middle of the school year and somehow had to finish in the month of
November, and therefore I only worked exactly half of the school year. I
believe the native language had much to do with it, for I remember with
satisfaction that most of my pupils came away reading and interpreting
satisfactorily the Spanish language during this period.

During the time I worked as a teacher in front of a group of students, I
always used the maternal language of my students, Nahuatl, whose

dialectal variation is what I speak; of course this was possible thanks to
the fact that I was working in said variant.”

MR. P.

M.R.P. is primary school teacher. Apart from being a teacher in front of a group, he has
held various supervising jobs. Currently he is a zone supervisor. As with the teacher
immediately before him, he also was a representative of the philosophy of indigenous
education in his group, holding, however, a position somewhat more emphatic and
romantic, sometimes even rhetorical. Very acute, he was able to use the approaches of
many of the texts to adapt them to his discourses. Often the discussions in class in which
he participated turned into a political statement on the principles on which the practice of
indigenous education should be based. In his discussions with female mestizo teachers he
was frequently disqualified by them because it had been years that he had not led a group

as a teacher. He left the program without finishing it.

“I still remember very clearly how my parents and my grandparents were when I was a
child; I have it all in my mind as if it were yesterday. I remember how my father took us
to live in a new house that he and his friends, colleagues from the community, had built.
The house was made of wood, composed of trunks called huilotes, of forks of brazilwood

106

and chijol [a local tree]. The roof was all made of a leaf called hoja de casa, it smells nice
and when it dries, it takes on a very beautiful walnut color. My father put on his white,
white clothes. His pants and shirt all made of raw number 90 cotton. His huaraches of
rubber soles, rubber from car tires. His palm straw hat of the huasteco style. My father
talked with his friends from the ranch in pure Mexican, but he also liked to speak in
Spanish. The people from other villages respected him, and they liked him because he
could always begin a dialog in Mexican or in Spanish, he never failed. He was also a very
good bone-setter, they called him the sobador de huesos [bone fondler]. Many people
came from far away, and sometimes he would cure them, and the funny thing is he never
charged them for his services. He accepted what they gave him as a tip, because he rested
his faith on a dream in which the Virgin had given him the powers or the talent to cure
those who had hurt their bones. It is something incredible, but all the people he caressed,
all of them got well. I was barely between five and seven years old, but I remember
everything well.

My mother was always more discreet, she dedicated herself to looking after us, because
we were seven older brothers, plus three that were younger than me. My rancho [hamlet]
is called El Tizal, because close by there are some rocks of white earth they call tizal, that
is a very smelly and fine earth, they say it is good to make pottery and for medicine. In
honor of this white earth the village where I was born is called El Tizal; it is a rancho,
that’s the name for small villages.

They say that in times of the Revolution my grandfather’s father came to take refuge
there, and later my grandfather; together with three other friends they began to build their
little houses and to work the fields which in those times were without owners. That’s how
the hamlet began, and as time passed on it became bigger, until it had a population of 240
inhabitants of children and adults. My grandfather, son of a family of Spaniards, as they
say, nearly always spoke Spanish, though he also spoke Nahuatl. Over time he became
the greatest cacique [chief] of the region. He exploited the peasants of the community
and of the surrounding communities. He took possession of many hectares of land; he
worked them in exchange for a few coins per day, four to five pesos a day. He had many
cattle, and therefore he filled most of the fields with hay.

My grandmother, on the other hand, came from a village called Palma Real and was the
daughter of very respectable people in that place. My grandmother was one hundred per
cent Indian, from her features to her language and attire. Everything represented with
dignity the genuine culture of those times. I remember her white underclothes with their
embroidered edges; she always walked barefoot, never spoke Spanish, she understood it
well but never spoke it. She conversed with her grandchildren, in this case with me; I
spoke to her in Spanish, and she answered me in pure Mexican. But the two of us
understood each other very well.

Those were beautiful times, everything was joy. There was much vegetation and plenty
of water. In my rancho there is a large brook with an abundance of fish of all varieties,
the mountains are full of deer, jaguars, and even tigers and lions. I remember that my
grandfather, my father and other men went hunting, among them my uncles; we little

107

ones and the women stayed home, we hurried with the preparation of the firewood, the
tenamastles, stones to make fire, because we were sure that they would come back at
least with a very large buck. Oftentimes that was what happened, and we knew that on
arrival my father or grandfather would order to bleed the deer in a jar and they would
force us to drink the blood raw and still warm, because in this manner we would learn
how to run like deer, and besides it was medicinal so that we wouldn’t run around all
poposacos, that is pale, because of the constant intestinal infections and the mosquito
bites.

How nice were those days. Perhaps that’s why I still haven’t forgotten this custom,
because each time when there are vacations and I go to my rancho, the first thing that I
do is take my rifle and I go looking for birds or rabbits because now there are no deer left.
During the rainy season I go looking for fish; if the creek is wide, I fish with a hook, or I
put traps, achiquihuita, in the rapids. I set them up in the afternoon and leave them there
all night, and in the morning I check them, and for sure there are many mojarras,
guabinas, cosoles, acamayas, xiles, charales and occasionally even snakes. When it is the
dry season, between April and May, a whole bunch of us go fishing with the redecilla,
that’s how we call a net made of pitas [a type of fiber], so the fish don’t get away; we
make a bow and we stand in the water and start to fish. That’s all a lot of fun, although in
these last years there is hardly any more fishing because the water has been polluted with
insecticides and other pollutants, and the fish have died and it has been very difficult to
recover the abundance of fish. All these experiences, these memories have left important
traces in my life.

I do not want to let all my learning as a child go unnoticed; therefore I want to comment
on my recollections of the activities in the fields, I mean agriculture that we children
performed, approximately between the ages of nine and twelve years. My parents and
older brothers dedicated themselves to the cultivation of corn and beans, the cultivation
and cutting of sugar cane, as well as the preparation of pilo'n or brown sugar. What we
liked best was the time of the chapoleo or to work in the corn fields, cleaning the ground
in preparation for the sowing of the new corn in the month of June. In the village we were
about twenty children who imitated our parents and older brothers and sisters, and while
they went to work cutting and cleaning big trees, we also got together doing the same, but
on smaller plots, called milcahuales. We worked every day in what was called mano
vuelta [a system of reciprocal help], and the interest of each of us was to get to the
highest number of days of mono vuelta. So when it came my turn to work my land, and I
had fifteen peons helping me, I had the duty to go and give them their day back when it
was their turn to work their fields. This activity supplemented la milpa [com field] of the
adult people.

Talking about the fishing, not about work, I won’t even mention the tasty special dishes
my mother prepared for us with the famous techiches, with the chiquintes, with the
pemuches, with the wrapped poxtas and charales called tlapictles. And what can I say
about the traditional festivities of All Saints’ Day, where they prepare food in abundance,
the tamales wrapped in papatla or banana leafs; the violin and jarana [a small guitar]
music playing the famous huapangos, from house to house, visiting friends and relatives.

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The nice and valuable thing about this is that the family of the visited home is very
grateful and accepts the gift of food and the moment of music with huasteca songs.
Carnival is something similar. But what I appreciate most of all and what makes me
nostalgic sometimes is the time of the posadas [traditional celebrations before
Christmas], Christmas and New Year. In my childhood there was no church, even now
they don’t have one, but in those times (1958-1960) prayers were held in a humble house
specially built for that, which was known as the ‘chapel’, with some statues of saints;
people got together, women and men, sometimes a whole family. The house filled with
people who brought their candles with great faith. They knelt down to pray, and I
imitated them, although for me this was like a game. I remember that with joy because
there many sones were danced to the music of violins and guitars; these sones are
components of a very nice dance in worship of the Virgin of Guadalupe. I remember they
formed lines of two, between ten and fifteen people per line, and all the little ones like
myself ‘tagged on’ in the back, and we kept the same rhythm as the adults. The dance is
composed of a cuatliIe, who is a man that leads the dance holding a blank machete over
his head in the sign of protection and attack, gives off a cry in a very special tone, like an
invitation to the dance, and then he begins to dance. The head-dress consists of crowns
made of reeds, ribbons and mirrors on the sides; a machete in its sheath, a carrying bag,
and everybody with white cotton clothes, a red kerchief around their necks; they dance in
front of the chapel or in front of the image until the wee hours of the morning.

It makes me nostalgic to remember that, because when I went to boarding school with a
scholarship, I had only very few opportunities to come back to my rancho to participate,
and since my teachers put other ideas in my head, so instead of liking the environment of
my rancho, I began to feel ashamed, because they pointed me out as an indio, and back
then I didn’t want to appear among my schoolmates as an indio... However, today as an
adult and after many years of rarely going back to my rancho, though not with the same
intensity as before, I keep feeling inside me this force that calls me to acknowledge my
village, my parents, my brothers and sisters, my family and, above all, my own culture.
Among the values that I still conserve is the Nahuatl language. [feel that in everything
else I’m not an Indian anymore [emphasis added], because this time of my childhood has
stayed far behind; but what I always carry with me is my native tongue. The Nahuatl I
learned from my grandmother, from my parents, from my older brothers and sisters, from
the inhabitants of my rancho, and from my fellow pupils at the time, and even though the
teacher tried to destroy it by forbidding us to speak Mexican in school, we did it secretly
or in the comfields, on the way and on all occasions of social gatherings, we kept
practicing the Nahuatl language together with Spanish, which in those days began to be
accepted in my rancho, and for all of us it was a motive of pride to speak Spanish well,
because according to the teacher that was the official language and the language of those
with ‘reason’. Therefore we all committed ourselves to speak good Spanish, and little by
little they took away my interest in the Nahuatl language and the cultural values of the
inhabitants of my rancho.

As I continued studying outside my rancho I moved away from my social and cultural
environment. When I finished primary school at the boarding school of Colatlan,

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Veracruz, I had a mentality I didn’t share with my countrymen from the community. My
estrangement became complete when I received a scholarship to go to the teacher’s
school at Perote, Veracruz. I moved away completely from my land, with all the classes
of my teachers in secondary school, filled with capitalist trends and ideas of integration,
extermination of the ethnic cultures, my pride of my identity as an Indian, as a provincial
person, of ranchero, huasteco etc. had ended. I preferred not to visit my parents, and in
consequence I stayed away from all participation in the events that took place at the
rancho. The little identification I had was leaving me, it was slowly extinguished until
nothing remained. As time went by and as I studied, 1 developed a different worldview,
of life and the world and its cultural and social spheres. With the influence of the
capitalist system and its bombardment of consumers, my village lost its attire, its string
music, its proper customs. Everything became very different, the string and band music
had no success anymore, modern bands began to gain popularity; the raw cotton clothes
were replaced by trousers, shirts and dresses for the women; huaraches were replaced by
shoes, plastic (rubber) boots. Even the fields were fertilized by chemical fertilizers. Many
people from my village began to emigrate to other places in search of better jobs or to
continue studying; young people like myself, who went away to study, never came back
to live in the community and are perfect strangers today, just like myself, we are some
rather uprooted indios [emphasis added], we are, like Guillermo Bonfil Batalla would
say, ‘strangers in our own land,’ or we are indios, we want to continue being indios, or
we feel better when those who observe us call us ‘Spanish-speaking indios,’ or as the
inhabitants of my rancho say to differentiate among people, ‘you are coyomej, from the
Spanish word coyotes. The non-indios, those who are not masehuli, are seen as related to
los de razo'n [those of reason, an expression used to name non-Indian people as opposed
to los de calzo'n], the mestizos or coyotes (coyomej), because they are persons who only
stalk the indio to exploit him, to use him, to steal his work, and so forth.

As an adult I never again participated full time in the festivities, the field work, sports
events or activities of the community for social, economic and cultural improvement; for
all these reasons I am today rejected by the members of my community. They don’t tell
me that, but I feel it, I can nearly see it, or rather I sense it with my intuition. However,
it’s not all my fault; today I realize that it is a consequence of the political system of the
government and, above all, of educational policies that has always implicitly carried the
poison of disintegration of ethnic groups and the integration into the Westemizing
ideology of the capitalist system in order to convert us into unconscious consumers and
human beings without proper identity.

My cultural contribution as a bilingual indigenous teacher with twenty-four years of
service may be considered as insufficient if one takes into account the multiple problems
which exist today and which everybody must face when searching for solutions, waiting
for proposals, actions, initiatives, innovations and, above all, waiting for conscious and
total participation. If I consider my participation from the political point of view, as a
government employee, as one more teacher, perhaps my attitude and my actions may be
considered as sufficient, because giving service to the government during twenty-four
years is to give a whole life, an entire youth, all the energy to comply with an established
program, to comply with the task of being an agent of change, being a ‘cultural

110

transmitter’, but of which culture? The one that is convenient to the system: capitalism,
the Westemizing trend, the educational policy of integration into national society.
Therefore they know me in my social circle as an ‘indigenous bilingual teacher,’ or
should they instead know me simply as a ‘teacher of rural primary education?’ Here is
the key to the problem... so it’s not the same being simply called a teacher of pre-school
education or primary school than being consciously called an ‘indigenous teacher.’ The
common teacher is the one that complies with his duty to develop the learning contents of
a pre-established program, without reflection, without criticism and, above all, without
favoring the cultural revaluation of the population he serves. The indigenous bilingual
teacher is consequently the professional who is aware of his identity as a member of an
ethnic group, aside from possessing cultural experiences and values proper of the
community, such as the native (indigenous) language, customs, traditions, music, dress
etc. that make him different from the rest of the others that are considered ‘national
identity’.”

These three stories as a whole contribute yet another series of elements for the
understanding of the group of indigenous teachers. Indeed, each of the stories contributes
additional data to get a better vision of the panorama of the indigenous teachers. To begin
with, the indigenous cultural substratum that is latent in these teachers again becomes
manifest: tastes, recollections, and the more or less detailed or more or less intact
knowledge of practices associated with indigenous societies. This permits the creation of
implicit ties from these rescued memories.

There is also the evident shock at discrimination, as I mentioned before, that
generally produces a sensation of rejection of one’s own group and therefore the attempt
to cross over to the mestizo group. Placed in this position, it is frequently the case that the
teachers are seen by their own original indigenous group as hispanicized natives, i.e. as
indigenous turned mestizos or ladinos, and subject to an inverted discrimination by the
indigenous people. This is sometimes just as strong as the other discrimination. At times
there may also be stronger forms of mimicry: in their attempt to escape from

discrimination, the teachers adopt not only the cultural features of the mestizos, but also

111

their discriminatory conducts, and the price is very high: what follows are internal
conflicts and the need to rationalize their actions, even though this leads to new
contradictions.

All of this shows that the building of identity, far from being a linear process, is
generally a very rough path, and the subjects may create, undo and recreate affiliations
and interests, depending on the experiences they make and the resources they have.

One significant characteristic is the sensation of contradiction they acquire as a
part of these processes and the fact that many of them find in the principles of indigenous
education the possibility to reflect their situation in a more critical fashion. However, the
available data indicate that the teachers frequently, and in spite of their desires and
statements, end up not totally mesticized, but differentiated from their group of origin,
and in this intermediate state that characterizes the group: two of these three teachers, for
example, live in the city and have come to form part of this sector of the working class
population that has indubitable ethnic roots, but acquires a more flexible spectrum than

that of a clearly distinctive sector.

The indigenous teachers: round trip

Thus the group we are studying could be called flexible. Created on the basis of
phenomena of great importance, such as the foundation of the modern Mexican State,
they can be distinguished on any trail: they are not peasants anymore, but they are also
different from other professionals that live and work in the rural world (physicians,

engineers, nurses). Sometimes they reach the top and form part of the local elite. When

112

 

they come to the city, they are little different from other working class sectors of
indigenous heritage.

However, when seen within certain contexts or through their personal experiences
and acts, they appear sharp and defined, with all their contradictions and with the long
and painful processes that brought them to form this intermediate group that continues to
be there: looking first to one and then to the other side of the societies that have made

them, with the institutions and practices that maintain their peculiar situation.

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CHAPTER 4

RECOMPOSING MEMORIES: THE SEARCH FOR IDENTITY

“that’s all, in a nutshell that has been my life,
from hidden there among the coffee trees on the farm,
until now... well, turned into a professional...”
.1. HQ
This chapter presents an analysis of the teachers’ narratives. These are, as may be
remembered, basically of two types: firstly, memories of their lives, and secondly what
may be called rationalized elaborations on their work and their personal and social
situations. Occasionally, both types are joined in a single narrative, but on other
occasions a clearer distinction may be made. In any case, these narratives are a privileged
way of accessing the processes of identity formation, insofar as these memories and
rationalizations are elaborations matched by group situations, even in the case of personal
experiences. As will be shown, the material shows two fundamental types of memories
and experiences, associated with the identity among the teachers, which correspond, in
large part, to two types of teachers.
0n the one hand we have those teachers who were less acculturated in their
childhood, whose native language was indigenous and who did not have much contact
with mestizo society. These teachers have relatively negative memories of the formation
of their own identities, which are associated with early discovery of racial discrimination.
This discovery is almost always associated with their entrance into school, this institution
that represents, in the community itself, the other social and cultural world of mestizo
society and is, at the same time, the beginning of a process of uprooting of their

reference

114

groups, frequently complemented, however, by other bonding tendencies. These early
experiences left strong marks on those teachers who, when entering into the teaching
profession, even increased their contradictions and did not always resolve them
satisfactorily.

There is, however, also another group of teachers fiom more acculturated
families, who did have Spanish as a native language or grew up in a bilingual setting. In
spite of everything it is possible to detect ethnic affiliation among them. This is because
the family groups of whom they are members maintain a series of collective practices that
are characteristic of those of indigenous populations (as such those related to the life and
annual cycle: mayordomt’as, religious celebrations), but with a certain contact to national
language and culture. It must be pointed out that this group includes some individuals
who can be identified as mestizos, but who present themselves as natives'.

In this second group of teachers, the narratives show that the social and cultural
shock does not appear in their memories of early life, as happens in the first group, which
is precisely because of this contact mentioned above. In the case of the mestizos there is a
constant emphasis on ethnic association, but associated with the ideas offered by the State
by means of the educational institution: those links to the Indian forefathers all of us
Mexicans supposedly have.

To give a better idea of the materials presented in this chapter, I first intend to
point out the ethnic origin and native language of the two groups with whom I worked:

Class 1990 and Class 1992.

 

' The main reason for this is the fact that formally only natives who are fluent in an indigenous language
may work within the subsystem of indigenous education and study these courses at the university.

115

Table 11 Ethnic origin of the teachers from Class 1990

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Origin Number %
Nahuatl 19 61.3
Mixteco 3 9.7
Popoloca 2 6.5
Mestizo 3 9.7

Undefinedz 4 12.9

Total 31 100.]

Source: Interviews and teachers ’ writings
Table 12 Native language of the teachers from Class 190
Native language Number %
Nahuatl 13 41.9
Mixteco 0 0
Popoloca 0 0
Spanish 9 29.0
Bilingual 3 9.7
Undefined 6 19.4
Total 31 100.0
Source: Interviews and teachers’ writings
Table 13 Ethnic origin of the teachers from Class 1992

Origin Number %
Nahuatl 12 42.9
Mixteco 2 7.1
Popoloca 4 14.3
Mestizo 6 21.4

Undefined 4 14.3

Total 28 100.0

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Interviews and teachers ' writings

 

2 Reliable information on ethnic origin and mother tongue of teachers is not available in University records
because it is assumed that every teacher working in the Subsistema is of indigenous descent and for the

116

Table 14 Native language of the teachers from Class 1992

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Native langjgge Number °/o
Nahuatl 7 25.0
Mixteco l 3.6
Popoloca 0 0
Spanish 1 3 46.4
Bilingual 6 21 .4

Undefined 1 3.6
Total 28 100.0

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Interviews and teachers ' writings

Several things come to our attention in these tables. First, although it is true that the
number of mestizos is a minority in both tables, (9.7% and 21.4%, respectively), in group
2 it is twice as high as in group 1. This is probably due to the fact that Generation 1990
was the first generation in Indigenous Education at the Puebla campus of the university.
Besides, on this occasion there were greater restrictions for the entrance of non-
indigenous teachers, whereas this criterion was relaxed much later. Some of the
comments heard among the teachers pointed out that the study course was seen as a
triumph of the indigenous teachers, long awaited by many of them, which may have
contributed to this more selective admission process.

It is also interesting to see that although Spanish as the mother tongue is important
in both cases, it is more important in Class 1992. In Class 1992 it is native to 67.8 percent
of the teachers (if the Spanish speakers are added to the bilingual speakers), whereas for
Class 1990 it is the native language of 38.7 percent (also adding Spanish to bilingual
speakers). This may certainly be explained by the progress of Spanish in some regions of

Mexico where it has replaced the indigenous languages. This is reflected here, since the

 

University this is the only fact that counts. The only possibility to know this information is through direct
questioning of teachers. Unfortunately I did not always get clear answers if any at all.

117

second one is a much younger group3 and would therefore have been more exposed to
this advance of the Spanish language, although other cultural traits may have been
preserved.

In the analysis of the narratives I will begin with those of the first group of
teachers, namely those who faced greater problems in the transit to this other world,
which was initially represented by school, and who exemplify with much more drama the

formation of a group characterized by contradiction.

Identity as travel: the departure

I assume that identity is the effect of the actions performed by subjects in their context.
Thus identity would always be the outcome of a negotiation, because even though the
subjects can control only very little of the process or accept, voluntarily or by force,
images or stereotypes that have been assigned them, there is always a part where they
must act, and acceptance is anyway almost always the effect of a previous process that
involved actions thrOugh which concepts were negotiated that were favorable only to
certain groups.

A good example for this are those teachers whose native language is indigenous.
Through their memories and everyday actions (at the university, in their work and in their
daily lives) they showed how they were building what they are: members of a particular
group that appears to be situated in an eternal transition between two margins they cannot
completely grasp: the indigenous society where they come from, and the mestizo society

into which they were thrown.

 

3 In class 1990 the average age was 34.5 years with a mode of 32; in Generation 1992 the average was 30.2
years with a mode of 26. Archivo escolar, Universidad Pedago'gica Nacional.

118

Let us first consider the recomposition of the stories they told about their lives, in

order to attempt to reconstruct the identities they have been creating.

Memories of “lived” life

What is remembering? Paul Connerton (1989: 36-37), in reference to Maurice
Halbwachs, points out that remembering is a complex social act because it is only
through membership in a certain group that individuals are able to acquire, identify and
recover their personal memories. He also says that any memory of facts or thoughts, even
the most intimate and private ones, only exists in relation to the whole of notions also
held by many others, and therefore the idea of an individual memory, absolutely separate
from social memory, is an abstraction that does not make any sense. This is certainly true,
and the nature of the collective becomes obvious in each of the personal experiences
remembered by the teachers.

Teachers show, through their narratives many peculiarities and individual facts:
their idiosyncrasy and the special concatenation of facts that appear in any individual
human life. However, at the same time their histories disclose common topics and similar
experiences that delineate the contours of a group of people made of commonalties and of
the interactions with others.

Perhaps the most conspicuous characteristic that stands out in the narratives is
learning, starting at a very early age, that there are important differences between
themselves and others, in this case associated with stigmatization. Other authors have
already explained the meanings of acknowledgment and internalization of stigmatization

by the subjects (Foley 1990; Goffrnan 1986). Among some of the most remarkable

119

features of this process is the existence of a set of attributes tied to a negative content.
These attributes are socially created. In the concrete case of indigenous teachers,
stigmatization is related to a set of ethnic attributes that go from “immediate” and
“evident” features to others more hidden or unclear. These attributes include among
others, physical appearance, attire, language, speech, food and musical tastes, place of
birth, family names, body management, and stereotypes. Individuals who possess these
attributes are part of groups located in subordinate positions in the social structure.

Two features of this process of stigmatization are worth mentioning. First, that the
process is not univocal, namely, that it has room for an amount of negotiation among
actors who can manage ethnic attributes in the extent that these are not essential but
relational ones. Second, that stigmatization is part of a system of institutionalized
inequality: the process that locates groups of individuals in social positions is neither a
random or contingent one. It serves to reproduce a particular social structure.

Stigmatization linked to ethnic attributes implies, by indigenous teachers,
discovery of stigmata, and learning of a system of behavior associated with these
stigmata, how to manage situations, how to negotiate inside the limits provided by
situations.

To be different, on ethnic person, a fact that was not evident within the families,
appeared, one is tempted to say, as a sudden realization on the first visit to school. This
happened frequently in grade school, because in those years, in the middle sixties and

early seventies, the concept of pre-school was not yet very widely used in indigenous

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communities. This difference materialized, in the beginning, as the difference fiom

others, unknown individuals and languages, often causing terror4:

“On the first day of classes, I went to school with enthusiasm, to be certain
because I wanted to know what they were doing there, but my good mood
only lasted some minutes, because I wanted to go back home as soon as
possible. However, I had to endure not only my first day, but the next and
all the others as well I resisted. When I went back to school it was
because my tutor forced me. The reason for my resistance was the terror I
felt when hearing an unknown language. With the passing of time I
learned that it was Spanish.” T.M.B.

“On my first day of classes, everything was new to me. When I saw the
teacher I felt fear, and even more so when he began speaking Spanish to
us. I didn’t understand a word, because my only language was Nahuatl...”
B.A.B.C.

“During my first year of school I didn’t want to go because I was so
embarrassed. I remember that my mother beat me so hard with a
casahuate [a local tree] stick that I couldn’t even walk, but as time passed
on I began to like school... When I was in second grade, some bearded and
long-haired men came to supervise, but they were so ugly that the bigger
kids said they were thieves who stole children, so we brought out all our
things secretly and without the teachers’ knowledge, and when they
became aware of it there was no one left because we had all gone home
and told our parents that some hairy men had come who wanted to steal
us. Our parents went running to the school to find out what was going on,
but the teachers informed them that these were people from SEP
[Secretaria de Educacio'n Publica. Department of Public Education] who
had come to see how they worked, but I could see that they were
threatening them, and therefore I didn’t want to go back to school...”
F.G.R.

“At the age of five I attended the Center for Indigenous Preschool
Education, where I heard the Spanish language for the first time, but I
was very much afraid, because I didn’t understand it and didn’t understand
or know how some of the words were pronounced.” M.B.M.

\

4
Flt-9m here on all quotes are the teachers, and in order to facilitate reading, there is only a minimum of
editing, always respecting the sense of their words.

121

“In my first year of entrance to grade school I was afraid the teacher might
ask me questions, because I only knew my name, the names of my parents
and brothers and sisters; I understood everything my fellow students were
talking about, but I couldn’t pronounce the words in Spanish. This
problem caused my fellow students to humiliate me, just because I
couldn’t talk with them. Although my uncles and my cousins spoke in
Spanish, I only learned the meaning of what they were saying, because my
mother wouldn’t let me play with them; ever since I was a little girl I had
to help her with the household chores.” L.V.J.

After this first experience, however, a sense is acquired that the different ones are
not those others, but they themselves. Attending school (this place that, in spite of being
an accustomed landscape, physically and culturally, of the rural communities of Mexico,
is still so foreign to many of them, a topic I shall pick up again further on), many of these
children quickly learned this different status of culture and language, and came to know

how to recognize it in themselves and in their families:

“In our community there were two little huts that served as the
schoolhouse, and there came the time when I had to go there. Basically
this wasn’t much of a problem, because finally we all were children of the
same village, and the only outsiders were the teachers who, though they
belonged to the indigenous subsystem, taught us in Spanish, but with a lot
of sacrifice and the idea that learning comes with “blood, sweat and tears”
and the combined efforts of the teacher at school and my dad at home I
went on and stayed in that school until third grade.

The real problem began when I had to go to another school with a social
group that was totally different from mine non-indigenous, and I
became aware that being indigenous was nearly equivalent to a sin, and I
suffered an internal conflict because of the contrast between indigenous
culture and Western culture.

This school is only two kilometers from the municipal center, and most of
my fellow students were monolingual Spanish speakers. Thus the
outsiders in this group were we, who came from the indigenous
community, and we were classified as inditos [little indios], compadritos
[little godfathers], nacos [half-wits] and with countless other pejorative
epithets.” Emphasis added. J.H.C.

122

“When I went to grade school ethnic languages were not taken into
account; on the contrary, we had a teacher who sometimes would imitate
or pronounce a word in Nahuatl, and he did it as a joke, to make fun of us.
Our village would each year celebrate the local fair, where they organized
the Dance of the Moors, and when the teacher saw one of them go by, he
would say: Look, children, there go the devils.” Emphasis added. A.L.M.

“In the past, my parents didn’t speak Spanish very well. I became aware
of this when I went to school... in second grade, when the teacher corrected
me... During grade school I learned to speak better, clearer, and I came
home and I told my parents how to say some of the words they couldn’t
pronounce; they told me that was the reason I was going to school, to learn
how to say things correctly, because these were other times.” Emphasis
added. E.P.H.

“My parents are Popoloca Indians, and they speak both their own language
and Spanish, but my grandparents only have Popoloca, and therefore I
learned both languages since I was a little girl. In grade school they
obligated us to understand and speak only Spanish. Although my parents
speak Spanish, but not perfectly... I observed how the teachers tried to
eradicate this language with severe punishments of the students who were
hearing others speak in Popoloca, and we were forced to speak in
Spanish... although now I understand that we say everything wrong; we
change all the phonemes, from feminine to masculine, from plural to
singular and vice versa...” D.A.M.

“As children in the family we had no right to participate in any of the
adults’ conversation, family affairs or not, because my parents had been
educated this way. Thus they passed their culture on to us in the same
manner. It is for this reason that all my brothers and sisters have problems
in language comprehension and speak Spanish all mixed up.” M.B.A.

Together with this sense of difference, and in spite of still being situated in the

familiar context of the village, school appears as the starting point of a process of
uprooting that for many would be present in other experiences lived in other places. In
the community, school is already part of this process, since it establishes rules that often

appear strange and incomprehensible to the children. One of these rules, as has been

123

mentioned by the teachers in their narratives, is the prohibition of the use of indigenous
languages. Although there are teachers who do not have memories as traumatic of their
introduction to castilianization, this is definitely the exception. Additionally, there are

many memories of physical or verbal punishment associated with ethnic discrimination:

“The teacher’s class remained a void, because I did not understand or
comprehend... the explanation she gave me, and not only for that reason,
but because he forbade me to speak my language.” J .F.C.B.

“The first language in which I began to communicate... was Nahuatl. The
change began to exist when they signed me up for first grade of the local
grade school, where it cost me a lot of work to learn Spanish, since I
continued to communicate in my native language, and I was really
embarrassed to pronounce words in Spanish like “Good morning,
teacher.” Instead I said piali tlamachtiketl, but when the teacher heard that
he began to scold me, he slapped me and punished me by saying “So you
won’t learn Spanish?” That really struck fear into me and I gradually
forced myself to learn a few words. Besides, I didn’t learn anything at
school; everything the teacher taught... was in Spanish, and since I didn’t
understand, how was I to learn? I repeat that it wasn’t until second grade
that I learned the second language little by little.” B.D.M.

“When my teacher caught me speaking in Nahuatl with my fellow
students, he rewarded me with strong physical punishment, trying to get
me to understand that this language wasn’t good for anything and that I
should not continue to speak it. There were so many punishments they
gave me for trying to speak Nahuatl in class and for not learning Spanish,
and even less being able to express myself in it, that the marks the
physical punishment left on me disappeared as time passed on, but the
psychological marks will remain all my life and manifest themselves in
many traumas and frustrations.” T.M.B.

“During my childhood, when I entered the federal grade school of my
village, the only language I knew was Nahuatl, but then in school I needed
to learn Spanish, because the teachers who worked in this institution
punished us... if they heard us speak in our native tongue. Another thing
was that most of us girls had our rebozos [a wrap to cover the head and to
carry objects, children, etc.] during the first days... to protect us against the

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cold, but our teachers didn’t like that and they took them away from us
abruptly without giving us any explanation for this attitude.” L.E.H.A.

“... since I was a little girl I was spoken to in Nahuatl, but from the time I
was five years old I attended grade school. I felt rejected by the other
children, although I was sociable with all of them... this was because my
parents spoke to me in Nahuatl, and all of them only spoke Spanish.”
E.P.H.

These memories of the prohibition to speak the native language are also shared by
some of the Spanish speaking teachers who attended school together with indigenous
fellow students, from whom they learned the indigenous language, ironically and

contrary to the intentions of the school:

“When I began to go to school, I felt very glad, because this way I didn’t
have to go with my father to do field work. I had a lot of fun being with
my fellow students, children of the same age. Since... the teacher did not
like us to speak in our native language, we all spoke Spanish, but some of
the other girls did speak it; sometimes we played tricks on the teacher:
when she went out or didn’t pay attention, we answered each other in
Nahuatl. I didn’t know any Nahuatl, but at school and at play with my girl
fiiends, we began to pronounce the words to say the names of things, and
we also had fun with that, because during recess and sometimes after
school we asked our friends to teach us how to speak Nahuatl.” S.V.I.V.

“My first grade teacher was a man named Jose’ Osorio. Everything went
well, but when I communicated with my fellow students in the Nahuatl
language, he became very angry and started giving us cuffs on the head
and slaps with the eraser, because he didn’t like us to speak in that
language, he believed his mission was to castilianize this community...”
B.R.S.

The separation from home and community life is often more profound when
students had to go to boarding schools, they were obligated to stay all week. This

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happened when their villages did not have primary schools with all grades. Additionally
some families, who sought a more successful acculturation in a non-indigenous medium,
sent children away to school. Some of the memories which are most associated with the

school years are those long hikes to school under difficult climatic conditions:

“During my childhood I went to school in the village where I lived,
studying here my first and second year; afterwards my parents sent me to
study in a nearby community where another teacher for the third grade
existed.” A.M.G.L.

“When I set foot for the first time in a school I had to face many
problems... I didn’t learn anything... I went for four years to the same
school; in my last year I failed to pass again... my father was very
disappointed in me, and therefore he sent me to a boarding school in the
northern part of the state, Comaltepec, Zacapoaxtla... I had a hard time to
adapt to the climate of the place, and also to the type of education they
used there...” A.L.M.

“...when I finished fifth grade... I was forced to request a scholarship for
sixth grade in another community close by, where there was a boarding
school named Pita Ixhuatlan de Madero in the state of Veracruz. I went to
present my exam, which I passed, and in this school I finished my primary
education. In the first days I couldn’t get used to it because of the food; the
tortillas were made of Minsa [industrialized corn flour], and I wasn’t
accustomed to eat that, I wanted the tortillas from my home which are
made of corn... ground on the metate [a mortar made of stone used for
grinding maize], but I had to subject myself... to the rules established by
the administration of this institution: on Sunday we had to be ready at
three o’clock sharp to go and collect firewood. Those of us who brought
firewood from home did not have to go, and could leave on Friday. We
had to take the bed sheets home with us to wash and bring them back
clean on Sunday. They gave us the soap, though...” H.M.B.

“... my dad came and so I left, and from there... he took me to my
grandparents’ house... and on the next day my grandmother went... to see a
lady teacher from there, at a private school, and so the teacher accepted
me. There I stayed for one, I mean to say, I finished the school year... and
yes, there the teacher was more or less patient when she taught me,

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although she always beat us, too. She beat us with a stick that had like
thorns; she beat us, well... because she said that we would only learn by
force...” A.M.G.L.

“... I repeat that I was born in Tlaxiloco and the grade school is Vicente
Suarez, where I only had opportunity to attend three years, because they
only had up to third grade there, and afterwards I went to the municipality,
which was a walk of two and a half hours. In order to enter at nine, I had
to leave at seven fifteen to get to my school at nine; there was a lot of
suffering in those winters, it rains every day and the roads, they are like
paths, pure mud. We had to cross the ravines with mud and all, and I had
to get up a little earlier when I went to secondary school, because
secondary school began at eight. I had to get up... at five in the morning
every day to get to my school a little before eight, because if not they
turned us away.” F.C.B.

“I went to school barefoot, it was about a half hour’s walk or three
quarters of an hour, but in those days it was normal to walk barefoot.”
M.E.1.G.O.

“as I said before, I grew up walking barefoot, and so I went through two
years of grade school, walking one hour to get to school, under rainstorms,
thunder, lightning, I’m so afraid of them...” L.V.J.

“... one of the problems was also the inclemency of the weather, since
there in the Sierras the change of seasons is very notorious; there were
weeks in winter when the rain closed in, the drizzle, the fog, the cold, and
we had... to get up at six in the moming, ah... have breakfast and so,
between water and mud and cold we had to walk two hours to school, to
the school where we studied. I say we studied, I’m talking in plural
because it was my sisters and I who walked. And after that, when the rain
closed in, in the afternoon we had to walk again two hours back home in
the same conditions: walking between mud, cold, water and ah... it was
always the same situation until, for example, the winter season ended.
When spring began, another season began... the heat; There was so much
heat, and, truth be told, my parents were or are of very low income, and
sometimes they don’t even have enough for a soda... and my sisters and
I... we had to walk, and with those dry lips; sometimes there were springs,
and we had to drink water there because there wasn’t enough money for a
soda. After that the heat stops and there comes... spring is over and
summer begins, the downpours begin... between lightning and thunder...
the same situation. When we were walking, for instance, if it started
raining while we were in class, we knew exactly that there was a river that

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we couldn’t cross... we wouldn’t be able to cross that stream and we
would have to wait until our parents came to pass us over on an
improvised bridge made of a tree trunk, looking for the narrowest part of
the river and building bridges, bridges made of trunks, and in this way we
crossed over...” J.H.C.

“When I was eleven years old, I was still interested in getting on with my
studies, and therefore I decided to leave my village to continue studying,
because only teachers with little interest came to my village... to teach;
therefore I went to the state primary school Narciso Mendoza, which is in
the community of Limontitla, municipality of Chicontepec, Veracruz, and
I had to walk approximately eight kilometers to get there every day, and
the walk was difficult, and I had to carry my tortillas to eat along the way
in order to be able to make it.” M.B.M.

“From the village of Tzinacapan to the municipality of Cuetzalan... it is a
walk of one hour and a half. There are times when the downpours and
lightnings are very strong... but I had to walk like this, in all this water,
and I put on a pair of huaraches [indian sandals made of a heavy tire
rubber sole with leather thongs attached] for the walk. That was when I
was thirteen years old, and for my second year of secondary school it was
the same, I had to walk this distance.” F.C.F.

“The month of inscriptions for secondary school came... From where I live
to the place where I studied secondary school it is a three hours’ walk.
There was no transportation, I had to cross a river, and when it rained I
couldn’t get across, because there was no bridge.” C.G.P.H.

“At the beginning of August my father registered me in secondary
school... in the municipality of Cuetzalan... I had to walk... approximately
one and a half hours... There were times when the rainstorrns were very
strong, with lightning... but I had to walk anyway in the rainy season...”
F.C.F.

“When the first year of secondary school came, my shyness grew again
because I would meet new fellow students in the group, but what
encouraged me was that I found three friends there from primary school,
among them my cousin, and thus I came to meet the other fiiends, and
little by little my shyness disappeared.

In this year my suffering began, because in this place it rains most of the
year, and I had to walk each day one and a half hours from school to my

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home, and the public buses didn’t run every day because of the bad state
of the road, on the one hand, and on the other I didn’t get money for the
fare, which was a peso and fifty centavos back then, and my dad only gave
me a peso to buy something to drink at school...” B.A.B.C.

When these teachers left their communities, at any stage of their education, the
process of uprooting and stigmatization was sped up, above all by ethnic discrimination,
which at that moment was practiced mainly by their school mates, who were sometimes

in the same economic circumstances, but were nearly always mestizos:

“I finally managed to finish the first year and went on to second and third,
but since the school isn’t fully organized, one could only finish third and
that was it, starting fourth year and until the end of grade school, one had
to look for other schools... far away, the truth is they are a long way from
my home village... the school I went to was a general primary school or
federal school one, as it is known today. There were more children of
mestizo origin, Spanish speaking children, and the few who attended like
me from indigenous communities were the minority, and we were really
marginalized by the people from the village administration... during the
time I attended that school, and I have already told you about those kids,
for example, the mestizo kids who treated us badly or called us
compadritos, ignorant, indios, well, countless pejorative concepts, and we
always were the ugly ducks, and because of this very situation maybe one
loses this safety little by little, one has this fear of... of speaking with or in
the presence of other people, which is called to express one’s thoughts or
feelings.” J .H.C.

“During all this time there I was living with my grandparents and playing
with the other girls, well... but always, I don’t know, the girls from there,
well, they had like their noses in the air, like they knew more, because in
that village my language is not spoken. We speak Mixteco in our village,
it is still spoken there now... some said that we were indios, that we were
nacos [a pejorative term for a working class person] and all that, they said
we were mecos [a pejorative term for indio], but I didn’t really know what
they meant by these words, and since the girls there were all older,
whenever we were carrying something they took it away from us and they
beat us... sometimes I was distracted when I felt the rock that was thrown,
well, it appeared they didn’t like me , because they said we were indios,
because we couldn’t speak... so they always beat me, then, and they
shouted that I was an indio.” A.M.G.L.

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“Although they my schoolmates were also from the country, the kids made
fun of us because we were unable to pronounce some of the words, and
when we answered the questions as to where we were from, they started
calling us indios and mecos, always belittling us, saying that we couldn’t
talk right and that we were indios because we spoke Mixteco.” Emphasis
added. M.G.C.

“When I finished primary school, my uncle sent me to study in
Huachinango, Puebla, where I entered secondary school... when I finished
the first year, my parents didn’t like that place and they sent me to Mexico
City, but when I came in touch with the other students I felt strange, like
rejected, because they have other physical characteristics, or rather...
their culture is higher.” Emphasis added. F.C.H.

“... but the situation repeated itself, we as indigenous people were despised
in that school, because the outsiders, from Campeche, I remember a
schoolmate from Campeche, from Veracruz, from the state of Puebla,
Hidalgo, from Mexico state, from all parts of the Republic there were
schoolmates who came to study there... the thing is I entered to study in
that school, and again this rejection that they made us feel, ah... also from
the teachers and from the other students as well, and that put us on the
side, or I myself went to the sideline and caused that I didn’t participate
much in class, on the one hand because of the... because of the poor
Spanish that I spoke, maybe I still do, although I knew how to express
myself in Spanish and knew how to communicate and everything was
okay with the people in Spanish, but there were always words that were
wrong, and I said words that were not very adequate, and then even the
English teacher, I remember he once told me, being in an English class the
teacher told me, “I heard that some of you entered presenting an exam of
knowledge and others entered presenting an exam in native language; I
don’t know,” he said, “why the authorities do this, this kind of situations,
because here what good does the native language do them, on the contrary,
here you come to learn English and not the native language.” And that was
something I remembered forever, and apparently he was right then,
because there really was no reason there to speak in an indigenous
language, only Spanish, and I ended speaking that... I learned a few words
in English...” J.H.C.

This process frequently results in an internalization and the acceptance of

subordination:

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“I get nostalgic remembering that, because when I went to boarding school
I rarely had the opportunity to go home to our place and participate and
because my teachers put other ideas in my head, and instead of liking the
environment of the countryside I began to feel ashamed, because they
pointed me out as an indio and in those times I didn’t want to stand out
among my schoolmates as an indio.” M.R.P.

On other occasions, this discrimination was faced in other ways. There were those

who tried to camouflage the differences, albeit without much success:

“The most difficult stage I went through in this aspect was when I went to
secondary school, because I had this “personality” conflict inside of me,
because I didn’t want to accept that I belonged to an ethnic group and tried
to behave like my mestizo classmates; however, everybody was aware of
my situation, and some of my classmates I spent time with called us los
Chicones because we are natives of the region of Chicontepec, Veracruz;
they also called us los nacos.

Later, when I entered preparatory school, I continued trying to appear in
my behavior like my schoolmates, trying to break down this barrier that I
felt existed between them and me.” S.C.M.

A minority of others tried confrontation and rebellion through a conscious

reevaluation of the ethnic difference:

“I finished secondary school and continued my studies... In order to go on,
I entered a private school where most of the students were from families
with good incomes and were from the same town, well, that’s what they
said, but from what I observed... some of those students only pretended to
be from the city, because it was clear from their features that they came
from a village. Maybe they concealed that out of embarrassment; well, in
this class only six of us were from villages, but from different parts, and
we always looked for each other to be together in recess. Inside the
classroom the assessor also always put us together for teamwork or any
kind of activity, because the other classmates always isolated us. The
assessor understood the reason for this situation, he spent time with us, but
couldn’t do anything so the others would include us in all of their
activities. So the six of us were always working together, and we
identified with each other for many reasons: our way of dressing,

I31

speaking, because we always spoke... Nahuatl, which we did to annoy the

others. Besides, they wouldn’t understand us even if they were listening;

we felt proud and important because we knew two languages. That’s how

we spent three years together, but of course each of us went home to our

villages on the weekends...” Emphasis added. L.M.L.T.

Although the mestizo schoolmates were not always prejudiced, the feeling of
isolation persisted:

“During my first year of secondary school I was a shy student, I didn’t like

to be with others because there wasn’t any other student from my home

village... In the beginning I didn’t want to go; I had to go because of my

father’s insistence, and one of the problems was that I couldn’t understand

the teachers... some of my classmates took pity on me and gave me a

sandwich or a soda from time to time.” J.J.P.

It becomes obvious that the step from primary to preparatory school represents for
these teachers the process of getting to know the ethnic difference and when they get out
to know and dominate the other culture as much as possible. It also is the stage when the
social “markers” are learned, which distinguish the region (and in good part the entire
country as well) the populations with ethnic differences: their language and ways of
speaking, their features, their customs, their dress, economic differences, and their place
of origin. The narratives show that sometimes it was enough to know that an individual
belonged to a certain town or region to be identified as an indio. One part of the
assimilation of the terms use to designate Indians, starting with the most derogatory,
which at the same time carries the whole charge of what is negative and backward: indio.

Other derogatory terms were “monkeys”, compadritos, nacos and mecos, all those

Epithets that separate and denigrate the individuals identified as natives.

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Within this process of uprooting, school sometimes also contributed to another
separation, one that is more internal, namely the distancing of the teachers from their
places of birth. Such things as clothing, one of the most visible diacritic aspects and a

point that holds great emotional force, symbolized this:

“When I finished primary school, I had a godfather who gave me a calzo'n
de manta [a pair of pants worn as traditional Indian attire, made of raw
cotton and bound with string at the waist and the ankles]; since my dad
used them, he wanted me to be like him, but after I entered secondary
school, I always used normal pants, because before entering secondary
level I used pants... and sometimes calzo’n de manta.” F.C.F.

“Afterwards I went to secondary school, and there everything made me...
like ashamed still; I couldn’t quite place myself, and I showed up in my
huaraches, and some of them had shoes, sneakers, and were more or less
well dressed, and then I became sort of ashamed, like I was afraid, but
over time, during those three years, it became clear to me that we were all
alike, but there we were different, because of our clothes and resources.”
S.A.F.

“When I grew up, my mom dressed me in long dresses, a rebozo, I went
barefoot and had my hair in two braids, always with colored ribbons in
them... but one day the teacher... picked me for a dance, and to this day I
remember how I was supposed to be dressed: they asked me to wear a
white dress, white shoes, bows, and white socks; maybe it seems to be
ridiculous when I write this, but that was really my greatest joy; I was
thinking of a nice hairdo, elegant shoes and dress, but everything went
wrong, because my mother was so used to do what her neighbors told her.
This was in second grade, and later, in third or fourth grade, my mother
was completely different, because she noticed that I was very much
aflected at school by feeling inferior to the others; I only worked in
silence, and when I was asked to come to the blackboard I refused;
nevertheless my work was good.” Emphasis added. L.V.J.

This process of uprooting, which may be called a centrifugal tendency, is

complemented by another one that would be centripetal, preventing the teachers, at least

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in a large number of cases, from losing contact with their native villages. This tendency
also appears in their narratives, as we shall see further on. The initial insertion in an
educational institution represents the first moment of separation of the teachers from their
groups of origin. In the same vein, incorporation into the teaching service, which for
some of them was a fortuitous circumstance, marks the following stage, because from
this moment on our future teachers would leave their regions and go first to the places
where they would take their preparatory courses, and then on to their assigned places of
work, which nearly always put them far away from their native communities. It must be
pointed out that at the same time this seems to be a kind of apprenticeship, accepted a
priori, and a move of institutional politics to separate all rookie teachers from their

places of origin:

“So those from the commission come looking for me at prep school... to
see if I wanted to enter as a promoter [a governmental agent devoted to
development and educational projects] —because back then the promoters
were bilingual— and to say the truth, I was really out of my depth. I said,
“How am I going to accept this? I don’t know anything about teaching.”
Then I started talking with my fellow students about what we wanted to
do, and so we decided to take another course before we entered into
service. This course lasted half a year and was held in a place named
Eloxochitlan, in the state of Oaxaca. And there the course ended in the
month of June of 1980, yes, it was 79-80. So it can be said that I started
working a year in 1980 on a contract basis. And in 1982 I had my tenure
and everything...” S.A.F.

“Later I was offered the opportunity to present a selection exam for
teaching candidates in the indigenous medium; I passed the exam and
went happily to the course which was held in Huehuetlan el Chico, Puebla.
This course had a duration of six months, but it was a very pleasant
experience, because we were various fellow students of different ethnic
origin, and we shared our experiences. We all had one single object in
mind: to give everything we had to serve our indigenous peoples...”
A.L.M.

I34

“I finished preparatory school, there was a course... I also always thought
in entering the teaching profession, I saw many teachers and I had this
mentality that the teacher was the best-paid person, ah... with a high
prestige in society, that he had an impeccable image in society, and so I
got this idea of wanting to be a teacher, maybe also because I didn’t have a
more comprehensive vision and didn’t receive a more adequate vocational
orientation of which profession to go into, or what course I could study.
When I finished preparatory school I was offered an opportunity to go to a
course in the state of Oaxaca, in Eloxochitlan, to a course for bilingual
promoters... to work in preschool education. I went to this course that
lasted six months. When the course was over they gave us the opportunity
to enter as promoters, but with a contract, right here in the region of
Atlixco. Later... after the end of the contract, the Department of Public
Education gave us... posts to continue working on this preschool level. My
first community was Santa Maria Xoyatla, near... Tepeojuma, behind
Atlixco. After this post, where I stayed for three years, I went from one
community to the other to get to know as many of them as possible...”
J.H.C.

“When I finally was a teacher, I had to go and take a course to enable me
to enter into the service; that was in San Antonio Eloxochitlan de Flores
Magén, Oaxaca, where I again met new fellow students I hadn’t known
before, from different states, and consequently the languages they spoke
were different as well: Mixtec, Mazatec and Totonac... When I arrived in
the community where I had been assigned, I found out that it was a great
responsibility to work with these children...” B.A.B.C.

“In the community of San Martin Zacatempa, Tochimilco, Puebla I had
my first experiences in teaching practice... This community is about 25
kilometers away. People from this village travel in cargo trucks, the road
is a dirt road; there are days when they have to walk all the way to the
municipality; and to get to the city of Atlixco they have to take the bus
from the municipality, which is Tochimilco, to Atlixco. That’s what I
didn’t like about it, because you have to walk a lot. I lasted two school
periods and then asked for a change to another center that was closer to the
city of Atlixco.” L.J.P.

“A few days later I was sent to my first community, a large and beautiful
village that had all the indispensable services. I was lucky there, because
normally they send the new teachers to the smallest and farthest villages in
the region, but 1981 was a lucky year for me.” G.M.B.

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“I presented my bilingual exam and passed it with 8.7; afterwards I was
sent to a three-month course in Oaxaca, and then we came back from the
course in October and they gave us our posting to start working with the
little ones, and I was sent to the region of Tepexi de Rodriguez. I was
lucky, because they didn’t send me very far away from the community, to
San Felipe Otlaltepec... Later I requested a change and they sent me to a
community that was closer and where there is transportation.” E.H.N.

“When I was finished with the course they sent me to the sierra, to the
farthest place... where I walked three hours, but fast, because I walk that
way, because when you go slowly it’s four hours, and there I worked in
four different communities until I came to Matamoros; from Matamoros I
was sent to Los Reyes; from Los Reyes, here I am working in Xoyatla and
I have very little experience, just five years I’ve been working here...”
F.C.H.

This moment of entering into the service represents yet another type of
socialization: the socialization of the teaching culture that provides different images of
the indigenous, and is sometimes an alternative to those negative images with which they

grew up:

“When I entered the Indigenous Education service, a part of those
prejudices disappeared, and the decision to become an indigenous
promoter was, in a certain way, an acceptance of my reality as a native,
always trying in front of my colleagues, and even in front of some mestizo
relations, to demonstrate that I wasn’t ashamed to belong to an ethnic
group, and that I was satisfied to be one, and even more than that, to
accept it.

Nowadays I owe a large part of that to the “reflections” we practice here at
the university, and to the concepts I was able to form regarding what it
means to “be indigenous” and everything that represents, and I feel proud
of my customs and my profession...” S.C.M.

“I began to know and differentiate my identity as an indigenous teacher
from the national identity from the moment I started working within the
subsystem of primary education, even though... before I knew my native

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language and all kinds of daily life in my community, and even so I didn’t
identify myself as indigenous.” C.M.L.

However, the negative stereotypes of the indigenous did not disappear, but they
survived within the official ideology. This ideology keeps at the same time a demagogic
perspective about ethnic heritage. School is one of most important vehicles of this
twofold vision. Despite the entire official ideology there is discrimination inside the

teaching profession:

“In my profession I also had to face discrimination, but gradually I’ve
overcome that, and now this criticism doesn’t affect me anymore, neither
professionally nor personally.

Now I’m more worried about the course our service is taking, since many
colleagues only take this as a stepping stone to enter into other systems
once they are better prepared.” S.C.M.

“Well, as a teacher in the indigenous medium I have analyzed and
reflected upon everything I have lived through, my experiences and the
way other colleagues from the other subsystem look at us. They say that
because of being teachers of indigenous education we are not sufficiently
prepared to cover the role of teachers, and because of speaking an
indigenous language... we are not on a level to compete with them...”
M.R.H.

“As I said at the beginning, I maybe still had my doubts about this job. I
said, “Am I or am I not?” because I saw that among us, as teachers, as
educators. Because I am not a teacher. In indigenous education maybe
many of our colleagues are working for the Department of Public
Education, but perhaps we can’t classify ourselves, or as they think that
those of indigenous education are not really capable of teaching
indigenous education; or they point at us and say, “Look, there are those
fi'om indigenista education... ” That’s when I explain to them politely,
without denying, for example,... my roots, because indigenista and
working in the indigenous medium, it’s different for me. Because there are
two, or maybe various, indigenist departments that have, like, everything:
a director and different branches. Because before our generation these
posts were paid by IN I [The Instituto Nacional [ndigenista (National

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Indigenist Institute) has been the official body that directs the state’s
politics towards the country’s indigenous populations]... but now that is
not so anymore... And that’s when I explain to them that indigenist is
different from indigenous education.” Emphasis added. S.A.F.

“To be an indigenous teacher is equivalent to be classified... within a
group with standards and guidelines... that are different from the rest of
the teaching professions, like... being tagged just as a product of second-
class quality, and since these standards and guidelines are not given in a
clear and precise manner, this provokes an ambiguous identity in me.”
Emphasis added. J.H.C.

“Once a teacher from the rural system [which does not belong to the
indigenous educational system] asked a fellow teacher with regards to the
festivities of May 15 [Teachers’ Day]: ‘Does the union give you the same
opportunities? I don’t think so, because you are from the indigenous
system: You won’t be given the day off and they won’t celebrate you.’

By that he meant that the indigenous system is of less value.” A.L.M.

Thus teachers are facing an ambiguous situation that almost always causes
personal anguish. Frequently, and ironically, the teachers themselves and the actions they
undertake to confront discrimination, only contribute to increasing it. It is very interesting
to observe that some of them have a great clarity, a great penetration, as Paul Willis puts

it, regarding the situation and the conditions that provoke it:

“To begin with, the General Department for Indigenous Education was
created to ‘rescue’ and ‘protect’ indigenous culture, apart from offering
indigenous children an education in their own language a formal
education, that is; perhaps this was respected during the first few years
after its creation, but today these characteristics of indigenous education
are not... as manifest, because there simply aren’t any educational
programs structured especially for the indigenous medium; also there are
no supporting resources like books or primers edited in indigenous
languages, maybe due to existing dialect differences within certain
indigenous languages. Besides, many of us are placed in non-indigenous
communities close to the city, which makes it more difficult for us to live
in the community.

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This situation, as I mentioned in the beginning, provokes an internal

conflict in me, because I now realize that I am neither one nor the other;

nor am I from there, because my social group doesn’t let me participate in

religious festivities anymore, like making collections; what I mean is they

don’t let me do what they do anymore, like sowing corn, harvest coffee,

collaborate in activities of mutual help, or... in even in making fun,

because they say that I belong to a different category now, but on the other

hand I haven’t been able to adapt a hundred percent... to Western culture,

and therefore my identity as an indigenous teacher is at best shaky right

now.” Emphasis added. J.H.C.

It must be pointed out that this case is exceptional, both because of the clarity with
which the situation is expressed and also because not always is there a rupture this radical
with the community practices and the reference groups, as will be demonstrated below.
However, it must be noted that this is part of the processes of uprooting and contradiction
that are in the hearts of the indigenous teachers. Although there have been several intents
of removing negative connotations of the term indio, they have been unsuccessful. The
term is part of Mexican society and is part of a system of social classification that uses

physical appearance in combination with economic elements. Some teachers seem to

have accepted these negative images:

“One of the experiences I had when I spoke with a colleague teacher was that when I
asked her why she didn’t teach Nahuatl to her children... she answered: ‘No, why would
we want more indios, as if I weren’t enough. My children aren’t indios, and therefore I
don’t think it is important that they speak the language I speak.”

Identity as travel: the return
As I mentioned above, together with the forces that separate the teachers, there are also
tendencies that promote their taking roots. In this sense the narratives also reflect their

connections, community practices, and reencounters; in short, unbroken links with a past

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that survives in and with them and which shows some of the meanings of ethnicity in
Mexico. This becomes evident in some of the celebrations of the annual cycle which
keeps them bound to their communities. The condition is that the community maintains a
strong nucleus of collective practices. Therefore some of the teachers continue
considering their place of origin as their home, the place where they feel at ease, as they

say, and where they become themselves once again:

“When I come home, well, I say it like that because it’s the place where I
lived a long time, and above all because my dad lives there alone, for my
mother went away and never comes back [she died] the first thing I do is
to greet my father and the people who are with him. And my father, the
first thing he does is offer me something to drink, as is the custom among
us... offering me a beer because of the intense heat, or simply because of
the habit among us, and of course something to eat. At nightfall we get
together in the dining room, my sister-in-law, my brother..., my husband
and I.... to make plans about how we are going to organize things for the
chili sowing, or simply to talk about how we’ve been and how things are
in the community and, above all, at home.

At first light we get up at around six in the morning to prepare breakfast,
which consists of a cup of coffee with milk and bread or cookies; around
eight o’clock we all have breakfast together, and later we have lunch
when... we get hungry, because we don’t always eat at the same hour,
rather when we feel like it.

even though I am far away, now that we have a phone, I call my family
and ask them who is going to be mayordomo this year, and if it is one of
my brothers, I somehow send him some money, because that’s the only
way to help him so he can perform this activity in the community.”
Emphasis added. A.E.V.

“After I finished my studies, I returned to my village where I could be
together with my family and my fiiends... where I returned after a long
time to do and remember what I had done back then, like speaking in
Nahuatl, using my former hairdo, footwear, and dress like I used to, to be
together with the people from my village, to feel at ease, to participate in
different activities in the field, social and cultural activities, participate in
the festivities of my village; I continued to identify myself with the people
from there... today I am working in another community, near the city of
Atlixco... and during the holidays the whole family comes together in the

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village. I personally go there every thirty days, because I participate in the
agricultural activities, and I also participate in the festivities; occasionally
I contribute financially, because I can’t accept the commissions that I
normally would have to take, since I work. The festivity in which I take
part is the 21" of September, that’s when they have a special dinner for all
who take part in the basketball tournament; we make the financial
contribution and the other people contribute their work, but we all work
together, and if there is an opportunity, we request a special permit in
order to be in this festivity which is so important...” Emphasis added.
L.M.L.T.

“I think I haven’t completely detached myself from my roots, since the
authorities of my community make a list of the persons who are living
outside of the village, in order to ask us for financial help for the school,
the church and the village fair, where they fix a cooperation. If we can
give more, that’s all the better; in case we don’t come to the village
regularly, they inform us through a relative or the commission visits us
where we live.” M.P.T.

“Although in my community most of the inhabitants are outside of the
village, the identity of the community is being maintained by way of the
traditions and customs, because the mayordomias [the obligations to take
care of certain tasks in honor of certain saints] are celebrated by the
citizens of the community who live outside... and... they themselves offer
the celebration of a feast without asking them in writing if they accept...
On the other hand, what is nearly lost is the language, because only the
people of sixty years and older speak it anymore, but even so there are
characteristics... because of which it can be said that there is social and
individual identity, because when we return to the village to celebrate one
of the mayordomias, we feel the unity with the other people...” C.M.L.

And it is acknowledged that there is something, memories, habitus in Bourdieus'
Words, that marks them forever, regardless of the place where they live or work (Bentley
1987). These structures are related to the customs they acquired during the first stages of
their life in the presence of family and community groups. This sometimes separates
them from others, in spite of their similarities, or it identifies with others, in spite of their

differences:

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“My husband is from San Gabriel Chilac. The people from that village
have their own customs; I personally have been able to adapt to them
nearly in all aspects: in their manner of speaking, their behavior, their way
of doing some activities, in... the preparation of food; I’ve tried to do
everything like they do. What I haven’t been able to accept is that they are
very religious, and I’m not. I do have a certain faith, which I have
obtained from my parents, but I can’t be like them. They accept me, they
integrate me in their group, I live with them in every respect, but to say the
truth, without them knowing it... I don’t feel part of their group, I don’t
feel comfortable in this type of religious ceremonies. I do participate in
their get-togethers, but in other celebrations I don’t, because I don’t share
those ideas. They believe that because of living with them I changed my
origin, but I can’t, I think I won’t be able to...” M.L.P.

“Now I will talk about my identity with my husband’s family. I sometimes
feel strange in this group, because they have activities to which I am not
accustomed. For instance, when one of my children became suddenly ill,
the first thing my mother-in-law did was take the child to a woman who
cures the evil eye. In the beginning I didn’t believe that because I wasn’t
accustomed to these things. Now I do it myself and... I think that its effect
may have to do with the faith one has. Another thing is that here they eat
three meals, and that is something I cannot get used to, and besides they
eat at a certain hour of the day and, the truth is, those are the customs that
make me feel like an outsider in this group, but I always try to make
everything go right in this group to which I belong and in which my
children are growing up. Another thing: in this family they eat
grasshoppers, the cuetlas [an edible ant], and I don’t, but when I go to the
market with my husband, I buy them so that my family can eat them,
because they like that. In a certain way I am sharing their traditions,
although I don’t eat that. Back in my village we eat the ants that come out
on the 24th... of San Juan, and... in my husband’s family they don’t, but
when they come out of the ground here, they collect them and I eat them
myself, because even my children don’t eat them. Although we don’t
share the same taste in food, well, in some anyway, I do consider myself a
part of this group because I share so many other things with them.

In my work I don’t have, or I feel I don’t have, any identity, because I
don’t share the traditions and customs of the community. For instance, last
year I was invited to become a godmother of two children who finished
kindergarten... in this community they have the custom that the godparent
buys the clothes for the ceremony, and I didn’t do that like that and... their
parents didn’t say anything to me, but when the ceremony was only a few
days away it occurred to me to ask my colleague who lives in the village
what was the custom... regarding this date; she told me what is usually
done and I really felt bad, but anyway; she told me that I had an excuse,
that I didn’t know and that I shouldn’t feel bad, and when the whole thing

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was over I had no other choice but to ask these people to forgive me, and
so I got out of this pinch. For all these reasons I feel that my identity is not
there, because people only identifiz me as the kindergarten teacher, and
not because we have things in common. I do identify with my colleague at
work, above all because we do have things in common...but only with one
of them because... with my director I don ’t find any identity... at any
moment...” Emphasis added. A.E.V.

“During my first years I worked in an indigenous community, and it was
really very nice, because the community felt identified with me because I
ate what I was offered, and they have the custom to eat... alaches [a local
vegetable], beans, potatoes, chili, eggs etc. and I would sit down on a mat
on the floor like they do, something the state teachers [who do not belong
to the subsystem of indigenous education], who work in this community
wouldn’t do, because they considered these acts as degrading; to share and
like ranchera or nortefia music instead of other kinds of music, like the
modern type.” J.H.C.

“As far as the communities where I have worked are concerned, I have
tried to develop the roles the people of the village have assigned me, and
to form in this manner a more pleasant environment with the population in
general; apart from that, most of them aren’t so strange to me because they
are similar to those of my native village, and I came to the conclusion that
I identify with these people even though I don’t dominate the language
they speak.” Emphasis added. M.C.G.N.J.

Here we have these teachers: remembering their life and thinking about the

present, exemplifying a common process of so many natives in this country:
stigmatization. The recollections show teachers faced diverse forms of discrimination.
We see in all of this, sweet and bitter memories of teachers’ families, native communities

and villages where they worked, schools where contradictions do not disappear but

sometimes they are often even more manifest.

These contradictions are related to the twofold nature indigenous teachers keep

inside. On one hand, teachers assimilate part of mestizo national ideology that

discriminates against indigenous features. On the other hand, they learn from their

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professional training, a discourse that exalts Indian roots. As a result teachers become
part sympathetic with mestizo negative views on Indian culture, part conscious of the
importance of their ethnic roots. This process arises in the teachers’ narratives, including
some elements that include critical opinions regarding traditional beliefs and authoritarian
and negative customs. One might think that their professional career gave them the power

to maintain a more objective and less romantic position with respect to their familiar past:

“We are eleven brothers and sisters, and all are working in agriculture, and
my five sisters... are homemakers and work in the fields as well, only in
this manner they can obtain more commodities, food, dress, and education
for... their children; I am the only one who has a profession... Ever since
my grandparents induced us into the Catholic religion, they are very fanatic
about that, except myself... My father was very sensible about everything,
and incomprehensible at the same time; he never created a nice relationship
of friendship... with my brothers and sisters, he was always imposing and
without explanations; only towards my mother did we have a little
confidence regarding some questions about work, but with respect to the
sexual relations of a couple, nothing like that. They always kept my sisters
and myself in the dark. In this sense, that is to say, one day some people
from a literacy campaign... came to the community; so I attended their
classes, but one fine day my mother found out that the books we studied
contained the schematics of the structure of man and woman, and so she
took the books and burned them so they wouldn’t educate me wrongly...
because according to her it was a sin to see the female organs. The same
thing happened with the animals: never could we see when an animal was
in heat, because if we saw them mating she said we would get warts in the
eyes and we wouldn’t be able to see... It was so bad that when I was a
young lady of fourteen years I didn’t know anything about anything. My
ignorance didn’t allow me to see reality.” V.L.M.E.A.

“In the Catholic faith, when it rains and thunders, our parents have
instilled into us that we mustn’t touch our hair, much less take a bath,
because we could be struck by a lightning due to the electricity in the hair,
and that we must cover the mirrors to avoid any danger, but when we grew
up we realized that this wasn’t true because in the books it was all
explained. Since then I didn’t believe anything anymore, and I always
said: that’s a lie.” C.M.H.

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However, on several occasions some of the teachers showed something more than
only a critical position, as if their insertion in the teaching profession had also included
the acquisition of a school ideology that maintains notions of rationalism of the struggle
against ignorance that continues behind the state’s educational activities. Occasionally
the words of some of the teachers seem to show how, ironically, they themselves turn
into those distant teachers of their childhood recollections, promoting this view of
progress and civilization represented by school and education. They did not seem aware

ofthis:

“At the beginning of the 1990-1991 school year the inspector of the school
district... posted me to San Miguel Ayala, Atlixco, Puebla... I was very
pleased, but I never thought that I would find the kind of people who live
there: they are persons who are... not yet civilized, these people are so
blocked, despite the fact that the city is close by. The population is very
negative, even regarding their children, they don’t care about education,
it’s like it doesn’t sound right when one speaks to them about education or
school, they are content when the child knows how to work well in the
field, and that’s more than sufficient to create a family...” Emphasis added.
L.J.P.

“As far as some of the observations I made within the group and the
community in general, one of the things that stand out most is the lack of
socialization of the individual before the others, perhaps because they
don’t have adequate preparation or because they have never attended an
educational institution and only limit themselves to what their families
indicate to them...”

Other memories, other experiences
As I have stated earlier, there is another type of memories in these narratives: the

memories recorded by the more accultured teachers and the mestizos. Even though there

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are also negative memories of school and other media among these recollections, they
hardly ever have to do with the ethnic difference, but are rather associated with other
issues. It is also more often the case that these teachers had other professional aspirations

which were frustrated by different circumstances:

“My father... brought us to live in this city (Puebla) because, according to
him, there wasn’t any better way. I was about seven years old. Everything
was different, I saw things I never could have imagined existed. The city
was very nice, but for us it was worse, because in the village at least we
were free, with an enormous amount of open land, and our house was a
little bigger; in the city we lived in a tenement that was at the same time a
mechanic’s shop, in a small room which we couldn’t leave to go out and
play because cars were constantly going in and coming out, the smell, the
smoke and the noise the mechanics made. We only went out to play in the
evenings. I went to the primary school Federica M Bonilla which was
very far away from my home, at about two kilometers. There I did my
studies; I went to school joyfully; walking every day along all these
streets, back and forth, it didn’t seem at all far to me. When I got tired, I
sat down in some place or on some doorstep to rest a while, or I sat down
to whittle with a small razorblade that was my pencil sharpener; my shoes
had lasted nearly a year, and when I saw that the others got new ones, I
wanted some as well, but the bad thing was that they bought me the same
kind again.

Later, and with a lot of sacrifice, my father bought a piece of land, and
there it was better, because at least we weren’t in this horrible tenement
where we had lived for nearly seven years. I went to the federal secondary
school number 3, which is in that neighborhood called La Hacienda. How
nice was this period, without a care, only studying, laughter, and being
able to pass all my exams.” G.M.B.

“Since I was born, I passed my childhood in this village, I’m the oldest
girl of seven children, three girls and four boys. My mother married again
and I passed my childhood in my grandparents’ care, since my mother is
my grandparents’ only daughter, and when she remarried... I stayed with
my grandparents, and since then they took care of my education. I was
removed from my brothers and sisters, since they live someplace different.
I went to grade school in the village and didn’t go to secondary school
because back then it didn’t exist. Although there were three of us, my
grandfather dedicated himself only to agriculture, sowing corn and beans
on some fields where we had to ride on burros for three or four hours to

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get to this place, and we stayed there for three months during the sowing,
and at harvest time we stayed twenty days to a month...” I.G.V.

“The language in which I started to communicate, in other words my
mother tongue, is Spanish. I say that because even though my parents are
bilingual in Spanish and Nahuatl, they never spoke with me in Nahuatl;
they communicated with me only in Spanish, and therefore I began to
speak in Spanish, which was my native language. Now, to have learned to
speak Nahuatl, in my father’s house we had a great-aunt of mine, that is to
say a sister of my grandmother’s... who was monolingual in Nahuatl. She
communicated with all of us in Nahuatl, and so I gradually learned it from
her. Of course that wasn’t so difficult, she was speaking in Nahuatl and I
paid a lot of attention to what she meant, and by way of signaling and
words in Nahuatl I learned. In this period of my life I did things that I
could do, and also I didn’t neglect my studies in which my parents helped
me.

At the age of thirteen I moved to Mexico City in order to go to secondary
school with the help of my older brother, who was the only one to help me
back then; of course that was a big change from my native village to
Mexico City, I observed many things that were different and what I
concluded was... that the city was better, one lived better, and there I
stayed for eight years, studying and working at the same time... At the age
of fifteen, when I was about to conclude my secondary education, well, I
thought to go to preparatory school and continue my studies in a higher
school of engineering, since that was the course I wanted to take, but that
didn’t come to pass. I studied first and second semester in a vocational
school in Mexico City, but there are always problems that present
themselves. My brother, the one who was helping me, well, the factory
where he worked went on strike, and since there wasn’t any money, I quit.
I left school and went to work for my younger brothers and sisters. The
job I’m doing right now we got by questions of destiny and need...
although I don’t feel satisfied, because it really isn’t my vocation,
although I am making an effort to comply with what I have.” B.R.S.

“My brothers and sisters and I were always educated... in the two
languages (N ahuatl and Spanish), everybody taught us the native language
from the day we spoke our first word; my uncles and aunts on my
mother’s side always offered us to eat talking in Nahuatl, even when they
scolded us. And my uncles and aunts on my father’s side rarely spoke
Nahuatl with us, nearly always they spoke in Spanish.

In 1974 I went to visit my uncle Fernando who lives in Mexico City. I had
a hard time to adapt to his family, because they had different customs,
even in their manner of speaking; they were very rude with each other, and
they used many bad words. That’s what bothered me most, my parents had

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educated me differently; those of my brothers who dared speak a bad word
didn’t get away without a scolding or a slap in the face. There were entire
days when I cried, on the one hand because I couldn’t get used to being
shut in, and on the other because of the kind of environment.

In 1976-1982 I went to primary school in the village, at the school Nicolds
Bravo, those were six consecutive years. In first grade I was afraid to
approach my teacher because all my brothers and sisters had told me that
the teacher I had was a grouch who used to hit the children with the meter,
which hurt a lot. As time went by I realized that this was only a joke and
that the teacher was a great guy.

In second grade some friends from other classes told me that the lady
teacher I had was also an old grouch, and of course I didn’t believe them,
but this time they were right: this teacher was very strict, and to top it off
we had her for four long years; when we were late she slapped us with the
meter, always according to the day of the week: on Monday one slap, on
Tuesday two, on Wednesday three, and so forth, according to the day.
Sixth grade was a very nice year, but at the same time very sad, because it
was the last year as a student of grade school. In this year I had a lot of
friends, and we got along marvelously, in this grade I decided to study
secondary school in the city of Atlixco, but at the same time I didn’t really
want to because I had to start the trip very early, at five thirty in the
morning, coming back at four in the afternoon, and I still had to help my
mother with the household chores and do my homework afterwards. Well,
it is true, the traveling was very tiring; so I decided to stay in the village
and study the telesecundaria system [television-supported classes]. Later,
when I had finished secondary school, I didn’t know... which study course
to follow; some told me it was better to study a short course, and other
people told me it would be better to go to preparatory school. The truth is I
didn’t know any of the two systems at all. My brothers told me one thing
and my uncles and aunts told me something different.

With the help of my brother I decided to study to become an executive
secretary in a commercial academy, I always wanted to work in an office
or in a large company, but my dreams never came true because we didn’t
have the financial resources. I only studied two years, because the monthly
fees were really high, plus the cost of office materials, and for me it was
really hard to work and study at the same time.

The third year I only went two months, I was really close to concluding
my studies, when a bilingual teacher approached me and offered me his
post. At that moment I didn’t know what to decide, I was between a rock
and a hard place. I talked with my family about this to see what they
would suggest to me in this respect. My parents suggested that it would be
better to accept the teacher’s posting, because the secretary’s job I would
only have as long as I was single, and afterwards who knows.

I accepted to become a bilingual teacher, although my dreams were others,
and now I believe I’m better off...” L.J.P.

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“I entered grade school in the year 1970 to 1976, and from the first year on
I began to feel distrust, because the lady teacher I had always got very
mad when we couldn’t answer her questions right; she always made me
feel like a clumsy girl, and thus she made me feel distrust in myself. When
we had doubts we didn’t ask her for fear of getting scolded, and I didn’t
ask her in order to avoid a scolding, because instead of explaining
anything she always told us how stupid we were. It seemed that whatever
we thought wasn’t right because we were... children. In my case, my
relationship with this teacher was even worse because my father had had a
very serious problem with her husband...” N.M.C.

“In 1974 I went to grade school for the first time; I went with great
enthusiasm because there I would meet new fiiends, because they weren’t
the same kids with whom I had shared games and mischief in the
neighborhood. This would be a very interesting change because I would
have the opportunity to learn, to make up tales, to read, to write.

It didn ’t turn out like that, because let ’s say there was a discontinuity
because I also knew Spanish perfectly, and over the course of the years I
neglected my native language, replacing it with Spanish, and not because
I wanted that but I was obliged by the need to communicate with the
others.” Emphasis added. E.M.C.

From these memories it is possible to begin to see differences between the
teachers. On the one hand are those who come from less acculturated families, with little
or no knowledge of the Spanish language; on the other hand are those whose families had
more contact with or knowledge of national culture and language. These differences are
fundamental, because even though there were no significant economic differences
between the families of the teachers, the knowledge about mestizo culture turned into
obstacles for some and into advantages for others. A case apart are the mestizo teachers.
Here we have a much more profound separation, which moreover is a financial question,

Since the mestizo families, who live in mestizo communities, have other occupations that

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surely allow them to have better incomes. Unfortunately I have no economic data on this
subject.

There is a set of data that may provide a better perspective of these distinct
memories: the narratives written by teachers as a form of rationalization or explanation

on topics specifically related to their work or their identity.

Rationalizing: controlling the contradictions

I used argumentative narrative to explore the issues in greater detail. Through them the
teachers must give an explanatory account of a number of questions related to identity.
There is, for instance, the question if they consider themselves indigenous and why, or if
they speak of experiences they consider important in their teaching practice. In these
cases the narratives demonstrate the ability the subjects have to handle some aspects of
identity as part of the conditions of action.

This handling can be conditioned, among other things, by the particular
characteristics that shape ethnic identification in Mexico. The fact that a good number of
markers of the indigenous may be hidden, minimized or discarded (language, dress,
regional or local origin, musical taste, dietary habits and others), moderated (economical
conditions) or, not as specific or unique (physical features). This offers the possibility,
albeit limited, for the actors to manage a certain presentation of their identity. A person
can present her/himself as non-indigenous but just to move into the working class sectors
that finally are also discriminated by upper classes. However, for indigenous teachers this
process often helps to face the contradictions or conflictive facts that appear in the course

of their interactions.

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The argumentative narratives are in fact reflective elaborations, which
demonstrate the ability of the actors to perceive their situation and to act correspondingly,
principally through the conscious use of recourses that are generally idealized
conceptions of the indigenous. However, the narratives show the limits of the teachers’
action, since there are contradictions, such as the discrepancies about the supposed
possession of cultural traits, which may not be overcome in the reflective act, as well as
affirmations which are beyond the will of the actors.

In this case there may also be found differences in argumentative form which are
due to the existing characteristics of the teachers. The existing characteristics separating
indigenous from mestizo teachers are essential here. In fact, there seems to be a gradation
of arguments from the most indigenous to the mestizo teachers, with those who are more
acculturated but maintain an indigenous family context in the middle. Then, it is possible
to find a different type of “proofs” of ethnic roots mentioned by these three groups of
teachers. The most distinctive element is a series of arguments that indicate concrete facts
that are part of the families’ lives. This is intermingled with those positive images that
exalt indigenous culture, and sometimes with reflections which permit facing

discrimination:

“My deepest roots... are in the native race, and I do consider myself
indigenous because I... dominate the indigenous language well... my place
of birth is 90 percent speakers of the native language, in my community,
the place where I am from, Tzinacapan, municipality of Cuetzalan,
Puebla.” FC.F. Nahua.

“I do consider myself indigenous because I have roots... and I identify
myself with them.

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Since I was born in the community of Xayacatlan de Bravo, Puebla, my
people had their own customs, their own Mixtec language; I as another
member of the family integrated myself with them and I continue
participating in all the work that is done for the good of the community. I
learned to appreciate all the customs, to participate directly and indirectly
in all the celebrations that take place. Fortunately our traditions are being
preserved, what is about to disappear is our language, since only the adults
speak the language; those people who emigrated to other states in search
of work and a better living continue to keep our customs alive, and there
are only very few people who will forget our customs.

Those persons who found opportunities to get a professional formation
continue to value their roots and return to the community to participate in
all the celebrations that are taking place. Therefore I can affirm that even
though we may feel removed from our roots, even though we succeed
economically, even though we may be brilliant lawyers, engineers, doctors
or stand out in any of the other professions, we have native blood in our
veins. Because we are natives.” A. L.M. Mixtec.

“I consider myself indigenous, because first of all my parents speak an
indigenous language, which is Nahuatl, and in this language we all...
learned to speak, thanks to our parents who taught us. We learned Spanish,
or rather, they taught us Spanish at the age of five when we went to
school, and for this reason I speak... two languages. For me, speaking
Nahuatl is a pride, since in my village the majority still speaks this
language, when I go to visit my grandparents, uncles or friends, I don’t
speak Spanish with them, rather I prefer to converse with all of them in
our native language.

There is another thing that counts for a lot, and that is our dress; my father
uses the calzon de manta and the coton, that is to say the shirt of the same
material, my mother used traditional skirts and the embroidered cotton
blouses. The only thing that has changed in women’s dress is that
nowadays they make the naguas [petticoats] of every kind of material and
the color they want to wear, but the original is only worn by very few,
only the old women, so they are nearly obsolete.

It is also important to me to observe all the customs, because these
demonstrations they give, for example on All Saints’ Day; each person
carries on with his tradition in a different way, but for them it means a lot.

It is for this reason that I consider myself indigenous, because I know that
my place of origin is a village that speaks... a Nahuatl language.” H.M.B.
Nahua.

“I consider myself indigenous because I follow the same traditions and
customs of our forefathers, I feel indigenous because I speak the native
language, which is Nahuatl. On the other hand because I have the blood

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and the features of the man that was called indio, thanks to our
grandparents who spoke of the culture of Mexico; I am not ashamed to
consider myself a native or to use my native language spoken by my
parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts and the people of the same village,
where we continue to converse in our dialect Nahuatl.

Thanks to my mother language I have a job as an educator, I think if I
didn’t speak this language, I wouldn’t have a job like this. I hope that the
children continue practicing, that they don’t give this up, because this is
very important for us as Mexicans, above all to defend our country which
is Mexico; being a Mexican, if one likes it or not, one is a native, because
they conquered us, the Americans.

We are all indigenous people, only there is a problem in Mexico. The city
people consider the country people indios. Although perhaps they haven’t
realized yet that we are all living in the same country.” L.J.P. Nahua.

“I consider myself ‘indigenous’ because I was born in a small village
where the people live, dress and eat like indigenous people, or in fact they
are indigenous people, and among them are my parents; ever since I was
little they taught me the Nahuatl language, although with the difference in
dress, because they didn’t dress me in traditional clothes but in different
pants and shirts, but in spite of everything I spoke Nahuatl and Spanish
which I learned in grade school. My dad and my mom used the traditional
dress of the natives; the work in the kitchen, the work in the field, the
greetings, the mutual help among neighbors and relatives, and I grew up in
this world and therefore I consider myself indigenous, because when I go
to visit my village I adapt to the life and customs of the people of my
village, of my parents and other relatives...” B.A.B.C. Nahua.

There is one case that demonstrates the difficulties faced by the teachers in this
attempt to reconcile the negative meanings the indigenous aspect has in Mexico, where
the positive elements come from rationalized discourse: one female teacher whose
recollections contain a high degree of memories of discrimination wrote an explanation

which ends up being a contradiction when she tries to rescue these links:

“I am a descendant of an indigenous race that has its traditions and
customs, of course they still conserve all these things which I perhaps
don’t celebrate, but in my mind I have some ideas of my class, which are
the natives... on the one hand I say I am indigenous, on the other hand I

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don’t, because we’ve been mixed with Spanish blood, if we were one
hundred percent indigenous we would still have the same features;
however, there are people who consider themselves indigenous, but they
don’t seem to show it... they have blond hair, bright eyes, they are white
etc., therefore my answer is... we are mestizos, even though as a matter of
fact we will always be characterized as indigenous, although it is known
that since the arrival of the Spaniards the race of our ancestors became
mixed, and so we have descended from them... we are mestizos.” L.V.J.
Nahua. Emphasis added.

On the other hand, there is a subtle change in argumentation among the teachers
who start to shift towards the mestizo culture. They generally recognize the changes they
have undergone, and they let ethnic affiliation fall back on ancestry, that is to say on the
link to indigenous ancestors, or with characteristics that have traditionally been

associated with the indigenous as an economic situation:

“Yes, because I consider myself autochthonous, and despite the many
modifications I don’t want to lose my authenticity, even though our
personal appearance, both in our personal way of dressing and... in our
exchange of dialog must be in Spanish because of the needs demanded by
society.” N.M.C. Spanish—speaking Mixtec.

“I am indigenous and I consider myself indigenous because I am from a
simple, humble family. My parents communicate using the Nahuatl dialect
[sic]. There are people who don’t speak it, and the first thing they say...
about us who speak it... is that we are stupid, ignorant, that we don’t know
how to speak. But when we study our language thoroughly we will realize
that our language is original... because the language we speak was
imposed on us by the Spaniards.” F ..I .C. bilingual Nahua.

“I personally consider myself indigenous and I have indigenous roots and
will always classify myself like this; for me to belong to an indigenous
group is nothing to be ashamed about, on the contrary, it makes me proud.
Although today I don’t live in my community, I haven’t lost the most
important customs; my family which is still rooted in the village tell me
that now I am a mestizo because I live together with those from the city,

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but I believe that as long as I don’t lose my customs I shall continue to
consider myself as indigenous.” A.S.N. Spanish-speaking Nahua.

“I consider myself indigenous because my family comes from an
indigenous group where they have very much their own customs and a
language which is Popoloca; I was born in a village with its traditions,
even though they have been modified in large part by the arrival of the
Spaniards: customs, traditions and our native language by the current one,
but even with all these changes... they can’t take away the indigenous
from us.” G.M.B. Spanish-speaking Popoloca.

The mestizo teachers, at least in the more public contexts of the university, all
consider themselves as indigenous, regardless of the real circumstances in which they
find themselves. This is clearly influenced by the context of interrogation: the university
is a place where the indigenous heritage must be affinned, and the subjects may use a set
of arguments to give evidence of these attachments. These arguments, however, are
generally different from those employed by the indigenous teachers: they are resorts to a

vague and imprecise past:

“I consider myself indigenous because as a matter of fact our ancestors
have sacrificed themselves so we could live in peace without any
problems, and now if I would say thank you and deny my roots would be
the worst thing, because the blood that runs through my veins I can’t take
away and stop being what I am, and I shouldn’t be embarrassed of being
what I am, because for being indigenous I am not missing anything, on the
contrary it is nice that all of us who are natives conserve our traditions, as
well as the customs our grandparents had, so that in the years to come we
may tell our children how they were before us, and they may believe it.”
J.C.A. Spanish-speaking mestiza.

“Let’s say I’m not one hundred percent indigenous. Why? Because my
father tells that his grandfather came from a Frenchman from the time of
the revolution, whereas on the other side my mother is of the native race,
but for the sole reason that I am of this country which is Mexico,
proudly... I say, yes: I am a native.” V.L.M.E.A. Spanish-speaking
mestizo.

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“I don’t consider myself one hundred percent indigenous because today
there is no pure race in our country. More than indigenous, I consider
myself a mestizo because in our veins runs Spanish blood since the
conquest. The fact that we speak an indigenous language does not
characterize us as indios. It would be an honor for me to be from a pure
race to feel more identified... with our country. Above all, to have
inherited or acquired this knowledge, ingenuity, abilities and skills with
which the works of our Aztec forefathers was developed, their way of
thinking and acting, the few diseases they had, their natural foods and their
way of dressing. Today we mestizos have managed to recover some rites
or customs of our forefathers...” M.E.P. Spanish-speaking mestizo.

“I do consider myself as indigenous because I have the blood of my
ancestors. Although one may say he or she is not... indigenous,... the truth
is that we are indeed indigenous, even though one does not have the
customs or the Nahuatl language... Now the people of today say one is not
indigenous because one dresses differently, because one doesn’t speak
Nahuatl, that’s why they say they aren’t natives. But if you look at it
correctly, they are indeed indigenous. I do consider myself indigenous
because I have the blood of my ancestors and because I work for the
system of indigenous education.” L.H.M. Spanish-speaking mestizo.

In some cases the context of interrogation has so much influence that the teachers
invent affiliations that do not exist and which can be detected in other narratives about
facts of their lives which have a less evident connection with the public presentation of
identity and which therefore offer the possibility to uncover the contradictions. Three

examples.

One teacher affirms his ethnic association in the following terms:

“I consider myself indigenous because I come from a family with roots in
places where my people are called indigenous, and not only because of
that, but also for speaking a language which is Nahuatl; for me personally
it is a question of pride... to be able to speak Ndhuatl as a native
language, and Spanish as a second language. And it also makes me feel
satisfied... to be able to serve, as my countrymen simply say. My personal

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aims were to enter the teaching profession in the indigenous medium, first
of all... to have been prepared by the Direccion General de Educacio'n;
once... I was trained, then I was directed... to apply what I had learned; for
me it was like feeling a little proud of myself... to have reached the goal I
had set for myself; and it is for this reason that I consider myself as
indigenous. Why? I am the son of an indigenous family which speaks
Ndhuatl and that is what characterizes a person... one’s way of being and
beliefs that one comes to have of the family.” H.M.S. Spanish-speaking
mestizo Emphasis added.

However, the same teacher gave the following information about his life in

another moment:

“I was born in the community described above on January 8, 1970; my
parents are natives of the same community, and by occupation my father is
a peasant and my mother a housewife. After I was born and.. with the
passing of time I came to distinguish the things that were happening
around me and events that took place during my childhood. Later I got to
know my parents; I communicated with them first by babbling and later
they taught me to speak Spanish, which is the only language that is
spoken... in the home where I am from, since in that place no indigenous
language is spoken...”

Another teacher, a woman, gave the following statement about her ethnic

association:

“I consider myself indigenous because I speak an indigenous language.
This is one of our roots that must be rescued and enriched so that in the
future the inhabitants may know the different languages that were spoken
' since antiquity and that they existed in the whole country, since Spanish is
only an language imposed on us by the Spaniards since the conquest.
My mother tongue is Ndhuatl and... I have tried to conserve it. I also have
the customs regarding the traditional celebrations, to this day personally I
like it that they be preserved and practiced.” C.M.H. bilingual mestizo.

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However, she mentioned the following with respect to her learning of the Spanish

language:

“I learned Spanish as a first language because my parents spoke
Spanish... They taught me and my brothers and sisters Spanish since we
were little. However, my parents speak Ndhuatl as a second language. I
learned Spanish from my parents, my brothers and sisters, and also from
the neighbors. When I entered grade school at the age of six, all my
classmates spoke Spanish, that’s why I’ve always spoken Spanish.
However, when I went to first grade of primary school, the teacher, I still
remember that I understood her and that I knew a little Nahuatl, and when
she felt like it she asked things in Nahuatl, but since I couldn’t answer
because I didn’t understand her, she punished me; she said that we should
master the two languages, because that’s the way it should be, but when
she realized that her teaching technique didn’t work she later changed her
way of communicating with us and spoke to us in Spanish, and from then
on I learned to speak better.”

Finally, another woman teacher showed great difficulties in making her ethnic

affiliation explicit:

“For the last five hundred years they have called us indigenous, indios, but
this shouldn’t be so because my social class in the dynasty to which I
belong they should call me by my name, by my class, as Mexica, Maya,
because thanks to these classes our national territory received the name
Mexicans, created of course by the Mexica empire, so this name was born
from a great civilization.

The most correct way would be for them to call us indigenous or natives;
another name they could call us by is ethnics, but they shouldn’t use just
one word... just to hear it... because the nations, with the exception of
China and Japan, which conserve their ethnic identities as such... the other
countries... are mixed... and Mexico is one of the countries formed by
multiple ethnicities... of course crossbred because of the great mixture of
each of the pluricultural societies of Mexico: Zapotec, Mixtec, Tzeltal,
Tzotzil, Yaqui, Seri, Paipai, etc. N.I.A.B. Spanish-speaking mestizo.

However, this teacher confessed in one class that her family did not consider itself

as indigenous, but that she had decided to enter into the Department of Indigenous

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Education because she did acknowledge her roots and her father had asked her what she
wanted to do with those natives. It is very probable that these statements are also part of a
rationalization and manipulation.

It may be said that the argumentative narratives provide information
complementing the recollections and that it is also possible to find in them the traces
which indicate the ethnic differences that go across the group of teachers. What can be
distinguished here as well are the differences between those teachers whose indigenous
heritage is strongest and the more acculturated, as well as the mestizos. However, what
becomes evident is that even in moments when the subjects have the greatest control over
their discourses (in this case over the arguments to present a public image on ethnic
affiliation), this control is not total. The most acculturated teachers and the mestizos have
to resort to less concrete elements, more ambiguous statements, highlighting the
affirrnation that we all have indigenous roots, a common image in Mexico. On the other
hand, for the most indigenous teachers this ambiguity, although not completely absent,
has yet another connotation which permits them to face ethnic discrimination. They make
use of the actual fact that ethnicity; cultural practices linked to indigenous groups (as
religious beliefs, dietary preferences, and medical activities, among others) are widely
spread among different sectors of Mexican society. In this extent, they link their ethnic
elements to those analogous existing in Mexican culture.

What also comes to attention is the importance of the State institutions, mainly
schools, in this process: all of the teachers resort to in the course of their explanatory
discourses images which are essentially provided by education, but also by society in

general, on the nature of the indigenous. It is as if the indigenous were a cultural value

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that exists socially to be employed in social interaction with distinct purposes, depending
on the subjects using it.

There is another group of facts related to this level of the explanatory discourses
which will round out this approach to the forms in which certain elements of ethnic

identity are used and reproduced among the indigenous teachers: their actuation.

Performances

When I refer to performance, I simply mean the way the subjects act in the course of their
social life, and how they continuously generate, among other things, through their way of
acting, the conditions and elements of their identity. These performances may be
controlled and stereotyped or spontaneous. The element found in all cases of performance
is the production of a discourse (narrative or acted) of the individuals by which they
make aflirmations on what they think they are.

In some instances it is clear that there are affinnations which are contradictory to
objective facts, as is the case of manipulation of the mestizo teachers I presented above.
But here the most important aspect is not the attempt at distortion (which is rather limited
as there are other elements that permit the involved actors to correctly identify the
situation), but the firnctions of these manipulations. What we have here is something
similar to what Richard Avedon (1993) points out with respect to the portrait in the genre
of photography. Avedon says that the portrait should not be seen as a genre less genuine
than other, more naturalistic forms like photojournalism. When one poses for the camera,
Avedon argues, one is not pretending to be something one is not, but on the contrary one

presents an image that one assumes to be real. Following this analogy, we may say that

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the poses of the teachers show important affirmations of their identity, regardless of the
veracity of these asseverations.

There were various contexts for these performances which permitted the
observation of some of these forms of acting. First of all there was the context of the
university and, more specifically, the classroom; in second place are the work places of
the teachers, and finally some spaces of family and everyday life.

Beginning with the university, here the stereotyped images are predominant: the
teachers are extremely formal in their treatment of each other; except when among close
friends, they almost always used the formal treatment of usted and the title maestra or
maestro when talking to each other, above all in the context of the classroom. With very
few exceptions, they never spoke an indigenous language, and almost always
communicated in Spanish. One possible reason could have been the different handling of
the distinct languages, but even among speakers of the same language, it was always
Spanish they employed. In the rare cases when an indigenous language was used, it was
Nahuatl (for instance, during some basketball games or in a trip when a mestizo female
teacher made a speech).

The basketball court was one situation where the indigenous language was used,
when it was advantageous for the game to do so. Also in those moments when linguistics
was a matter of discussion and when it therefore appeared as something natural, or in a
number of situations that could be called declaratory. These situations had the same
characteristics as the declarations of the mestizo teachers mentioned before: the
proclamation of facts (in this case ethnic affiliation) as part of a public representation. In

this latter case the allocutions of a mestizo woman teacher, pronounced in Nahuatl, stood

I61

out on two occasions: one in the classroom as part of a demonstration of her indianness,
and the second in the course of an excursion when she recited a composition well-known
among the teachers.

On the other hand it may be said that there were no notable elements evident
among the teachers that would distinguish them categorically from the mestizo teachers
from the popular sectors; however, a more thorough observation did show some
distinctive elements: these teachers pretended to be or appeared more rural than the
other teachers attending different study courses at the university, and other circumstantial
data also identified them as indigenous teachers: their existence and (generally less
extrovert) behavior were known and they were pointed out as the indigenous teachers.

As part of their interior interactions, one interesting question, above all in the
group of Class 1990 (where the teachers with the highest number of service years and
two of the most clearly identified teachers with the Department of Indigenous Education
were placed) that was brought to our attention, was a certain permanent tension between
the teachers most associated with the system of indigenous education and the mestizos
who often do not speak any indigenous language. Apparently there always had been some
animosity between the former and the latter, since it was assumed that there should be a
certain commitment on behalf of the system in favor of ethnic affiliation. This
confrontation had emerged within the confines of the Departamento de Educacion
lndigena but reappeared under various circumstances in the classroom, for instance in the
discussions on the goals of education.

Another area where public identity is important is the work place. Some of the

teachers who attended classes at the university worked in rural communities (with a

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variety of linguistic, ethnic and social situations), whereas others were posted in suburban
schools of the city of Puebla. In all cases the teachers distanced themselves from the
context. This was most evident in rural communities where they distinguished themselves
from the inhabitants by their way of dressing and their attitudes. This can be seen in
Figure 3. There is a way of behaving of these teachers that has to do with the culture
instilled by the different institutions with which they have been in contact since they
started their professional life. This is even more accentuated by the fact that most of them
do not live in the communities where they work, but in nearby mestizo villages.
Frequently the rural public buses are full of the poorest professionals who work in the
countryside: teachers, nurses, and sometimes a doctor who is in his social service year.

In rural communities the indigenous teachers are thus probably closer to the
community than “the other teachers” (those who do not belong to the Department of
Indigenous Education), like their narratives indicate, but that seems to be all. Apparently
a social distance has been created which is a part of the professional structure of this
group. Indigenous teachers must maintain a social distance, in part for prestige, in part as
a need for getting legitimacy in the community. Additionally there is the variety of
linguistic situations in the communities; if Spanish predominates in the village, teachers
use the indigenous language rarely or never. It only comes to play if an indigenous
a language dominating (obviously in the case the teacher speaks it) but fundamentally

.as a means of castilianization.

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Figure 5 Peasant and teacher in the Sierras

 

Photograph: Jorge Meneses

In the schools of the urban periphery the teachers are not different from the non-
indigenous teachers of analogous areas; here perhaps the only distinct element is the
interpretation of the national anthem in Nahuatl during the civic ceremonies on
Mondays. The teachers have a great affinity with the locals, although the distance that
marks their occupational position still exists. In these places there are no public displays
of ethnicity, which appears to remain in limbo: the teachers are teachers, period. In the
domestic spaces, they still manifest the links that point out their ethnic origin, in spite of
all the changes they have gone through: one finds photographs in their homes with
friends and relatives in indigenous attire, or ruralized houses with domestic animals
like turkeys or chicken; other pictures show various celebrations: weddings in
rented reception rooms, urban fashion, but with food prepared in the rural style; the

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rituals of the celebration are a combination of the same elements (modern games like
throwing the bride’s bouquet and the traditional advice of the godparents to the
newlyweds); or the presence of important religious festivities, such as the Day of the
Dead, when one returns to the village or the village comes to town (with compadres,
relatives or friends who bring part of the offering for exchange).

One example shows this clearly: when one teacher at the university, who always
had a mestiza appearance, celebrated her civil wedding in her native community, she used
various pieces of clothing associated with traditional female dress on top of each other: a
wrap, a kerchief around her neck, an apron, and a hairdo with flowers; just as if this

would underline a tie between the two worlds in which she moves (cf. Figure 6).

Teachers: narratives of word and deed

Summarizing everything that has been presented in this chapter, it becomes clear that the
teachers’ narratives show, both in their memories and their actions, a group caught
between the mestizo and the indigenous world, and at the same time they also show
important differences among the teachers. How they act and what they remember shows

the conditions in which they have lived and those in which they currently move.

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Figure 6 Elena’s wedding

 

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CONCLUSIONS

This dissertation examines the relation between action and structure as being part of an
integrated domain, focusing on the study of ethnicity. The idea of action and structure as
two complementary aspects of social life is originally derived from Anthony Giddens
model. I understand that both have a deep link between them: structure as sedimented
action and fueled by the intentions and the interests of social agents, and agency as the
capability of actors to intervene in social life, although not in any fashion, but following
existing conditions. This is not a matter of just theoretical fashion: social life shows daily
a real difficulty to transform existing conditions, and profound change, though possible,
only happens under exceptional conditions and consuming great amounts of agency.

This can be also applied to ethnicity. Actors can have a certain range of action to
manipulate ethnic ascription but this manipulation is not made in a social vacuum.
Historical elements, concrete practices, societies, and groups, intervene to influence the
limits of social definitions. In this extent, ethnicity does not have a general or abstract
value. As Linkon (1999) has mentioned for the working class, ethnicity has diverse
meanings depending on the context in which it is found.

For the case of indigenous teachers, narratives and performances show a
conscious use of ethnicity that, however is not entirely based on actors’ will but quite the
contrary, it follows patterns established by teachers’ scenarios. Then, we have mestizo
teachers that in the University and in public or “declarative” spaces stress a nonexistent

ethnicity. This process, nevertheless, cannot be entirely controlled and, in this extent,

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shows contradictions, especially in those less manipulative and conscious aspects. A
teacher who was one of the conspicuous mestizo teachers provide an example. She was
one of the mestizo teachers who all the time tried very hard to pass as indigenous. One
day, when I asked her to recall her life, she told me how Indians discriminated against her
and her sister, when both of them were children. This was the result of their outfit (they
were wearing plastic raincoats) and because they used to go by horse to the school. Indian
children pulled their hair and made fun of them, calling them names. Interestingly enough
she did not see any contradiction between this experience and her ethnic claims. It seems
clear that, in spite of the fact that she all the time pretended to pass as an Indian at the
university, her memories tell a very different story, and she was not entirely conscious of
this.

In other cases, indigenous teachers tried to “camouflage” their native roots in the
urban contexts where they work and live. There, they use Spanish as a daily language
and behave as mestizo people. However, here too some practices, tastes, and
preferences, point to a different direction: to a cultural substratum not entirely
controlled by individuals showing those levels of identity that have been identified as
practical.

It is possible, then, to talk about of the existence of different levels of the
presentation of the ethnic self: on the one hand, levels that are more conscious,
discursive and manipulative. On other, one finds levels more unconscious, automatic
and “rebellious”. All of them operate at the same time. And it seems that although
individuals can manipulate a great deal of ethnicity in a conscious fashion, the access

that they have to processes of ethnic formation has a limit. A social context, or

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structure, that is not undifferentiated, gives this limit. On the contrary, it possible to
distinguish in this context, institutions (particularly the State) and with specific histories
and trajectories. This does not mean, however, that context turns actors into puppets
imposing on them a script that must be strictly followed. Structure, must be
remembered, and should be understood as a negotiated action or sedimentated action.

In all of this, an active use of ethnicity by actors can be seen, a use that is not
entirely free of course, but is more a continuous negotiation that depends on the resources
at hand. One of these resources is clearly the knowledge provided by the university
program. The impact of the program in the process of identity formation has been
different:
although in general the program can be seen as a “storehouse” that provided discourse,
symbols, and practices, the use of all of these materials was also distinct. For those
involved in administrative duties (and having a prior clear strategic identity) the program
provided discursive strategies that allowed them to refine their actions. For mestizos, who
must “act ethnic”, the program also worked as a reservoir of ethnic symbols that can be
used in public contexts. Finally, for others, those coming from ethnic backgrounds
(where communities retain their importance) or having certain cultural capital (in
Bourdieu terms), the program certainly served to make them more aware of the meaning
of their ethnic roots and make them reflexive about their ethnic self.

The program has had a positive impact in terms of the process of ethnic
formation, giving teachers at least the opportunity to rationalize the contradictions
derived from negative connotations attached to ethnicity in Mexico and the positive, but

Void image existing in official and public discourse. But, ironically, on the other hand, in

169

the extent that the program remains urban oriented and foreign to teachers, this positive
impact cannot be translated into educative actions. This could make its potential really
effective in identity awareness, not for specific individuals but for a wider range of
people: indigenous or mestizo children that have ethnic roots or influences. This shows,
in the last extent the limits of a proposal that is not created and managed from the groups,
but from above, specifically from the State and its institutions. This also shows a certain
dynamic of ethnicity in a country such as Mexico where since the conquest, Indian
symbols have been appropriated by non-Indians in the nation-making process.

Indigenous teachers show that social groups are not abstract or essential entities.
They show the manifold nature of the indigenous population in Mexico and its dynamic
nature. In certain way, they probably could be seen as an intermediary group located
between the bulk of the native communities and the mestizo fractions of the working class
population that share ethnic roots. But in another way, they are not precisely intermediary
because they do not mediate, but sometimes they behave as part of the mestizo working
class and sometimes as Indians. Ethnicity in the dissertation is shown to be a highly,
personal, and uneven, spread out within the Mexican population that has a historic
meaning attachment. Generally speaking, it serves as a marker, combined with class, used
to discriminate against certain working class groups. However it is not equated to class:
in interethnic areas, poor mestizos have a better social (although not necessarily
economic) position than poor Indians do.

This is the concrete context that appears in the action of teachers; these are

possibilities for that action, but at the same time they are also their very limits.

I70

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