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Agrarian Revolt in a Mexican Village
Agrarian Revolt in a Mexican Village deals with a Taráscan Indian village in southwestern Mexico which, between 1920 and 1926, played a precedent-setting role in agrarian reform. As he describes forty years in the history of this small pueblo, Paul Friedrich raises general questions about local politics and agrarian reform that are basic to our understanding of radical change in peasant societies around the world. Of particular interest is his detailed study of the colorful, violent, and psychologically complex leader, Primo Tapia, whose biography bears on the theoretical issues of the "political middleman" and the relation between individual motivation and socioeconomic change. Friedrich's evidence includes massive interviewing, personal letters, observations as an anthropological participant (e.g., in fiesta ritual), analysis of the politics and other village culture during 1955-56, comparison with other Taráscan villages, historical and prehistoric background materials, and research in legal and government agrarian archives.
176 pages, Paperback
Published December 15, 1977
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September 11, 2023
Although Agrarian Revolt in a Mexican Village is not a very long work, it is filled with fascinating histories. Friedrich skillfully organizes many local biographies and oral histories, some semi-folkloric reminiscences about the golden past, incisive accounts of the years of sickness and hunger, of the years of exploitation and violence, and finally dramatic narratives of the villagers’ noble pursuit of land reform, as well as of the village’s attainment of some measure of retributive justice and equity in that regard.
The book starts out like a classic salvage work from mid-twentieth century American ethnography, where the ethnographer talks to the oldest folks in the village in order to reconstruct a cultural milieu based on the elders’ memories. These recollections from the elders’ childhoods as well as from stories these elders were told long ago from their parents' days provide most of the ethnographer’s data, although the archival methods of the historian are also employed effectively. Friedrich’s object of ethnographic/historical inquiry is the village of Naranja, one of numerous small Tarascan-speaking villages found in the cool, high country of Michoacán province in southwest Mexico. Friedrich begins in the year 1885, about seventy years prior to his initial fieldwork in Naranja.
It appears Naranja in 1885 had a vibrant and vigorous culture, one where all life seemed to be in balance. There was in the village at that time a great deal of cultural syncretism, if not synergy, between Catholics and pagans. Mexican-Catholic institutions like the many annual saints festivals had become blended with Indigenous-Mexican rites and traditions enacted during these fiestas. Similarly, the Catholic custom of having compadres (godparents) was colored by local, Tarascan expectations about the roles of compadres and comadres. Friedrich’s description of the fiestas are terrific, especially as he relates the pageantry of the immaculately dressed natives who walked from one Tarascan village to another, feasting and drinking and socializing and doing all the things people in large gatherings tend to do when they are having a good time.
Then a man-made tragedy struck. The marshy lake that Naranja depended upon was drained to expose new, highly fertile farmland. The loss of the lake meant two things for the village: the fish that they lived off of were gone; and the reeds which they braided into hats, baskets, mats and other commodities, were also gone. In a stroke of some government bureaucrat’s pen, the village of Naranja’s primary means of subsistence and all of its commerce were lost. The new farmland was deeded to haciendas which were unwilling to share their new land or their windfall of maize with the indigenous population. The indigines now had no reliable source of food and no local way to get money. Some worked abroad. Many left seasonally to work for the haciendas. There, they were ill-paid at best, and were frequently subjected to physical and verbal abuse from the mestizos and whites who ruled the haciendas. The nice clothing and the elaborate fiestas drained away like the lake itself. The indigenous had become indigent, reduced to the near slavery of debt peonage, or else confined to a life of hunger and hopelessness.
The people of Naranja fought back. On the national and provincial front, Mexico underwent revolutions which produced administrations in favor of land reforms to help native peoples who had been dispossessed of their livelihoods. But things didn’t really change much. The haciendas were successful in delaying and appealing land reforms in the courts. And just when it seemed the reforms would finally take place, pro-native political leaders would be run off or assassinated. Before too long, local warfare and feuding enveloped Michoacán, as mestizos fought against indios over the fertile land from the drained lake. There were also divisions within Naranja, as some more conservative Tarascans sided with the catholic establishment in their support of the hacienda owners’ claims to the land. But ultimately, reform did bring an end to the violent struggle, as the village of Naranja gained a charter for an ejido (rural collective) which recognized their claim to the adjacent, fertile maize producing lands. They didn’t get their lake back, but they got most of the rich farmland in recompense.
The village of Naranja probably would not have been ultimately successful in its struggles without the exploits of Primo Tapia, a leader of the Tarascan agrarians. Primo was what Gramsci would call an organic intellectual. With just a little college education, Primo learned to speak five languages and acted as the lawyer for the village. He had lived for a while in the US, where he joined in the early twentieth century labor struggles as a member of the Wobblies. Upon his return to Naranja, Primo led an agrarian revolt in the 1920’s, fighting alongside his small army of relations. While Primo could be vane and violent, he was nevertheless much loved by his people. He was indian enough to be capable of blending in with the other Tarascans when he needed to conceal his whereabouts. And while he stood up against the generally conservative catholic clergy, he was accepting of catholic institutions like the fiestas and the compadres. He was not the Bolshevik that his enemies accused him of being. Nevertheless, he was ultimately hunted down and executed by his enemies.
The biographical saga of Primo Tapia provides a clear example of Friedrich’s skills both as an historian and as an ethnographer. Primo might have been a little too macho or violent to survive the instability of Mexico’s political-economic turmoil of a century ago. But his leadership proved to be indispensable to the Naranja cause. Given the injustices faced in Naranja and the culture of despair found there, it isn’t surprising that the struggle devolved into bloodshed and vendetta. But Primo’s primary weapons were not guns but rather his natural intelligence and his talent for organizing people.
I believe there are important lessons to take from Friedrich’s Agrarian Revolt in a Mexican Village. First, we must remember that poverty among ‘natives’ is not self-inflicted. It is often instead the result of legal, political, even military advantages of the haves over the have-nots. And second, it is perhaps even more significant that a descent into poverty is in fact reversible in some cases, provided sufficient leadership is able to put it all on the line and fight until the just goals are achieved.
I recommend Agrarian Revolt in a Mexican Village to anyone interested in the fertile nexus of historiography and ethnography. Like a classic ethnography about Native Americans (I am thinking of Lowie’s Crow Indians), Friedrich’s book salvages cultural details before they could be lost forever when the oldest generation of Tarascans passed. But Friedrich pulls together a reconstruction of the rest of the history as it unfolded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, demonstrating that native cultures really can endure and transform themselves in the face of hardship and struggle. By locating Tarascan culture both in local knowledge and in wider contexts of political economy, Friedrich provides a much richer account than just a ‘salvage’ of a culture already lost. In sum, Friedrich’s ethnography reveals the microcosm of Naranja in light of a political and economic macrocosm, showing how local struggles in seemingly out of the way places are tied to regional, national, and even international events.
The book starts out like a classic salvage work from mid-twentieth century American ethnography, where the ethnographer talks to the oldest folks in the village in order to reconstruct a cultural milieu based on the elders’ memories. These recollections from the elders’ childhoods as well as from stories these elders were told long ago from their parents' days provide most of the ethnographer’s data, although the archival methods of the historian are also employed effectively. Friedrich’s object of ethnographic/historical inquiry is the village of Naranja, one of numerous small Tarascan-speaking villages found in the cool, high country of Michoacán province in southwest Mexico. Friedrich begins in the year 1885, about seventy years prior to his initial fieldwork in Naranja.
It appears Naranja in 1885 had a vibrant and vigorous culture, one where all life seemed to be in balance. There was in the village at that time a great deal of cultural syncretism, if not synergy, between Catholics and pagans. Mexican-Catholic institutions like the many annual saints festivals had become blended with Indigenous-Mexican rites and traditions enacted during these fiestas. Similarly, the Catholic custom of having compadres (godparents) was colored by local, Tarascan expectations about the roles of compadres and comadres. Friedrich’s description of the fiestas are terrific, especially as he relates the pageantry of the immaculately dressed natives who walked from one Tarascan village to another, feasting and drinking and socializing and doing all the things people in large gatherings tend to do when they are having a good time.
Then a man-made tragedy struck. The marshy lake that Naranja depended upon was drained to expose new, highly fertile farmland. The loss of the lake meant two things for the village: the fish that they lived off of were gone; and the reeds which they braided into hats, baskets, mats and other commodities, were also gone. In a stroke of some government bureaucrat’s pen, the village of Naranja’s primary means of subsistence and all of its commerce were lost. The new farmland was deeded to haciendas which were unwilling to share their new land or their windfall of maize with the indigenous population. The indigines now had no reliable source of food and no local way to get money. Some worked abroad. Many left seasonally to work for the haciendas. There, they were ill-paid at best, and were frequently subjected to physical and verbal abuse from the mestizos and whites who ruled the haciendas. The nice clothing and the elaborate fiestas drained away like the lake itself. The indigenous had become indigent, reduced to the near slavery of debt peonage, or else confined to a life of hunger and hopelessness.
The people of Naranja fought back. On the national and provincial front, Mexico underwent revolutions which produced administrations in favor of land reforms to help native peoples who had been dispossessed of their livelihoods. But things didn’t really change much. The haciendas were successful in delaying and appealing land reforms in the courts. And just when it seemed the reforms would finally take place, pro-native political leaders would be run off or assassinated. Before too long, local warfare and feuding enveloped Michoacán, as mestizos fought against indios over the fertile land from the drained lake. There were also divisions within Naranja, as some more conservative Tarascans sided with the catholic establishment in their support of the hacienda owners’ claims to the land. But ultimately, reform did bring an end to the violent struggle, as the village of Naranja gained a charter for an ejido (rural collective) which recognized their claim to the adjacent, fertile maize producing lands. They didn’t get their lake back, but they got most of the rich farmland in recompense.
The village of Naranja probably would not have been ultimately successful in its struggles without the exploits of Primo Tapia, a leader of the Tarascan agrarians. Primo was what Gramsci would call an organic intellectual. With just a little college education, Primo learned to speak five languages and acted as the lawyer for the village. He had lived for a while in the US, where he joined in the early twentieth century labor struggles as a member of the Wobblies. Upon his return to Naranja, Primo led an agrarian revolt in the 1920’s, fighting alongside his small army of relations. While Primo could be vane and violent, he was nevertheless much loved by his people. He was indian enough to be capable of blending in with the other Tarascans when he needed to conceal his whereabouts. And while he stood up against the generally conservative catholic clergy, he was accepting of catholic institutions like the fiestas and the compadres. He was not the Bolshevik that his enemies accused him of being. Nevertheless, he was ultimately hunted down and executed by his enemies.
The biographical saga of Primo Tapia provides a clear example of Friedrich’s skills both as an historian and as an ethnographer. Primo might have been a little too macho or violent to survive the instability of Mexico’s political-economic turmoil of a century ago. But his leadership proved to be indispensable to the Naranja cause. Given the injustices faced in Naranja and the culture of despair found there, it isn’t surprising that the struggle devolved into bloodshed and vendetta. But Primo’s primary weapons were not guns but rather his natural intelligence and his talent for organizing people.
I believe there are important lessons to take from Friedrich’s Agrarian Revolt in a Mexican Village. First, we must remember that poverty among ‘natives’ is not self-inflicted. It is often instead the result of legal, political, even military advantages of the haves over the have-nots. And second, it is perhaps even more significant that a descent into poverty is in fact reversible in some cases, provided sufficient leadership is able to put it all on the line and fight until the just goals are achieved.
I recommend Agrarian Revolt in a Mexican Village to anyone interested in the fertile nexus of historiography and ethnography. Like a classic ethnography about Native Americans (I am thinking of Lowie’s Crow Indians), Friedrich’s book salvages cultural details before they could be lost forever when the oldest generation of Tarascans passed. But Friedrich pulls together a reconstruction of the rest of the history as it unfolded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, demonstrating that native cultures really can endure and transform themselves in the face of hardship and struggle. By locating Tarascan culture both in local knowledge and in wider contexts of political economy, Friedrich provides a much richer account than just a ‘salvage’ of a culture already lost. In sum, Friedrich’s ethnography reveals the microcosm of Naranja in light of a political and economic macrocosm, showing how local struggles in seemingly out of the way places are tied to regional, national, and even international events.
April 6, 2019
This book showcases the struggles that indigenous people had to go through in Mexico in order to acquire land through the political system but also with violence. The main leader Primo Tapia is a great example of grassroots leadership and how the people put pressure on the government in order to achieve the great land reforms in Mexico. I personally enjoyed this book because Michoacán the place this book is based on is where my family comes from.
January 12, 2024
great ethnography that looked into the day-to-day lives of the people involved. the book, however, left me wanting more information about the agricultural (cropping) systems in Mexico and how the crops being produced payed into agrarian revolt (rather than just land ownership)
November 7, 2024
lowkey doodoo
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews