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The Mixtecs of Oaxaca
Ancient Times to the Present
By Ronald Spores, Andrew K. Balkansky UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS
Copyright © 2013 University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing Division of the University
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8061-5091-8
CHAPTER 1
THE MIXTECA AND THE MIXTECOS
Oaxaca is a region of unusual geographic and ethnic diversity, small communities, small farms, and minor industries. Against this varied contemporary setting, the rich and diversified cultural traditions of Oaxaca have developed over the past several thousand years. At least sixteen major ethnolinguistic groups occupied Oaxaca at the time of the Spanish Conquest. Some groups, like the Mixes, Chontals, and Mazatecs, remained isolated in remote mountainous areas from which they have emerged only in recent decades. Others, most notably Mixtec- and Zapotec-speaking peoples, operated in the mainstream of Mesoamerican society, with far-reaching exchange networks, urban states, and highly developed religion. They were among the originators of Mesoamerican civilization. Modern Mixtecs may be found almost anywhere on the North American continent, while their homeland remains a region of great beauty with a spectacular history, with vast but underdeveloped resources and great potential for development, but with limited opportunities at present for material advancement.
Our approach in this book consists of following the course of development among the Mixtec from their earliest beginnings to the present, focusing on transformational events: urban origins and development; the emergence of the state and a complex social system; technological innovation; the emergence of writing, great art, and science; religious transformations; catastrophic epidemic; collapse and cultural reformulation; and conquest and colonization that pertain to ancient and Colonial times. Wars of independence and revolution followed, and the modern era of economic globalization and mass migration characterizes the present. We consider anthropological studies of the Mixtec to have reached a critical density, which upon synthesis and further study should yield data and theoretical observations of considerable interest to scholars worldwide. We begin with the relevant background to the Mixteca and the Mixtecos, their archaeological, historical, linguistic, and environmental parameters before considering the prehistory in greater detail than in any of our prior efforts. The second half of the book covers the Spanish Conquest and colonization and continues into the contemporary era of the Mexican nation-state. We must delay all of that, however, and before getting to the "good stuff" make a few remarks about our methods and explain why we frame the presentation as we do.
CONVERGENT METHOD
We have always viewed our work as situated within the entire Mixteca, both as it exists today and in the past, and sought ways to conjoin the several subfields of anthropology into a broad, and we hope convincing, approach to the Mixteca and the Mixtecos. This is not a new idea. As with many things in the study of Oaxacan peoples and places, we trace the roots of a conjunctive-historical or "convergent" method to Alfonso Caso. Caso, his closest collaborators Ignacio Bernal and Jorge Acosta, and Wigberto Jiménez Moreno began a tradition of integrative studies that is still followed—bringing the results of archaeological excavations together with the study of ethnohistory, and situating analyses of writing and the calendar alongside regional settlement surveys. Caso's studies of ancient Mixtec settlement, writing and the calendar, Colonial maps, land transactions, and eye-witness accounts form important elements of the research from this era (1930s to the 1960s) and still contribute to our view of Mixtec cultural development as a continuous and unfolding process.
What the convergence of aims and methods means in practice varies among researchers, but for us it involves, minimally, the use of complementary data for looking back in time as well as for the present and into the future. Julian Steward described this approach as "the elementary logic of working from the known to the unknown" and then remarked that for areas like Mesoamerica, "where many of the more conspicuous sites were only recently abandoned and where a connection between historic and prehistoric cultures was obvious, it was almost an inevitable approach." We take it as axiomatic that explanations tempered by several sources of information almost always prove to be the more enduring. We likewise view the documented behaviors, attitudes, practices, knowledge domains, and beliefs of native Mesoamericans as the right and proper starting point for our research. Ethnographic and historical documentation thus becomes a yardstick against which we measure modern, historic, and prehistoric sequences of development.
Our emphasis on documented behavior is far more revealing and more reliable than the empirically empty theoretical approaches that are often employed in Mesoamerica. There are good reasons why we continue to use results generated in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, and it has to do with their empirical utility. What strengthens this approach is the use of parallel lines of evidence, including materials recovered through systematic excavation and survey as well as observations drawn from systematic study of the documentary record. Yet we remain mindful that the Postclassic period in Oaxaca wherein all convergent approaches must demonstrably come together is barely subdivided chronologically. This means that the last six hundred years or more of Oaxaca prehistory is only a rough sketch archaeologically, thereby masking all of the oscillations the historical sources tell us characterized each small polity. The considerable dynamism and flux of the Postclassic is difficult to approach in this circumstance, and earlier periods require still greater interpretive conservatism.
THE SCIENCE OF ARCHAEOLOGY AS APPLIED TO THE MIXTECA
Archaeology, as a branch of anthropology, is a set of techniques and methods applied to the study of material remains of past cultures. Although the discipline is ancient, archaeological methodology and objectives have evolved steadily over the last century. We can readily trace this development in Oaxaca, both in aims and methods, from the late nineteenth-century era of Marshall Saville and Leopoldo Batres to the mid-twentieth-century work of Alfonso Caso and Ignacio Bernal, and more recently to John Paddock, Kent Flannery, Steve Kowalewski, Charles Spencer, Bruce Byland, Marcus Winter, and many others.
Systematic archaeological research began in the Mixteca in the early 1930s, with limited surface survey in the central region and excavations in two major sites, Yucuñudahui and Monte Negro. In the late 1940s, reasonably extensive excavation was conducted at Coixtlahuaca, and in the 1950s limited exploration was carried out at Yatachío of Tamazulapan. Generally speaking (as outlined in chapters 2 and 3), these were rather individualized investigations aimed at gaining knowledge of developments at particular loci and/or relationships between the Mixteca Alta and Monte Albán.
Beginning in the mid-1960s, however, the objectives of archaeological research shifted to a more regional and processual orientation that combined extensive-intensive regional survey and associated selective excavations. This demanded the honing of specific methods, including the formation of a systematic pottery typology-chronology for the region, ecological and geomorphological studies, and an emphasis on cross ties between sites both within the Mixteca and beyond (see results from the Vanderbilt University Nochixtlan Valley Project, the University of Michigan Prehistory and Human Ecology of the Valley of Oaxaca Project, and the somewhat later Valley of Oaxaca Settlement Pattern Project). More recent and current archaeological studies (1990s to the present) are the direct descendants of the mid-1960s to 1970s projects and are discussed in detail in subsequent chapters. Among the more important recent developments in the archaeology of the Mixteca have been the expansion of the regional survey program and the excavation of the urban capital at Yucundaa-Teposcolula.
These collective efforts required planning and coordination among numerous individuals and several academic and research institutions. The information presented in this book is derived directly from this highly productive and creative archaeological base. Without it, and the collaborations on which it is based, most of the material and related interpretations and conclusions presented here would not be possible.
THE ETHNOHISTORICAL-ETHNOLOGICAL FOUNDATION
The most productive approach to the study of Mixtec culture and history is a convergent methodology that incorporates the methods and results of historiography, archaeology, linguistics, geography-geology, and ethnology. Each category provides a specific set of techniques for exploiting and processing cultural information. Taken together, however, the sum of the parts of this method of study eclipses the substance and value of any one of the individual approaches. At times we have referred to the larger focus as ethnohistory, or "documentary ethnology." In the present context, however, it is more useful to reserve the term "ethnohistory" for our explicit use of conventionally written or pictorial manuscripts and their conversion to raw ethnographic and historical data, with at least some diachronic penetration being provided by oral history. The framework of analysis, however, is anthropological, therefore not relying exclusively on one sort of study or information, to the exclusion of other data and approaches.
The ethnohistorian is in a position to search for solutions to anthropological problems and may engage in empirical research or test hypotheses as effectively as any other social scientist. There are many possible lines of inquiry into the nature of socioeconomic organization of a community or region and its relationship to demographic fluctuation or technological innovation. For example, as with the Mixteca, it is possible to investigate connections between a political capital, or cabecera, and its subordinate communities and between the community and the province or state and the factors that may contribute to changes in those relationships over time. Also over time can be examined the nature of a system of beliefs as well as conceptual and institutional changes and their broader cultural relationships.
Several features of the ethnohistoric approach should be mentioned. First, documentary ethnology allows for consideration of long developmental sequences, some covering decades, others—as with the Mixteca or the valleys of Oaxaca or Mexico—extending from before the eleventh century to modern times. Conventional ethnographic studies are largely restricted to the present, but the ethnohistorian can focus on the past and the present and observe cultural developments through long periods of time. Second, the documentary approach allows for detailed synchronic-functional analysis at any point in time for which documentation is available, as, for example, the case of the ancient political system, the yuhuitayu, señoríos, cacicazgos or kingdoms of the Mixtec. Third, documentary ethnology can employ one of the most scientific methodologies in anthropology, for its basic data are highly susceptible to verification and authentication. As long as the documentation upon which a study is based is extant, anyone can examine that exact same documentation, retrace the investigator's steps, and reach their own conclusions regarding the reliability of cultural inferences. Obviously, documentation can provide a breadth of exposure to cultural details that are generally not possible for the archaeologist, yet it retains the diachronic dimension that is not accessible to the conventional ethnologist. We reiterate, however, that the best approach is one that combines all of these methods and orientations by an individual or, as is more often the case, through collaboration of several investigators.
The first major category of resources for the Mixteca are the native picture manuscripts of the pre-Hispanic era and their Colonial derivatives and native European illustrative, artistic, and cartographic sources created from the time of the Spanish conquest to the early twentieth century. The media of presentation are stone, primarily deer skin, bone, and native paper. The vast majority of these illustrated sources by now have been published separately in collections, or as relevant components in many articles and books. Pictographic documents have been most plentiful from the Valley of Mexico, from Oaxaca—especially the Mixteca—and from the Maya area.
An extensive body of unpublished manuscript sources has been used in the preparation of this book, and the senior author is first and foremost an ethnohistorian. Most of these materials are preserved in three major repositories: the Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico City; the Archivo General de Indias, Seville; and the Archivo Histórico del Poder Judicial del Estado de Oaxaca, in the city of Oaxaca. Also of great importance have been materials housed in the more specialized archives of the world, such as the Bancroft Collection at the University of California, the Latin American Library at the University of Texas, the Bodleian Library of Oxford University, and the bibliotecas nacionales of Mexico and Spain. There are, of course, abundant published sources, many of which have been used in the preparation of this book and which are listed in the bibliography. Several of the more important archives and libraries are worthy special mention.
Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico City (AGN)
This is the richest repository of manuscript materials in America relating to the Mixteca during the Colonial period. Its holdings are divided into several dozen ramos, or sections. Although there are indexes, guides, and extensive bibliographies relating to the holdings of the AGN, there is absolutely no alternative to consultation of the originals or their exact copies.
The preparation of this book relies on materials from six sections of the AGN:
Ramo de Civil: records of civil litigation involving both natives and Spaniards.
Ramo de Indiferente General: a collection of short reports and grants or denials of individual privileges, orders for investigation, or resolution of all manner of conflicts involving natives, Spaniards, and religious and civil institutions.
Ramo de Indios: litigation, grants and prohibitions, reports and orders for investigation of all matters relating to natives.
Ramo de Inquisición: records of investigations and processes relating to matters of heresy, idolatry, treason, and other violations of the "divine order" as defined by the Crown and the office of the Spanish Royal Inquisition throughout the Colonial period, and involving natives from the time of their conversion to Christianity until the mid-1570s, when they were exempted from inquisitorial jurisdiction and process.
Ramo de Mercedes: royal grants of privilege or entitlements to both natives and Spaniards.
Ramo de Tierras: a voluminous collection of lawsuits regarding public and private lands and resources involving natives, Spaniards, communities, and religious, secular, and corporate institutions and agencies.
Archivo General de Indias, Seville (AGI)
The AGI consists of 43,000 bundles, or at least 80 million pages, of original documents housed in the sixteenth-century Casa Lonja de Mercaderes in Seville, Spain. It is the largest and most valuable repository of original documentation relating to the history of the Spanish Empire in the Americas and the Philippines. Although there are earlier and later documents, the vast majority relate to the period from 1492 to the 1820s. Investigators have access to original documents, to microfilm, to photocopies, and, increasingly, to digitalized impressions.
The AGI is arranged in ramos, the most important for the study of Colonial life in Oaxaca being the following:
Audiencia de México: a vast collection of thousands of bundles of documents relating to the governance of New Spain from 1519 until the end of Colonial times. Whatever the subject—social, political, economic, or religious—any research project on Colonial New Spain–Mexico would be incomplete without reference to the documentation found in this ramo.
Contaduría: an enormous collection of primarily economic documents relating to Spain and its empire from medieval times to the nineteenth century. It contains incredibly detailed accounts, reports, audits, wills, censuses, and inventories all aimed at controlling the wealth and expenditures resulting from Spain's vast economic enterprise.
Escribanía de Cámara: a large ramo containing millions of pages relating to the economic and political matters of Spain and its vast empire from medieval times to the end of the empire, as well as wills and litigation over estates and dispensation of inherited wealth.
Indiferente General: as the title suggests, this branch of the archives is a great collection of documentation of all types relating to Spain since medieval times. It is an extremely varied resource, requiring painstaking consultation in order to find and utilize relevant materials.
Justicia: one of the greatest documentary collections ever assembled concerning all matter of justice and legal matters relative to Spain and its vast empire from Islamic-medieval through Colonial times and on into the twentieth century. The documentation is incredibly detailed and partially cataloged for general purposes of reference and research. It would, however, be erroneous to assume that such lists and indices cover anywhere near all the subject matter or potential of this grand ramo. They do not.
Patronato Real: a vitally important collection of documentation involving the right of the Spanish Crown to control both civil-military and religious organization and dispensation in the empire and related matters in the New World. As is readily apparent, this authority extended to every conceivable type of activity, and this is reflected in the highly diversified contents of Patronato documentation.
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Excerpted from The Mixtecs of Oaxaca by Ronald Spores, Andrew K. Balkansky. Copyright © 2013 University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing Division of the University. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS.
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