Constructing Livelihoods in Rural Mexico: Milpa in Mayan Culture

Abstract

This article concerns indigenous Mayan communities whose traditional pattern of agricultural subsistence, the milpa, is of much greater significance that many development efforts suppose. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, it examines local meanings attached to the milpa and its relevance to identity, social interaction, constructions of the environment and petty commodity production in explaining resistance to change. Development analysts and NGOs who ignore this fundamental feature of peasant livelihood will continue to provide inappropriate development solutions resulting in not only inefficient use of funds but also potential damage to the rural communities whom they purport to benefit.

Notes

This article is is based on doctoral research by Annabel de Frece, and supervised by Nigel Poole. They would like to acknowledge the ESRC for funding, the staff at El Hombre Sobre de la Tierra and above all the community of Mahas, without whose hospitality, interest and openness this research would not have been possible. Thanks also go to Dr Remi Gauthier for initiating the research, supervising the first two years, and steady support during the fieldwork.

1 For an early account of the impact of ‘modernization’ on Maya peasants, in Guatemala, see Nash [1958].

2 For the background history and political economy of rural Yucatán, see the edited volume by Brannon and Joseph [1991].

3 Data were collected within the village over an eleven month period in 2002. As well as participant observation, also employed were semi-structured/structured interviews and surveys conducted with a sample of the population. Institutions and government staff responsible for and associated with the area were also consulted. Interviews were conducted in Spanish and Maya and recorded and transcribed. Quotes found in this article are taken directly from transcripts. The analysis was ongoing and reflexive in situ.

4 Most notably, those conducted during the 1930s by Redfield [1934] in the Mayan village of Chan Kom. Although he formulated the concept of a folk-urban continuum [Redfield, 1941, 1965], a description of the way in which peasant society became modern (secularised, individualised, etc.) in the process of urbanization, Redfield nevertheless recognized the perennial nature of agricultural tasks, and through this their centrality to cultural meaning and values. On this subject–‘The Little Community as Ecological System’–he wrote [Redfield, 1955: 19, 20] as follows: ‘I went along with a man to the field he had cleared in the forest for the planting of his maize. I watched him cut poles and with them build a little altar in the field. I saw him mix ground maize with water and sprinkle it in the four directions, and then kneel in prayer. I watched him then move across the field punching holes in the shallow soil with a pointed stick and dropping a few grains of maize in each hole … As I witnessed such things done, I talked to the people about the earlier agricultural preparations, made before I came to the village … For this is of course an annual cycle. It is repeated (almost) every year. Soon after the harvest is in, the Maya agriculturalist begins again to choose a spot in the forest where he may cut down the trees there to make new milpa, as he calls it. While my attention was upon these series of activities, necessarily interconnected in the same invariable order, I was recognizing one particular system within the whole that is the life of Chan Kom.’

5 Much the same was noted by Wagley in his case study of a Mayan village in Guatemala during the 1930s. He observed that [Wagley, 1941: 31]: ‘In describing the agricultural methods by which Chimaltecos cultivate maize, the costumbres called “corn's copal” cannot be separated from the mechanical processes of cultivation. To the Chimalteco, maize will no more grow without prayers and ceremonies than without the careful planting, the various weedings, and the careful harvest. The one group of activities is as important as the other, and the two spheres are closely interwoven.’

6 This is similar to the situation in the Mexican state of Chiapas during the mid-twentieth century as described by Cancian 1965, where the social position of an inhabitant within the Mayan community was connected to sponsorship of religious offices in the cargo system.

7 Although the precise nature of the exchange varies, such working arrangement across the generations is an historically common feature of peasant economy in Latin America. Hence the following observation by Tax 1953: 79] in the Guatemalan Mayan community of Panajachel as it was during the 1935–41 period: ‘In spite of the free market in land, there is clearly a family feeling about it. If it must be pawned or sold, it is desirable that it go to a close relative – especially one who would fall heir to the land if it were not alienated … This is the method by which aged parents obtain support from their children when they are no longer able to work. The parent demands money from a son or daughter due to get the land with a threat to sell it if the money is not paid. A bargain price frequently indicates that the transaction is not purely a commercial one.’

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Annabel de Frece

Annabel de Frece is a Development Consultant