The Art of Being In-between: Native Intermediaries, Indian Identity, and Local Rule in Colonial Oaxaca - Hardcover

Yannakakis, Yanna

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0822341425 ISBN 13: 9780822341420

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 2008

Synopsis

In The Art of Being In-between Yanna Yannakakis rethinks processes of cultural change and indigenous resistance and accommodation to colonial rule through a focus on the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca, a rugged, mountainous, ethnically diverse, and overwhelmingly indigenous region of colonial Mexico. Her rich social and cultural history tells the story of the making of colonialism at the edge of empire through the eyes of native intermediary figures: indigenous governors clothed in Spanish silks, priests’ assistants, interpreters, economic middlemen, legal agents, landed nobility, and “Indian conquistadors.” Through political negotiation, cultural brokerage, and the exercise of violence, these fascinating intercultural figures redefined native leadership, sparked indigenous rebellions, and helped forge an ambivalent political culture that distinguished the hinterlands from the centers of Spanish empire.

Through interpretation of a wide array of historical sources—including descriptions of public rituals, accounts of indigenous rebellions, idolatry trials, legal petitions, court cases, land disputes, and indigenous pictorial histories—Yannakakis weaves together an elegant narrative that illuminates political and cultural struggles over the terms of local rule. As cultural brokers, native intermediaries at times reconciled conflicting interests, and at other times positioned themselves in opposing camps over the outcome of municipal elections, the provision of goods and labor, landholding, community ritual, the meaning of indigenous “custom” in relation to Spanish law, and representations of the past. In the process, they shaped an emergent “Indian” identity in tension with other forms of indigenous identity and a political order characterized by a persistent conflict between local autonomy and colonial control. This innovative study provides fresh insight into colonialism’s disparate cultures and the making of race, ethnicity, and the colonial state and legal system in Spanish America.

About this title

About the Author

Yanna Yannakakis is Assistant Professor of History at Emory University.

From the Back Cover

"Meticulously researched and engagingly written, "The Art of Being In-between" opens new dimensions for social and cultural history in the complex ethnic tapestries of the Sierra Norte de Oaxaca. Yanna Yannakakis's narrative elevates the historical role of native intermediaries--"indios ladinos"--in the persistence of communal identities through ethnic rivalries only dimly perceived by colonial authorities. This book illustrates the power of human agency in the negotiations among diverse indigenous peoples, Church, and Crown within the contradictions of colonial rule."--Cynthia Radding, author of "Landscapes of Power and Identity: Comparative Histories in the Sonoran Desert and the Forests of Amazonia from Colony to Republic"

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Art of Being In-between

NATIVE INTERMEDIARIES, INDIAN IDENTITY, AND LOCAL RULE IN COLONIAL OAXACABy YANNA YANNAKAKIS

Duke University Press

Copyright © 2008 Duke University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-4142-0

Contents

Preface.............................................................................................................xixAcknowledgments.....................................................................................................1PART 1. CONFLICT AND CRISIS, 1660-1700..............................................................................33Chapter 1. "Loyal Vassal," "Seditious Subject," and Other Performances..............................................65PART 2. THE RENEGOTIATION OF LOCAL RULE: STRATEGIES AND TACTICS, 1700-1770..........................................99Chapter 3. Reform, Resistance, and Rhetoric.........................................................................131PART 3. THE POLITICAL SPACE CLOSES, 1770-1810.......................................................................161Chapter 5. Bourbon Officials........................................................................................192Chapter 6. From "Indian Conquerors" to Local "Indians"..............................................................220Conclusion..........................................................................................................229Notes...............................................................................................................261Bibliography........................................................................................................275

Chapter One

"Loyal Vassal," "Seditious Subject," and Other Performances

On Palm Sunday, 21 March 21 1660, the native officials of Tehuantepec, the district seat of the Zapotec Isthmus of Tehuantepec, presented themselves at the administrative quarters of the alcalde mayor (Spanish magistrate), Juan de Avelln. There they issued a protest regarding the high production quotas and the low prices paid to native producers of cotton thread and cloth through the repartimiento system of forced production and consumption. The alcalde mayor, who was notoriously abusive, berated the officials and had them whipped publicly and imprisoned. The following morning, a crowd of over one thousand from Tehuantepec and its outlying settlements gathered in the town plaza and made its way to the municipal buildings. When the crowd encountered the alcalde mayor and two of his assistants, it turned violent and killed all three. The rebels then took control of the town. They organized a local government, garnered the support of surrounding pueblos, and for a year maintained a virtually independent native polity whose control extended into the outlying area. In the meantime, the rebellion spread, in the words of Spanish officials, like "wildfire" to the neighboring districts of Nexapa, Villa Alta, and Ixtepeji.

Historians have debated the geographical scope of the rebellion and its political organization and objectives. Notably, Judith Zeitlin contends that the extent of the rebellion was grossly exaggerated by the lead investigator and judge (oidor) of the Real Audiencia (royal supreme court), Juan Francisco de Montemayor y Cuenca, for political reasons, and that Spanish conceptions of the rebellion as highly organized and premeditated reflected Spanish hysteria more than reality. Most historians concur that the rebels' objectives were localized and reformist rather than revolutionary and anticolonial. For the most part, native peoples directed their grievances toward the abusive practices of the alcaldes mayores and not against the colonial system writ large.

In the districts of Villa Alta, Nexapa, and Ixtepeji, all of which were located in the Sierra Norte, the uprisings that coincided with the rebellion in the isthmus were not as violent as in Tehuantepec. Whereas the Zapotecs of the isthmus turned against their native governors who administered the repartimiento on behalf of the alcalde mayor, on the whole, sierra pueblos responded with community solidarity. Despite the abuses of some native governors, in general the commoners maintained their allegiance to their municipal governments, and directed their violence at the alcalde mayor and his agents. These differences may be attributable to the less stratified social relations in these districts, in which nobility and commoners were more tightly bound through the ethos of reciprocity than they were in the more complex social hierarchy of Tehuantepec. But although the rebellion in Villa Alta did not reach the intensity of that in Tehuantepec, several smaller uprisings from 1659 to 1661, involving some four thousand natives, proved sufficient to put the alcalde mayor, parish priests, and the native officials of the region on notice.

The choice of human targets for the rebellion's violence-native intermediaries and local Spanish officials-points to the perils of economic, political, and cross-cultural mediation in a largely indigenous, peripheral region where the demographic imbalance between Spaniards and Indians was stark, and where economic demands placed on native pueblos were highly coercive. Until 1660, the repartimiento had operated for well over a century without significant resistance, in large part because native and Spanish intermediary figures had struck a balance between the productive demands of the system and the maintenance of a degree of political autonomy in the region's pueblos. Once the demands of the system upset this delicate balance, the region erupted in protest, revealing a crisis in the political and economic mediation that had kept the system afloat.

The rebellion of 1660 generated a flood of letters, reports, and petitions written by and circulated among the bishop of Oaxaca, the viceroy, local Spanish officials, and native leaders. This documentation reveals a complex process of soul searching, finger pointing, and historical revisionism as Spanish officials struggled among themselves to come to terms with the root causes of the rebellion, propose solutions to the social unrest brewing in the four affected districts, and recast the events to their own political advantage. The effort to make meaning of the rebellion in its aftermath opened a forking path. Would the alcaldes mayores of the districts affected by the rebellion ease up on the repartimiento demands? Or would they continue to squeeze the native labor to which they were entitled and use the occasion to diminish native autonomy in the interests of tightening social control? Bishop Juan de Palafox of Puebla, who had written vociferously about the abuses of the alcaldes mayores of New Spain, used the occasion to renew his call for the abolition of the office of alcalde mayor and the repartimiento. No such measure was ever passed.

Yet the official investigation that followed the rebellion made plain the risks inherent in failing to modify the coerciveness of the repartimiento. The lead investigator, Juan Francisco de Montemayor y Cuenca, detailed the abuses of the alcaldes mayores of the affected districts. Zeitlin argues that Montemayor's relacin was intended not to remedy the abuses of the alcaldes mayores but to impugn those currently in office so that his own "cronies" would replace them. Montemayor's machinations bore fruit: the alcaldes mayores of Nexapa and Ixtepeji were replaced. However, the alcalde mayor General Pedro Fernndez de Villaroel y de la Cueva of Villa Alta was allowed to finish his term since the rebellion did not affect his district as acutely. It is also likely that his close relationship to the viceroy, the duque de Albuquerque (he was the viceroy's nephew) helped him to hold onto his office.

The alcaldes mayores were not the only controversial figures to emerge from the investigation of the rebellion. In a 1661 report to the viceroy, the bishop of Oaxaca, Alonso de Cuevas Dvalos, who had a reputation as a defender of Oaxaca's Indians against the abuses of local officials and priests, cited other culprits for the violence-literate and bilingual native leaders who dressed in Spanish silks:

And it is necessary to remedy the abuses that there are in many pueblos where some Indians, perhaps one or two in each pueblo, dressed like Spaniards and some with sword and with total authority, who having left their Indian clothing, and in the new clothing that they don, are in the habit of raising the spirits of the community, and come to be in the pueblos the lettered men and superiors to whose will they have subordinated the other Indians. And in addition to being the leaches that suck the poor lifeblood of the Indians, they are the ones who absolutely lead and arrange whatever disagreement or uprising. To avoid this it appears very advisable not to give them the chance to change their natural attire and excite their pretensions so that they become the oracles of their pueblos, but rather that they live in equality with the rest.

The bishop's description of these men was clearly influenced by Spanish prejudices toward the perceived pretension and duplicity of hispanized Indians, particularly those who were literate and used the legal system to stir up trouble. These men were known by Spaniards and natives as indios ladinos, a term that was at once descriptive, meaning bicultural, and pejorative, connoting duplicity. The term ladino carried significant symbolic weight and served as a political weapon for both Spaniards and native people who sought to cast aspersions on natives with a foot in either world.

The term ladino originated during the Roman period on the Iberian Peninsula and referred to those locals who learned to speak Latin with skill and refinement. The connotation of skillfulness broadened the applicability of the term ladino to include those "skilled or sagacious in any dealing." During the Middle Ages, the term came to refer to Sephardic Jewish culture, and then expanded its range of meaning to include foreigners (such as moriscos, or "Moors") who mastered Castilian. Finally, following the conquest, the term was imported to Spanish America and applied to natives who learned the language of their conquerors. In the New World, ladino took on a range of associative meanings, varying regionally in its connotations.

Throughout the seventeenth century, native elites of the district of Villa Alta petitioned the Real Audiencia for licenses to wear Spanish clothes, carry swords and daggers, and mount horses, things forbidden to Indians by the sumptuary laws of the time. That native elites should seek to present themselves in a way that aligned them with colonial power makes sense given their desire to project social distinction from other Indians and to maintain their claims to authority in a context where older claims no longer had the same meaning. Both Spaniards and Indians considered ladinos to be "civilized Indians." Their noble status, rootedness in local political networks, and skillful use of Spanish legal discourses earned them respect from Spaniards and native people alike. However, native people also viewed ladinos' cross-cultural mobility with suspicion and resentment, associating it with trickery and taking advantage. From a Spanish perspective, ladino identity represented a threat to the colonial order. Not truly Spaniards, despite their language and dress, ladinos were seen to have suspect motives, and their cross-cultural and linguistic skills were considered dangerous.

Through the use of coded language-with which he accused indios ladinos of "raising the spirits" of the pueblo, "sucking the poor lifeblood of the Indians," and "arranging whatever disagreement"-the bishop made clear that one of the most dangerous roles that indios ladinos played was that of apoderado, someone to whom indigenous groups or individuals issued power of attorney. An apoderado, also known as an agente or actor de oficio y cargo, served as a liaison between those who hired him and the colonial court system. Apoderados penned petitions, managed legal documents, kept tabs on the Spanish lawyers (procuradores) who represented Indians officially in court (by law, Indians, who were considered minors, could not represent themselves in court), and ensured that the procurador remained on task and protected the interests of his clients. The absence of Spanish legal professionals in regions remote from urban centers forced indigenous individuals and groups in places like the Sierra Norte to turn to people in their own pueblos or in neighboring pueblos to fulfill this critical role. In the Sierra Norte, ladino legal agents tended to be caciques and were the most bicultural and linguistically skilled of any other intermediary figures in a given pueblo or parish. They also tended to have especially wide social networks, consisting of other native elites as well as Spaniards, and a fluency in Spanish law and the workings of the colonial bureaucracy. To the chagrin of Spanish authorities, native municipal governments financed the legal activities of apoderados through the community treasury (caja de comunidad), the economic "lifeblood" of the pueblo.

The long, transatlantic history of the term ladino and the historical nature of the role of indigenous apoderados, which dated back to the sixteenth century, make clear that the prejudices against ladino legal agents expressed in the bishop's report long predated the rebellion. The deployment of this rhetoric concerning apoderados at this particular moment, however, provided encouragement and justification for an aggressive stance toward these figures on the part of the alcaldes mayores. In this regard, in the wake of the rebellion, the symbolism of "ladino" identity worked in tandem with the historical agency of apoderados themselves to shape local politics.

The bishop's report helped to make meaning of the rebellion for local Spanish officials, the Audiencia, and Council of the Indies. By identifying ladino legal agents as a social and political problem with serious bearing on the maintenance of colonial order, the bishop's report justified the alcaldes mayores' persecution of these native intermediary figures, and in doing so, shaped the tense political climate in the district of Villa Alta in the decades between the rebellion of 1660 and the Cajonos Rebellion of 1700. During this period, the alcaldes mayores of the district identified two ladino legal agents in particular, with wide-ranging economic and political power-Felipe de Santiago and Joseph de Celis-as troublemakers. These men in turn pushed back with a vigorous campaign of political organizing and legal action.

The stakes in this mounting political, economic, and cultural confrontation among Santiago, Celis, the alcaldes mayores, parish priests, and other Zapotec rivals were quite high. From 1660 forward, the native population began to recover more fully, and the alcaldes mayores recognized the potential for greater profits from the repartimiento that more numerous native laborers could provide. An uprising in the sierra in 1684 reflected native resentment of these pressures and, more important, provided the alcaldes mayores with an excuse to intervene in pueblo elections, nominally to ensure regional security, but more pointedly to secure their own profits. To compound these political and economic pressures on sierra pueblos, after 1660, the bishops of Oaxaca, with the zealous cooperation of the alcaldes mayores of Villa Alta, reinvigorated their extirpation campaign and brought cases of idolatry against native ritual specialists.

Santiago and Celis responded to these attacks on native autonomy with legal action aimed at opening political and cultural space for electoral independence, interpueblo integration, native trade, and native religiosity. Although they articulated these objectives in collective terms, the defense of local autonomy also enhanced their own wealth and power. But the pursuit of power proved to be quite dangerous: the magistrates and priests wielded the force of colonial law and Catholic orthodoxy, and used them to physically punish, imprison, and exile their native opponents. What follows is a close examination of the micropolitics of this high-stakes political struggle. The tactics used by both native intermediaries and Spanish officials shaped the emerging political culture and the colonial system of the district and set the stage for the conflagration of 1700: the Cajonos Rebellion.

THE MANY PERFORMANCES OF FELIPE DE SANTIAGO AND JOSEPH DE CELIS

Felipe de Santiago and Joseph de Celis first appear to us in a 1684 petition addressed to the king. In the many instances during the late seventeenth century in which the district court identified Santiago as giving testimony or submitting a petition, the notary described his comportment as "bastantamente ladino en la lengua castellana" ("very skilled in the Spanish language") and noted that he dressed in Spanish costume. His signature at the bottom of petitions and court documents evinced a practiced hand, indicating that he was most likely literate. During the many occasions in which Celis did business with the district court, the notary identified him as ladino, though no mention was made of his bearing or his dress, and less evidence exists as to his degree of literacy.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0822341425
• ISBN 13: 9780822341420
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 320