New and Old Social Movements: Measuring Pisté, from the ‘‘Mouth of theWell’’ to the 107th...

New and Old Social Movements:Measuring Pist, from the Mouth of the Wellto the 107th Municipio of Yucatn

Quetzil E. Castaeda, University of Hawaii at Manoa

Abstract. This essay explores the history of the political structure of town andmunicipal authority in a specific case study of a Yucatec Maya community. Thetown is Pist, a community that has become a significant tourist center that pro-vides services for the nearby archaeological and tourist site of Chichn Itz. Adescriptive history of the town, mostly based in secondary literature and key pri-mary sources from archives, is presented with two goals in mind. The first objec-tive is to address ethnographically specific questions regarding the politics of thiscommunity, including the 1989 attempt to redefine itself as a new county accord-ing to Mexicos 1917 Revolutionary Constitution. The second objective is to raisequestions and broader issues regarding new social movements, state formationanalyzed from the bottom-up, the importance of the authority structure of thetown/county as a governmental strategy of theMexican state, and the ethnographicand historical study of the 1980s crises in Yucatn. The case study contributesto Yucatec studies by pointing attention away from the political-economic core ofMrida, the usual institutions (church, hacienda, and highly capitalized economicsectors), and typical topics (e.g., party politics, elite factionalism) that have been thefocus of Yucatec historiography. By directing attention to areas (communities in themilpa zone) and topics (the political and cultural forms of rural communities) thathave been marginalized by Yucatec historians but that have been a favored topicof U.S.-based cultural anthropologists seeking idealized Maya culture, this essayraises new research questions for which yet another rapprochement is necessary inYucatec studies between the fields of history and cultural ethnography.

Town and CountryOtherwise and in Reverse

This essay explores the history of the political structure of town andmunicipal authority in a specific case study of a Yucatec Maya community.This community, Pist, Mexico, of four thousand inhabitants, is located

Ethnohistory 50:4 (fall 2003)Copyright by the American Society for Ethnohistory.

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612 Quetzil E. Castaneda

three kilometers from the archaeological site of Chichn Itz; since thedevelopment of Yucatec tourism beginning in the 1960s, Pist has becomethe center of a miniregion within the regional tourist economy based inMrida and Cancn.1 The politics of tourism thus infuses its municipal andtown dynamics differently from the politics of other rural Yucatec commu-nities in which the economy is based on subsistence agriculture or state-subsidized agribusiness. The political and economic crises that culminatedin the late 1980s placed Pist among other rural Yucatec towns that experi-enced intense, and often violent, struggles over the control of municipaland town governments. Unfortunately, to this authors knowledge, neitherthe study of specific cases of town/municipal conflicts nor the comparativestudy of these regional crises of rural authority have been conducted forYucatn.

This case study contributes to Yucatec studies by directing attentionaway from the political-economic core of Mrida, the usual institutions(e.g., church, hacienda, and highly capitalized economic sectors), the typi-cal topics (e.g., party politics, elite factionalism), and the privileged period-izations (the Revolutionary period, Cardenas period, and the Caste Warin its before, during, or aftermath phases) that have been foci of Yucatechistoriography. By directing attention to areas (communities in the milpazone) and topics (the political and cultural forms of rural communities) thathave been marginalized by historians of Yucatnbut heavily targeted bycultural anthropologists seeking idealized Maya culturethis essay opensup an area of study needing a rapprochement between the fields of his-tory and anthropology.The essay addresses the following specific historicalquestion:What is the history of political authority of theYucatec town gen-erally and of Pist specifically? The aim is a descriptive historyaddressedmostly through secondary literature, with additional support from a fewprimary documents and oral history collected through ethnographythatcan generate further research questions and broader inquiry on the inter-face between town and country in relation to the formation of the Mexi-can state.

The relationships between centers and peripheries is an old themeand often based on the assumption that the polities of the center alwaysmovewhether in rational extension, fluid waves, smooth arches, or ner-vous spasmsoutward to colonize, control, and/or dominate the spaces ofgroups thereby subordinated. Despite the nuances of these conceptualiza-tions of hegemony, the effective control or domination of the modern stateis established by intervening in space with its institutions and mechanismsto both materialize its power and transform space into territory, that is, anorganized, controlled, known place. This process of de- and then reterrito-rialization of historical settlements into places strategically orchestrated as

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From the Mouth of the Well to the 107th Municipio of Yucatn 613

territory by the emergent statemust interweave the states mechanismswithprior logics of place. This dual territorialization of the state, then, entailsan articulation or infiltration between community and polity and is not, ornot simply, a colonization from the center, but a calling forth of the stateby what thereby becomes, or accedes to become, a part of its territory andis included within its subject-territory. Thus, not only is there an interpel-lation by the state of its subject-citizens, but an interpellation of the stateby its subject-communities that seek integration within its formation as itspublic. It is toward this understanding of a (modified) ground up analy-sis of the state that much recent Mexican historiography has been moving2

and to which this history of Pist contributes.The essay is divided into four sections. The first provides the ethno-

graphic context of Pist, Yucatn, Mxico, in 1989 that stimulated the his-torical questioning of the authority structure of the Mexican municipiolibre. The second section reviews the legal basis of the county in the 1917Revolutionary Constitution and how this effected the state of Yucatn. Thethird and fourth sections present a history of the community of Pist. Theconcluding, fifth section discusses broader issues raised by the case study.

Pist, the Antesala of Chichn Itz, from 1989 to 1917

A history is given to show the changes which occur in a typical Yuca-tn town from ancient to modern times. During this early history thePiste area undoubtedly prospered in the glory of Chichn Itz. . . .In nearly every part of Pist [in the twentieth century] the impressiveruins of many large buildings erected by the ancientMaya are found inall directions but chiefly in the southeast towards Chichn Itz. SincePist is only 2.5 km from Chichn Itz and has the excellent naturalwater supply of three cenotes (water holes), as well as good soil for theproduction of maize, it is likely that people lived on the present sitewhen Chichn Itz was in its aboriginal glory. (Steggerda 1941: 1, 3)

In December 1987 a new alliance of voters, based primarily in the agri-cultural and tourism sectors of Pists economy and led by a new genera-tion of educated youth just reaching political maturity, was able to electOswaldoYam as comisario or mayor. This, in effect, was a local putsch thatdisplaced the political bloc that had maintained control of the town hall orcomisara for the preceding ten, if not sixteen, years. This new alliancecomposed of teachers, employees of the National Institute of Anthropologyand History (hereafter inah), taxi drivers and owners, older (or at leastparty faithful) generations of ejidatarios (juridically defined peasant land-holders), and the employees of certain restaurants and hotels that were

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held together by strong Partido Revolucionario Institucional (pri) ideolo-giesresponded with a belligerent strategy of subversion that lasted fornine months. This kind of internecine warfare within rural towns of Yuca-tn, as well as Mexico, was rampant in the 1980s. Class divisions werecomplicated and cross-cut by religious affiliations, union memberships,state-sponsored civil associations, differences of land ownership and/oruse, divisions within and between political parties, and, of course, historiesof family antagonisms, both within and between familial groups. In Pist,as in other communities, ousted voting blocks engaged in the subversionof elected authority. These tactics escalated, forcing restaffing of the comi-sarios staff in March 1988 and again in June, and culminated in a physicalassault of the comisario in asamblea (town hall meeting) on 9 September.

Hurricane Gilberto, which devastated the Yucatn Peninsula five dayslater, on 1415 September, put a decisive end to the quotidian politics ofsuch rural communities as Pist. The storms deterritorialization of every-day life created an opening for various kinds of opportunism, both positiveand negative.While the governorship ofManzanilla Schaffer becamemiredin allegations of stealing disaster relief aid (an abuse that later fueled hiseventual forced resignation by Salinas de Gortar), Pist initiated a programof political reconciliation and nonpartisan self-help activities that eventu-ally mobilized, during spring 1989, into what could be called a new socialmovement, except that the means, mode, and objective were quite old andeven legally sanctioned (Burgos 1988a, 1988b, 1988c). Four months afterthe hurricane, the unified factions attempted not only to redefine Pist asa community but also to restructure it via a juridical change in its statusfrom a comisara, or legally defined town level of government subordinatedwithin a county (that of Tinum), to amunicipio libre, that is, a free countyas defined by Mexicos Revolutionary Constitution of 1917. The attemptby Pist consisted of a social and political mobilization of the communitythat aimed at (informally) politicking and formally petitioning the State ofYucatns governor and congress, the two official bodies capable of legis-lating the juridical change of status.

The laws regulating the municipio libre derive from the 1917 Con-stitution and introduce an ambivalence, if not contradictory dynamic, inthe structuring of governmental authority. This tension is between central-ization (at the federal level) and decentralization (at the regional or statelevel). The Municipal Law of 1917 charted the structuring of a hierarchyof executive authority from the president to governors and down to alcalde(county mayor) and comisario (town mayor) via the granting of grass-rootsautonomy in the form of the municipio libre. Communities meeting cer-tain criteria, for example, a population of five hundred plus citizens, couldpetition to become independent counties with alcalda (mayors office). The

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ambivalence of this governmental strategy of state formation (centraliza-tion through local autonomy and decentralization through hierarchy) andits effects in structuring regional center-periphery politics has yet to bedescribed, much less analyzed.

The Municipio Libre as a Measure of the Revolution:The Ambivalence of De/Centralization

There are several strategies that have been analyzed by others throughwhich vertical integration of the Mexican state was achieved: the literalinscription of individuals into the socialist party, which later becomes thepri; the legal liberation of the debt-peon/slaves of the haciendas; the grant-ing of communal or ejido lands to Indigenous communities coupled withthe reformation of large land ownership; the institution of the ejido author-ity structure based on an ideological vision of the colonial repblicas de ind-genas; the creation of federal controls over Yucatec henequn production;the creation of labor unions; and the creation of a rural educational sys-tem.3The concern here is the inscription of a national territory on theYuca-tec landscape at the level of the rural community. In this area the impor-tant work of Rodrguez Losa (1985, 1989, 1991) has charted the historicalchanges in juridical statuses of the towns of Yucatn and in the authoritystructures of town and municipal government. His research lays the basisby which to ask about the municipio libre as a governmental strategy thatnot only incorporates or integrates communities into the national struc-tures of authority but also outlines how settlements began to revise theiridentity and solidarity as subject-communities within a national imaginarydeveloped through the Revolutionary Constitution and post-Revolutionarypolitics.

The changes in authority structure are based in the 1917 Constitution.Article115 eliminates the partido or districtwith its jefe poltico as themainunit of structural authority. It establishes in its place the municipio libre:

the internal organization [of the states shall be] the republican formof representative and popular government, having as its basis the ter-ritorial division and political and administrative organization of themunicipio libre [which] will be administered by an ayuntamientoelected by direct, popular vote and there will be no intermediary author-ity between it and the state government. (Italics added)

In Article 115.3, each state was given the authority to legislate the cre-ation and elimination of these counties. On 17 January 1918, General Sal-vador Alvarado (19158), as constitutionalist governor of Yucatn, put theLey Orgnico de los Municipios del Estado de Yucatn into effect. This

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granted all county governments, whether ayuntamiento or junta, the statusof free counties if the county had a population of five hundred. In addition,it allowed for settlements with the status of pueblos, having comisaras andsubject to the ayuntamiento of the county, to petition to become a munici-pio libre.

The decentralization that this law implied can be appreciated whencontrasted to the centralization of the last years of theYucatecan Porfiriato.First, the increasing number of partidos after 1865 and the practical reduc-tion of the three forms of municipio authority to town councils increasinglyconsolidated the authority of jefe polticos and effectively made the partidoa macro-county. Second, the number of municipio governments had beenreduced to eighty-five in 1900 and then again to seventy-eight in 1910 (seeTables 1, 2, and 3; Rodrguez Losa 1985; Castaeda 1991: 10814).

Although only eight new counties were created in the first three yearsbetween 191821, and primarily in the southern Puuc and eastern-centralregions, the elimination of the partidowas a significant change of authorityin the northwestern core area.4 From 1921 to 1930, ten additional munici-pios were created. Nine more municipios were created between 1930 and1935, including the anthropologically famous case of Chan Kom. By the endof1935, twenty-seven new counties had been authorized under the1918 law.Only one more municipio was created in the twentieth centuryChikind-zonot on 20 December 1957. By 1935 the territorial division of the stateof Yucatn had been essentially finalized with 105 counties. It is not clearhow many petitions were denied between 193557 or afterward. The cre-ation of the last new municipio libre, the 106th of the state, occurred aftera twenty-two-year hiatus; there have been no changes since 1957.

In 1984, the state government changed the law that stipulated the cri-teria by which a community could become a municipio libre: the demo-graphic criterion was raised from a voting population of five hundred totwenty-five thousand adult citizens. This change was not publicized andturned out to be a secret weapon for those opposing Pists bid to be the107th municipio of Yucatn (see Castaeda 1991: 502; de los Reyes 1989;Diario de Yucatn 1989b, 1989c).

The administrative unit of the town/municipality, as a grid of gov-ernmental control, was first used as a tactic within a broad strategy oflocal empowerment (the ideal of political autonomy of communities). Thisstrategy is ideologically manifested in the legal terminology used to des-ignate the new governmental unit, since the Spanish word municipio wasselected over the word condado; while both can be translated into Englishas county, the former derives from the sixteenth-century municipiummeaning freetown and the associated wordsmuniceps (citizen) andmuna

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(responsibilities), and the latter derives from the fourteenth-century OldFrench meaning of county as lands belonging to the count or earl.Thus, municipio libre is a somewhat redundant phrase indicating a breakfrom prior forms of government-based aristocracy and kingship implied bythe etymology of both condado and county.

Ironically, however, with the consolidation of the state territory, thisjuridical tactic increasingly became a mechanism of containment and sub-verting forms of local opposition and resistance to both the pri and thestate. Significantly, the Zapatista movement has recognized the importanceof this ideal of the municipio libre as well as its duplicitous practice toestablish hegemony in its name.The Zapatistas, discarding the terminologyof condado and municipio libre, have encouraged Indigenous communitiesto become autonomous zones and have propelled a movement to create anew juridical form of governmental administration.

On the one hand, that different kinds of political actors are petitioningthe state apparatus to change the administrative-juridical mode of incorpo-rating its subject communities suggests a new angle on several problems.First, both cases of the Zapatistas and allies petitioning for the creationof new autonomous zones of government and other diverse communitiespetitioning to be incorporated into the state via already existing forms showthat the territorialization of the state necessarily entails a form of interpel-lation. Second, while Luis Althusser introduced the idea of interpellationto refer to the primarily discursive manner in which the state calls orhails the individual to become a subject-citizen, here this general func-tion of ideology is inverted. The state cannot actualize itself as the govern-mental apparatus except through the processes by which political subjectsinterpellate (call, hail, petition, and invite) the state into certainkinds of roles. Third, thus, the so-called new social movements appearas new precisely at those points where the failure of the state to respond tointerpellation becomes manifest.

On the other hand, this suggests the need for a fuller comparativeexamination of the Mexican municipio to chart its double-edged use andcontradictory ideals by different agents (communities and the state) in dif-ferent historical contexts. The widespread agitation in rural areas beforeand after the 1988 elections stimulated a handful of communities in Yuca-tn, but also in Chiapas and Campeche, to seek autonomy via the Munici-pal Law of the Revolutionary Constitution. A comparative study of howand why Cancuc and Escarcega, of Chiapas and Campeche, respectively,were able to become a municipio libre in the same year that Pist failed todo so would provide understanding of the political culture of Mexico interms of the strategies of creating territorythat is, controlling and regu-

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Table 1. Changes in number of municipios of Yucatn, 1900 to present

Year: Number Prior changes/comments

1900 85 In 17 partidos with 155 towns, 18 villas, 7 cities,3 ports

190010 78 1 new, 8 lost (5 later reinstated, 2 lost to QuintanaRoo, 1 never reinstated)

191017 78 No change in number of municipios191819 86 8 added (1 reinstated, 3 automatically elevated, 4 new)192129 96 10 added (3 reinstated, 7 new)193035 105 9 added (1 reinstated, 8 new)193656 105 No changes to present (2003)1957 106 1 new municipio added1958present 106 No changes to present (2003)

Note: The1917 Constitution put into effect by General Alvarado, constitutionalist governor ofYucatn, on17 January1918 eliminates partidos as executive structure in favor of municipioslibres; all communities with junta municipal and ayuntamiento become municipioslibres. The district comes into existence as a legislative or congressional unit.Sources: Rodrguez Losa 1985 and 1991.

lating space. In comparison to other Yucatec communities seeking inde-pendence as a new municipio libre, no other movement was as politicallyinvested with so much at stake, nor as viable a movement as the attemptby Pist. An oft-asserted comment during Movement 107 was that Pistcould not be granted its objective because it would set a precedent for othercommunities to create similar petitions.

In the seventeen-year period since the inception of the law (191835),27 new municipios were created in Yucatn for a total of 106 (see Tables1, 2, and 3). Among these was the anthropologically famous case of ChanKom.5 Although the making of new counties is viewed as a decentralizingmove from the perspective of the state, the case of Chan Kom, in whicha renegade community sought to safeguard the power of a local elite byincorporating itself to the socialist state, illustrates how these were actu-ally different kinds of movements on the ground. Similarly, fifty-five yearslater in 1989, Pist sought independence from its neighboring municipalauthority and, more important, a new, more direct integration with thestate. Rather than the state imposing its hegemonyon the countryside, com-munities interpellated the state to subject themselves to its apparatus ofpower and authority; motivated by and aiming for a reimagining of col-lective identity, both materially and symbolically, these movements reliedupon and thus facilitated the extension of state power into the countrysideand thereby converted it into territory, that is, social space, and populations

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Table 2. Twenty-eight new municipios of Yucatn created under 1917Constitution, 191857

Parent CorrespondingCreation date Name municipio 1900 district Zone

1 Jan. 1906 Chumayel Teabo Tekax Southern17 Jan. 1918 Cuncunul Uayma Valladolid Eastern Maize

Chemax Valladolid Valladolid Eastern MaizeChaczikin reinstated Peto Southern

from 1900Tahdziu Peto Peto Southern

30 June1918 Samahil Hunucm Hunucm Mrida31 March 1919 Akil Tekax Tekax Southern10 June 1919 Tekom Tixcacalcupul Valladolid Eastern Maize28 June 1919 Temozn Valladolid Valladolid Eastern Maize13 Dec. 1921 Suma Cansahcab Temax Mrida25 Dec. 1921 Dzilam Bravo Dzilam Temax Mrida

Gonzlez2 June 1923 Yaxcaba Sotuta Sotuta Central19 Sept. 1924 Sanahcat Hocaba Sotuta Central22 Dec. 1925 Uc Hunucm Hunucm Mrida18 Jan. 1927 Cantamayec Sotuta Sotuta Central12 July 1927 Telchac Puerto Telchac Motul Mrida13 Sept. 1927 Muxupip Motul Motul Mrida30 March 1928 Dzoncauich Temax Temax Mrida13 Sept. 1929 Tixpeual Tixkokob Tixkokob Mrida30 Dec. 1930 Tekal Temax Temax Mrida30 Sept. 1931 Quintana Roo Dzitas Espita Eastern Maize7 March 1932 Dzan Ticul Ticul Southern18 March 1932 Sudzal Izamal, Same 3 Mrida-

Yaxcaba, CentralSotuta

25 Feb. 1935 Chan Kom Cuncunul Valladolid Eastern Maize8 July 1935 San Felipe Panab Tizimin Eastern Maize15 July 1935 Kaua Cuncunul Valladolid Eastern Maize7 Aug. 1935 Kopom Maxcan Maxcan Southern8 Aug. 1935 Mayapan Chumayel Tekax Southern21 Dec. 1957 Chikindzonot Tekom Valladolid Eastern Maize

Sources: See Table 1.

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Table 3. New municipios of State of Yucatn, by economic-geographic zone

Mrida core

30 June 1918 Samahil Hunucm Hunucm Mrida Core13 Dec. 1921 Suma Cansahcab Temax Mrida Core25 Dec. 1921 Dzilam Bravo Dzilam Gonzlez Temax Mrida Core22 Dec. 1925 Uc Hunucm Hunucm Mrida Core12 July 1927 Telchac Puerto Telchac Motul Mrida Core13 Sept. 1927 Muxupip Motul Motul Mrida Core30 March 1928 Dzoncauich Temax Temax Mrida Core13 Sept. 1929 Tixpeual Tixkokob Tixkokob Mrida Core30 Dec. 1930 Tekal Temax Temax Mrida Core18 March 1932 Sudzal Izamal, Yaxcaba, Sotuta/ Mrida-Central

Sotuta Izamal

Maize frontier zone

17 Jan. 1918 Cuncunul Uayma Valladolid EasternChemax Valladolid Valladolid Eastern

10 June 1919 Tekom Tixcacalcupul Valladolid Eastern28 June 1919 Temozn Valladolid Valladolid Eastern2 June 1923 Yaxcaba Sotuta Sotuta Central19 Sept. 1924 Sanahcat Hocaba Sotuta Central18 Jan. 1927 Cantamayec Sotuta Sotuta Central30 Sept. 1931 Quintana Roo Dzitas Espita North Central25 Feb. 1935 Chan Kom Cuncunul Valladolid Eastern8 July 1935 San Felipe Panab Valladolid North Eastern15 July 1935 Kaua Cuncunul Tizimin Eastern21 Dec. 1957 Chikindzonot Tekom Valladolid Eastern

Southern zone

17 Jan. 1918 Chaczikin (Peto) Peto SouthernTahdziu Peto Peto Southern

31 March 1919 Akil Tekax Tekax Southern7 March 1932 Dzan Ticul Ticul Southern7 Aug. 1935 Kopom Maxcan Maxcan Southern8 Aug. 1935 Mayapan Chumayel Tekax Southern

New municipios created in area directly surrounding Pist

17 Jan. 1918 Cuncunul Uayma Valladolid Eastern Maize2 June 1923 Yaxcaba Sotuta Sotuta Central Maize19 Sept. 1924 Sanahcat Hocaba Sotuta Central Maize18 Jan. 1927 Cantamayec Sotuta Sotuta Central Maize30 Sept. 1931 Quintana Roo Dzitas Espita Central Maize18 March 1932 Sudzal Izamal, Yaxcaba, Sotuta/ Mrida-Central

Sotuta Izamal25 Feb. 1935 Chan Kom Cuncunul Valladolid Eastern Maize15 July 1935 Kaua Cuncunul Tizimin Eastern Maize

Sources: See Table 1.

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became integrated with the state apparatus. This decentralizationrather,integration and territorializationwas essentially halted in1935, inasmuchas between 1935 and 2001 only one new municipio (Chikindzonot) wasgranted, in 1957. Unfortunately, the history of these municipal changes hasyet to be studied andmany questions emerge about the intra- and intercom-munity dynamics within and across regions in relation to the formation ofthe Revolutionary state apparatus. This, it seems to me, is a crucial groundthat has structured the subsequent politics of class, community, (Maya)ethnicity/race, and urbanrural dynamics in Yucatn.

The transfer of the municipal authority structure, that is, the ayun-tamiento (municipal government) and the alcalda, from the cabecera (orcounty seat or capital of the county) to one of its comisaras (or subordinatetowns) would entail systematic socioeconomic ramifications. For Pist, thispolitical restructuring of authority was an aim in itself as a culminatingsymbol of its imagining of its own community identity and belonging as aprosperous, growing, and important center that services the internationaltourism of Chichn Itz. In public rallies and in the official petitions, thecommunity and the leadership proudly called itself Pist, the antesala [par-lor] of Chichn Itz. This political-symbolic objective was also a means toother, very material, goals: one, to take out of the hands of the county cabe-cera (Tinum)6 control of the municipal revenues produced by the touristcomplex of Pist-Chichn Itza; and, two, through this greater municipalaccess to (if not exactly control of) these revenues, the development of bothurban and tourist infrastructure.The identity, collective consciousness, andeconomic aspirations of Pist are strongly oriented toward the archaeo-logical heritage of Chichn and the further development of tourism in thecommunity.

A Tale of Three Towns: Pist, Tinum, Chichn(18211917)

Under the Spanish-speaking Yucatecans [Pist] became a thriving co-lonial town of1500 inhabitants, which went down to ruin in1847 dur-ing theWar of the Castes. By 1918 its population had again increased,but a new revolution reduced its numbers by half and left the remain-der quarreling and hating one another. Since then political changes,the archeological work of [excavating Chichn Itz conducted by] theCarnegie Institution of Washington and the Mexican Government,and the building of the Merida-Chichen Itza highway have producedtheir effects on the community. Today Piste is an agricultural Indiantown in which the people live comfortably but without luxury. (Steg-gerda 1941: 1)

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Prior to the Caste War, Pist was comparable in size and economic impor-tance to Tinum, the seat of the county to which Pist came to belong atthe end of the nineteenth century, and to places such as Cenotillo, anotherlarge and economically prosperous town in this central region that was thendedicated to cattle and maize production (ibid.: 6, n. 18, and 2334; Vr-guez Pasos1981; Strickon1965; Abiotes1985). Between1821 and1846, Pistshowed a substantial population growth of 32 percent, from 882 to 1,171,while, in contrast, Tinum only managed a 5 percent increase, from1,525 to1,600 for the same period. In comparison to the larger towns of theMridacore and the southern sugar zone, however, the settlements of the easternmaize and cattle areas near Valladolid tended to be about half the popula-tion size.

Pist, as were these other major towns to the west of Valladolid,was dominated by the Spanish, in spite of being in the old Cocom andCupul provinces that had always maintained opposition to colonization.TheMaya who strived for political and cultural autonomy in the CasteWarwere located further to the south and the east. Documents from the period18415 indicate that Juan Sosa Arce, the owner of the cattle hacienda atChichn, addressed the first alcalde of Pist with terms of respect, indi-cating a Spanish or criollo7 leadership in the region (Steggerda 1941: 67,n. 18, and 2334). A title for land in a ranchera (small settlement) nearthe twentieth-century municipio of Chan Kom is signed by the alcalde andtwo other witnesses, all of whom have Spanish names (ibid.). This suggestsboth the large territorial extent of the Pist alcalda and the Spanish criolloorientation of the Maya of Pist, which is most likely due to a success-ful incorporation of the population to hacienda life much as the Maya ofthe area surrounding Mrida had committed themselves to Yucatec (i.e.,white-Spanish descended) society and politics. This seems evident, giventhat both Pist and the hacienda at Chichn became targets for the MayaRebeldes (Maya Cruzob) from the outbreak of the CasteWar to the end ofthe nineteenth century.

These communities, then, became part of the war zone that dividedindependent Cruzob Maya and the centers of white society. The pueblo ofPist and the cattle Hacienda of Chichn were attacked early on in the war,not only devastating the settlements but also destroying most of the recordsthat could have been used to piece together a history of the communities.The population, predominantly Indian or Maya and sympathetic to whiteYucatec society (or perhaps peace), fled north to Dzitas and Tinum. Theformer town was a place of refuge since it had been, and continues to be,the Catholic parroquia (parish) to which Pist belonged (Steggerda 1941:7, n. 14); Tinum has been the parent town to Pist at least since the six-

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teenth century, when Chichn was given to Juan Cano of Tinum as part ofhis encomienda (colonial land grant). Furthermore, as has been mentioned,an ancestor of the Arce family, which has been dominant in the municipalgovernment of Tinum since the end of the nineteenth century, was asso-ciated with the Spanish founding of Pist in the later 1700s and was ownerof the hacienda at Chichn.

According to the census of 1862, the decimation of the war left Pistand Tinum with populations of 308 and 326, respectively. In the Cruzobcampaign of 1862, Pist was again sacked and burned, leaving it with only228 individuals (145 indgenas and 83 mestizos) according to informationfrom 1865 (Steggerda 1941: 7, n. 14). Afterward, for the next thirty years,the town of Pist seems to have been alternatively abandoned and only spo-radically repopulated by a handful of Maya families that dared return fromtheir exile in the neighboring communities of Tinum andDzitas to continuemilpa farming. In contrast, the cattle hacienda of Chichn was destroyedand permanently abandoned by both Yucatec hacendados and Maya.

In 1875, between twenty and thirty Mexican and Yucatec soldierscomposed the garrison that was to provide the early warning system toprotect the towns to the north (Steggerda 1941: 79). Although no majorCruzob campaign entered the region, Pist continued to live under con-stant threat of both rebel attacks and looting by the soldiers stationed inthe burned out church. The indications are that, despite this garrison, thePisteleos were no doubt ready to quickly hide or flee and that this frontierzone was a kind of political vacuum. The war had dramatically deterritori-alized both civil society and the state apparatus. The social isolation of anon-again, off-again population of a couple hundred persons was so nearlycomplete as to make political authority a far away, unseen, and virtuallyunknown gesture of writing legislative reforms.

Articles 70 and 63 of 185962 legislation again reformed the govern-mental units in light of the demographic and political aftermath of theCaste War. Cities, villas, and cabeceras de partidos were allotted ayunta-mientos. Below these political centers were three grades of authority struc-ture: juntas municipales, comisaras municipales, and comisarios auxiliares,which were designated according to the number of citizens in each, that is,at least sixteen, between eight and fifteen, and seven or less, respectively(Rodrguez Losa 1989: 10530). Thus, Pist was designated as a comisaramunicipal while Tinum became a junta municipal. It is not clear, however,whether these reforms included or were supplemented by the official sub-ordination of Pist to Tinum as comisara to county cabecera or whetherthey were each independently and directly linked to the cabecera in Valla-dolid. Archival documents to resolve this issue as well as the question of

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when Pist officially fell under the municipal jurisdiction of Tinum haveyet to surface.

This absence of rich documentary sources gives space to some inter-pretative characterization. What the few historical records do communi-cate is that the settlement of Pist was being repeatedly unsettled, emptiedin the literal sense of its population, not only by war, but by a plague oflocusts in1884, which was augured by a comet the year before, accordingto oral history collected by Steggerda. Pist was emptied in another sensein that abandonment also entailed the deterritorialization of society andthe state apparatus, whether Imperial or Porfirian Mexico or the Yucatecgovernment. This image of a frontier space, virtually detached from effec-tive outside political intervention except by whatever cocked gun or raisedmachete was present at the moment, is memorably pictured by the handfulof archaeological explorersfor example, Le Plongeon in 1875, Charnayin1880, Maudslay in1888, andMaler in18918that crossed through Pisten route to the ruins of Chichn. Charnay writes the following from hissecond expedition:

Pist, where we arrive, stands on the extreme [eastern] border ofthe state [of Yucatn]; It has been so often sacked and burnt by therevolted natives [sic], that the only building left is the church, occupiedby a company of twenty-five men. It looks a forsaken, God-forgottenplace, a veritable exile for the small garrison quartered here in turnfor three months in the year; not that there is any immediate danger,for the natives, who first rose to conquer their liberties, fell to massa-cring from a spirit of revenge, and now only take the field for the sakeof plunder.We have nothing to tempt their cupidity, consequently ourescort of fifty men [and twelve Winchesters] is a measure of prudencerather than of necessity. . . . The ruins of Chichn are two miles east ofPist, and were used as pasture for the cattle of the inhabitants, whoat stated periods had the woods cut down, when the monuments wereeasily distinguished. (Charnay 1887: 3224)

In the travelogues of these protoanthropologists, such as this one by Char-nay, much of the narrative is taken upwith dramatic entries about the prob-lems getting armed escorts and the local fears of Cruzob entradas or attacks.These issues set up the inevitable head-on encounter of the white explorerwith a contingent of Indios Bravos or Cruzob that eventually emerge fromthe trees and in the travelogue. Although these scenes are original sourcesfor Indiana Jones, it is reasonable to suspect that the fears of Pist locals arereal and not simply the narrative stereotyping for purposes of a plot basedon a racial (travel-)logic that Hollywood has mythologized.

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Cruzob entradas diminished in frequency over time and allowed forother sociopolitical issues to manifest. For example, the 22d Battalion gar-risoned in the Pist church seems not to have contributed to the security ortranquility of the community. On the contrary, the soldiers ruled over thetown, stealing land, liquor, chickens, women, and other property as they(drunkenly) pleased. At least this is the debauchery that is protested in let-ters by the alcalde auxiliar and other concerned citizens of Pist dated 10and18 August 1896, in which they plead with the partido authorities in thecabecera of Valladolid for help:9

In answer to your letter of the 7th of this month and with reference tothe report that you requested of me regarding the scandals that someMexicans have committed in this town, I inform you that a Mexicansoldier of the 22nd Battalion named Jos Sanchez lives here who hasa little store from which he sells liquor to the Mexicans who come tothis place dedicated to the stealing of animals, money, and whateverelse they can find. In the house of this Sanchez they hide since they buyat a low price and he exchanges aguardiente for all that they steal andin this way among themselves other scandals constantly occur. . . . Onthe morning of the 24th of July . . . Rufino Mendoza, Ensebio Alar-cn and others stole weapons from Manuel Campos of the HaciendaChichn and from Rufino Poot of this town. . . . Alarcn has plantedterror in this town as a scandalous drunk and thief. (Pist, 10 August1896; translation by the author)

This letter by the alcalde auxiliar also states that he was able to arrestAlarcn and send him to jail but that he returned, having been released, tomake fun of (burlar) Pists authority. Eight days later, a letter signed bynineteen persons was sent to the jefe poltico or district head of Valladolidpartido:

we proclaim to you that since the [problem] of two months ago wedo not have any authority in this town to represent its few inhabitantsin order to stop the abuses constantly committed[.] Specifically thereis still to this day some chicleros of the Hacienda [Chichn] that aredestroying the fruit trees of the ejidos10 of the present population. Onthe 12th of this month we communicated to the C. President of theJunta Municipal of the town of Tinum a letter with the same tenorand to this day he has not given it attention[.] [W]e inform you andplead with you to put a person of confidence to protect the order ofthis town [since] the proper C. juez absented [himself and] concededhis position to the suplemente [town official] who lives in Hacienda

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Chichn, and we desire that you grant through this petition what webeg of you. (Pist, 18 August 1896; translation by the author)

As this second letter implies, not only did Mexican soldiers terrorizethe community, but the rise of the chicle (tree sap used to make chewinggum) trade in the second half of the nineteenth century brought chicleros,the gatherers of chicle, who seemed to exceed the law. Chicleros spreadnorth and west from the southeastern base of the peninsula in search forand to trade chicle. In this way, they poached on communal lands of fron-tier towns such as Pist. Further, the letter indicates that through the endof the nineteenth century, if not also the Porfriato, Pist was independentof Tinum under the jurisdiction of the Partido of Valladolid. However, inhis exhaustive investigation of legal records, Rodrguez Losa (1989, 1991)has not reported any legislation that explains how, when, and why Pistbecame a subordinate comisara to the county of Tinum in the first or sec-ond decades of the twentieth century. This issue remains open for research.

The ineffectualness of local authorities in dealing with either Mexicansoldiers or the chicleros is corroborated and explained in an incident toldin 1938 by Manuela Huchin, a nineteenth- and twentieth-century residentof Pist, to Morris Steggerda, who wrote a synopsis of her recollection inhis unpublished field notes:

In 1887 Alejandro Martin, Comisario of Pist, stabbed and killed JoseInes Vega, the Presidente of Dzitas, because of jealous rivalry over agirl. Nobody prosecuted him, however, for assassinations were com-mon in that period. Later Alejandro Martin had a quarrel with someother men, and Andres Alcocer called his attention to the fact that he,being the authority, ought to set a good example. Martin flew intoa rage and threatened to kill Alcocer . . . one night he knocked atthe door of Alcocers house, but Alcocer . . . shot him as soon as heentered the house. The men who accompaniedMartin fled. (Steggerdan.d.: 579)11

This was the law of the frontier. However, this common situation doesnot mean that there was no community of Pist; rather, it suggests a self-sustaining, not very corporate, grouping of families. Capitalist relationsof exchange and production linked the community of farmers and semi-proletariats to the merchants and landowners that controlled land in Pistbut that resided in the Yucatec criollo town of Dzitas. The lack of a churchuntil 1910 did not seem to cause any difficulties: On the one hand, the offi-cial procedures related to death, birth, and marriage that are controlled bythe church were processed in the parroquia of Dzitas. On the other hand,

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the spiritual dimensions of social, individual, and agricultural health wereattended to by several ritual specialists (called h-men in Maya) who livedin town and worked in the region (cf. Thompson 1965 [1932]; Roys 1965:168; Steggerda 1941: 2425).

Although Pist was quickly, if sporadically, resettled in the second halfof the nineteenth century, a permanent re-population did not occur untilthe 1990s. At this time, Edward H. Thompson initiated attempts to buyland in Pist but eventually purchased the Hacienda Chichn in the firstyears of the twentieth century. With this purchase, he brought individu-als whom he had met in other parts of the peninsula during his travels towork for him at the hacienda; these retainers, including his Yucatec mis-tress, came to reside in the near vicinity of the main building. Thus theabandoned hacienda lands were again producing maize and cattle. But thiseconomic activity was not the primary reason for Thompsons residence inChichn; rather, it was to conduct archaeological explorations in search ofartifacts and valuables to send to the PeabodyMuseum of Harvard Univer-sity. His activities were very controversial and at the time were denouncedbyTeobertMaler as systematic pillage and plundering of theMaya city.12 Inthis period the community of Chichn became differentiated from that ofPist, a differentiation that lasted until 1983 when the road (built between1924 and 1936) from Mrida to Chichn was closed or, more accurately,redirected from the ancient citys center around to the north of the SacredCenote (see Castaeda 1998, 1996). The population remained small andchanged in relationship to the status of Chichn Itz: While the Revolutionforced the families associated withThompson to abandon the hacienda, theinitiation of archaeological excavations sponsored by the Mexican govern-ment and the Carnegie Institution brought other workers and their fami-lies to live in Chichn (both in the legally defined zone of ruins and on theprivately owned hacienda lands) (see Breglia 2003).

One exception is JuanOlalde, who came to Pist and Chichn toworkas a majordomo for Edward Thompson at the Hacienda Chichn; he canbe seen in photos in the museum of Chichn assisting Thompson gettinginto his scuba gear to search for treasures in the Sacred Cenote. By retaininga nonpartisan position, Juan was also subject to both socialist and liberalviolence and eventually abandoned the hacienda when Thompson did so;yet his son Isuaro became a capitaz or foreman for the American archae-ologists who conducted work at Chichn (192340) under Carnegie Insti-tution of Washington sponsorship (Steggerda n.d.: 1918 Census and Sec-tion B: An Account of the Families of Pist). In turn, Isuaros son Eraclio,or Rach, Olalde became the key power broker in the Pist movimientoto become a municipio; popular understanding is that when he died of a

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heart attack while negotiating squabbles among the community in 1991,the Pist struggle died with him. Four of his sons are currently tour guidesat Chichn Itz.

In part due to the military defeat of the Cruzob Maya in 1901, Pistbegan a steady population increase. The peace that settled on the penin-sula allowed for a resurgence of migratory drift, not only of Maya, but ofChinese, Lebanese, andMexicans (i.e., non-YucatecanMexicans from cen-tral or northern Mexico). Some were involved in petty commerce, othersin chicle production, wage labor, and subsistence farming, and yet othersin any combination of these. Pist prospered, not only with a lively com-merce in maize, cattle, and chicle, which linked the town towider markets,but work was available at Thompsons hacienda and at a match-furniturefactory that operated on the west side of town.

Pist and the Municipio Libre, from 1917 to 1989

The importation of the Mexican Revolution13 did less to disrupt thesituation that had settled into this frontier zone during the first decade ofthe twentieth century than to intensify areas of contestation and struggle(Joseph 1982). Allen Wells and Gilbert Joseph (1996) refer to this periodof low-intensity violence and conflict in terms of escalating discontent andupheaval. Their focus, however, on the protagonists of the Mrida sceneand its immediate peripheries leaves open questions about the broaderperiphery of frontier zones.14 Ethnographies of the period (e.g., Redfieldand Villa Rojas 1934; Steggerda 1941, n.d.) note the sporadic, even ner-vous, quality of governmental order in the frontier and suggest somethingakin to a culture of terror (Taussig 1987: 3135) if of lower intensity thanthat which is usually invoked by the term.15

The hacendados, under the banner of liberalism and afraid of anotherMaya resurgence, intervened in the rural towns to organize their paramili-tary squads so as to demobilize any revolutionary threat. In 1918, the presi-dent of Tinum went to Pist to organize, with the aid of locals Juan Agui-lar and Antonio Martin, the Liberal Party and to conscript a liberal squadfrom local veterans of the Mexican army who had participated in the 1901assault on the Cruzob capital of Chan Santa Cruz (Steggerda 1941: 10, andn.d.). Oral history collected in 1989 from descendents of the EstanislaoPucJuliana Ceme family recalled stories about an ancestor, Julian Ceme,an ex-soldier, who assumed a prominent role in terrorizing socialists inthis period of terror, that is, from the end of Alvarados governorship in1918 until mid-1924, when the Socialist Party recuperated control of thegovernment after the assassination of Felipe Carrillo Puerto. Interestingly,

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the assassins hired to kill Carrillo Puerto were from the town of Xocen-pich, just seven kilometers (roughly four and a third miles) north of Pist(Castillo Cocom 2003). As noted by Steggerda (n.d.: 1918 Census Appen-dix III), Pist suffered a 58 percent total population loss and a loss of 49percent of the founding families from the 1890s resettlement.

An opposing socialist militia was organized in defense and in turndrove out the liberal soldiers three months later; subsequently, raids andcounterraids prevailed, including a 1921 attack on the liberal headquartersof Yaxacaba by a coalition of socialist militias from Chan Kom, Pist, Cun-cunul, Ebtun, Tinum, and Yaxcaba. While the contours of the back-and-forth fighting is charted by Robert Redfield and Alfonso Villa Rojas (1934:21230) and Morris Steggerda (1941: 1830), histories of these strugglesthat would detail the dynamics of these regional events have yet to be exca-vated from the archives.16 Further, the vicissitudes of violence in rural Yuca-tn are of course correlated to the upheavals and seasons of socialistvictory in Mrida (Wells and Joseph 1996) but in ways that still need clari-fication and analysis. The victorious socialist leaders of these communitiesformed the camarilla network and the groundwork for what would laterbecome the governmental grid of power as Mrida political brokers con-solidated themselves in the aftermath of the assassination of Carrillo Puertoand accommodated the Revolution to their agendas.

In 1921 the Presbyterian church established a bible school in Mridafrom which to convert Yucatn. Among the targeted rural communitiesin the eastern maize zone were Pist, Xocenpich, and Chan Kom (Red-field and Villa Rojaws 1934; Redfield 1959; Goldkind 1965, 1966). Mostof the community of Chan Kom converted, but then the famous caciquelineage of the Cemes converted back to Catholicism and used the idiomof religious difference to violently expel Protestant families from the vil-lage.While Redfield analyzes this struggle in terms of community solidarityand progress, Victor Goldkind, using Redfield and Villa Rojass ethno-graphic data, shows that this was also a political struggle over authoritybetween agricultural-oriented landholding and commercial-oriented fami-lies to attain political control over the town.

As Goldkind notes, many of the self-exiled Protestant families movedto Pist (as well as to Cuncunul) in the 1930s and 1940s. According tooral history documented in 198889, many in Pist remember the arrivalof Protestantism as a continuation of the same factionalism and violencethat marked the earlier socialist versus liberal struggles. In Pist, as in ChanKom, there were gun fights in the center of town. While many Catholictowns reacted violently against the Protestants, Xocenpich, a small sistercommunity seven kilometers to the north of Pist, was one of the rare

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communities where the missionary movement was not negatively received.Because of the welcome acceptance of the missionaries, Xocenpich wasselected in 1942 as the new headquarters of the Presbyterian Evangelicalmovement (Castillo Cocom 2003). The violence was short-lived in Pistand the Chan Kom Protestants and other converts were accepted into thecommunity.

Interestingly, while one branch of the Pat family changed their name toPadilla and continued their economic endeavors, but now without pursu-ing political office, another remained Pats as well as campesinos (peasants)and became politically prominent in both the agrarian and civil authoritystructures up through the 1990s. Further, one senior Pat male became keyleader in the Lucha 107. In turn, some of his male children by his secondwife initiated their political careers in the Pist movement and later wenton to champion the founding of the opposition Partido Accin Nacional,or pan, in Pist in 1994.

Unfortunately, the regional history of the Evangelical mission duringthis early period as well as the relationship between religious conversionand Protestantism to the consolidation of pri political power has not beenthe subject of sustained anthropological or historical study. This may bedue to the way the Protestant church disrupted the idyllic image of theauthentic Maya community that so animates the anthropological imagi-nary. In turn, the Mrida-centricity of Yucatec historiography has left uswith few studies of the Revolutionary violence in the countryside and theways in which this process articulates with community, class, and ethnic-racial identity formation in the different regions of Yucatn (e.g., Puucversus maize zones). More important, there are questions about intracom-munity articulation within regions of Yucatn in relation to both the Evan-gelical mission and the new modes of integrating with the emergent social-ist state.

From the socialist victory at Yaxcaba (discussed by Redfield and VillaRojas 1934), Pist-Chichn began a new mode of incorporation into thenation-state. This involved imagining themselves as citizens of and as acollectivity subject to the nation. The historical record does not provideany heroic or dramatic moments in this slow and silent process that wouldallow it to be tracked. But it is possible to imagine the effects of the perva-sive role of Chichn in all aspects of Pists daily life, especially after 1923,when Chichn became massively invested as a monument, to theMaya (seeCastaeda 1996, 2001), yes, but more importantly, to the Mexican nation.The multiple and dense interventions by science, state, and business wouldaffect, in the long run, the sentiments and consciousness of belonging. By1989, Pisteleos called upon the state to change the form and mode of its

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integration within the nation. Somos cien por ciento pri-stas! [We areone hundred percent pri-stas!] was not only a cry of identity that differ-entiated this community as worthy in contrast to other less worthy and/oruncitizenly subjects; it was also a direct interpellation of the state to inter-vene, a beckoning of the paternalistic power of the party (and thus the state)to perform the script of hegemonic authority.17

As the community of Pist grew dramatically starting in the 1970s inrelationship to the burgeoning tourist industry at Chichn and the region,it pursued the goal of becoming a municipio libre (c.f. Redfield 1950; Cas-taeda 1995). By 1983, based on its functioning as the support service fortourism at Chichn, it had already incorporated the satellite community ofChichn and become the fastest growing socioeconomic center of a micro-region of eleven neighboring counties.18 To briefly explore this character-ization, consider that Tinum county, of which Pist represents 45 percent ofthe population (see Tables 4 and 5), was among the top fourteen counties ofYucatn in terms of per capita income during the1980s and in1985was sec-ond only toMrida.19While Tinum, the local economy of which is based inagriculture and cattle, is not accessible by a major road, Pist attends to anaverage of 50 percent of the states annual number of tourists, or approxi-mately 300,000 tourists annually during the 1980s and more than half amillion by the mid-1990s.

From the perspective of surrounding farming villages, Pist is clearlyan urban oasis. The town has three-star hotels; restaurants; a fleet oftwenty taxis; swimming pools; video game rooms; open, homosexual, andcross-dressing clubs; and youth, drug, and gang cultures. Yet, from localand tourist perspectives, the underdevelopment of the urban infrastructurewas in the 1980s and early 1990s starkly contrasted to the technologicalmodernity of the tourist services of Chichn and Pist. This underdevel-opmentfor example, lack of running water, no paved roads, 30 percentelectricity20strongly motivated the community, both as a whole and asindividuals, to seek the improvement of their life situation through politicalcontrol of tourist receipts.

These goals of the improvement of basic standards of living, whichwould be realized through the social mobilization to attain a political goal,lead to the question of how Pists struggle for municipio libre sharesaspects with or a family resemblance to new social movements (Escobarand Alvarez 1992; Laclau 1985; Laclau and Mouffe 1985; Slater 1985).

Although there is a great diversity of examples and concepts by whichto analytically grasp these variations, new social movements can be defined,for the purposes of this argument, asmovements in which the agents are notthe classically conceived subjects of history (e.g., classes, economic sectors,

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Table 4. Population of Pist, Tinum Pueblo, and Tinum County, 18111990

Tinum TinumYear Pist Pueblo County Noteworthy events

1811 1,433 n/a1821 882 1,525 n/a Mexican Independence from Spain.1846 1,172 1,600 n/a Census just prior to Caste War.1862 308 326 n/a Second Cruzob Maya attack on Pist.1883 0 1,496 Pist abandoned; refugees go to Tinum.1900 85 616 1,735 Slow repopulation of town begins after1910 233 782 2,227 1888, continues until Revolution.1918 474 Mexican Revolution imported to1921 332 1,092 1,817 Yucatn.a

1930 295 2,116 Morley begins projects in 1924.1933 307 Steggerda begins 5 yearly census and1934 364 other race-focused research.1935 415 Highway from Mrida to Chichn1937 433 completed in 1936.1940 500 3,028 Carnegie project ends in 1940.1950 820 3,3501960 974 1,149 3,757 30,000 visitors to Yucatn in early 1960s.1970 1,308 1,289 4,171 Mass tourism begins in region.1980 2,471 1,776 6,725 Cancn ten years old.1982 2,718 1,954 6,958 Closing of highway sets off invasion.1988 3,774 Presidential elections.1989 3,979 Lucha 107 de Pist begins in March.1990 4,196 Pist wins municipal elections.1990 3,124 1,723 7,111b

Sources: Figures for 1821 are from Rodrguez Losa 1985; for 1846, 1862, 1900, from Rodr-guez Losa1989:190, 206, 219. Figures for the municipio191070 are from the general censusof the state of Yucatn (Gobierno del estado de Yucatn 1980). Figures for Pist 191037 areunpublished (Steggerda n.d.); for 1811, from Steggerda 1941: 5 n. 14, 233. Figures for 1980and 1982 are from Gobierno Estatal de Yucatn 1982: sec. 5.2. Alternate figures for 1980 are4,986 (Rodrguez Losa 1991: 349) and 5,154 (Gobierno del estado de Yucatn 1980). Figuresfor Pist in 1988 and 1990 (Pinto Gonzlez et al 1989: sec. 3) are based on survey and pro-jected growth rates. Figures for 1989 are from the census of the Comisara de Pist and theComit Pro-Lucha (Pist 1989). Official figures for 1990 from inegi (1991: 13, 32) appear tobe underestimations.a Joseph 1982.b Population of Tinum County in 1990 according to Rodrguez Losa (1991: 349) is 7,131.

political parties, unions) but also as solidarity groups based in cultural-historical criteria of belonging that cross class, institutions, and races (e.g.,gender, age, sexual orientation, culture per se, widows, disenfranchisedbarrios, urban marginalized, prisoners, ethnic-racial groups). The sharedidentity and/or conditions of subordination within these new social move-

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Table 5. Distribution of municipal population of Tinum, 194090

Pueblos 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990

Pist 16.5 24.4 26 31 37 45Tinum 30 30 26 24Others 44 39 37 31Municipio 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%

ments are organically used as a banner to create alliances with analogousidentity groups and to mobilize not a radical agenda with radical means,but the political demands of redress, reform, or fuller implementation ofdemocratic ideals.

Pist, then, was a social (i.e., democratic) movement unifying dispa-rate groups into a community of solidarity without, however, a banner ofsubaltern identity politics, but instead with a more conservative party linepolitics, to achieve an end that was neither overthrowing bad governmentnor fulfilling democracy, but rather an application of a law that if appliedentailed dramatic and radical, if not exactly revolutionary, ramifications indifferent local, regional, and national spheres.21

New Historiographic Movements; or, Notes on theComparative Ethnography of the Maya

This ethnographic history of Pist and the Lucha 107 may have intrinsicinterest for regionalists, that is, Mayanists, Yucatecologos, and the peopleof Pist. Beyond the merits of the discussion for these interested parties,this account has sought to raise broader issues of significance by suggest-ing both problems for further investigation and approaches to these ques-tions. Specifically, the social and political movement of Pist raises com-parative questions and implies yet another clarion call,22 addressed to thefields of Yucatec historiography and Maya ethnography, for a rapproche-ment between anthropology and history.

The concept of new social movements is based on a comparative analy-sis of a great diversity of phenomena. The social and political movementof Pist can therefore be understood, ambivalently or contradictorily, asa kind of new social movement that was not. That is, it was such amovement in spite of the fact that its mobilization chose not to pursue itsobjectives in terms of a subaltern identity and not to ally itself with othermovements that had a broader slate of issues. It was such a movement,however, in its objectives: to attain local political autonomy through alegally sanctioned process and the fulfillment of a democratic ideal. In this,

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Pists gambit to become a municipio libre,23 like other such attempts byYucatec communities in the 1980s or the successful attempts by Escarcegaand Cancuc, preceded the deployment of a similar strategy by the MayaZapatistas, a strategy that seems unequivocally identifiable as new ifnot also, for some analysts, a postmodern social movement. Given thehistory of the municipio libre (in Yucatn, at least), the question ariseswhether there is something new in these movements and how these ele-ments are to be distinguished.

In their political histories and ethnographies, numerous works (e.g.,Joseph 1982; Wells and Joseph 1996; Villanueva Mukul 1984; GonzlezPadilla 1985; Lara Cebada 1997; Hervik 1999) have provided a basis to askabout Maya identity politics in the twentieth century. However, in addi-tion to the Mrida-centrism of these works, there is a gap in understand-ing such community-based political movements or Maya identity politicalmovements in Yucatn from the 1910s to the present. The problem here isthat Maya identity, in the aftermath of the critique of Redfield, has beenstereotypically typified as race or class based, to the detriment of under-standing the social solidarity and belonging of Maya identity in terms ofcommunity structurally shaped by the governmental strategy of the townand municipio. This oversight also correlates to the general gap regardingthe relations between popular cultures, political cultures, and the forma-tion or consolidation of the Mexican state apparatus from the 1920s to thepresent (see Joseph et al. 2001). This artifact of scholarship needs to beaddressed by ethnographers and historians with the goal of providing morerich ethnographic histories of twentieth-century Yucatn. Thus, the needfor yet another rapprochement of anthropology and history (see Castaedain press).

A broader issue of investigation emerges here since, in the case of Pist,Cancuc, Maya Zapatismo, and the other cases of Yucatn derive fromthe political and economic crises of the 1980s. While this topic has stimu-lated voluminous and crucial work, there seems to be a gap in address-ing the issue of the municipal structure of authority as a governmentalstrategy of state power. There are two key, and interrelated, points that areraised. First, the question of the ambivalence of this strategy of power towork, both ideologically and practically or materially, in the direction ofboth hegemony and local autonomy (or containment and empowerment)requires further comparative study.

Second, community mobilizations that seek the condition of munici-pio libre are in effect interpellating the state. This is most clear in theimmediate period of widespread designation of new municipios, but alsoin the case of Pist; the study of Escarcega and Cancuc would, it seems,

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provide further substantiation of the point. Here then is a crucial investiga-tive focus that has not been attended to in asking about how the state orits hegemony is created not from the center out, but from outside in orbottom up. Furthermore, this idea could then be usefully employed asa criterion of conceptual definition of and further research on new socialmovements. In what ways are these social movements seeking not only tocreate anew the state from the bottom up, but refashioning the manner inwhich the state territorializes itself in relations of governmentality to sub-ject citizens and subject communities?

In this regard, the pursuit of the municipal-town authority structure asa containment strategy within the governmental strategies of the Mexicanstate is conjoined with an attempt to trace the interpellation of the state bycommunity agencies in ongoing self-constitution. In particular, this essayhas sought to chart a history of the structure of localized, town authority,which is but one of four axes of governmentality that territorializes theMexican state (class, community, race-ethnicity, culture) in Yucatn (seeCastaeda 1996; Castaeda and Fallaw in press). This approach seeks tosidestep assumptions of a binary dynamics between two prestated oppo-sites, the politically subordinate and the dominant group, and instead seeksto trace a more fluid field of interaction in which there is more than asimple give and take between differentially positioned (as well as consti-tuted) collectivities.

Notes

1 The article title includes two word plays. First, Pist is the name of the townwhose history is under consideration; this Yucatec Maya word means to mea-sure. Second, Pist is located close to the ancient Maya city of Chichn Itz,which translates as Mouth of the Well of the Itz.

2 Examples are Mallon 1994; Joseph and Nugent 1994; Nugent 1993; Lomnitz-Adler 1995; Vaughn 1997; Joseph et al. 2001. Jan Russ (1994) study is particu-larly noteworthy, as are early ethnographies (e.g., Friedrich 1970, 1986; Red-field 1950).

3 For new analyses of how the Revolutionary educational agenda was put intopractice in rural Yucatn and for how the educational discourse of the Revolu-tion sought to reform the Yucatec Maya Indian, see Fallaw in press and Eiss inpress, respectively.

4 The districts were reinstituted as a territorial unit headed by elected deputies.These supra-county units thus changed from the executive to the legislativebranch.

5 Redfield and Villa Rojas 1934; Redfield 1950; Goldkind 1965, 1966; Castaeda1995.

6 Tinum is the name of both the cabecera and the municipio.7 The ethnoracial and social classification system of Yucatn is distinct from that

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of Mexico. While criollos became Yucatecos, the people known in the twen-tieth century as Maya (of Yucatn) became classified by different nonethnicterms; those who sided with the white-Yucatec society in the Caste War becamemestizos, while others remained indios, that is, either indio rebeldes (the Cru-zobMaya) or indios pacificos (communities of Campeche). See Restall in press,Gabbert in press, and Castillo Cocom in press for details.

8 Steggerda1941: 69 quotes these early archaeologists descriptions of the aban-donment of Pist.

9 See Castaeda 1991: chapter 2 and appendices; letters in the Archivo Generalde Yucatn (old catalog system, Municipal Series, Valladolid Box 18856).

10 The word ejido in this letter references a plot of public or common land. How-ever, this is not the same as the ejido land grants that were legally defined bythe 1917 Revolutionary Constitution.

11 The quote is from the typed manuscript Appendix IV: History of Pist AsToldby Former Inhabitants of Pist. The information is repeated in the typedmanu-script Section B: An Account of the Families of Pist. Both originally wereplanned to be part of Steggerdas monograph but were pulled at the last minuteby his supervisors at the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

12 See Ramirez Aznar1990 for a history of the plundering of Chichn for Bostonsmuseums and the antagonism between Maler and E. H. Thompson.

13 On the Revolution, see Joseph 1982; Sierra Villarreal 1986; Gonzlez Navarro1970: 22638; Villanueva Mukul 1984; Sierra Villarreal and Paoli Bolio 1987;Baos Ramirez 1990; Wells 1982; Joseph and Wells 1982, 1983; Garca Quinta-nilla 1978: 4449, 5458.

14 Recurrent issues in the historiography of Yucatn are the political control of thehenequn economy, power blocs or camarillas, and the regional accommoda-tions with the forces and protagonists of the Mexican Revolution approachedwith a Mrida-centrism that privilege the state and traditional historical agents(e.g., parties, classes, capital, church). See Castaeda in pressb for a discussionof this historiography.

15 On violence, see Abiotes 1985; Gonzlez Navarro 1970: 27783; Joseph 1982;Orosa Daz 1982; Paoli Bolio and Montalvo Ortega 1977; Reed 1964: 22949;Snchez Novelo 1986; Sullivan 1983: 17680, fn. 4; Villa Rojas 1945: 2030.

16 A diary of Don Eustaquio Ceme, the cacique of Chan Kom, is published aschapter 13 in Redfield and Villa Rojas 1934. In includes an important discussionof the history of the mobilization of socialists against liberals. Following Red-fields lead, Morris Steggerda also sought to elicit oral history about the Mexi-can Revolution. His unpublished field notes include two accounts, one by hisresearch assistant from Pist, Martin Dzib, and one fromMargaret and RobertRedfields research informant from Dzitas, Pedro Castillo. Both accounts arehandwritten documents located in the Steggerda files of the Hartford SeminaryFoundation; both are minimal narratives and mostly include listings of namedpersons who were affiliated with the two partidos. I thank Ben Fallaw for hisgenerosity and friendship in sharing with me his research notes and copies ofdocuments he located among the Tinum municipal documents. Those docu-ments inform parts of this essay but are mostly unexploited and await a futurecollaboration.

17 See Castaeda 1996, 2001 for elaboration on the questions of the entangle-ments of anthropological science, tourism, and government in the history ofPist and Chichn. See Castaada1996: 25997 for an ethnographic account of

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the Lucha107 between1988 and1989. See Castillo Cocom (n.d.) for a landmarkexplanation of the practice of Maya identity politics in the Yucatn.

18 On the artesanry industry of the Pist and Chichn region, see Peraza Lpezand Rejn Patron 1989; Peraza Lpez et al. 1987; Morales Valderrama et al.1989; Castaeda 1996: 20358, 1998, in pressa.

19 See Gobierno Estatal de Yucatn 1982; inegi 1987a, 1987b, 1991; and Casta-eda 1991: Appendix GF.

20 See Castaeda 1996: 6893 for community life of Pist in the 1980s.21 See Castaeda 1996: 25997; Castaeda and Burgos Cen 1989; de los Reyes

1989; Diario de Yucatn 1989a, 1989b, 1989c; Gongora Navarrette 1989; andPist 1989.

22 In Yucatec studies, key landmarks are Jones 1977; Farriss 1984; Sullivan 1989;Castaeda 1996; Restall 1997, 1998; and the conference A Country Like NoOther, organized by Gilbert Joseph, Ben Fallaw, and Paul Eiss and sponsoredby the Yale Latin American Studies Center, New Haven, ct, 45 November2000.

23 While waiting for the state to grant either political autonomy or urban infra-structural development, Pist attained economic autonomy through a fund thatpaid town bills and the Lucha 107. Funds derived from individual donations ofPist citizens and from contributions made by tourist businesses in Pist as wellas some tourist agencies based in Mrida and Cancun.

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