In this splendid volume, based on thirteen months of fieldwork carried out in 1967 and 1969-1970, Gregory Reck presents a convincing argument for the importance of humanistic ethnographies which invoke the spirit of the people rather than tests of statistical significance. Using the experiences of an indio-become-mestizo called Celestino de la Cruz (a pseudonym) as the fulcrum of his plot, the author tells the story of Jonotla, a village of 1,500 in the Sierra Norte of Puebla, Mexico. Celestino is a ne’er-do-well dreamer whose struggles with a rapidly changing world reflect the experiences of millions of marginal men throughout rural Mexico. Three other protagonists are central to the drama: Don Chalo, a blind widower who sees all; Don Angel, an entrepreneur blind to everything save his own ambitions; and Ambroso, a friend who abandons the village to seek “the promised land” in the barrios of Mexico City. For Celestino, these three men embody the past, present, and future; they also offer contradictory role models as he continually searches “for centavos.” In the end, after numerous sad and hilarious failures to prosper in Jonotla, Celestino takes his family away from the village—to overcome the broken dreams of his past and to pursue his dreams for the future.
This volume reminds us that the drama of modernization is not reducible to mere statistics, however neat the research design or the computer data analysis. Although Reck has also abandoned the usual scholarly conventions of footnotes, references, and tables, the result is still worthwhile. In the Shadow of Tlaloc presents memorable characters who come alive in their confrontations with the worlds of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. When read in conjunction with the numerous “scientific” ethnographies which describe the transformation of the Mexican countryside, this volume is to be highly recommended.
