These works share both an ethnographic focus—the Zapotec peoples of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca—and an interest in documenting processes that are transforming the meaning of being “Indian” in Latin America. The Campbell volume is a welcome anthology of essays, poems, short stories, speeches, folklore, autobiographical accounts, photographs, and historical studies drawn largely from the Zapotec magazine Guchachi’ Reza, published by the Worker-Peasant-Student Coalition of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (COCEI). The editors (who are anthropologists with considerable field experience in Oaxaca) include chapters examining the origins of the COCEI, placing it in the context of isthmian history, and discussing how its leaders have creatively drawn on Zapotec symbols, institutions, and experiences to fashion a political movement that has been uniquely effective in challenging the PRI. The COCEI is the first leftist organization to oust the PRI from a major district capital since the official party was established in 1929.
Anyone with even a casual knowledge of recent events in Latin America will realize that indigenous intellectuals have begun actively to resist assimilationist programs and, in the process, have enjoyed some success in challenging established political and social orders. This collection is therefore of considerable interest, particularly because it is the only place an English-speaking audience can read firsthand what the Zapotec intellectuals of Juchitán have to say on topics ranging from growing up female on the isthmus to the challenges the COCEI faces now that it has achieved power. Some readers might wish the editors had been more willing to reflect on the tension between their ethnographic commitment to portray the polyphonic nature of social life and their “politically informed” decision to exclude certain privileged sectors of isthmian political life. But most readers will find a rewarding discussion of contemporary debates on the nature of ethnographic research and an example of the kind of collaborative projects that will increasingly characterize anthropological work in Latin America.
Lane Hirabayashi’s book contributes to an understanding of the mass migration of indigenous people to urban areas in Latin America by examining how networks of chain migration between villages in the Sierra Zapoteca and Mexico City are informed by local ideas of relatedness, or paisango. While paisango draws on rural patterns of friendship, kinship, and community, it is also a form of association that has emerged to help migrants make their way in the city; constituting, in Hirabayashi’s words, a kind of “cultural capital.”
The author compares three sierra villages in terms of the organization and effectiveness of the migrant associations their members have established in Mexico City. Although the book reflects the difficulties of carrying out multisite ethnography— either the rural or urban end of the chain always seems slighted—Hirabayashi’s close attention to migrant experiences and the interesting divergences he finds give the reader a good sense of the overall complexity of the migrant phenomenon.
