Words and Deeds: The Ladinos of ChiapasAuthor(s): Julian Pitt-RiversSource: Man, New Series, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Mar., 1967), pp. 71-86Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and IrelandStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2798655Accessed: 13/12/2010 11:55

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WORDS AND DEEDS: THE LADINOS OF CHIAPAS

JULIAN PITT-RIVERS

A2cole Pratique des Hautes Atudes, Paris

Early anthropologists inquiring about morals and customs were generally content once they were given a rule of conduct, a stated norm. Whether the norm was followed or not was a matter they were unlikely to examine, given the ideas of their time and the conditions under which they worked. Custom was thought to command an obeisance which made further investigation unnecessary.

Today we are aware that other peoples, like ourselves, do not always do what they say they do, nor even what they believe they do. We have learned to clis- tinguish between the normal and the normative, between the mechanical and the statistical, between action systems and ideology. A whole scale of 'degrees of implementation' could be applied to range normative rules from those which are obeyed without question, passing through those whose violation evokes some punitive sanction and those, honoured more often in the breach, whose fulfilment accords prestige, to those which are admittedly beyond hope of human compliance, but which endow with a special grace those persons who aspire to follow them. Most prescriptive rules are laid in abeyance at some point and we are no longer surprised by the divergence between word and deed. Yet we possess scant theo- retical equipment with which to view this divergence, so that authors tend to concentrate their attention on either the conceptual system or the action system rather than on the relation between the two. The idea that people can aspire to be other than they are and proclaim their attachment to norms they do not observe has stalked the field-worker ever since custom was revealed to be, not King but Tyrant, and a distinction emerged between the desirable and the desired; norma- tive systems were found which contained not merely contradictions but conflicts. There is no need to enforce a norm to which no opposition arises, but there is a difference to be marked between norms enforced by a coherent system of sanctions only against individual deviations and those which find themselves opposed by counter-norms deriving from a schism in the ideology of the community. We might argue that simple traditional societies still live in ideological unity; but where cultures come into contact conflicting demands arise between which the individual is caught. He is no longer presented with the choice between con- formity and deviation but rather with a choice of norms to which to conform. No longer a consistent whole, custom becomes fragmented into incomplete systems which offer the individual only rules that are disregarded and ideals that remain unattained. Such a situation is to be found, for example, in the high- lands of Chiapas, the most southerly state of Mexico, where I shall attempt to examine it.

* * * *

In Chiapas as in many other parts of Latin America, two different cultural traditions, Indian and Hispanic, are combined within a single society which admits

72 JULIAN PITT-RIVERS

two distinct identities and two different norms. Thus, while from certain points of view-the economic for example-the Chiapas highlands are a single society, from others-above all that of values and beliefs-this region appears to contain two different systems. The knowledge which the people of one sector have of those of the other is extremely limited: Indians do not understand much about 'ladinos' (as non-Indians are called today). These they consider-even in towns where they live next door to one another-as the Devil himself, mero pukuh, formed by God- according to the myth-not from honest clay like Indians but from the droppings of horses: beings of a different substance, created only as a punishment for the Indians' sins. In another myth ladinos are the progeny of an act of bestiality between a Chamula Indian and his bitch. The fantasies of ladinos regarding Indians are at least as great. While they know a certain amount about what Indians do, their reasons for doing so, the ideology behind their customs, remain uncomprehended.

The differences between the two traditions have sometimes been dealt with as an historical problem by tracing the cultural features found today back to the heritage of the ancient Maya or the colonial Spanish. Yet such an approach faces methodo- logical difficulties, since it assumes that traditional cultures are, somehow, natural unities which can continue to be used as terms of reference once the changes resulting from contact have begun. Thus the early studies of 'acculturation' in Central America were devoted to labelling cultural traits as Mayan or Spanish and estimating 'the degree of acculturation' of a given Indian people by counting the number of pre-Columbian traits which had persisted and the number which had been replaced. From this calculation the degree of acculturation was established. This method proved questionable once it became apparent that there was no single path of acculturation, that one Indian people changed in one way, another in a quite different way; some became bilingual and retained their Indian language, while others abandoned it once they had learned Spanish; some learned Spanish but retained their traditional dress, while others changed their dress but continued to use only their native tongue. In other spheres of culture the paths of change were equally diverse.

The degree of acculturation therefore depended in large part on the weight which the investigator chose to give to one feature rather than another and the way in which he chose to define the features. After more than four hundred years of contact to label a custom Mayan or Spanish is a fairly arbitrary matter, since we find a fusion of elements which no longer correspond to the stereotype of either 'culture', that is to say, culture as it once was. In Chiapas we find, for example, a system of religious belief centred on the divine figures of the Catholic Church. The cult of the saints is organised in religious fraternities; their images are taken out in procession as in Spain; they are prayed to and offered burning candles and incense. Yet, beliefs regarding them nevertheless contain interpretations which are far from orthodox and, at many points, reminiscent of Mayan antecedents. The sun and moon are treated as having identity with God and the Virgin Mary respectively (an identification at least latent in Catholic imagery which shows the Saviour with a halo behind His head and the Holy Virgin standing upon the crescent moon); 'Holy Cross' is a separate image in the churches and is treated among the divine hierarchy as a separate personage, the one who controls rain and the water supplies; and the Archangel Michael, sometimes said to be the supreme

WORDS AND DEEDS: THE LADINOS OF CHIAPAS 73

being, has thirteen nahuales or animal spirits, a quality which makes him indeed supreme in matters of witchcraft, since this is performed by the nahual of a witch. It is also to be noted that the distinction between good and bad spiritual power is not made according to the duality ofthe Christian tradition. Legitimate punishment and evil witchcraft are conceptually the same. They are distinguished only according to the innocence or guilt of the victim. Moreover, the supernatural hierarchy is expanded to include, in addition to the saints, other spiritual beings relating to wild nature and agriculture and having no equivalents in European Christianity.

Once such a fusion had taken place the culture of the Indians formed a new unity, different from both ancient Mayan or orthodox Catholic, which took no account of historical origins. Indeed, many of the characteristics that today define an Indian, in opposition to a ladino, were adopted under the influence of Spanish monks in the sixteenth century, while elements of pre-Columbian origin have been integrated into the culture of the ladinos. Thus, for example, the Christian names of Indians are always from the Catholic calendar, but ladinos are sometimes named after Aztec heroes. This kind of transposition of culture is common throughout Latin America and has been remarked on elsewhere. For instance, the Reichel- Dolmatoffs write: 'In reality those despised as "unprogressive Indians" stand ideologically closer to Western civilization than the local "Spaniards" or the lowland Creoles' (I96I: 462).

This theory of acculturation therefore, in addition to confusing a culture as an historical unity with culture in its contemporary function, also committed the error of anachronism by supposing that a cultural trait, encountered in the twentieth century, could be equated with that which resembled it in the fifteenth or sixteenth century without regard to its significance within a changed social system.

Some recent studies of cultural change among American Indians have attempted to take its social setting into account: for example, a volume edited byEdward Spicer (I96I). Spicer and his co-authors view the process of cultural change as determined by the 'contact situation' and the subsequent changes in social structure; they are concerned with the totality of the society within which change takes place and 'the role relationships in the communities in which Indians lived' (4). They are thus led to differentiate between 'directed' and 'non-directed change' and to distinguish processes of cultural change. I am concerned with two of these which are referred to as 'fusion, or synthesis, that is, a combination of cultural traditions resulting in a new, emergent cultural system' (7) and 'compartmentalisation, or isolative integration ... a keeping separate within a realm of meaning of elements and patterns taken over from the dominant culture' (533).

In reviewing the history of the Indians of Chiapas we find that the monks, though few in numbers, were exceedingly active during the sixteenth century in converting the Indians to Christianity; yet, the Indian aristocracy (which held priestly functions) nevertheless survived until the eighteenth century. During this period many elements of Christianity were adopted by the Indian religion which continued to be followed in spite of periodic attempts on the part of the Spaniards to suppress it, being practised on various occasions though largely in secret. Indian gods were sometimes discovered by the monks hidden behind a baroque reredos containing the image of a saint: which shows at least that the Indians still dis- tinguished between the two. Even if they thought it desirable or expedient to

74 JULIAN PITT-RIVERS

associate them, the fact that they continued to treasure the 'pagan idol' testifies to some degree of 'compartmentalisation'. Following the great Indian rebellion of I7I2, however, the Indian aristocracy and priesthood disappeared and subsequently the missionary endeavours of the orders declined; isolated in their villages, the Indians now contrived the 'fusion' of their religious ideas unmolested by dogmatic authorities on either side.

It appears to me that the concepts of fusion and compartmentalisation are useful in explaining the history of such situations as these. Yet they pose a theoretical problem which is worth examining: under what conditions do two cultural tradi- tions compartmentalise and under what conditions do they fuse? Spicer and his colleagues are helpful in pointing first of all to the importance of political authority and, second, to the reciprocity of roles between members of the two groups. However, the possibility of fusing two different traditions depends ultimately upon their compatibility and whether incompatibilities between them can be reconciled. The limits of inconsistency which determine whether they can be fused or not are to be found in the relationship between ideology and conduct. This is a problem which is better examined in the present.

* * * *

The Chiapas highlands are inhabited by some two hundred thousand persons of whom about two thirds are classed as Indians. Indians live in rural communities which are differentiated from each other by dialect and usually by a traditional dress particular to each. The social, political and religious organisation of each community is quite separate. Each has a strong sense of identity which centres upon a separate patron saint. Some live in dispersed settlements within their territory whose ceremonial centre is occupied by no permanent population, while others live concentrated in their town. They are almost all subsistence farmers. Ladinos live either in the capital of the highlands, San Cristobal Las Casas, in rural towns, in the central nucleus of Indian communities, or on ranches in the countryside. There are communities which are entirely Indian and others which are entirely ladino; but the majority are mixed. The two elements of the population live mostly in close proximity, but separated by a moral and cultural gulf

The ladinos regard themselves as superior to Indians and derive this superiority from their wealth and power in the first place, but also and above all (since some ladinos are no wealthier than Indians) from their culture, which identifies them with the rulers of the country. A ladino is one who speaks Spanish correctly (or what is thought to be correctly); he is civilised. An Indian in his view is one who follows uncouth customs, is obsessed by witchcraft and is not civilised. At the con- ceptual level the distinction is perfectly clear, though its application involves ambiguities, since there are many who have changed their culture and their status. It is not a physical distinction. The ladinos vary in physical type from European to Indian while the Indian population includes individuals who show traces of European descent. Negroid features are found among both. However, the upper classes are markedly more European in type and commonly believe themselves to be of purely European descent. Physical features are therefore a rough correlate of status, not a criterion of it, and are in no sense a determinant of ethnic affiliation. Anyone who claims to be a ladino and knows enough Spanish to play the part is

WORDS AND DEEDS: THE LADINOS OF CHIAPAS 75

accepted as such in face to face situations. Behind his back it may be explained that he is 'really an Indian' but this assertion relates to known descent and cultural accomplishments, not to phenotype. Moreover, of course, it is only said of those who do not occupy Indian status. The higher the social status of the speaker the more people he regards as 'really Indian'.

Indians are commonly referred to by the patronising diminutive indito. The word indio is used literally among ladinos without any implication of ethnicity. It is an insult rather than a designation. The term used in official language, and also by those who wish to avoid the patronising tone of indito, is indigena, while the Indians themselves, when speaking Spanish, use another term altogether: naturales (natives). They occasionally refer to another Indian whom they regard as uncivilised as an indio bruto, borrowing the expression of the ladinos, but the common usage is to refer to those they regard as inferior as Chamulas, from the name of one of the communities where the inhabitants have a reputation for being dirty and stupid.

The ethnic distinction is not defended as a social barrier. Ladinos do not feel threatened by the ingress into their ranks of former Indians. They applaud the Indian who has become 'civilised', that is to say, ladino. The ladinos of Teopisca proudly denied that there were any Indians in their town and when it was pointed out that some still dressed as Indians and many spoke the language, they replied that these people did not count as Indians now that they were civilised. Seen from the ladino point of view, the aspiration to change is praiseworthy and a sign of intelligence. The expression indio atzado (rebellious Indian) refers only to an Indian who fails to show proper respect for ladino superiority while remaining an Indian, not to one who emulates ladinos.

The distinction is therefore in no sense a 'colour bar'. The status of Indian is associated, as well as with dress and language, with participation in Indian fiestas and in a way of life which excludes a man from certain crafts and from entrepre- neurial activities on any scale. The ladino's evaluation of the Indian as inferior places him at a material disadvantage in many situations; he can be intimidated, he is served last in shops and can often be cheated with impunity. There are, never- theless, religious fiestas in which both participate, each making his own inter- pretation of the ritual. Diaz de Salas has described in his field diary the ceremonies of Holy Week in the town which he studied, where the procession of the ladinos accompanying the image of the Saviour is interpreted by the Indians as a represen- tation of the Jews capturing Christ and leading him off to the crucifixion. For the Indians the word 'Jew' is synonymous with 'Devil'. To give another example: the feast served to the mayordomos on Palm Sunday is for them a representation of the Last Supper in which they play the role of the Apostles and the priest, whom they expect to preside over this occasion, represents Jesus. A new priest ignorant of the custom of the Indians-and quite unconscious of the significance for them of his participation-attempted to evade the invitation and thereby caused a deep resentment. The Indians for their part have a most unorthodox understanding of the dogmatic significance of the celebration of Holy Week in which the divine personages of Santo Entierro (Holy Sepulchre) and Se-nor Santa Cruz (Lord Holy Cross) are, according to their interpretation, entrusted with the protection of the sown seed and the assurance of rain. We have therefore in this example an instance of co-participants in a common ritual who understand its import in two quite

76 JULIAN PITT-RIVERS

different ways; one might even say that mutual misunderstanding is the basis of their co-operation. Though fused in common action, the two systems of belief remain ideologically distinct.

In spite of their different statuses Indians and ladinos co-operate in various other ways: in commerce and employment and on occasions in political and agrarian activities. The social inferiority of the Indian does not suffice to exclude him from ladino society; there are even situations in which ladinos are employed by Indians as musicians or artisans. Intermarriage is not infrequent and ladinos often recognise their Indian kinfolk. Even a lady of the upper class once put on mourning for the death ofher Indian-illegitimate-half-sister. There are bonds which cut across status distinction at certain points and which bind Indians and ladinos together in relations of patronage and clientship. The social structure is therefore one in wlhich the ethnic distinction is, for all its importance, not always clear cut and the ethnic barrier is not hard to breach for those who succeed in acquiring sufficient Hispaniic culture.

One may wonder then why any Indians determine to remain in the subordinate status to which the ladinos relegate them and why we find men like Juan Perez Jolote who, after living for years as a ladino, return to their native village and way of life (Pozas I962). The answer is that the traditional Indian does not accept the values of the ladinos nor his inferiority in ladino eyes. He is a bats 'ilwvinik, a ' true man', and his language is the 'true language'. He lives in a numerically small community which is morally integrated in the sense that the norms of conduct relate coherently to the system of belief. Indian ideology both validates the social organisation and provides a system of supernatural sanctions which punish with witchcraft and the castigations of the saints and spirits those who transgress its norms. The coherence between the norms of conduct and the system of belief which characterise the Indian-in conltrast to the ladino-community is well illustrated by the fact that, as Calixta Guiteras Holmes has observed, when Indians pray they pray for justice; when ladinos pray they pray for miracles.

* * * *

The material world of the Indians is dominated by spiritual forces. The traditional political organisation centres upon what is usually referred to as the civil-religious hierarchy, which is organised in a series of cargos, posts, of ascending importance, in different religious brotherhoods which are responsible for financing and running the fiestas and for the performance of ritual duties, but which also have political functions. They involve the expenditure of relatively large sums of money borrowed and saved by the office holders. When a man has passed through these posts, his prestige is established and he remains as a principal, an elder. The power of the elders is reinforced by a belief in the strength of their spirit. Events in the material world are interpreted as the result of events upon the spiritual level, and the elders are believed not only to watch over the community as such and defend it from evil, but to watch over the individual's actions, protecting and punishing him.

Ailments are caused, when they are less serious, by psychical conditions such as anger, shame or fright, which alienate the soul from the body. But the more serious illnesses, which may result in death, are caused by witchcraft which is intimately

WORDS AND DEEDS: THE LADINOS OF CHIAPAS 77

connected with curing since, as elsewhere, the power to do the one implies the power to do the other. This power is first revealed in dreams which are thought to be revelations of the spirit world and it derives from the strength of a person's spirit; his spiritual strength is manifest in his good fortune or health, for the loss of either is interpreted as being due to the action of a more powerful spirit which wishes him harm. Whether this is on account of his own transgression (in which case he may be punished by the elders with some affliction) or on account of the envy or hostility he may have inspired remains always in doubt; but it is likely to be connected with his own fault, since witchcraft can only-according to the Indian theory-be performed with the permission of the elders. In practice, witches are continually getting out of hand, abusing the elders' permission, overruling them through the strength of their spirit and in any case the elder may himself be a witch. In addition, God, the Saints, the Ancestor and Holy Earth are also prompt to castigate any failure to propitiate them or any moral or ritual shortcoming. Illness comes therefore to be equated with fault, delito, and its persistence is normally only attributed to witchcraft when the sufferer has atoned for any possible offence towards any of the spiritual powers. The justice for which the Indian prays reflects the coherence of the system of sanctions which devolves from these beliefs, in the sense that the hierarchy of spiritual power provides an explanation and a justifica- tion for all the events with which a person has to contend and, therefore, a guide to conduct in terms both of ethics and expediency. It is justice upon earth and, indeed, the hereafter plays a negligible part in the beliefs of Indians. There is no situation in daily life which cannot be interpreted in terms of this system of belief and at every point it reinforces the norms of conduct of the community.

If we turn to the ladinos we find a very different situation. To begin with, the moral horizon of the individual is not confined to a community of, at most, a few thousand souls. First, he is a member of a universal church. (Though Indians believe themselves to be Catholics, for the more traditional communities the priest has only a ritual and limited importance.) The ladino's Catholicism is much more nearly orthodox, though it includes deviant elements of belief and his conduct at many points leaves something to be desired by the Church. Second, he is a member of a national state. Its policy runs counter to the ideas of the ladinos, at least of the upper class. For one thing, it has been anti-clerical ever since the Revolu- tion fifty years ago, and has in the past actively persecuted the Church. For another, the central dogma of the Revolution concerns land reform and, in accordance with the agrarian law, land can be confiscated from the large properties and handed over to the landless as ejidos, while the Revolution was also committed to eradicate the system of debt peonage by which Indians were attached to the land. The first attempt to impose the new legislation in this area resulted in a rebellion which lasted for four years (I9I6-I920) and ended in a peace in which the rebel, General Pineda, virtually dictated his terms. Since then the legislation of the Revolution has been imposed gradually and with a certain circumspection. This is to be understood not only in terms of the wisdom of avoiding further strife but also of another doctrine of the Revolution: the autonomy of the local community. Political control is exercised through the Party of the Institutionalised Revolution -the ruling political party-which provides the structure of power, selects candidates for elections (not without careful consultation of local opinion) and

78 JULIAN PITT-RIVERS

makes key appointments. Officials interfere with the local community as little as they can and in this their views coincide with that of its inhabitants who show a highly suspicious attitude towards all outsiders.

While the ladinos of Chiapas are loyal Mexicans and as such are committed by their patriotism to the ideology of the Mexican Revolution which is taught in the schools, it can be seen that their aspirations at several points run counter to the aims of the federal state.

I have pointed out that there is a great difference of status and of culture between Indians and ladinos and that, while there is little fellow-feeling between the two, there is a great deal of interaction in the towns and nucleated villages. The fact of contact implies a certain community of values; common notions of reciprocal rights and duties or, if not exactly rights, at least expectations as to conduct and common understandings in all the fields of their interaction. Moreover, the off- spring of mixed unions (usually of a ladino with an Indian woman) join the ranks of the ladinos in many cases and augment the number of those who have crossed the ethnic frontier.

Thus, if the culture of the Indians shows a mixture of elements of both Spanish and ancient Mayan origin, that of the ladinos shares with Indians a number of features which owe nothing to the Spanish. This is noticeable in language, in witchcraft and curing, in religious conceptions and in certain festal activities. This is certainly not due to a conscious adoption of Indian customs. On the contrary, the identification of a custom as 'Indian' is enough, on occasion, to induce the ladinos to abandon it. For example, in one town the ladinos gave up participating in the jalada de gallos, the races in which a mounted man snatches a chicken suspended from a cord, on the grounds that this was an Indian custom. They were not aware that it is practised in Spain to this day. On the other hand, once a custom or conception has crept into ladino culture, it ceases to be identified as Indian.

* * * *

The ladinos can be seen, then, to be on the one hand associated with the Indian element of the community (which they despise) by traditions inherited from their individual past and by the requirements of their reciprocal roles which together have effected a fusion of the two cultures in certain regards, and on the other separated from it by the consciousness of their social status and by their ambitions and interests in the sophisticated outside world (which they distrust, but which they also emulate). They are subject to the influence both of local indigenous tradition and also of what I shall call 'metropolitan culture', between which they stand in an intermediary position, nearer to one or other according to their social standing,

By metropolitan culture I mean the body of customs and beliefs of the educated classes of the capital and the larger cities, that which is taught in schools and in- stitutions of higher education and propagated through the radio and the press; the ideas of those who teach, administer, run modern businesses and so forth, in contrast to the fused culture of the local ladino community. The two overlap, of course, and one can discern a certain progression ranging from the poor, uneducated ladino of recent Indian antecedents whose hold on metropolitan culture is slight to those who were sent to school outside the local community and who go

WORDS AND DEEDS: THE LADINOS OF CHIAPAS 79

periodically to the state capital or Mexico City for reasons of business, medical care or pleasure. The middle class ladino whose status commits him to a concern in metropolitan culture therefore finds himself at the crux of the conflict between its values and beliefs, and those of the local community.

Such a conflict manifests itself at two different levels: as an inconsistency between the ideologies of two different cultures which we, as students of those cultures, can perceive and as a contradiction between two different norms which confront the same individual and which he must somehow reconcile in order to adopt a course of action. The terms of this reconciliation are what determine the spheres of 'compartmentalisation' and 'fusion' of the two cultures in contact. How do the two conflicting systems of belief fare at the hands of social interaction? To begin with, we cannot assume that the inconsistency which we perceive presents itself in the same way to the consciousness of the individual unless we have already examined the way in which he interprets the norm in question. That which the ladino has learned of metropolitan culture has first of all to be integrated into his traditional frame of thought where it may not amount to the same as in the minds of the metropolitans. While the inconsistency goes unapprehended the two systems of thought can coexist in interaction as we saw in the case of the ceremonies of Holy Week described by Diaz de Salas. On occasion the same happy barrier of ignorance preserves the ladino's system of thought from conflict with metropolitan culture. To give an example, there is a conflict between the patriotic attachment to the Mexican Revolution and the traditional values of the upper class. This is resolved in the following way: 'revolution' is a prestigeous word; Mexican history is a series of noble rebellions culminating in the Mexican Revolution; the prototype of the hero is the revolutionary. The heroic figure who dominates the recent history of highland Chiapas is General Pineda, who led the landowners in the rebellion of I9I6 against the central government which at the time was attempting to impose the new legislation of the Revolution. The General is commonly referred to as a great revolutionary and his biographer, a local man, refers throughout his book (Moscoso I960) to the 'revolutionary cause' of his hero. The difference between a revolutionary and a counter-revolutionary is a fine point, relevant to a discussion of political theory, but not to the daily life of Chiapas. Rebellion is heroic in itself, and that is all that matters.

To give another example of an unperceived inconsistency, unperceived this time by poor ladinos and Indians: the activities of the doctor in taking the pulse of the patient are interpreted by those who have been taught nothing of medical science in conformity with their established notions of curing. The first act of a curer is pulsear, to hold the wrist of the patient and thereby to diagnose whether the cause of the malady is witchcraft and, if so, who is the witch, a fact which the curer knows but never reveals. He acquires this knowledge since the blood of the patient 'speaks to him'. The success of the local doctor in one town was attributed to the belief that, unlike other scientific practitioners, he knew how to listen to the blood. But, with a greater understanding of scientific medicine, the inconsis- tency becomes apparent and it is necessary to compartmentalise.

Just as it is possible for a bilingual person to speak two different languages on separate occasions, so two logically incompatible beliefs can be held by the same person, provided that the contexts in which they are thought to apply can be

8o JULIAN PITT-RIVERS

distinguished. In the folklore of Mexico there is a belief which relates to the classification of foods into hot and cold, not on the basis of their temperature or taste but of an innate quality which derives from the classical theory of the humours and which makes one or the other dangerous to take at certain times and in certain combinations (Currier I966). This belief is, needless to say, regarded as a sign of unsophistication by professional medicine, but it is held generally by the ladino population of Chiapas. When questioned about it, a lady who runs a restaurant- a member of a leading family in her town-denied any knowledge of its existence. Since the great majority of her customers observe its rules she could hardly have ignored it, even if she did not herself believe. She was sufficiently informed to know that metropolitans scoff at such ideas (and the investigator appeared to her as a metropolitan) and she preferred to dissimulate rather than appear uneducated. She compartmentalised. Another member of her profession, however, was less well informed: faced with a foreign tourist who declined to put ice in his drink on account of his doubts about its origin, he asserted that to take ice in the evening could do no possible harm since it is classified as a hot food: and only cold foods are dangerous at night. He interpreted the tourist's anxieties in accordance with his own system of thought and found sound reasons to allay them.

People do not necessarily believe what they claim to believe, nor even what they believe they believe at a given moment. A certain lady of the upper class once gave an account of the quaint beliefs of the Indians regarding witchcraft and firmly denied that the ladinos entertained any such superstitious notions. She added, however, a telltale phrase: 'Formerly, they say, there were ladino witches'. Questioned further, she remembered their names. A few weeks later, it transpired that at about this time a ladino living a few streets away had narrowly escaped being murdered as a witch.

Six months later it turned out that, in fact, this lady's sister was the chief curer of the town and used all the classical 'Indian' techniques, such as diagnosis through pulseando, curing through blowing alcohol, soplando, and making offerings with prayers to the house spirit in order to expel evil. The latter rite involved her in a technical difficulty now that concrete floors are fashionable among the well-to- do: she could no longer bury a chicken in the centre of the house; instead she buried two eggs in the adobe wall just above the concrete, saying: 'well, it's the same earth, anyway'.

With regard to such beliefs it cannot be claimed that there is no scepticism-any system of magic offers the possibility of doubt-and there are people who believe none of these things and others who believe some things but not others. Those who have enough money go to the state capital or Mexico City to be cured if they are seriously ill, but many also use the services of the local curers. Offered two systems of belief by the two communities to which they belong, the local community and the community of the educated, they tend to believe both according to context. One system of explanation does not invalidate the other. The doctor can cure, and so can the curer. The curer can also cause sickness and kill since he is also a witch. The doctor denies that the witch can do this and one would like to believe him. Yet, in discussing the matter of witchcraft the moment always comes when the investigator is told: 'yo no muy creo', 'I don't very much believe in it', and this assertion is commonly followed by a wealth of anecdote giving incontrovertible

WORDS AND DEEDS: THE LADINOS OF CHIAPAS 8i

testimony of the effects of witchcraft. Torn between an inner conviction nurtured by tradition and the desire to conform to the standards of the sophisticated, the ladinos endeavour to eat their cake and have it, believing one thing at the level of general statements while subscribing to quite different views at the level of atiecdote and conduct.

The degree to which people doubt or disbelieve in witchcraft depends upon their awareness of metropolitan beliefs. Therefore, unsophisticated ladinos are much less self-conscious in discussing it than those who have pretensions to education, for they are not committed to reconciling their traditional beliefs with the tenets of the metropolitans. Ladino belief in this regard has much in common with the ideas of Indians, some of which it appears to have absorbed. A fusion has taken place which combines elements of the Indian and Hispanic traditions into a single system of thought. Thus ladinos believe in an animal spirit resembling the nahual, yet it has a different character in their view. It more nearly resembles the witch's familiar in the European tradition, for while Indians believe that every person has a nahual which can be either a victor or victim in the struggle for spiritual power, the ladinos normally believe that only witches possess one and that they use it uniquely for perpetrating witchcraft. A similar distinction can be made with regard to the conception of permiso, the permission to bewitch. This is held to be necessary by both Indians and ladinos. Nevertheless it is still a very different phenomenon in the two communities, since it belongs in each case to a different conceptual system which operates in a different kind of society. In the Indian community this per- mission is believed to be given by the elders and the belief serves to reinforce the system of sanctions which regulates its moral conduct; in the ladino community it is thought to be merely the prerogative of the chief witch-since witches are believed to have some kind of organisation-it does not relate the power of witch- craft to the notions of offence and punishment and to the moral system, but to the notion of personal power which dominates the politics of the ladino world.

We can see from this example that a given item of belief has a different signi- ficance according to the conceptual framework in which it is placed. But the con- ceptual framework in its turn depends upon a social background. For the Indians the social background of the traditional village provides a consistent setting for the Indian belief system, but for ladinos it is different: the social background varies according to the place of the individual in the class structure and according to the social context in which he confronts the metropolis. The uncertainty of his beliefs relates to this. Hence we can see that for the traditional Indians the ideological conflict which the Conquest imposed has been resolved by the fusion of past centuries; they live in a consistent world where the norm is clear and the sanctions supporting it are powerful. The tenacity of their conservatism is related to this and to the fact that those who reject its sanctions can depart. The ladinos, on the other hand, whose culture is the product of a fusion, are also today a prey to the conflicts which have arisen in the twentieth century between the ancient tradition which they represent and that of modem Mexico.

There is, finally, a third way to resolve the conflict between local and metro- politan culture which is neither compartmentalisation nor fusion but which con- sists, as it were, in refusing to accept the credentials of the metropolitan representa- tives. In this way those whose land is confiscated tend to blame the individual

82 JUTLIAN PITT-RIVERS

official rather than the law. The law is quite right, they say, the landless should be given land, but there is plenty of national land available for them and it was due to the malevolence or incompetence of the officials concerned that their own was confiscated.

The priest, in one town, is sometimes treated in somewhat the same way when he attempts to reform local, religious customs. For example, the Christmas festivities centre round household shrines for an image of the Holy Child. This is first born in one fiesta (la nacida), then in a secondfiesta, a week or two later, is clothed and seated upon a throne (la sentada). During the evening the image is sometimes stolen (la robada) in order that a furtherfiesta may be given by the robbers when they return it (la parecida). Some of these images are thought to be very powerful, muy castigador, since they castigate with fire and disease those who fail to provide an adequate supply of liquor and rockets for theirfiesta. In this they recall the Indian ancestral divinity who is pictured among other things as a small child and is greatly feared for his capacity to punish but, unlike the Indians' ancestral divinity, the Holy Child has never been known to punish anybody for actions which dogma would define as a sin. The priest, understandably enough, attempts to restrain such customs but his interference has little effect upon the beliefs of the faithful. His remonstrances are not taken to heart but are attributed to an uncharitable disposition.

* * * *

I have given examples to show how certain beliefs of the ladinos contain elements which are shared with the Indians from whom it may reasonably be supposed that they diffused, how they come into conflict with the beliefs of modern educated Mexicans and how this conflict is resolved; it may remain unapprehended in the first place; if apprehended it lends itself to a compartmentalisation according to social context; or it may lead to a fusion as in the past, or to a refusal on the part of the ladinos to accept the ideas which emanate from the capital. But Mexico is a national state with a legal system and a body of administrators to impose its in- junctions. Therefore it is not only a question of how the ladinos adapt their ideas to metropolitan influences, but also of how the law is accommodated by local custom which transforms legal dispositions within the social organisation ofthe community, just as it transformed the festivals of the Church into occasions of which the priest disapproved and the celebrations of the Revolution into an occasion to honour the memory of the counter-revolution. A certain degree of fusion is indeed achieved in these transformations.

The Fiscalla (the organisation which collects taxes, suppresses illicit stills etc.) possesses the power to impose heavy fines upon those who evade its agents. Other officials also possess the power to control and to exert sanctions on those who default. They are entitled to grant permits and favours of various sorts: free medicine from the health service, permits necessary to cut down trees or to receive loans from the agricultural bank and so forth. These are among the many matters which are controlled by Mexican administrators. The legal background to these powers is varied, but in all cases the official's permission is required to do some- thing he might otherwise prevent, or he is requested to grant some favour he might otherwise withhold. A favour is something which must be returned and to the uneducated it is a matter of indifference, even if it is perceived, that in some cases

WORDS AND DEEDS: THE LADINOS OF CHIAPAS 83

the charge which he makes is legally authorised and in some cases not. Moreover, where the payment is for a federal or state tax, this is regarded as a tyrannical imposition and the official, if he has any humanity, will at least make a reduction in the imposable amount. It is common custom therefore to collect half the amount chargeable and to halve the remainder for the private benefit of the payer and the collector. A one-time employee of the Fiscalla gave his opinion that a controller who attempted to extort the full amount would not hold his job for long. Diffi- culties would be made for him and he would be denounced as drunken or mad, so that he would be dismissed.

It is significant that where criticism is openly expressed of an official for taking a mordida, a 'bite', it is normally not because he demanded one, but because the amount demanded was excessive. The mordida can in fact be considered as a right, recognised by custom, to payment in return for the goodwill of one endowed with the power to inflict sanctions, positive or negative. Gifts are necessary to secure the favour of a person in many contexts. This is equally true of the Indian community where they accompany the making of any request: for the hand of a girl in marriage or the services of an artisan, when a plea for justice is presented to the judicial authorities, or when protection is implored of the deities. The mordida may be likened therefore to the offerings made to saints in order to obtain benefits and avoid reprisals. It differs from them, however, in that offerings to the saints are an occasion for afiesta, whereas there is no enjoyment attached to giving a mordida to an official. The official pockets the mordida; but the fiesta is enjoyed by the offerer and his friends. It differs also in that, while custom approves this way of dealing with the officials, it does not regard these as necessary or desirable in themselves.

This summarises the views of the uneducated; persons of more education are aware of the theory which justifies the existence of the officials, and they are forced therefore to accommodate two, to us conflicting, modes of thought regarding the institution of the mordida. When the recipient is a member of the legal profession holding an official appointment, the problem poses itself in its acutest form, for he is bound to the ideals of the law on the one hand, yet he is also a local man raised in the traditions of ladino Chiapas. Thus, for example, the judge of one town maintained that corruption was the curse of Mexico and asserted that when a case was brought before him he considered nothing but the legal weight of evidence and the ruling of law. He gave only the purest and most 'indifferent' justice. On the other hand, he found it natural that for such good justice people should feel gratitude and that they should wish to express it in the form of a gift. Such manners are customary and to refuse is to offend.

Another example of the way in which the theory of law adjusts to the customs of the community is found in the explanation given by a clerk of the Court of First Instance (secretario deJuzgado) regarding the way in which cases of assassination for witchcraft are handled. The law of Mexico, he says, does not recognise the existence of witchcraft; murdering a witch is like murdering anyone else. Yet, in cases of murder the gravity of the crime relates to the motives of the murderer. A man who murders a witch believes that the witch is harming him or his family; he is acting in self-defence. This is an extenuating factor according to Mexican law and the local court is entitled therefore to use its discretion in evaluating it.

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84 JULIAN PITT-RIVERS

I attempted at the beginning of this article to outline two systems of belief, the Indian and the ladino, and to put them into relation to their social backgrounds. I first showed the coherence of the Indian community in this regard, and then I showed how the ladinos are subject to the influences of metropolitan culture and the dispositions of organisations that extend far beyond their horizons and possess a body of codified law or dogma. Whereas the Indian faces only a problem of interpretation within a single system of belief-is it witchcraft or not? mal bueno or mal echado, who is the witch? what was the motive?-the ladino is aware of an alternative system of belief which is foreign to his traditional way of thought, but which is at the same time prestigious and is in any case imposed upon him by the sanctions emanating from outside the community. He is able to fuse this with his traditional culture only to a limited extent. He must therefore compartmen- talise and recognise that the systeml changes according to the context.

Such compartmentalisation necessarily brings qualifications to bear upon the certainty of belief and the absoluteness and efficacy of ethical precepts; there is a choice of norms. This fact may be related to some of the characteristics which have been observed in the ladino communities of Chiapas by contrast to those of the traditional Indians. First of all there is the relative weakness of the sanctions of public opinion. There is no lack of gossip and much of it is critical, but the first rule of conduct is to avoid personal antagonism. People may fight, but they rarely reproach one another. Stealing is considered wrong but the victim of theft is usually content if he can recover his possessions without censuring the thief. Correspondingly, one is struck by the great licence which public opinion accords to individuals, especially adult men. Strong feelings are regarded as an explanation and a validation for almost any course of action and the wish to do something is considered a sufficient reason for doing it. 'Ast lo quiso', that's how he wanted it, terminates almost any enquiry into the wisdom or propriety of an individual's conduct. Personal relations and attachments and desires provide all the motives of action. While general statements of an ethical nature are not hard to elicit, they are no longer volunteered once it is a question of personalities, for here, as in Tzint- zuntsan, the structure of personal relations is composed of a network of dyadic contracts. I Judgements of people tend to be expressed in terms of personal relations with them rather than by reference to any moral normative rule: a characteristic which makes the ladinos of Chiapas happily free from any tendency to moralise. It has, however, this corollary: that, unsullied by the wear and tear of daily use in the determination of conduct, ethical statements retain all the purity of the high- minded feelings which inspired them. Therefore these statements often appear to relate to aspirations rather than to reality and to be indulged in, like a daydream, for the sake of the pleasure which they afford in themselves and without any concern for their possible application.

It would seem that people do not consciously conceptualise the distinctions of context that determine which of the conflicting norms they should obey and thanks to this psychological compartmentalisation they are able to evade the recognition that the stated norm of custom is so often not borne out in practice. This would explain the predicament which induced one anthropologist to report of a poor ladino community in Chiapas that 'sixty per cent. of marriages are irregular and exceptional'. Custom demands that girls should be requested in marriage of

WORDS AND DEEDS: THE LADINOS OF CHIAPAS

their parents and their union sanctified in church, rather than 'robbed', but only a minority achieves conformity with this custom. People know that the metro- politans approve of parental consent and church marriages and they would like to think of their community as representative of the ideals of the Mexican nation. But they are also aware of the elaborate system of pedidas, requests for the hand of a girl in marriage, which is followed by their Indian neighbours whom they have no wish to emulate. Moreover, other considerations come to the fore: the economic expense involved in formal marriage and the wisdom of not submitting to legal restrictions upon one's future freedom. The claim to conform to metropolitan ideals and beliefs is qualified when it comes to practice, as has been shown in previous examples.

This observation brings into question the general problem of the social function of normative statements. They may be made in order to justify or to induce a certain course of action or to establish a basis of agreement for the evaluation of conduct. They are selected from among the accepted values of the community in order to plead a cause in the court of public opinion; they establish rights to action and counter-action. But they are also made for another reason; they validate the image of the speaker or of his community and they can achieve this end merely by being stated; they do not require to be implemented. They might then be said to have ritual rather than political significance. Given the structural situation of the ladinos of highland Chiapas it is understandable that this 'ritual' function should not be neglected by them and that the normative should so often fail to express the norm. Yet, this does not mean that they are in any way insincere in their beliefs, nor that they do not appreciate the valour of those who determine to overcome the obstacles to the implementation of their stated norms. To incarnate the ideals of society is not the lot of ordinary mortals, but is reserved for those heroic figures who earn through this their charismatic command over the allegiance of people. As an elderly man recalled of Belisario Dominguez, the martyred hero of the revolutionary period in Chiapas: 'his word and his deeds were one'.

NOTES

For my research on this subject I am indebted to the University of Chicago Project 'Social, Cultural and Linguistic Change in the Chiapas Highlands' and to the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation who supported it.

The field-work on which this article is based, other than my own, is that of Calixta Guiteras Holmes, Lilo Stern, Esther Hermitte, Charles E. Mann, John C. Hotchkiss, Marcelo Diaz de Salas and the late Robert Montagu. I am also indebted to the historical research of Edward Calnek and Vicenta Cortes. Needless to add, they need take no responsibility for the con- clusions which I have drawn from their work.

It will also be apparent that I have leaned heavily on the published work of colleagues in attempting to cover a wide geographical span and to reduce a great variety of ethnography to simple generalisations. Since it would be impractical to acknowledge all and invidious to make a selection I have given no bibliographical references to ethnographical sources, but I do not mean in this way to conceal my indebtedness to them.

I Foster has elaborated this concept in his analysis of the formerly Indian Tarascan village and has stressed that this implies individual rather than solidary obligations (I963: I,I74). He notes that it is 'consonant with the atomistic or particularistic quality of society which an anthro- pologist feels so strongly when living in the village' (I96I: I,I9I).

REFEREN CES

Currier, Richard L. I966. The hot-cold syndrome and symbolic balance in Mexican and Spanish-American folk medicine. Ethnology 5, 3.

86 JULIAN PITT-RIVERS

Foster, George M. I96I. The dyadic contract: a model for the social structure of a Mexicart village. Am. Anthrop. 63, I,173-92.

Moscoso Pastrana, Prudencio I960. El pinedismo en Chiapas. San Cristobal Las Casas: published privately.

Pozas, Ricardo i962. Juan the Chamula: an ethnological re-creation of the ife of a Mexican Indian. Berkeley, Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press.

Reichel-Dolmatoff, Gerardo & Alicia Reichel-Dolmatoff I96I. The people of Aritama. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.

Spicer, Edward H. (ed.) I96I. Perspectives in American Indian cultural change. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.