Being the Third Generation in Tzintzuntzan
Concluding chapter
from (2002) Chronicling Cultures: Long-Term Field Research in
Anthropology. Robert Van Kemper and Anya Peterson Royce, eds. Walnut
Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
Return
to home
Being a member of the third
generation of anthropologists to conduct fieldwork in Tzintzuntzan has
indelibly marked the nature of both the data I collected and the
conclusions I made. If I had attempted the same project in a
field site unknown to the anthropological literature, my results would
have differed in far more than geographical nuance. Ethnographic
research in social anthropology training is still a solitary task, a
rite of passage that separates seminar-taking graduate students from
writing-up fieldworkers.2 However, by undertaking research in a
community already well studied by my main adviser (Professor Stanley
Brandes), and his own academic mentor (Professor George M. Foster), I
joined an ongoing dialogue that included my informants as well as those
of my predecessors. Through this dialogue, an ethnography emerges
that is both informed and inchoate.
Contributors in
earlier chapters of this volume have written about the history of
long-term research projects, the effect of continuing contact with a
community on their theory and method, and passing the mantle to the
next generation. My own vision is less expansive. From my
vantage point at the end of a Ph.D. program, I can look back with
clarity on the decision to choose my field site and topic, the
experience of conducting research, and the process of analyzing and
writing. But, until I begin an academic career and take on
students of my own, it will be difficult to predict how I will care for
the mantle I received. Therefore, in this chapter, I will confine
my comments to the advantages and disadvantages, the benefits and
frustrations, of being a third-generation fieldworker in
Tzintzuntzan. Using examples from my own dissertation project, I
will argue for the significant impact which receiving the mantle of
long-term research has had on the ethnography produced. I will
further suggest how joining an ongoing research project enhances
graduate training.
Joining a
long-term project
I did not enter the Ph.D.
program in socio-cultural anthropology at the University of California,
Berkeley with the intention of joining a 55-year longitudinal study of
the mestizo community of Tzintzuntzan, Mexico. My particular
research interest was religious change among Latin American indigenous
groups. Given my broad topical and geographic focus, I found the
Berkeley Department’s size and theoretical variety attractive. I
had also forged a relationship with a professor there who agreed to
become my primary academic adviser.
In my first year at
Berkeley, rather than hone my own dissertation project, I took
wide-ranging seminars and assimilated graduate-level reading
loads. The first-year cohort met twice a week in a seminar
designed to introduce us to major ideas in the discipline. On one
day, we would meet with the professor for structured discussion of the
readings; on the other, we students met on our own. We also
instituted a series of visits from current and emeriti faculty, who
would recount their intellectual autobiographies and familiarize us
with their ongoing research projects.
One week, George M.
Foster
was the guest professor in our seminar. I knew that Foster had
directed my adviser’s doctoral dissertation, when Brandes had been a
graduate student at Berkeley in the late 1960s. I also knew that
Foster’s recent generosity had helped solidify support for the
department library, which was renamed to honor him and his wife,
Mary. Until his visit to our classroom, however, I knew very
little about his work on peasant societies or his longitudinal research
project in Tzintzuntzan, Mexico. He described for us his initial
fieldwork in Tzintzuntzan and how he had unintentionally begun a
long-term ethnographic project there, sending teams of students during
the summers to research different aspects of life around Lake
Pátzcuaro. Although he had not brought graduate student
researchers to Tzintzuntzan since his retirement about twenty years
earlier, he still felt that many issues and changes in the community
remained to be studied.
At that point in the
semester, I was thinking about a summer visit to Latin America,
possibly a chance to scout out a site for my own year-long fieldwork
experience. Later, when I recognized Professor Foster at a
department function, I broached the idea of spending the summer in
Tzintzuntzan. He responded enthusiastically. We arranged to
meet to discuss the details, which turned into a weekly reading course
in the spring semester before my first visit to Tzintzuntzan.
That February, Foster and Brandes traveled to Tzintzuntzan to celebrate
the community’s largest fiesta of the year. On that trip, they
selected a family for me to live with and prepared them for my arrival
in June. Back in Berkeley, I had access to the most recent
ethnographic census data, so I immediately looked up the household
where I would be living and memorized the names and ages of all the
family members.
For my summer project,
Foster and Brandes advised that I select a project that could be
completed in a two-month period. Pursuing the theme of religion
seemed unfeasible since I would be present for only one of the major
fiestas of the liturgical calendar. Moreover, discussing issues
of spirituality and conversion would require greater rapport than I
could generate in a short visit. So, I prepared to focus on the
marketing of pottery, a topic that intersected with the changing
socioeconomic conditions in the community that influenced religious
life as well. Tzintzuntzeño potters, for the main, still
produced their ceramic ware using the same methods that Foster had
documented when he first arrived in the community more than a
half-century earlier. However, improvements in transportation and
tourism had modified the way artisans sold their goods.
The directed reading
course
with Foster and Brandes familiarized me with the literature on
Tzintzuntzan. Anthropological researchers in Tzintzuntzan, though
collegial, have tended to publish as single authors and in a range of
scholarly journals and monographs. To construct my reading list,
I included as many pieces about Tzintzuntzan as I could find.
From the first generation of researchers, I read the original
ethnography that detailed the ways of life in the community as observed
in 1945 . The first-year theory course no longer included
discussion on the nature of peasant societies, so I revisited the
debate about Foster’s formulation of the Image of Limited
Good. From the second generation, I read Kemper’s study on
the migration of Tzintzuntzeños to Mexico City and
Brandes’s examination of the fiesta system, neither of which
seemed directly relevant to pottery, but which later proved useful.
Entering
the field as the third generation
When summer arrived, George
and Mary Foster accompanied me to Mexico. We traveled with a
classmate of mine, who also planned to do research in Tzintzuntzan that
summer and had participated in the reading course. Even with my
advance preparation, I was taken aback by the physical beauty of the
setting: white-washed adobe houses on the edge of a lake surrounded by
jagged volcanic cones. The rainy season made the hillsides lush
with vegetation and the air clear and moist. The Fosters escorted
me to the house where I would be living, a wonderfully simple process
compared to what I had heard from colleagues who had spent the initial
months of fieldwork locating a suitable place to live.
The Fosters stayed for
an entire week to make sure that we two novice researchers began our
projects smoothly. Despite the diminished energy associated with
being in their upper eighties, the Fosters still maintained lively
friendships with nearly the entire community and included us in all
their socializing. They took care to introduce us to both potters
and merchants, who would be helpful resources in understanding how the
artisanry market had changed. They gave us advice on how to
conduct ourselves in the field as well as how to take assiduous yet
unobtrusive notes. With their imprimatur of legitimacy, initial
acceptance into the community came with unusual ease.
Unfortunately, the
near-universal welcome I received did not translate into productive
research. As it turned out, pottery marketing was such an
uncontroversial subject that neither artisans nor sellers had many
opinions about it. To the potters, their craft was simply an
inherited occupation and one of the few money-making activities,
however meager, on which they could rely. Beyond that, potters
and non-potters had little to say about their craft, how they sold
their goods, or what pottery-making meant to them.
But when a troupe of
Florida evangelicals pulled into the town plaza one summer evening with
clowns, puppets, and balloon animals, the whole town started
talking. My first hint that something out of the ordinary was
going to happen came during Mass the previous Sunday. After
giving his sermon and communion, the parish priest announced that a
free medical clinic would be held the next day in the town hall.
On Monday, after visiting with some potters, I decided to go see how
the clinic was going. When I arrived, I found a mob of
people. A whole section of the second floor was given over to an
optometrist, another office had become a gynecologist’s consulting
room, and the ground floor had been transformed into a bustling
pharmacy. Outside, dentists operating in a mobile van would end
up pulling 43 teeth that day.
I quickly noticed that
the nurses and doctors were North Americans, only some with a command
of Spanish. One of them, wearing a polo shirt and taking a break
from the clinic, noticed me and introduced himself in English. He
explained that he was part of a team of physicians and nurses from West
Palm Beach, Florida, who had been coming to Michoacán for
several summers to offer free medical clinics. I asked him if
they came with a particular organization. He answered, pointing
to the logo on his shirt, “The Church of Christ.”
During the day-long
clinic, there was no overt or even subtle proselytizing. When
they packed up the supplies and the building gradually reverted to its
government functions, I thought it was the end. I went into my
room to write up all that I had seen that day. My landlady, who
was used to housing anthropologists and understood that my project was
to see everything mundane and unusual, knocked on the door and
announced: “Something’s going on in the plaza.”
From the entryway to
our house, I saw flashes of movement and heard children’s squeals
coming from the normally sleepy town square. When I got closer, I
saw a clown enticing small children with animal-shaped balloons and a
school bus unloading blond teenagers. On the adjacent basketball
court, they had set up a makeshift puppet theater, microphone stands,
and loudspeakers. The clowns led the kids from the street back
toward the basketball court, where other visitors in sequined costumes
were encouraging the children to sit facing the stage. When a
ring of kids had formed along with some rows of adults standing on the
edges, the performance began.
Only a few of the
performers spoke Spanish, but that did not matter since they mostly
acted their routines to the words of a taped Spanish soundtrack.
A group of women singers led the chorus while puppets and magicians
entertained. The culmination of the event was the teenagers’
allegorical retelling of the New Testament in which God appeared as a
toy maker and Jesus as the doll sent to bring harmony to the workshop.
As soon as the play ended,
the preaching began. A Mexican took the microphone. He
talked dramatically about the importance of having a personal
relationship with Jesus Christ and his own miraculous recovery from
drug and alcohol addiction. He ended his sermon by calling
forward all those interested in delivering themselves to Jesus
tonight. Having read about the hostility evangelical faiths had
received in Latin America and having witnessed Tzintzuntzan’s own
strong Catholic faith, I expected the preacher to have few
takers. To my surprise, a woman came forward, then another, and
then several more until a group of thirty or so circled the
speaker. The Floridians joined hands around them in energetic
prayer.
In the days following
the
visit, I tried to understand why so many people had responded to the
preacher’s call. One Catholic informant, who did not join the
prayer circle but watched the event, told me, “It is a beautiful
message that there is one God.” Others complimented the
“beautiful” music. The only outright skepticism I heard came from
a sixteen-year-old girl who taught catechism to Catholic children:
“They don’t want us to love the Virgin. She is even greater than
Jesus. She is His mother. I just let the message go in one
ear and out the other.” In the play, the mother of Jesus was
dressed like a flamenco dancer. She stepped out of a group of
toys to receive God’s child, then faded back into the chorus of toys
for the rest of the play. The topic of religion did not prove too
sensitive for discussion, and it certainly roused the emotions of the
community more than ceramics ever did.
A pastor/physician
returned to Tzintzuntzan without the Florida crew the following Monday
for a Bible study and medical consultation. There were about
sixteen women present on the now barren basketball court. They
listened quietly as he read passages from Scripture, then became
animated when he closed his Bible and opened his medical kit. He
came several more Mondays and even talked of renting a more permanent
location for his consultations. By then, the summer had ended,
and I was scheduled to return to Berkeley. Though I failed to
discover anything remarkable about pottery marketing, I had honed my
qualitative research skills, confirmed my interest in the topic of
religion, and selected Tzintzuntzan as my primary fieldwork site.
Advantages
and disadvantages of Third-generation fieldwork
When I returned to Berkeley,
I felt both energized and focused. My foray into fieldwork
convinced me that I had a feasible dissertation project, which I could
summarize succinctly whenever anyone asked me. I began
formulating a research proposal and contacting faculty members for
advice. Neither Foster nor Brandes had pressured me or even
suggested that I return to Tzintzuntzan for my dissertation research,
but I felt a definite urgency to return. For one thing, the
religious landscape seemed to be mutating so rapidly that I was curious
to document all the developments. In addition, being in
Tzintzuntzan had been so enjoyable, a sheer bliss that rarely makes it
into the write-up and analysis of field research. The community’s
acceptance of my presence extended to a constant stream of invitations
for meals, parties, and even to serve as a godparent. Collecting
data was arduous, tiring even, but never dull.
A year after I had
returned from my first visit to Tzintzuntzan, I loaded my backpack with
notebooks for another research trip. This time I would travel
alone and remain in the community for a full year, from August 1999 to
August 2000. I had arranged to stay with the same family as I had
during the previous summer, since we had developed a good rapport and I
had cultivated a taste for my landlady’s cooking. My intuition
proved true in that religion was a topic of great personal and communal
interest in Tzintzuntzan. During the year I spent in
Michoacán, I regularly visited a dozen different evangelical
congregations around Lake Pátzcuaro while living with a Catholic
family and participating in the Catholic rites that dominated local
life. Although I was investigating a topic that no previous
researcher had asked about, I became increasingly aware of how the
preceding generations of anthropologists informed both how my
interlocutors viewed me and how I interacted with them.
1) The first advantage
I noted in the field was the ease of access. While it was true
that I would have had difficulties asking about sensitive religious
issues upon my initial arrival in Tzintzuntzan, it did not take long
before I had reached a high level of comfort with many
informants. Letters of introduction on official university
stationery impressed no one as much as a verbal explanation that I was
a student of “El Doctor,” their affectionate nickname for Foster.
Sometimes, if I presented myself as an anthropologist, but not
specifically as part of a team of researchers, informants would ask if
I knew El Doctor. When I would say “yes,” they immediately became
less guarded and more responsive to my questions.
The community had
become so
thoroughly familiar with anthropologists that I rarely had to explain
the goals of the discipline or the purpose of my project. They
took it as a given that outsiders would want to know about how they
lived and felt it a point of pride to inform me of the facts as they
saw them. It had been challenging enough justifying to my parents
the role of an anthropologist, so I was relieved to find that my new
neighbors felt perfectly comfortable with the idea. As one friend
phrased it, while introducing me to an out of town relative, “He’s an
anthropologist. That means he’s going to learn how we live, then
go back to his country to help people understand Mexicans
better.” I did not know if she was repeating what another
researcher had said or simply was stating her observations of
anthropologists’ roles. In either case, I saw no reason to
contradict her.
Tzintzuntzan had not
always been so accommodating of foreign researchers. In fact,
some of the most repeated anecdotes that I heard from neighbors
recounted how Foster had been mistreated during the early days of his
stay in the town. They jokingly told how a man had duped the
eager ethnographer into drinking water after tasting fresh mescal, a
combination known to induce vomiting. Their laughter belied their
embarrassment at how ignorant and closed-minded their parents and
grandparents had been. Now, they have come to appreciate the
interest of outsiders, which distinguishes their community from others
and helps generate tourism.
The frequency with
which I heard the story about Foster drinking mescal points to another
way in which being the third generation enhances access to data.
People in Tzintzuntzan not only made me feel at home, but also knew how
to relate to me because they saw me as part of a lineage of previous
researchers. Much of my daily activity in the field involved a
sort of informal intimacy, that is, visiting informants and engaging in
unstructured conversations that traversed several topics. Many
times, we filled the potentially awkward transitions in our chats with
gossip about other ethnographers. My predecessors had established
godparenthood ties as well as personal friendships over the
years. They had introduced their families to people in
Tzintzuntzan. While I was living in the community, I had periodic
access to electronic mail in nearby Pátzcuaro, so I acted as a
conduit for news between Mexico and the United States. In this
way, data gathering mixed with pleasant chats and became a true
exchange of information. Note-taking felt more congenial than
extractive.
At the same time, the
facility of acceptance comes with the danger of greater
expectations. Jose Limon’s description of “precursory”
ethnographers resonated with me in the field. As Limón had
experienced in his own fieldwork in south Texas, anthropologists must
contend not only with the group studied, but also with the
anthropologists who have preceded them. In my case, the working
habits of precursory ethnographers shaped the expectations for how I
should behave.
For instance, Foster
scrupulously collected data on traditional remedies, often with a tape
recorder. In my research, I did not find it as important to
document exact details of folk prescriptions, nor did I use a tape
recorder in my interviews. This occasioned some questions.
An older informant would sometimes interrupt a train of thought to ask
me, “Aren’t you going to write this down?” Or, she would make a
reference to how El Doctor used to record their conversations.
Another time a potter remarked to me that El Doctor used to stay at his
house until midnight watching how he fired his wares. For me, the
unspoken implication was that going to sleep at 10 p.m. made me a
sluggish fieldworker. Even though the specifics of the pottery
process were not so useful for my investigations, the expectation
existed that I, too, would study what those before me had investigated.
My social expectations
were also framed by the researchers who preceded me. When Foster
first arrived in Tzintzuntzan, he was already a Ph.D. with a salaried
job. Other researchers who started in the field as students later
returned as tenured faculty. As such, they have been able to help
families in Tzintzuntzan pay medical bills and send children to
school. They are generous with gifts from toys to televisions,
even sponsoring visits of Tzintzuntzeños to the United
States. During my dissertation research year, I was financially
dependent on a fellowship stipend for all my expenses. Though I
knew of families with great monetary need, I could offer little more
than emotional support. While the expectation to help financially
was never voiced, I nonetheless felt its pressure.
There also were
examples of past researchers’ misdeeds that influenced how I was
received in the field. These were expressed. Chief was the
accusation that I would never return after finishing my stint
here. Despite some fifty years of regular anthropological visits,
people in Tzintzuntzan clearly remembered the ones who never came
back. They had befriended these researchers and patiently
answered their questions, but then never saw them again. In some
cases, this had happened before I was born, but it still weighed on the
informants and, consequently, on me. Particularly in the case of
the colleague who had accompanied me to Tzintzuntzan in the summer of
1998 and later left the Berkeley Ph.D. program, I found myself
defending her motives as well as my own. Proving future
intentions was impossible, so I am especially conscious of my
obligation to return after completing my dissertation.
2) Another advantage
of working in Tzintzuntzan has been the availability of
resources. Even before entering the field, I had read published
accounts of the community as well as boxes of fieldnotes. I had
seen slides of the festivals in which I would later participate.
Yet, once in the midst of research, I discovered that the most useful
resource of all was an office and small library that the Fosters
maintained in the house of the family with whom they stayed when in
Tzintzuntzan.
Usually I wrote up my
notes in the room I rented near the plaza, but it was not a space for
reflection. The reason I enjoyed my living situation was its
constant stimulation – small children playing, roosters crowing,
customers entering, music blaring. Having a separate office
became increasingly necessary. The Fosters’ apartment was a place
without distractions and with comfortable chairs. There, I could
escape with my notebook to write more thoughtful prose, or I could read
through monographs and check census data in the files kept there.
On one occasion, a
non-governmental organization working with potters in Tzintzuntzan
asked me to give a seminar to its engineers on the cultural
explanations for local artisans’ unwillingness to accept
innovation. By their calculations, they were offering potters
more energy-efficient ovens with the possibility of producing higher
quality wares. Yet, families in Tzintzuntzan and other
communities were reluctant to incorporate the new techniques into their
pottery making. I remembered from reading Foster’s publications
that CREFAL (a UNESCO organization based in Pátzcuaro) had
attempted a similar project in Tzintzuntzan back in the 1950s, in hopes
of stimulating artisan cooperatives. It had met similar
failure. However, I had brought very few materials with me that I
could use to prepare a talk that would be both historically accurate
and useful for the engineers. In the Tzintzuntzan office, I found
the relevant citations with which I wrote a presentation that provoked
productive debate among the audience.
I also benefited from
the availability of human resources. At some point during my
fieldwork, I received visits from Foster, Kemper, and Brandes. As
much as I could, I participated in the once-a-decade ethnographic
census (coordinated by Kemper in the year 2000) while continuing my
dissertation fieldwork. In addition to the oversight and
troubleshooting I offered to Kemper and the team of local
census-takers, I profited from the chance to meet families from all
neighborhoods in Tzintzuntzan. In the end, the resulting
demographic data will also serve me in the chapter of my dissertation
that describes the community.
Another time, I
encountered difficulty with a particular informant. As a
self-styled historian of the community and former seminary student, his
perspective could have been especially helpful to my research.
However, he was also a pompous anti-Semite. In one discussion of
the emergence of evangelical churches in Tzintzuntzan, he spun a
conspiracy tale involving covert Jewish domination of the world.
He ended by recommending that I read the racist tract, “Protocols of
the Elders of Zion.” I did not hide my Jewish roots from the
community, so I found this accusation personally offensive.
Moreover, I was unprepared to dislike an informant so intensely and
worried that it would impair my ability to understand religious
movements in Tzintzuntzan. In an electronic mail to Brandes, I
explained my frustration, hoping for some general advice. His
reply was perfectly tailored: it turned out that when he had been a
graduate student, he also had found this man offensive and recommended
that I not bother trying to engage him further.
The ready availability
of resources also has its downside. Although the need for
reflection during fieldwork was undeniable and the office an oasis, I
found that it threatened to turn me into a passive researcher.
For example, I had to learn to rely on the census data volumes only
when I had a specific question about genealogy or household
arrangements. When I investigated on my own and asked questions,
the results were both richer and more up to date than I would find in
the volumes in Foster’s office. Similarly, I needed to balance
using the library with being an involved participant-observer.
Since my time in the field was limited, I could not justify spending it
reading what I could find later back in Berkeley. It proved
helpful to have resources at hand to answer strategic questions as well
as to highlight what remained to be answered, but I did not want that
to detract from my own discoveries.
3) Additionally, I
benefited from sensing that I was making a contribution. It is
axiomatic that beginning researchers will experience pangs of anxiety
in the field over the relevance of their project or their own ability
to complete it. When I was feeling most skeptical about the
validity of my findings, I could console myself with the thought that
at least I was adding to the body of knowledge about
Tzintzuntzan. Thankfully, the moments of self-doubt came
infrequently. Most of the time, the ease of access and the
availability of resources instilled confidence in me that I could
collect sufficient data to make claims in my thesis that would be
significant to the discipline.
It helped me that my
advisers gave me freedom to pursue the research questions that
interested me. The means of passing the mantle to younger
anthropologists in Tzintzuntzan is very informal. My initial
foray into the realm of pottery was meant to familiarize me with
ethnographic research, not to track me into a particular area of
inquiry. When I decided to follow the potentially divisive
emergence of evangelical groups in Tzintzuntzan, I received solid
support from other researchers. As a result, I feel that I am
conducting more than simply a restudy. I am setting new terms for
the consideration of religion in Tzintzuntzan. I am part owner of
the long-term project, and not just a graduate student for hire.
The frustration has come from
not being sure of my own expertise. Before I can claim anything
about Tzintzuntzan, there are boxes of notes, dozens of articles, and
several books that can contradict me. The knowledge I have gained
in fourteen months of fieldwork is considerable, but there are several
others whose time in the community dwarfs my own. In such
circumstances, it requires an inordinate amount of certainty to make
any assertion with authority. When I do feel confident in
describing, for example, a Catholic fiesta, I am likely to find it has
already been said in print.
I saw an example of
this undermining of authority when Professor Michael Shott, an
archaeologist from the University of Northern Iowa, came to
Tzintzuntzan to carry out a comparative survey of the longevity of
ceramics in several communities in Michoacán. He had
contacted Foster and Kemper in advance for advice and a list of
possible informants. I was visiting one of the suggested potters
when Shott appeared at the door. The potter invited him in, and
listened to his request for information on the age of various pottery
pieces. When he finished, the potter looked up at him from his
clay and asked, “Didn’t Dr. Foster already write an article about
that?” He quickly explained that Foster had indeed collected that
data decades ago, but that he was interested in updating the
information.
While it has helped me
to have advisers intimately familiar with the field site where I
studied, coordination between researchers has proved challenging.
The informality I referred to earlier that gives each member of the
team part ownership of the project can lead to disarray. There is
no central storehouse of data, nor any single format for recording
them. I do not know whether any of the other graduate students
who came with Professor Foster for a summer in and around Tzintzuntzan
recorded information on early religious converts. In addition, I
have no access to material collected by researchers who left without
completing their thesis or publishing their findings. Even among
those scholars with whom I have regular contact, our projects stand
independent of each other. Kemper and I shared the field
comfortably while he coordinated the year 2000 ethnographic census, but
the intellectual intersection between our projects never became
clear. Our common base seems more geographical than theoretical
or methodological.
Writing in
the third generation
In some respects, the added
scrutiny from both informants and other researchers encourages more
scrupulous scholarship. It increases the opportunities for
collaboration and correction, making for a more informed
ethnography. But it also produces what I consider “inchoate”
ethnography since there always exists the possibility of future
updating, modifying, or challenging of any of our findings. Any
ethnographic work is open to restudy or reconsideration in light of new
theoretical and socio-economic developments. However, in
long-term research projects, the possibility is nearly a certainty, and
thus becomes an intrinsic part of the writing process. In turning
my data into prose, I find myself emphasizing the historically
contingent nature of my conclusions.
There have been only a
limited number of ethnographies of conversion in Latin America, and
almost all have been situated in communities with a large evangelical
presence.3 In Tzintzuntzan, non-Catholic religious groups have
arrived only in the past twenty years, and have remained a fringe
phenomenon. By focusing my study on a community where
evangelicals make up only a tiny percentage of the population, I could
study the interaction between evangelicals and Catholics rather than
simply the process of conversion.
In contrast,
Annis conducted research in an indigenous Guatemalan community
where 20% of the population had become evangelical Christians.
His study draws sharp distinctions between Catholics and converts in
agricultural production, political behavior, and even textile
designs. He attributes entirely different “logics” to members of
these two antagonistic religions. Catholics adhere to a
colonial-era dependence on the land and accept the communal use of
wealth through the distribution of ceremonial expenses, while converts
aim to be self-supporting and reject as “wasteful” the payment towards
community rituals.
As evidence for an
evangelical interest in personal over collective advancement, Annis
cites statistics which show that evangelicals buy plots in the best
locations, plant higher-yielding crops, and cultivate them more
intensively. Evangelical weavers display more entrepreneurial
traits in selling their textiles and purchasing others’ textiles to
resell. Significantly, he records that converts opted out of the
“Catholic cultural tax,” the fees requested from every household for
the celebration of communal fiestas. “By all accounts,” Annis
concludes, “it is ‘cheaper’ to be a Protestant than a Catholic” .
I wondered if this held true for Tzintzuntzan – with a far smaller
proportion of converts – as well.
In a mostly
evangelical community, I would be inclined to focus on the ruptures
converts have made from the Catholic Church. However, in
Tzintzuntzan my perspective was wider. The depth of
anthropological observation there allowed me to see how the Catholic
Church itself had changed over time. I could also see how
conversion, though recent, had deep-rooted causes. Working with a
small number of convert families, I was awakened to the accommodations
they must make as a religious minority. Due to the friendly
welcome I received, I was able to elicit rich qualitative data on an
often prickly topic.
In analyzing and
writing up my results, I have come to realize that it would be more
fruitful for me to consider how evangelicals and Catholics in
Tzintzuntzan share many similarities. I did not find an
ideological cleavage between the two religious traditions; instead, I
noted how both groups valued personal advancement and the pursuit of
profit. At the same time, I spoke with several evangelical
families who continue to pay the “cooperations” to community-wide
Catholic fiestas. Though they recognize that the money supports
another church, they feel that the promotion of community harmony
outweighs any harm. Many converts maintain Catholic traditions
like praying to the saints and participating in fiestas.
Unlike Annis, I found
that the Catholic faith had adapted to modern life and did not remain
linked to a moribund colonial mindset. Minor celebrations in the
1940s have expanded and grown more elaborate by 2000. Migration
to the United States, in particular, has infused the fiestas with
additional money and given new reasons to seek the divine intercession
of the saints. For their part, Catholic clergy acknowledged their
ongoing educational mission by encouraging evangelical-like principles
among their parishioners. They called for individual reading and
interpretation of Scripture as well as the restriction of alcohol
consumption.
The conclusions I
reach in the dissertation suggest an alternate view of religious
conversion in Latin America, one that does not posit clear distinctions
between Catholics and evangelicals but rather highlights their peaceful
cohabitation. I am aware, however, that future visits to
Tzintzuntzan could undermine these findings if serious division were to
occur in the community because of religious differences. I also
must be careful to distinguish conditions in Tzintzuntzan from those in
other locations in Mexico, where evangelical religion has achieved a
large percentage of converts and, in some cases, engendered
violence. Still, my data support a novel contribution to the
study of religion in Latin America. With the decades-long
ethnographic record of the Catholic Church in Tzintzuntzan, I was able
to identify how it had changed over time in reaction to the emergence
of competing religious institutions.
Conclusions
Not only did participating in
a long-term research project have intellectual consequences for my
graduate training, it offered me practical advantages as well.
Ph.D. programs at large research universities require students to work
with a few faculty advisers in a mentor/apprentice relationship.
In departments like engineering and physics, graduate students carve
out a smaller project from a professor’s ongoing research. Since
their intellectual and methodological interests align closely, advisers
and students in those disciplines form close relationships.
Moreover, faculty members have a direct interest in the success of
their students’ research. This has not been the case in social
anthropology, where advisers may do research in an entirely different
country and language from that of their students. Participating
in a long-term project in which my main adviser also has a stake has
strengthened our relationship and made possible a more fluid exchange
of ideas.
My connection with a
long-term research project also has multiplied my opportunities for
professional development. National conferences like the American
Anthropological Association’s annual meeting receive more applications
to present papers than their schedules can accommodate. As a
participant in fieldwork in Tzintzuntzan, I had the opportunity to
appear at an invited session at the AAA meeting in Chicago in 1999,
which focused on many of the same issues that this volume
addresses. When the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the
University of California, Berkeley, hosted an exhibit of Foster’s
photographs of Tzintzuntzan, I was invited to be a speaker at the
public event accompanying the opening. In my slide presentation,
I updated the audience about the life of the community since Foster’s
original visit and shared insights from my own recent fieldwork.
Choosing Tzintzuntzan
as the site for my doctoral research greatly reduced the time it took
to receive my degree, a concern both graduate students and faculty
share. It eliminated the need for extensive pilot studies and
field visits to determine an appropriate site for research. In
the field, I enjoyed unparalleled access to individuals in
Tzintzuntzan, nearly all of whom received me with instant intimacy and
candor. In writing up, I benefited from a treasure trove of
published sources on the community as well as the careful attention of
my advisers. Throughout the process, I did not let self-doubt
derail me, because I felt certain my results would be relevant to other
scholars. All these benefits contributed to my completing my
degree in a time significantly shorter than average.
My involvement with
Tzintzuntzan so far has not been “long-term” by the standards of the
other scholars contributing to this volume, but I am acutely aware that
I am participating in a study that transcends my individual
effort. Being a member of a long-term research project has
colored how I experience the field as well as the conclusions I
draw. The topic of conversion from Catholicism has not been
explored fully in the corpus of Tzintzuntzan data. Though
evangelical families in the community remain few in number, their
presence is strongly felt and growing. My research will place
them in relation to the Catholic majority and consider how both
religions are modified and strengthened by the interaction.
For all the advantages I have
enjoyed as a third-generation anthropologist in Tzintzuntzan, I also
have had to endure frustrations. It was a challenge to establish
a research style and persona separate from that of my
predecessors. There was a larger than usual temptation to rely on
already-gathered material rather than to put my participant-observer
skills to work. Moreover, I will not have the opportunity to
introduce a new field site into the anthropological literature.
Instead, I will have the sense of caution that my arguments could be
easily questioned by a number of persons with research experience in
Tzintzuntzan.
Throughout my year in
the field, I sensed an extra set of eyes looking over me. I felt
the responsibility to behave myself in Tzintzuntzan, and not only
because many of my neighbors could easily inform my advisers of any
misdeed. I am aware that my time in the field will affect how
future anthropologists are received there. And just as I have
benefited from the warm relations cultivated by Foster and others, I
intend to make Tzintzuntzan an attractive place to those researchers
who follow me. Even before I complete my degree, I can state
confidently that the positives of participating in a long-term research
project outweigh the negatives. The environment in which I
conducted my research has helped shape the theoretical stance I
take. The dissertation that results may lack a splashy first
chapter describing a “new” field site, but the remaining chapters will
offer a fresh analysis on why religion has remained strong in
Tzintzuntzan over the years.
NOTES
1. Rabinow’s (1977) account of the
division at the University of Chicago Department of Anthropology
between magically transformed fieldworkers and earnest but naïve
pre-fieldworkers has held true for many graduate programs in the 2000s.
2. See Garma Navarro (1987),
Rosenbaum (1993), Eber (1995), Carlsen (1997), Chesnut (1997), and
Sullivan (1998).
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Carlsen, Robert S. (1997) The
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Chesnut, R. Andrew (1997)
Born Again in Brazil: The Pentecostal Boom and the Pathogens of
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Eber, Christine (1995) Women
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