Land and Labour in Central Chiapas: A Regional Analysis

Development and Change, 8 (1977), 441-463

Land and Labour in Central Chiapas: A Regional Analysis

Robert Wasserstrom

For some 30 years, the central highlands of Chiapas, Mexico, have formed the object of anthropological investigation and of detailed ethnographic study. Since 1943, when Sol Tax and a group of his students conducted preliminary research in the Tzotzil (Maya) community of Zinacantan, no less than fifteen monographs and full- scale ethnographies have appeared in print. With few exceptions, these works have concentrated upon Zinacantan and its immediate neighbour, the municipio (township) of Chamula (Pozas, 1959; Vogt, 1966, 1969; Cancian, 1965, 1972; J . Collier, 1973; Bricker, 1973; Fabrega and Silver, 1973; Gossen, 1974). Like other Maya groups in Chiapas and western Guatemala, Zinacantecos and Chamulas live in dispersed settlements (parajes) where they cultivate maize, frijoles (beans) and occasionally chile1 (see Map 1). More recently, George Collier (1975) has suggested that social scientists may learn a great deal about such communities by examining them as ‘refuge regions’, that is as marginal zones in which the social structure of colonial Latin America has survived almost intact. Like the Mexican anthropologist Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrb (whose book Regiones de Refugb provides the theoretical framework for his analysis), Collier contends that such people are obliged by a series of mechanisms to produce an agricultural surplus - a surplus which is then appropriated in almost feudal fashion by local Ladinos (mestizos). In response to these arrangements, he continues, indigenous men and women retreat more resolutely to their own villages, where they barricade themselves off from national society behind an elaborate array of customs, ceremonies and traditions. Paradoxically, however, their actions lend new force to prec&ely those ethnic differences which allow the area’s Ladinos to exploit them. In the words of another

441

44 2 Robert IVasserstrom

I

,+ -+ -+ - + - + -+-+

G U A T E M A L A

Map 1 : Zinacantan and Charnula, with respect to the Sierra Madre and the Central Depression

Land and Labour in Central Chiapas 44 3

Mexican anthropologist, Mercedes Olivera, ‘the traditionally colonial characteristics [of native communities] permit them to be instruments of their own marginality’ (1976: 92-93).

From this discussion, it becomes clear that both Collier and Aguirre have adopted a view of Mexican society familiar to most students of economic development, a view which holds that underdeveloped countries in many parts of the world are divided into two distinct social and economic orders. On the one hand, this theory states, the political and economic life of such countries is dominated by urban elites, new social groups which arose in recent years as a result of industrialization. On the other hand, outside of the cities, peasant villages and traditional latifundia, bound to a way of life which originated in most cases with European colonization, regulate their lives according to the time-honoured rhythms of agricultural production. Thus, for example, speaking of Latin America Horowitz has characterized,this division as ‘a rift between “classes” who inhabit the cities and “masses” of disenfranchised peasants and rural labourers who live in the countryside. . . .’ (1970: 141-142). In Mexico, such ideas have given rise to an ideology known as indigenismo, an ideology which may be summarized in the following manner: 1. in contrast to national society, Indian pueblos harbour neither social classes nor significant differences of wealth or power; 2. despite the large numbers of wage labourers who migrate temporarily from these communities, subsistence activities retain their importance in the native economy. Except in a few cases, wage labour sustains religious celebrations and practices; 3. the Indian is above all a peasant. For this reason, he is exploited not as a rural labourer, but as a producer of agricultural commodities.

According to contemporary theorists of indigenismo, then, and principally to Aguirre, native communities form the most marginal sector of traditional society, a sector in which ‘mechanisms of domination deny equality . . . and maintain the colonial situation by conserving within class society relations of social caste that are completely anachronistic’ (Aguirre Beltran, 1967: 18).

In the following pages, 1 would like to present another kind of regional analysis, one which examines the close relationship between native swidden cultivation in central Chiapas and modern commercial agriculture. Unlike Aguirre and Collier, I shall focus my attention not upon the activities of highland farmers, but rather upon those Indians who plant primarily in the adjacent Grijalva river basin. Because

444 Robert Wasserstrom

their own milpas (swiddens) do not produce a sufficient supply of agricultural staples, for example, many Zinacantecos (perhaps 85 per cent of the town’s adult men) rent such fields from Ladino cattle ranchers. Similarly, most Chamulas, whose highland milpas are one- tenth the size of their Zinacanteco counterparts, must labour for extended periods of time outside the municipio. Surprisingly, however, relatively few of them (25 per cent) rent lands in the Grijalva valley, and those who do so tend to live in parajes close to San Cristobal. In contrast, more than three-quarters of these men earn their living principally as wage labourers; indeed, half of them work each year on the state’s numerous large plantations. To what series of factors, then, may we attribute the markedly divergent patterns of occupation which characterize these two communities? I t is my contention that such differences reveal a fundamental aspect of indigenous social life; the place which native people occupy in the class structure of contemporary Mexico. And in the case of highland Chiapas, they indicate the complementary places occupied by neighbouring townships in an elaborate and diversified system of agricultural production.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF REGIONAL ECONOMIES IN CHIAPAS, 1821-1975

In order to understand such notions, we must first clarify our ideas about regional economic systems and networks. As Collier has rightly observed, such systems may be defined not only by their contemporary structure and form, but also by their origins and historical development. For this reason, it is useful to take a brief look at the agricultural economy of Chiapas since Independence (1821), and the ways in which it has altered the nature of Indian-Ladino relations. Beginning in 1826, and again in 1827, 1828 and 1832, the state government, bankrupt and disorganized, encouraged landowners to ‘denounce’ and entitle native commage and communal lands (Trens, 1957: 550-551). In this way, public officials hoped that they might meet the taxes and levies which national authorities constantly imposed upon them. Until 1844, their dreams remained unrealized and unrealizable: prospective hacendados, unable to ‘measure and demarcate’ unclaimed fields with accuracy, could not comply with these laws. Thereafter, however, surveying procedures were simplified until virtually any Ladino might acquire valid title to such lands. As a result, Indians who for centuries had farmed their own small

Land and Labour in Central Chiupas 44 5

milpas suddenly found themselves transformed into baldios - involuntary servants who worked four days each week for their landlords. Between 1838 and 1850, approximately 20 per cent of the inhabitants of Chamula suffered this fate, along with 30 per cent of their neighbours in such Tzotzil communities as Pantelho, Magda- lenas and Mitontic (E. Pineda, 1852). By that time, too, these townships had begun to feel the effects of a significant increase in population, an increase which placed enormous burdens on their already declining land base. In 1869, faced with this unresolvable situation, nearly 5000 Indians, led by men from Chamula, took up arms. After slaughtering the entire Ladino population of the central highlands, they were themselves defeated by government forces three months later (V. Pineda, 1888).

Despite their terror and apprehensiveness, Chiapas’ Ladinos soon returned unperturbed to their pursuit of wealth and fortune. In the years following 1870, they embarked upon a second wave of penetration and settlement within highland communities. For the most part, these new estates consisted of small, single-family ranchos, whose owners eked out a marginal existence. By 1909, as the long reign of President Porfirio Diaz drew to a close, such ranchos cons5;uted 84 per cent of the State’s rural properties, one-third of which had been established in areas formerly occupied by Tzotzil, Tzeltal and Chiapaneca Indians. In contrast, between 1880 and 1910, British, French, American, German and Spanish capitalists invested 4.3 million pesos in Chiapas’ burgeoning coffee industry, an industry which was concentrated primarily in the Sierra Madre mountain range (Gobierno del Estado, 1911: 95-102). By the end of that period, coffee production had reached nearly 5850 metric tons per year - a crop which brought foreign investors a handsome return on their capital. So important, in fact, did coffee become in Chiapas’ economy that by 1909 these plantations (which never represented more than three per cent of the State’s rural properties, absorbed almost fifteen per cent of all the capital invested in agriculture.

Even before the 19th century ended, however, plantation owners began to experience serious labour shortages. Like earlier agricultural booms, coffee cultivation along the Pacific coast quickly exhausted the area’s supply of landless and unemployed peasants. Equally problematic was the lack of local Indians, a fact which did not favour the development of a large rural workforce. Of the nearly 21,000 souls who inhabited the coastal region in 1897, for example, only 7400 were Indians, and fully one-third of the remaining Ladinos


resided in the city of Tapachula (Byam, 1897: 31-32). As for those Ladinos who lived in the countryside, they chose not to become plantation hands, but rather to raise cattle, sugarcane (for liquor) and maize with which to supply nearby estates. Faced with this situation, finca (plantation) owners began in 1904 to contract seasonal labourers through Ladino agents in San Cristobal (Pozas, 1959: 127). In general, these hapless workers, principally Chamulas, remained in the coffee zone for a period of months. Not infrequently, they accumulated such exorbitant debts there that they were not permitted to return to the highlands a t all. As a result, by 1909, the area’s population had grown to 36,641 inhabitants, an increase so rapid that it far outstripped population growth elsewhere in Chiapas. Together with temporary labourers, these new residents provided the plantations with almost 10,000 workers each year (Santibbiiez, 1907: 41; Gobierno del Estado, 1909: 52).

Curiously, Zinacantecos by and large avoided work in these fincas, as 30 years earlier they had refused to participate in the 1869 uprising. Having lost their best lands long before Independence, they remained largely unaffected by post-independence agrarian legislation. Instead, between 1820 and 1880 they maintained a steady population - which is to say that as many as 2500 Zinacantecos emigrated permanently from the municipio. With few exceptions, these men and women became wozos (peons) or sharecroppers on lowland haciendas in the Grijalva basin. In turn, the ready availability of such labourers permitted Ladino hacendados to expand and develop their holdings. Initially, these landowners devoted their energies to cattle raising, and sold their animals across the border in Guatemala. Thus, by 1838, the number of such properties in the area immediately adjacent to Zinacantan rose from 25 to 41. Then, too, in the central and southern parts of the basin, this figure increased from around 5 0 to 167. Later in the century, spurred at first by the 1844 land law and then by the development of cotton and sugarcane, these hacendados entitled virtually the entire valley (E. Pineda, 1852: 3; Gobierno del Estado, 1909: 52). And when this task had been accomplished, they moved out onto the scrubby, unwatered plains to the west and northeast. In fact, by the end of the Porfiriato, this area counted fully one-quarter of the State’s total number of rural properties. As for those Zinacantecos who remained in their hamlets, two contemporary observers, Flavio Paniagua (1876) and Enrique Santibdiiez (1907), noted that they made their living either as mule drivers or as itinerant peddlars. Taking advantage of the municipio’s strategic ,location

Land and Labour in Central Chiapas 447

between San Cristobal and the lowlands, these men maintained their traditional way of life by transporting cotton, coffee and wheat to markets as far away as Tabasco and Oaxaca.

Despite its wealth and prosperity, however, the Grijalva valley represented only one of several regions which, in the final quarter of the 19th century, underwent rapid and dramatic development. To the north, in the department of Pichucalco, Ladino landlords also denounced and entitled Indian lands on a large scale. By 1909, this area possessed only slightly fewer large haciendas than did central Chiapas and the Soconusco (the coastal zone). As for the number of ranchos, Pichucalco equalled the Grijalva basin. For the most part, these hacendados, like their colonial predecessors, cultivated cacao. By 1909, they harvested 514 metric tons of this crop - two-thirds of the cacao sold in Mexico, according to Santibiiiez. Then, too, Pichucalco’s haciendas produced one-quarter of the State’s maize, as well as significant amounts of sugarcane, coffee, rice and rubber. Similarly, the departments of Chilbn, Palenque and Simajovel exported large quantities of coffee, sugar, maize, frijoles and, in the case of Simajovel, tobacco. Apparently, such activities proved lucrative enough to attract foreign capital: on the eve of the Revolution, a number of foreigners (Americans, Germans and Belgians) had invested more than two million pesos in Palenque’s coffee and rubber plantations. In effect, then, expanding national and international markets divided Chiapas into a series of economic zones, zones in which one or two commercial crops set the pace and style of life for hacienda owners and peasant farmers alike.

In what ways, we might ask, did the Mexican Revolution (1910- 1920) modify and transform this situation? The answer to this question may be found in the actions of General Jes6s Agusth Castro, who in September 1914 became military governor of Chiapas. Like his superior in Yucatin, General Salvador Alvarado, Castro soon realized that he could expect little sympathy from the State’s large landowners, men who remained overwhelmingly loyal to the government which Castro himself had recently helped to overthrow. Hoping to weaken local hacendados, he quickly promulgated the Ley dc Obreros (Workers’ Law), a far-reaching measure which abolished debt servitude and company stores, established a daily minimum wage and regulated many other aspects of plantation labour. There- after, ranging the countryside, his soldiers returned many hacienda workers to their native villages - at gunpoint if they did not leave voluntarily. For their part, Indians in Chamula and Zinacantan greeted


these prodigal sons with mixed emotions. To be sure, many of them regarded Castro’s law as an act of providence. But other men quickly realized that these new immigrants placed a grave and nearly unbearable strain upon the community’s already fragile resources. Where, they asked, would former mozos live? Where would they build their houses? Who would give them land? In some parajes, of course, these questions posed relatively few difficulties. For the most part, however, highland residents simply could not provide for these immigrants. Without additional farmlands, Tzotzil peons remained dispossessed and unemployed. In Chamula, such men quickly swelled the ranks of seasonal labourers who worked in the Sierra Madre. As for the Zinacantecos, within a few years they began to petition for grants of ejidn land on Ladino ranches within their community, land grants to which they were entitled under the Constitution of 1917. And by the time they were given such parcels, 20 years later, local hacendados had established new and efficacious systems of unpaid servitude.

In order to understand these systems, it is necessary to consider briefly the course of development in Mexican agriculture after 1920. Unlike the pre-revolutionary years, Mexican farmers found that they had become increasingly dependent upon a single export market, the United States. Whereas in 1910 the US had absorbed only 3 5 per cent of the country’s foreign trade, this figure rose a decade later to 75 per cent. As a result, Mexican cotton planters, including those who lived in the Grijalva valley, watched helplessly when, in 1929, their exports declined catastrophically. Similarly, between 193 1 and 1935, sugarcane production throughout the republic fell sharply. But while hacendados in northern and central Mexico recovered from these disasters during the Second World War, landowners in central Chiapas, unable or unwilling to change their patterns of activity and improve their techniques, gradually ceased to cultivate such commodities. By 1950, therefore, cotton production in the Grijalva valley had decreased significantly, while throughout the State only 4400 hectares were planted in sugarcane. In the end, it was the international economy itself which destroyed that symbiosis of cattle and cotton that for nearly a hundred years had formed the mainstay of agriculture in the central depression.

Under these circumstances, local hacendados experimented with new crops and cropping systems. In 1922, for example, the German geographer Leo Waibel remarked that Chiapas seemed to be divided into a series of inter-related ‘economic formations’, specialized zones whose economic life was shaped largely by their relation to the State’s


coffee plantations (Waibel, 1946: 146-147). On the one hand, he noted, the central highlands, which produced very little by way of grain, continued to provide the Sierra Madre with its principal source of seasonal labourers. On the other hand, he suggested that Ladino farmers in the Grijalva valley depended upon these plantations to buy their cattle and corn. As the coffee industry expanded throughout the 1920s, therefore, low-land hacendados struggled to increase their production of these two essential commodities. Paradoxically, however, having invested their money in cattle rather than in irrigation or modern equipment, they continued to rely upon those techniques of swidden agriculture which characterized native farming. In order to combat their declining yields, they permitted Indian tenants from highland communities to rent unused or underutilized brushlands (monte). Initially, they demanded of these tenants both a portion of the harvest and a period of labour in their own enterprises. But within a few years, they abolished altogether those weeks of unpaid drudgery which, in better days, they had required of their workers. To their great satisfaction, they soon acquired a large workforce of Zinacanteco and Chamula arrendatarios, unattached peons who travelled continuously between highland parajes and lowland fields. In this way, they converted their uncultivated lands to maize at an unprecedented rate (see Figure 1). As for older fields, fields which had been utilized consecutively for three or four years, these might be left to recover their fertility or they might be used as pastures.

Given these events, we must now consider those bonds of kinship which in the years following 1920 united commercial agriculture and native tenant farming. As Figure 1 suggests, between 1930 and 1945, Ladino landowners in the Grijalva basin, stimulated by a national economic policy of import substitution, directed their energies toward the production of food grains for sale in local markets. Even so, their progress remained unexceptional : citing contemporary sources, another German geographer, Karl Helbig, noted that enormous stretches of uncleared monte still existed in the region around 1940 (Helbig, 1964: 52). As the United States entered World War 11, however, this situation changed dramatically. Faced with an enormous increase in international trade, ranchers in northern Mexico withdrew their cattle from national markets. Rather than sell these animals in Mexico City at domestic prices, such men preferred to do business in Texas and Chicago. As a result, farmers in southern Mexico, including Chiapas, expanded their production to meet the demands of consumers in the capital (CEPAL, 1975). In the Grijalva basin, they redoubled their efforts

450

4 0

30

2 0

10

Robert Wasserstrom

Figure 1. Rate of Increase of Cattle Production

and Land Area Planted in Maize State of Chiapas, 1930-1970

Number of c a t t l e

planted i n maize

8 -I 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970

Year

Land and Labour in Central Chiupas 451

to recruit native tenants, a task which was greatly facilitated after 1947 with the completion of the Pan-American Highway. As we might expect, this highway, which ran directly through Zinacantan, soon gave rise to a network of secondary roads, roads which linked lowland haciendas directly with highland municipios. As early as 1949, such developments had begun to change the nature of agricultural production in central Chiapas: according to one economist, Moisks de la Pefia, the large expanses of monte mentioned by Helbig had been replaced in many areas by elephant grass and other forage crops (De la Peiia, 1951: 11, 327).

At this point, it is useful to ask ourselves why lowland ranchers continued to employ Tzotzil tenant farmers rather than to recruit local men and women to work on their properties. In answer to this question, we must first note that, in the years following 1936, the federal and state governments, commited to a far-reaching policy of land reform, expropriated many highland ranches. In turn, these properties were granted to the inhabitants of nearby communities or to the mozos who had previously worked on them. In Zinacantan, for example, approximately half of the municipio’s families received lands (about 2 hectares apiece) taken from several Ladino farms within the municipio (Edel, 1966). Under these circumstances, lowland hacendados discouraged landless peasants from residing on their holdings - a situation which might lead to legal disputes and expropriation. On the contrary, as Figure 2 reveals, by 1950 they had not only retained their haciendas, but they had also reasserted their firm control over the area’s resources. Moreover, they benefited directly from the ejido grants which were made in Zinacantan. For such grants, far from freeing Zinacantecos from their dependence on tenancy arrangements, encouraged them to rent more land in the Grijalva valley. Thus, as Collier demonstrates, during these years men in the paraje of Apas raised only half of their subsistence needs on their own parcels - not enough to live on, but certainly enough to sustain them in the face of a poor lowland harvest. It is perhaps this fact, as much as other differences, that distinguished Zinacantecos renters from their counterparts in Chamula. Unlike Zinacantecos, these men received ho ejido grants and were therefore less inclined to undertake the risks of lowland farming.

Let us now examine the pattern of social and economic relations which developed between tenants and landlords during the past 50 years. Depending upon the fertility of their fields, Indian arrendatarios in the years following 1920 paid between 10 and 25 per cent of their

452 Robert Wassevstrom

Figure 2. Distribution of Private Farmlands in Central Chiapas, 1950

Per cent of Properties (deciles)

I 11

111 IV V

VI VII

VIII IX X

Per cent of Land Area

0.04 0.07 0.2 0.2 0.4 2.0 4.4

10.0 19.7 63.0

Per cent of Land Area (cumulative)

0.04 0.1 0 . 3 0.5 0.9 2.9 7.3

17.3 37.0

100.0

Municipios: Acala, Cornitan, La Concordia, Chiapa, Chiapilla, Socoltenango, Totolapa, Venustiano Carranza, Villa Corzo, Villa Flores, El Zapotal

Source: Secretaria de Agricultura y Ganaderla: Censo Agricola, Canadero y Ejidal, 1950.

harvests in rent. As a result, they sought to guarantee their access to unused lands, a right of access which they pursued by means of two different but interrelated courses of action. On the one hand, many tenants established semi-permanent leasing arrangements with relatively large landowners, that is, with those who promised to rent them virgin monte every two or three years. In some cases, these relations (which Indian farmers periodically renewed with gifts of sheep, fruit or money) lasted as long as 25 or 30 years. On the other hand, Indians who did not enjoy such friendships roamed ceaselessly from one hacienda to another. In this way, they hoped to find appropriate fields, which they utilized for short periods of time. At first, they confined their quest to those areas which could be reached easily by mule. But after 1947, the Pan-American Highway permitted them to explore untapped territories far beyond their former zones of operation.

I t was precisely this fact, together with t h d renaissance of cattle raising after 1950, which modified and reordered social relations throughout the region. According to one anthropologist, Frank Cancian (19721, Zinacanteco arrendatarios, spurred by the quest for higher profits, willingly cleared and cultivated these new fields. In so doing, they broke many of those long-standing patron4 relations which they


had forged with hacendados in the areas closer to Zinacantan. As a result, Cancian maintains, between 1957 and 1966, men from the parajes of Apas and Na Chih, departing from custom and tradition, changed their farming locations approximately every four and a half years. Moreover, in the hopes of increasing their harvests, they hired Indian labourers - principally from Chamula - to cultivate additional land. Using these jornaleros, many Zinacantecos planted four, five or even eight hectares - far more land then they had rented in previous years. By 1966, Cancian contends, almost 45 per cent of the men from Na Chih and 25 per cent of those from Apas seeded four hectares of milpa or more. By that time, too, CONASUPO and ANDSA, federal commodities agencies, had established a number of receiving stations in the region. In this way, many Zinacantecos, or at least those who cultivated larged quantities of land, were able to sell part of their harvest at official government prices.

What Cancian does not stress, however, is that Zinacantecos changed their agricultural habits only with great hesitation. As late as 1966, most of his informants - 56 per cent of Na Chih’s renters, 89 per cent of the men from Apas - still preferred to rent land within older, more established zones of operation. Because arrendatarios from such parajes, relying upon their collective experience, tended to farm together, tenants from both parajes continued to farm precisely in those locations which they had reached in the late 1930s (Wasserstrom, 1977). Similarly, despite the fact that some men expanded the size of their operations, most arrendatarios cleared and planted only two or three hectares of milpa, just as they had done 30 years earlier. If we calculate the area which most Na Chih men seeded (i.e. the mode, 2.0 hectares), we see that their harvests remained modest. More importantly, much of this corn found its way into the hands of landlords, truck owners and Chamula labourers (see Figure 3). Faced with this situation, many Indians, hopeful that they might reduce their transportation costs, had purchased their own mules and pack animals. Informants recall that possession of these animals, which gradually died off and were not replaced, encouraged Zinacantecos to farm within familiar territories.

Why did these men eventually turn their backs upon long-standing patterns of work and abandon their well-established zones of operation? In order to answer this question, it is instructive to examine the behaviour of tenants from two closely-related parajes, Na Chih and Elan Vo’. Between 1940 and 1950, both hamlets grew at the expense of more isolated villages. Upon completion of the highway, however,


Figure 3. Modal Na Chih Harvests in Two Parts of the Crijalva Valley, 1957-1966

Area 1 Area 2 Kilos Percent Kilos Percent

Gross Yield 3960 100 5 1 3 0 100 Rent 900 23 900 18 Labour 900 23 720 14 Transportation 360 9 486 9

Net Yield 1800 45 3024 59 __ __ ~

Source: Cancian (1972).

this situation changed considerably. Attracted by the new road, many Zinacantecos flocked to Na Chih, where they married into local families. Simultaneously, they placed heavy demands upon the already diminished stock of uncleared lowland monte to which Na Chih men retained access. Unlike their neighbours in Elan Vo', they began to rent land at considerable distance from the highlands, primarily in municipios to the south-east. So successful were they in establishing new operations, in fact, that by 1973, fully 80 per, cent of Na Chih's arrendatarios rented land in these areas. In the end, therefore, such men searched for new fields more in response to demographic pressure than as an expression of entrepreneurial spirit.

Contrary to their expectations, Na Chih farmers soon foun'd themselves enmeshed in a very difficult and highly complex system of economic relations. Although at first their fields were extraordinarily productive (157 units of maize harvested per unit seeded, according to Cancian), within seven years their yields had diminished by 30 per cent. At the same time, several hacendados, realizing that good lands had become scarce, raised their rents once again. As a result, Indian tenants paid landlords between 3 3 and 38 per cent of their harvests. In order to offset such costs, and to increase their own productivity, they pursued the only alternative which remained available to them. Without commercial credit, lacking technology, they preferred not to reduce labour and transportation expenses, as Elan Vo' men continued to do, but chose to clear and cultivate extremely large milpas, milas which sometimes occupied 15 or 20 hectares of land. Indeed, by 1973, most Na Chih farmers had augmented their operations from 2.0 to 6.0 hectares. Paradoxically,


such strategies increased their dependence both upon Chamula jornaleros and upon private truck-owners. For their part, these shippers, eager to capitalize on local prosperity, doubled their passenger and freight rates. By 1973, therefore, despite the fact that Na Chih arrendatarios farmed twice as much land as they had in 1966, their net returns remained virtually unchanged.

Under these circumstances, after 1973, Zinacanteco renters changed their production strategies and modes of operation. They simply reduced their use of hired labourers. In Elan Vo’, where most men rented within traditional areas, they refused to cultivate more land. Forgoing those temptations which had seduced their neighbours in Na Chih, they continued by and large to plant one or two hectares of milpa - the amount which a single man might cultivate without hired hands. By limiting the number of jornaleros they thus harvested enough maize and beans to meet their needs. Furthermore, even those few men who cleared larger areas (15 per cent) tended to rely more upon the labour of their sons than upon that of paid workers. Despite higher transportation costs, then, such farmers enjoyed net returns which far exceeded those of equivalent Na Chih enterprises. Even so, an increase of demographic pressure and a diminution of appropriate farmlands were soon felt among Elan Vo’s tenant farmers. By 1973, fully 36 per cent of the paraje’s adult men had reduced their rented milpas to 1 hectare, while 26 per cent of them had abandoned lowland agriculture altogether.

In contrast to Elan Vo’, only six per cent of Na Chih’s adult men had, by 1973, become rural jornaleros or urban labourers. As for those who rented land, these Indians continued to explore both new farming zones and new ways in which to organize their activities. Not surprisingly, they soon turned to a device which, a few years earlier, they had virtually abandoned: commercial herbicides. According to Cancian, the spray used by Zinacantecos

is effective in recently cleared fields . . . where broadleaf weeds rather than grasses are the major problem; but it cannot be used where beans are inter- planted with corn. In the early 1960s a good many farmers tried chemical weed killer, but many of them lost their crops while waitingfor [it] to work on old fields, where grasses were the principal competition for the corn.’ (1972: 60)

As long as these men farmed within traditional zones of operation, they possessed little incentive to utilize such sprays. By 1973, however, they faced renewed and intense competition for their lowland fields


from other highland inhabitants. In order to protect their livelihoods, then, Zinacanteco arrendatarios began once again to search for stands of uncut forest. In 1974, they farmed in the municipio of Comitan, more than 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Zinacantan. Pushing onward, they arrived one year later at the Guatemalan border, 100 kilometers to the south-east. Naturally, they could not hope to pay the prohibitive transportation costs and the high wages which such operations entailed. On the contrary, after clearing and planting enormous plots of land, they discharged their workers for the duration of the growing season. Thereafter, they applied chemical herbicides to their fields. And in so doing, of course, they indirectly encouraged the spread of grasses into such fields - a practice which accelerated the growth of pasturelands.

The irony is that it may well have been government commodities agencies, together with the new roads, which created this situation. In 1966, Cancian noted that such agencies ‘provide a stable base for the corn market, lowering the risk to truckers and other private buyers in the fields’ (1972: 85). Naturally, many Zinacanteco farmers, primarily those who grew large amounts of corn, preferred to sell part of their harvest directly to these agencies. As a result, they decreased their transportation costs substantially and acquired the cash with which to ship their unsold grain to the highlands. Further- more, he declares, receiving centres paid 880 pesos (US $70.40) per metric ton, a favourable price compared to other markets. In contrast, other Indians, those who cultivated modest amounts of land, avoided such agencies. Like their wealthier neighbours, they also needed cash to pay for transportation. Frequently, however, they did not possess the means to sell their corn to the government, a procedure which required both time and capital. Instead, they sold their surplus at a 10 per cent discount to private haulers who bought corn in the fields and resold it to official warehouses. Because they lacked both cash and credit, Indian farmers paid, in effect, a 10 per cent surcharge on their shipping rates - not an inconsiderable sum. Similarly, lowland hacendados soon realized that they might earn considerable profits simply by reselling the corn which their Indian tenants raised. As a result, they encouraged native arrendatarios to clear and cultivate even larger milpas and to hire greater numbers of jornaleros. And of course, the more workers these renters hired, the more cash they required at the end of the harvest. By means of such devices, therefore, ranchers and private truckers increased their share of Indian harvests until by 1973 they claimed 44 per cent of the total crop.


By 1973, too, problems of credit and liquidity had spread even to those arrendatarios who rented relatively large amounts of land. Indeed, only 2 3 per cent of these men, primarily those who planted 10 hectares or more, still delivered their grain to the government. At first glance, we might attribute this strange phenomenon to a rather simple and straightforward fact: between 1966 and 1973, the annual mean price of corn in San Cristobal increased by 140 per cent. Curiously, however, during these same years, the amount of maize which Na Chih arrendatarios sold in the city remained relatively modest. At the same time, they became more dependent upon their landlords to purchase their harvest. Moreover, another type of trans- action, one in which tenant farmers sold part of their prospective harvests to other highland Indians early in the year, placed heavy liens on much of the grain that eventually arrived in Na Chih. Faced with this situation, many Na Chih men - almost 10 per cent - ceased to cultivate their own lowland milpas. Instead, they became contratistas, that is, in exchange for a predetermined fee, they organized and directed indigenous work crews on lowland properties. In a word, therefore, economic growth in Chiapas ultimately reduced many Zinacanteco tenant farmers to the position of hired hands, of itinerant rural foremen who sold their services outright for corn or cash.

Before completing this survey of lowland tenant farming it is useful to compare the practice and behaviour of Zinacanteco renters with that of their Chamula counterparts. To this end, we shall utilize a recent study of 10 Chamula parajes, a study which examined the economic activities of nearly 1,000 individual households (Wasserstrom, 1976).2 Unlike Zinacantecos, men in Chamula make their living in a wide variety of ways. The reason for this difference is not complicated: whereas most Zinacantecos cultivate at least one or two hectares of land within their municipio, highland milpas in Chamula seldom exceed 0.2 5 hectares. Because these tiny parcels provide only about 11.5 per cent of the maize a family of five consumes annually, almost all Chamula men depend upon other sources of income. By buying small parcels from their more destitute neighbours, a few of them (nearly 7 per cent) have accumulated enough land over the years to cultivate vegetables for commercial sale in San Cristobal, Tuxtla or along the Pacific coast. In fact, if we rank these parajes according to the proportion of residents who live from horticulture alone, we notice that vegetable growers tend to be concentrated near the municipal cubeceru - that is to say, in the


area which, since the early 1950s, has enjoyed direct road communication with San Cristobal. Surprisingly, if we repeat this procedure with local arrendatarios (men who perform n o other economic activities), we obtain the opposite result. In this case, land rental is clearly associated with those parajes to which access roads have been constructed only in more recent years. Moreover, by correlating these two occupations - highland horticulture and lowland tenant farming - with other economic endeavours, we discover that Chamula is divided into two clearly defined micro-regions: one in which arrendatarios live side by side with seasonal plantation labourers, and one in which vegetable growers reside amidst men who work primarily on road gangs, as unskilled construction labourers or as domestic Servan ts.

Let us now consider more closely those family heads who rent land in the Grijalva basin. As Figure 4 suggests, their numbers vary widely

Figure 4. Chamula Tenant Farmers (% of family heads)

Paraje Proportion of Proportion Without Other Tenant Farmers Economic Activities

Calvario San Juan Lama’ Milpoleta Cruz Ton Petej Chik’omtantik Ni Ch’en, etc. K’at’ixtik

12.0 20.0 37.0 30.0 11.0 29.0 13.0 47.0

0 .o 1.7 4.8

17.0 5 .o 3.0 1 .o

18.2

Mean = 24.9 7.4

from oneparaje toanother. Nonetheless, i t is clear that by far the largest group resides in K’at’ixtik. Nor should this fact surprise us: both geographically and economically, K’at’ixtik constitutes an extension of the Salinas Valley, an area of Zinacantan which has engaged in lowland farming for nearly three generations. Like their Zinacanteco neighbours, men from this village first loaded their mules with provisions and rented land outside the municipio in the 1920s and 1930s. More recently, they have preferred to travel by truck to San Cristobal, and from there along the Pan-American Highway to their


farming sites. But Figure 4 also indicates the degree to which Chamula arrendatarios differ from their counterparts in Zinacantan. Whereas most Zinacantecos manage to produce enough grain and beans in rented fields to avoid other forms of employment, few Chamula renters live from their lowland milpas alone. On the contrary, in most cases, these tenant farmers spend at least part of the year working for wages in the coffee fincas, on construction projects or even as day labourers for other arrendatarios.

The explanation for this complex form of behaviour may be found in Figure 5. Like the inhabitants of Elan Vo’, Chamula renters have

Figure 5 . Net Maize Harvests of Chamula Tenants in the Grijalva Valley, 1970-1974

No. of Parcel Size’ Paraje Tenants (has)

C. San Juan Lomo’ Milpoleta Cruz Ton Petej Chik’ orntantik Ni Ch’en, etc. K’at’ ixtik

11 12 20 33 15 72 1 3 69

2.0 2 .o 3 .O 2 .o 2.0 2.0 2 .o 1 .o

% of Total Kilos Harvest

1026 39.0 2808 56.0 1368 33 .0 1030 44.0 4680 52.0 686 34.0

3528 76.6 283 34.6

.Mean = 39.0

*Parcel size = mode

generally limited the size of their parcels to 2 hectares. But because their costs are high, they frequently take home less than the 1.2 metric tons of grain which they require. Then, too, they often lack those time- honoured relations with Ladino ranchers that give Zinacantecos access to more desirable fields. Furthermore, the manner in which lowland renting itself is organized places them at a disadvantage. Even on more distant haciendas, Ladino landlords prefer to deal with their tenants through a single representative. In turn, this man, who is commonly called the caporal (foreman), distributes rented parcels among his companions; a t the end of the harvest, he also negotiates the payments which these arrendatarios must make. In most cases, however, landlords oblige such caporales to accept extremely poor or rocky land along with flatter or more irrigated parcels. Taking advantage of this situation, Zinacanteco caporales, who predominate


throughout the region, may deliberately include Chamula renters in their work groups - precisely in order to distribute such fields among them. In other words, these arrendatarios play an important role not only in preparing new pasturelands for Ladino hacendados, bu t also in maintaining the relative prosperity of Zinacanteco tenant farmers.

Having considered in a general fashion the relations between tenants and landlords, it is instructive to examine in detail the position which arrendatarios occupy in the economic life of specific ranches. To this end, I shall present a series of facts about one hacienda in the municipio of Socoltenango, a property not unrepresentative of Ladino farms in the 'new' cultivation zone. Finca Espinal contains approximately 300 hectares (the legal limit) on which the owner maintains 200 head of cattle. In addition to these animals, he also raises 50 hectares of sugarcane and 15 hectares of maize. Except during the cane harvest, he hires n o agricultural labourers. Instead, he relies upon his arrendatarios not only to clear overgrown brushlands, bu t also to labour in his own fields. In order t o attract a sufficient number of tenants, he regularly rents ou t almost 100 hectares of land.3 As a result, between 1970 and 1974, he acquired a semi-permanent labour force of 30 such men, Chamulas who planted their milpas several years in succession on his ranch. Under normal cconditions, these men paid the owner 25 per cent of their harvests - an amount which in 1974 ( a bad year) earned him approximately 52,500 pesos (US $4200). By comparison, his new 10-ton truck cost 150,000 pesos - so that, from land rent alone, he might have paid for it in less than three years. Moreover, his tenants agreed to work 12 days each preparing his cornfields, repairing his fences, etc. For this service, h e paid them 15 pesos a day, slightly less than half the legal minimum wage. And finally, in 1974, he purchased 7.2 tons of grain from arrendatarios who required cash to meet their operating expenses. By selling this corn to government agencies together with his own harvest, he realized an additional profit of nearly US $135.

CONCLUSIONS

From this discussion, it becomes clear that lowland tenant farming plays a far more important role in the economic development of central Chiapas than previous scholars have recognized. On the one hand, tenancy arrangements permit native farmers to invest their labour in extensive lowland swiddens, rather than in intensive (and easily disrupted) highland milpas. In this way, they overcome - at least


temporarily - the difficult problem of demographic pressure, a problem that would soon imperil the few agricultural resources which they retain. On the other hand, such arrangements allow lowland ranchers to employ their capital in ways which bring them the most immediate benefits. Thus, for example, they continue to use their money to increase their livestock, to improve its quality, and to expand their own commercial activities. At the same time, tenant farming enables them to cultivate lands which under more intensive methods might not be put to profitable use. Moreover, as we have seen, these practices did not arise in a haphazard or improvised fashion. On the contrary, they evolved in the lare 19th century, when a series of semi-isolated regional economies, stimulated by international markets, became joined into an integrated agricultural ecosystem. Within this system, Zinacantecos and Chamulas have traditionally performed different, indeed complementary, functions. Whereas Zinacanteco labour remains essential to cattle ranchers in the Grijalva basin, Chamula has provided seasonal workers to harvest the region’s principal export crop, coffee. And finally, in more recent years, many Chamulas have also begun to work as arrendatarios in thelowlands, a phenomenon which not only enlarges the local workforce but also enables Zinacantecos to cultivate the more attractive fields.

Under these circumstances, we must ask ourselves why indigenistas such as Aguirre and Collier have chosen to emphasize the marginal and isolated qualities of native agriculture. In response to this question, it is perhaps symptomatic that they have both made extensive use not of existing social theory, but rather of a series of metaphors taken from the biological sciences. Thus, for example, Collier remarks that ‘the position of Indians is analogous to that of prey in a natural food chain: Indians produce the harvest surplus, which the Ladino elite, through commerce, ultimately reap’ (1975: 136). In contrast to this point of view, 1 have shown that ethnic relations in central Chiapas, and relations among native people themselves, do not reflect the existence of colonial castes, much less the exigencies of Nature. No: the historical circumstances which have transformed one social group into predators and another into prey may be found not in their marginality but in its opposite, in the role which such groups play in regional processes of agricultural production.

How are these processes organized, what are their most significant features? AS we have seen, in the Grijalva basin ethnic differences become submerged beneath more fundamental differences of wealth, property and power. It is true, of course, that Ladinos appear most


frequently as landowners, coffee growers and cattle ranchers, while Indians labour for wages or (what amounts to nearly the same thing) for a portion of their own harvests. But we have also seen that as production itself has become more complicated in recent years, it has given rise to new social groups, intermediaries who span the distances between mestizo ranchers and indigenous peons. In this way, much of the region’s petty commerce has already passed into the hands of native truckers and middlemen; within Chamula itself, horticulturalists, not traditional political and religious leaders, now occupy a predominant place in the local economy. Surely, then, such facts must move us beyond both biological analogies and indigenismo, must require us t o examine those relations of class and of conflicting interest which agricultural development has generated in Chiapas - a region which, after all, contributes significantly to Mexico’s commerce in coffee and c a t t ~ e . ~

NOTES

1. In 1970, the population of Zinacantan was approximately 17,000 inhabitants and that of Chamula 55,000.

2. For the sake of simplicity, three of these parajes, K’alch’entik, Yaxalumiljo’ and Ni Ch’en, will be discussed as a single community.

3. I t is also significant that, like virtually all landlords in the region, he feeds his cattle on the harvested cornstalks - particularly during Chiapas’ dry winter months, when normal pastures provide little sustenance. Undoubtedly this fact, as well as his need for labour, influences the amount of land that he makes available to his tenants.

4. The author wishes to thank Kippy Nigh for her assistance in preparing this article.

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Land and Labour in Central Chiapas: A Regional Analysis

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