identity, culture, ethnicity
The purpose of this paper is to provide an interpretation of some socio-cultural processes, historical development which enables us to define the reasons underpinning the current image perception of ethnic identity in the indigenous town Mazatec Mazatlán Villa de Flores.
Ethnic identity is not culture. Culture is an interpretation of social relations in which social actors are involved, is the symbolic expression of society that gives meaning to the representations of the world. The identity, on the other hand, is the way in which an individual or a group is defined as such. While culture and identity are two concepts strictly related neither can be reduced to another and both are part of a process, such that cultural change can also observe changes in the cultural references that define the perception of identity a social group.
The concept of ethnic identity is a concept problematic nature lends itself to various theoretical interpretations. For several years the focus of studies on ethnicity has been characterized by a marked tendency to reify the notion of "ethnicity": we could say that the ethnic group was studied and represented as an entity that exists to waive the context of ethnic relations, a subject that is generated without any external reference point, as the product of a purely endogenous. In this perspective, both theories are put to understand ethnic and cultural entities, such as identifying the interest groups fighting for access and distribution resources.
A radical rethinking of entificaciòn perspective on the notion of "ethnicity," just theoretical approach to identify each ethnic group with a defined inventory of cultural traits was carried out by F. Barth (1969) has shown the non-substantive, but relational and contextual ethnicity, with emphasis on the cognitive dimension. The identity of an ethnic group - the comment - is not a set of traits, and their difference from other groups is not "objective" because the elements that define it are those held "significant" by social actors, which eventually operate a choice based to which they build their own identity.
The rejection of the substantive perspective has also contributed considerably A. Cohen (1974) which took even more radical positions of Barth reducing ethnic identity functional response to organizational demands imposed by political interests. The risk implicit in this perspective is the devaluation of the role played by objective factors (environmental, economic, historical) which mouldition concur in the process of formation of ethnic identities involved, often a decisive, relationships ethnic.
To avoid reducing the performance of identity to the unique strategies of social subjects is necessary, as suggested by Scarduelli (1996) noted a distinction between a cognitive dimension and a structural dimension of ethnicity. The first includes autorepresentativas patterns of ethnic groups, social classifications and behavioral strategies, ie, the imaginary contents of ethnic identity, culture, the ethnic group associated with its own identity and place through a process of manipulation or invention of traditions and mental models. The second includes economic, social structure, the distribution of power and, in short, everything that helps to produce and reproduce the conditions of existence cognitive dimension of ethnicity.
This distinction is strictly correlated one, one that emphasizes the synchronic and diachronic aspect of ethnicity. The first includes the cognitive dimension and that structural, the diachronic aspect, but rather is constituted by the historical changes and social transformation processes that change over time and, outside the consciousness of social agents, both cognitive maps as the social conditions that are related (Scarduelli 1996).
A famous theoretical approach to the study of ethnicity in Mesoamerica has provided us Bartolomé MA (1997). According to the identity of many ethnic Mexican built on a relational category that opposes the Indian world to non-indigenous world, as the same title of his book "People of usual and reasonable people." This dichotomous perception of social reality among Mexican ethnic groups would be supported and sustained by cultural bases are redimensionalizaciòn appeals to their own cultural forms of indigenous or assumed as such, they acquire new meanings from their confrontation with natives models and mestizos. The manifestations of ethnic identity can be supported by some elements who take a symbolic in comparison with alternative identities (Bartholomew, 1997: 98). Bartholomew
then indicated in the cognitive dimension, the origin of the construction process of the ethnic identity of Mexican indigenous groups, which would be represented as such, mainly in opposition to the outside world through awareness of themselves, from the categorization of basic and generic cultural traits that allow self-definitions, which actually correspond to predicates awarded to the generic Indianness. This construction has contributed, inter alia, the participatory indigenismo, bilingual-bicultural education and institutional rhetoric, that led to the dissemination of anthropological language in ethnic areas, through its repetition, the identity assigned even be internalized by the recipients. (Bartholomew, 1997: 56).
According to this theoretical perspective, representative car models can be conceived as conscious product of human creations to become instrumental, or ideology. When the identity of an ethnic group is configured as an expression of a social, cultural and / or political statement is the same in open confrontation with the alternative, we would be in the presence of ethnicity (Bartholomew, 1997: 62). The concept ethnicity is characterized as the way it expresses the competitive relationship in the same social context.
Whether consciously transform the image perception of identity in an ideology, can become a rational instrument of political mobilization. In fact, in general, as pointed out by Stanley Tambiah (1989) about ethnic conflicts in the contemporary world, ethnicity is showing greater ability to act as political mobilizer class position or membership in a nation-state .
As we emphasized in this regard Dìaz JH (1998), claims made by indigenous organizations to explicitly express as justification for their demands or, a primary requirement, the recognition of their right to remain as peoples with a different culture. The defense of cultural specificity is an important aspect for indigenous organizations, which sometimes characterize the native culture as if it, were a static entity and clear. The significance of this defense is that the indigenous movement participants (organizations and various associations) are building an ideology to justify their claims, the recovery of the organization "traditional" is repeatedly presented as an alternative to overcome the current misery in indigenous communities and is presented as a model for the new society they try to (re) building (Diaz, 1998: 83).
But, as we noted above, can not be reduced to pure ethnic identities instrumental creations assuming that there is perfect correspondence between the set of social actors and their behaviors. Although the cognitive dimension plays a fundamental role in the construction of identities and, if you really want to understand why an ethnic identity or self-representative model, take root, spread and become a shared heritage, it is necessary to analyze the context and environmental conditions, economic and historical given, that is, the objective factors involved the emergence of ethnic identities, often beyond the awareness of the social and configurations have shaped the current social, political, cultural.
Through analysis of these elements, we aim to better understand the current image of ethnic identity in indigenous Mazatec town of Mazatlán Villa de Flores.
The construction of ethnicity in the town of Mazatlán Villa de Flores
The first results of ethnographic research conducted in the Municipality of Mazatlán Villa de Flores, suggest that the image of local identity Mazatec, it is not with a homogeneous definition all individuals and all communities of the same, but different definitions have been collected while contrasting each other. In accordance with the theories of Boege (1988) it appears that ethnic identity is more firmly in the communities that are in the highest area, known as the cold weather, due to a production system and still based mainly on economy subsistence. In fact here, rituals and habits seem to remain strictly belonging to an economy based mainly on the products in the fields, which in turn disappear visibly lower in areas where the market economy was introduced initially through the operation intensive sugar cane, coffee and livestock, farm resources difficult in offshore areas and cold climate. The cognitive references that relate more deeply with the construction of the image of the identity of this part of Mazatec population, are in a particular conceptualization of the territory and in the field of sacred strictly correlated, which roughly means for indigenous live off the land and believe that she is a living, magical, home of the gods and, above all, the basis of survival and reproduction of human beings. We could define these cultural references of traditional ethnic identity, as opposed to new pop cultural references, which owe their appearance to the reprocessing of the image identity in accordance with social changes that are occurring in the area, mainly due to the massive introduction of market economy and the consequent rapid process of "modernization" that facilitates the attraction of foreign cultural patterns and social action as the logic of the dominant society. Were also observed, important and growing phenomenon castellanización miscegenation language and culture with the consequent phenomenon of ethnic decaraterizaciòn. This kind of perception of identity is fostered in large features by the ever more frequent contacts with the outside, the penetration of mass media, the growing consumption of industrial goods and massive out-migration phenomena. In this scenario social
the traditional reference lose their own symbolic force and cease to be the cultural pillars of identity, leaving the new standards, the task of charting a different horizon in the construction of local identity Mazatec.
The traditional view of territory as a cultural landscape, or as a landscape constantly built and rebuilt by the Mazatec through an ongoing dialectic with nature, is a dense network of different meanings, especially sacred, imbued with a dense symbolism. Such symbolism draws a conceptual horizon, besides being space-time, provides recognition elements for a cultural group that has built on the strict link with the environment and their meanings, the budgets of their own identity. You might think that this vision has taken root along the ethnic restructuring period called when the Indians of Oaxaca groups show signs of recovery in their worldview severely corroded by the missionaries and agents of the Crown during the sixteenth century (Carmagnani , 1988). The sign of this recovery is the renewal of the covenant with the divine through the territory. The market economy with its capitalist profit logic completely alien to a subsistence economy inevitably leads to its introduction, a way of understanding the territory completely different from the traditional. The earth becomes a mere means of production, with new technologies, such as fertilizers and pesticides, can achieve at high prices, more abundant crops whose product can be offered for sale in regional markets and directs the attention of producers local search to the monoculture profitable to increase their income. This new concept of land as a means of production rather than living, is mixed with the appropriation of new conceptual categories from a new ecological awareness has a significant influence on the design of the territory. The intimate links between community, identity and territory, the idea of \u200b\u200bMother Earth, which became hard to be able to work in exchange for payment, as well as have the myths, disappears instead of conceptions that are in a sick environment that needs careful and priests on earth, a weakling who has to defend, innovative concepts that become more evident in accordance with the penetration of market logic and ecological. If at first, the earth mother asked permission, now she is to claim aid. The territory is gradually losing its sacred meanings, symbols lose their evocative power and spiritual turning in empty containers, formal ritual objects required by a tradition of common law that is always brought to a lesser extent, or in a more hidden, in the community context. It is producing a kind of mythical deficit particularly among the young, bone is a lack of common reference points, of sacred and undeniable, a symbolic dislocation dislocated left the individual about their own tradition. (Disgregazione cf. Crapanzano 110-15 )
Of course, after the acceleration of the modernizing happened in the eighties, with the advent of electricity and the construction of the main road, the basic concern of the Mazatec family has become basically the search for strategies to solve problems of income. One of these is revealed in a permanent or temporary migration to Mexico City and abroad. The phenomenon of temporary migration is often the subject of social mobility that generates tensions and conflicts within communities, the economic success and the consequent change of status facilitates the processes of assimilation and integration patterns of the dominant society. A rise in the social scale usually accompanied by acquiring the values \u200b\u200band "lifestyles" of classes rather shelves and actually results in a process of acculturation. (Eriksen, cit. In Scarduelli, 2000, 17).
social
In this scenario, the threat of the loss of local ethnic identity and despite the unavoidable presence of elements of social and cultural dislocation, the explicit desire (speech event mayor) of wanting to rescue the 'culture Mazatec 'and to strengthen ethnic identity, says the firm will of the community to continue to fight within the union community for its political and cultural rights. Items of cultural and social dislocation descaraterizaciòn not prevent the actors seek new strategies and formulate new standards of identity. Today
sense of belonging to the municipality of Mazatlan is powerfully represented in the concept of nashinandà; nashinandà is "the people" is "the community" and expresses a complex of meanings and intimate relations with this. The moments in which the concept becomes concrete nashinandà can fully realize its magnitude are essentially community assembly and slaughter. The convening power of the Assembly is quite relevant and you have to redirect mainly to historical events that occurred early nineties when people spontaneously rebel against the PRI cacique and dismisses the president of the people making that was unknown to the Constitution in August 1991. Melquiades Rosas Blanco, leader of the rebellion has "march and rally were required to obtain this result and the people did not stay organized, it was a spontaneous rebellion winner. Since then the town of Mazatlán Villa de Flores has been recognized by the state and municipal government of "uses and customs", where officials are elected internally, without the presence of political parties, when such recognition to date came and has spread to more than four hundred indigenous municipalities, the people or was waiting: it decided internally, and just (Wim Gijsbers, 1996: Interview with Rose M. White). The popular struggle against the bosses that has cost dead, wounded and prisoners, but has managed to change the social order that over time has become so important for today Mazatec is a widespread cognitive concerning political and social union.
symbol of community life is undoubtedly the task, social moment of collective work, meeting classmates and strengthening and renewal of partnerships facilitated by the use of shan, exquisite locally produced spirits, which pushes toward work and toward the fellowship , a custom in obvious contrast to the alcohol abuse that occurs daily and the most during the holidays when it appears sadly this reality is a cause of collapse of personal stories and even serious social problem. It is said that during the PRI cacique absences in the tasks were subject to a fine of forty dollars, today they are free and participation is massive. The strong sense of belonging to the Community Assembly and participation in the tasks, however, are not backed by the same feeling in everyday social reality, where, and even disappear without significant reciprocal relations such as mutual aid in a more individualistic and depersonalized horizon where interpersonal conflicts are daily for reasons inherent to the neighborhood above. The strength and the ability to call for the Assembly and the public at tasks, seem desolve in the social reality of individuals in the private sphere. One explanation for this phenomenon must be sought in a number of factors and historical, social and economic factors that guide us in this case, to the regime of land tenure in Mazatlan is totally governed by private ownership of plots, particularly significant to the extent that we agree with the provision that the land is what makes possible the commonality and feelings of reciprocity and mutual help develop more easily where the land is ejido or communal system. Besides the cash economy makes any use day laborers to cultivate the field, which are always performed more often rather than go to the custom of mutual aid. That's also why the relationships of reciprocity, to have a smooth operation, must be embedded in family relations and kinship and yet the basic social fabric is being torn apart by the massive migration that has been brothers, cousins, uncles and godparents working out of town producing deep fractures in the social network and encouraging, along with the neoliberal ideology, the trend in society toward individualism.
Mazatlan is not therefore, not the idyllic image of a communitarian society, nor the negative image of a society in constant disintegration, but a society that is experiencing a rapid change, whose historical and social dynamics are complex and involve changes in culture and in concerning individuals' mental and symbolically nashinandà has become a benchmark cognitive community identity and becomes ever greater extent a symbol of ethnicity and potential political instrument capable of leading the Assembly to a renewed ethnic consciousness. While
rebellion against Mazatlan Mazatec PRI cacique has been a pioneer and forerunner, the State immediately has developed a strategy to accommodate these movements in the binaries of the law on "customary" and not endanger their sovereignty in the territories. These actions together with the definition of the Republic as a multiethnic state aspire to a standardization of indigenous societies in the characterization of a generic Indianness. On the other hand the movement of resistance to integration that aspire to autonomy, may not have the tendency to reify traditions, moving toward the affirmation of what is held important to raise the visibility of indigenous identities, their existence and autonomy. This standardization is through modalities guided by criteria that the State can recognize. In fact, the categories used for self-definition of indigenous identities in part are those that belong to the cognitive-conceptual apparatus of Western thought.
gradually become evident the process of construction of identity in relation to the criteria of visibility and cultural policy are the current and panindigena idea of \u200b\u200bethnic resurgence and autonomy. These buildings, often articulated through the recovery of traits belonging to the mythical past. With regard to that is interesting to note that some of the informal talks I had with Melquiades Rosas Blanco has emerged that his desire to start Mazatlan Mazatec thought of as Mie Niyu, the usual, men who received room and were saved by the ants when, there is a creation myth, the world was flooded by the rains. The desire to "begin to look" as Mie Nyu reveals the need to build cultural references that give unity to a people and serve as "glue ethnicity."
The use of historical events, especially when dealing with a mythical history, can raise the sense of belonging and strengthen awareness of themselves to sponsor the result of achieving the appearance of an entity endowed with its own characteristics, an ethnic group.
definitely that is produced by a structural processes that affect the categories of perception of themselves and on the symbolic and strategic valences these categories may represent, yielding clear that taking account of ethnicity and identity through historical reconstruction memory, guaranteed in the political landscape hodiernal access to important new political spaces for the development of Indian thought in general.
models are apparently built against integration but are actually caused by the same modernization and broader participation in the national debate. Mazatlan
now reaches a new perspective to develop, the search for educational autonomy. Identity and education
New challenge to autonomy and emancipation of thought Mazatec is the institution of a senior high school in the municipality. The Bachelor of Mazatlán Villa de Flores is a very recent institution and only during his last year of life has been given its official headquarters in the community of Corral. For the simple fact of being so young an institution has some problems still not resolved and also the new educational direction you want to go will need a strong commitment from all parties involved in the project to can in a short time to respond to the community about the educational development of their youth. BMG
course (Bachelor of General Mazatec) is not the only educational institution in the municipality.
education of children is a process that begins informally within the family and continues with a formal education is taught in primary schools (regular and bilingual) and secondary (normal, Tele technical and secondary) in the Municipality before the students attend the high school. In these three stages of education the individual is faced with very different realities in the analysis based on a problem becomes immediately apparent that resides on the fact that the three educational courses are governed by different ideologies and interests and ideals different, sometimes conflicting. Traditional education, culture and reshaping state independent not give continuity to the training and socialization of young Mazatec and they need a research study that we hold explicit the philosophical and ideological foundations to allow harmonization of the educational process.
The main methodological approach has allowed a critical approach to the educational reality has been mainly psycho-pedagogical. This approach focuses on teaching-learning relationship with primary reference to the cognitive components of such a relationship expressing an unfortunate lack of an adequate analysis of the social and cultural contenidor which provide educational relations. Analysis becomes essential and necessary talking about intercultural education.
Education has links with society, is an integral and vital sector of the socialization process and as such can lead to structural changes in society. It is not a case through the construction of an extensive network of schools, the Mexican government has begun a program of integration and then the destruction of local cultures. The public school has become an instrument of acculturation has expressed his attempts totalizing soon. The culture of state that learn in school is not actuated in everyday life and has references to local paradigms and create cultural, social and economic conditions in the community.
The fact of not referring to the local paradigms encompassing both the contents of knowledge regarding the mode of transmission of knowledge (cf. Bauman 157).
If we organize the results of a brief ethnographic research on the issue of family education in Mazatlan and draw in very broad terms some fundamental features that appear in the traditional learning process, it is noteworthy that such education is carried out mainly through informal processes that span the entire world of experience Mazatec life. Young people learn their tasks Mazatec basically as a distinction of gender and age, watching the performance of his older brothers. Education is difficult given by parents directly to the children and there is no time or space formal education, more is learned informally and empirical, "seeing and doing." During the learning process does not emerge questions or talks around the aims of learning tasks, as if the conceptual and theoretical were directly held by the doing. In this learning process know-how is learned rather than an abstract knowledge. Knowledge is practical and seems to pass from one individual to another, you learn only through the realization that this practice is not to settle on a theory previously. They seem to conceptualize Mazatec thus learning and repeatedly say that they learned what they learned "alone", "no more watching" Mazatec many migrants have when they went to Mexico could learn, for example the work of a bricklayer, only watching and playing the way we work of professional builders. It would then be an indirect learning, practical, quiet, a practice done that needs no theoretical explanation which would be implicit in the practice of doing. It is as if knowledge does not reside in individuals but in the world and were available to men who would not be entrusted, but vehicles and makers of knowledge that anyone can access through the humble practice of observation. It seems significant
present a version of a myth that perhaps brings us closer to understanding the general form of learning or rather the Mazatec attitude towards knowledge, the following interpretation, shared some of Mazatlan Mazatec:
a bird of beautiful plumage that could not sing and would like to learn went to a singing teacher to take classes. But his attention to his beautiful feathers and his vanity was not allowed to follow the teacher's classes with due care and their presumption was never able to learn to sing. On the other hand outside the room where they had singing lessons was a spring that he was ashamed and could not participate in the classes because I had to be paid. But just watching and listening from outside the teacher's class could learn to sing in a way so beautiful that now announces the arrival of spring with its beautiful song.
Interestingly, among other symbols, as well as in the myth becomes evident in an indirect way, humble and silent. If these features can be assumed roughly as informal learning qualities Mazatec, are perhaps more clearly the difficulties that young students are when they are required from primary school, learning content consists of theoretical discourse, far from the paradigms of local knowledge in an educational environment where castellanizante originating language and culture have always been discrimination. Knowledge in school, stop being a know experience made to be the knowledge of the experience narrated or transmitted in theoretical form.
The school, in the educational landscape is presented as an educational alternative of a different ideology and educational policy in search of a direction closer to EU requirements and some teaching tools modern and efficient secured by consulting industry experts to fill specific Hodierna education system failures. However there is the feeling that the future of the Mazatec Indian educational institution depends more on the ongoing social processes of teaching concepts and language.
A school can not dispense with their students and those of BMG, forming a narrow elite of young Mazatec that several factors have been able to attend a higher educational level and which do not yet know the general profile of students, necessary when discussing the subject fruitores of training programs and learning subjects. Enfrentándonos to this problem, we soon realize that some specific analytical categories and consolidated technically can not be applied to this type of social reality. Interestingly, the analytical category of "adolescence" for example, usually applied in the study of problems pertaining to high school students here might not make sense, because in fact in Mazatec society adolescence there is traditional.
Children and the adult world are closely linked and there is no effective time of passage from childhood to adult world that involves so many traumas and problems that exist in a change so important in society "Western" where this time of life can be prolonged, sometimes even thirty.
These youth are then suddenly to fill a new role in society in which they live and experience adolescence without a prior reference point they know how to live, which means to be a high school student and what is your role in that company . Is experiencing a deficit of meaning typical of adolescence without a previous pattern or broadcast showing how to cope. The same deficit is experienced by the whole society that suddenly has to formulate new cognitive categories in which to place these new "full-time students." It is clear that this general lack of student culture can lead to identity crisis among young people, to the extent that leave conventional patterns of social behavior to take new directions. A highly explanatory reference ejemplicativa this speech belongs to the world of women, whose election to continue his studies at the height of marriage, traditional patterns, sometimes can cause deep conflicts within the society and, more general, the simple fact of reading a book while the other family members are working can be a cause of deep family misunderstandings. On the other hand, it is important to mention that feature the student profile of BMG is that everyone, without exception so far, come from families that have a strong level of migration of its members inside and see the school a chance to train their children so they can leave the community. This confirms, if necessary, the strict relationship between migration and indigenous identity. And this perhaps will be the toughest challenge for the school's educational policy, the fate of double vision, first trying to create a kind of intellectual and technical interns, through the decentralization of the system, restricting the programs about community problems and promoting a decrease of migration abroad and secondly, to respond to domestic demand, which under pressure concepts and practices of liberal education seeks to prepare them for confronting the outside world. Facing
more practical discourse, teaching at the high school graduates who attend the higher level of education, manifest difficulties especially in the English language literacy. This problem, together with the reasons discussed above, it becomes a hindrance in any school activity in understanding the text, long-term storage, systematization of oral discourse and especially writing.
general education is to guide or lead the rationale for individuals to rationally understand and transform the world around them: with background assumptions, higher educational work will have to compromise and adapt to a particular local reality endowed with a culture of constant change and renewal knowing move between traditional elements and global modernizing and addressing the profound misunderstanding and incompatibility of interest between the indigenous community and the school system. A proposed partial methodology could be directed towards finding practical elements in each discipline subject of education as the basis and starting point for research and learning. Also in the humanities can find a wide range of practices that are part of a system of knowledge taken for granted in the common school practice and yet are required without being the object of teaching at any grade level, such as knowing how to take notes, know how a piece, use a dictionary, look for books in a library, etc.
The most important and delicate phase of any project must refer to force your application to reality and the reality of education in indigenous areas is not so simple. It is not simply to formalize, regulate, legislate an educational model but also look at the acceptance of this model form of training resources, production of didactic material and above all the acceptance and internalization of the model by teachers and parents. It takes time and commitment, is the construction of a speech, a long-term investment that although construction is far more subtle, delicate and has the charm of concrete, immediate and exuberant brick buildings .
