Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Yanna Yannakakis is Assistant Professor of History at Emory University.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

"Meticulously researched and engagingly written, "The Art of Being In-between" opens new dimensions for social and cultural history in the complex ethnic tapestries of the Sierra Norte de Oaxaca. Yanna Yannakakis's narrative elevates the historical role of native intermediaries--"indios ladinos"--in the persistence of communal identities through ethnic rivalries only dimly perceived by colonial authorities. This book illustrates the power of human agency in the negotiations among diverse indigenous peoples, Church, and Crown within the contradictions of colonial rule."--Cynthia Radding, author of "Landscapes of Power and Identity: Comparative Histories in the Sonoran Desert and the Forests of Amazonia from Colony to Republic"

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

The Art of Being In-between

Duke University Press

Contents

Preface.............................................................................................................xixAcknowledgments.....................................................................................................1PART 1. CONFLICT AND CRISIS, 1660-1700..............................................................................33Chapter 1. "Loyal Vassal," "Seditious Subject," and Other Performances..............................................65PART 2. THE RENEGOTIATION OF LOCAL RULE: STRATEGIES AND TACTICS, 1700-1770..........................................99Chapter 3. Reform, Resistance, and Rhetoric.........................................................................131PART 3. THE POLITICAL SPACE CLOSES, 1770-1810.......................................................................161Chapter 5. Bourbon Officials........................................................................................192Chapter 6. From "Indian Conquerors" to Local "Indians"..............................................................220Conclusion..........................................................................................................229Notes...............................................................................................................261Bibliography........................................................................................................275

Chapter One

On Palm Sunday, 21 March 21 1660, the native officials of Tehuantepec, the district seat of the Zapotec Isthmus of Tehuantepec, presented themselves at the administrative quarters of the alcalde mayor (Spanish magistrate), Juan de Avelln. There they issued a protest regarding the high production quotas and the low prices paid to native producers of cotton thread and cloth through the repartimiento system of forced production and consumption. The alcalde mayor, who was notoriously abusive, berated the officials and had them whipped publicly and imprisoned. The following morning, a crowd of over one thousand from Tehuantepec and its outlying settlements gathered in the town plaza and made its way to the municipal buildings. When the crowd encountered the alcalde mayor and two of his assistants, it turned violent and killed all three. The rebels then took control of the town. They organized a local government, garnered the support of surrounding pueblos, and for a year maintained a virtually independent native polity whose control extended into the outlying area. In the meantime, the rebellion spread, in the words of Spanish officials, like "wildfire" to the neighboring districts of Nexapa, Villa Alta, and Ixtepeji.

Historians have debated the geographical scope of the rebellion and its political organization and objectives. Notably, Judith Zeitlin contends that the extent of the rebellion was grossly exaggerated by the lead investigator and judge (oidor) of the Real Audiencia (royal supreme court), Juan Francisco de Montemayor y Cuenca, for political reasons, and that Spanish conceptions of the rebellion as highly organized and premeditated reflected Spanish hysteria more than reality. Most historians concur that the rebels' objectives were localized and reformist rather than revolutionary and anticolonial. For the most part, native peoples directed their grievances toward the abusive practices of the alcaldes mayores and not against the colonial system writ large.

In the districts of Villa Alta, Nexapa, and Ixtepeji, all of which were located in the Sierra Norte, the uprisings that coincided with the rebellion in the isthmus were not as violent as in Tehuantepec. Whereas the Zapotecs of the isthmus turned against their native governors who administered the repartimiento on behalf of the alcalde mayor, on the whole, sierra pueblos responded with community solidarity. Despite the abuses of some native governors, in general the commoners maintained their allegiance to their municipal governments, and directed their violence at the alcalde mayor and his agents. These differences may be attributable to the less stratified social relations in these districts, in which nobility and commoners were more tightly bound through the ethos of reciprocity than they were in the more complex social hierarchy of Tehuantepec. But although the rebellion in Villa Alta did not reach the intensity of that in Tehuantepec, several smaller uprisings from 1659 to 1661, involving some four thousand natives, proved sufficient to put the alcalde mayor, parish priests, and the native officials of the region on notice.

The choice of human targets for the rebellion's violence-native intermediaries and local Spanish officials-points to the perils of economic, political, and cross-cultural mediation in a largely indigenous, peripheral region where the demographic imbalance between Spaniards and Indians was stark, and where economic demands placed on native pueblos were highly coercive. Until 1660, the repartimiento had operated for well over a century without significant resistance, in large part because native and Spanish intermediary figures had struck a balance between the productive demands of the system and the maintenance of a degree of political autonomy in the region's pueblos. Once the demands of the system upset this delicate balance, the region erupted in protest, revealing a crisis in the political and economic mediation that had kept the system afloat.

The rebellion of 1660 generated a flood of letters, reports, and petitions written by and circulated among the bishop of Oaxaca, the viceroy, local Spanish officials, and native leaders. This documentation reveals a complex process of soul searching, finger pointing, and historical revisionism as Spanish officials struggled among themselves to come to terms with the root causes of the rebellion, propose solutions to the social unrest brewing in the four affected districts, and recast the events to their own political advantage. The effort to make meaning of the rebellion in its aftermath opened a forking path. Would the alcaldes mayores of the districts affected by the rebellion ease up on the repartimiento demands? Or would they continue to squeeze the native labor to which they were entitled and use the occasion to diminish native autonomy in the interests of tightening social control? Bishop Juan de Palafox of Puebla, who had written vociferously about the abuses of the alcaldes mayores of New Spain, used the occasion to renew his call for the abolition of the office of alcalde mayor and the repartimiento. No such measure was ever passed.

Yet the official investigation that followed the rebellion made plain the risks inherent in failing to modify the coerciveness of the repartimiento. The lead investigator, Juan Francisco de Montemayor y Cuenca, detailed the abuses of the alcaldes mayores of the affected districts. Zeitlin argues that Montemayor's relacin was intended not to remedy the abuses of the alcaldes mayores but to impugn those currently in office so that his own "cronies" would replace them. Montemayor's machinations bore fruit: the alcaldes mayores of Nexapa and Ixtepeji were replaced. However, the alcalde mayor General Pedro Fernndez de Villaroel y de la Cueva of Villa Alta was allowed to finish his term...