Tradition and The New Social Movements The Politics of Isthmus Zapotec Culture PDF

Tradition and the New Social Movements: The Politics of Isthmus Zapotec Culture
Author(s): Howard Campbell

Source: Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 20, No. 3, Mexico: Political Economy, Social
Movements, and Migration (Summer, 1993), pp. 83-97
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.
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Tradition and the New Social Movements
The Politics of Isthmus Zapotec Culture
by
Howard Campbell
Hobsbawm and Ranger's influential The Invention of Tradition (1983) has

called into question one of anthropology's sacred assumptions: that the lives
and customs of the peoples we study are rooted in tradition. The contributors
to this volume skillfully debunk the invention of traditions by states and
colonial administrators to justify their power; one researcher reports, for
example, that the most important symbol of Scottish identity, the kilt, is a
modern creation (Trevor-Roper, 1983: 15-41). Since its publication, many
other anthropologists have concluded that social practices often considered
traditional are in fact of recent vintage (e.g., Nagengast and Kearney, 1990a;
Whisnant, 1983; Handler and Linnekin, 1984). This trend has encouraged a
healthy skepticism toward "traditional culture" and caused researchers to
take history more seriously, but the invention-of-tradition literature has its
weaknesses. The danger in it is the creation of a true-false dichotomy between
tradition and invention,1 tradition being viewed as authentic and invention as
somehow illegitimate. This is an oversimplification of the complex cultural
processes of continuity and change, deconstructing one type of essentialism
only to replace it with another. A more fruitful approach would analyze the
dialectical relationship between tradition and invention and examine how
they intersect in cultural life.
Recent research in Latin America is concerned with a similar dichotomy.
A major focus of theory among Latin Americanists is the popular political
movements that challenge governments throughout the region (Foweraker
and Craig, 1990; Escobar, 1989; Eckstein, 1989). Writing on this subject is
known as the "new social movements" literature, but, ironically, amain thrust
of the work is determining whether these movements are really new or just
Howard Campbell is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology

at the University of Texas, El Paso. He has done research among the Isthmus Zapotecs for 11
years and has coedited an anthology of writings by Zapotec intellectuals and by anthropologists
who have studied the Zapotecs that will be published by the Smithsonian Institution Press. He
thanks Leigh Binford, Frances Chilcote, Mike Kearney, Tim Harding, and Federico Besserer for
their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.
LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECIIVES, Issue 78, Vol. 20 No. 3, Summer 1993, 83-97
i 1993 Latin American Perspectives
83
84 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
continuations of earlier forms of political activity.2 Much of the recent

discussion views them either as mobilizing new actors in the political arena
or as representing a categorically new kind of popular politics (Munck,
1990). In the case of Mexico, new social movements are often seen as having
arisen in the aftermath of the 1968 protest movement and therefore treated
as recent social phenomena (Foweraker, 1990: 7-9; Knight, 1990). From this
standpoint, such movements represent a rupture with past forms of political
organization and participation. This kind of analysis establishes continuity
versus change, tradition versus modernity, and old versus new as theoretical
antinomies.
In my opinion it would be better not to use such dichotomies at all.3
Uncritically accepted dualisms have permeated Western philosophy and its
social science discourses and are major obstacles to an analysis of cul-
tural/political movements. Dichotomous thinking profoundly oversimplifies
the historical complexity of social phenomena that are inherently dialectical
in the sense that the old is incorporated in the new and vice versa. I propose
that we study the ways in which tradition and invention, new and old, blend
and combine in cultural processes, as suggested by current writing in post-
modernist anthropology.
Here I refer not to the literary/textualist aspect of postmodern ethno-
graphic experimentation (e.g., Tyler, 1986), which has frequently tended
toward narcissistic excesses rather than revealing social analysis, but to the
emerging sociology of the postmodern (Clifford, 1988; Turner, 1990). Ac-
cording to Clifford (1988: 1-17), contemporary culture is characterized by
fragmentation, blurred boundaries, and pastiche (cf. Jameson, 1984). From
this standpoint, cultural life today is a collage of elements drawn from various
ethnic and historical traditions. Postmodern culture is a hodgepodge rather
than something pure, essentialist, or homogeneous. Postmodern individuals
construct their identities in terms of multiple emergent subjectivities. In the
United States this phenomenon is most evident in large cities like New York,
Los Angeles, and Chicago, but postmodernists argue that it is worldwide.
Thus the postmodern-collage metaphor can be used to further our under-
standing of cultural processes in peasant villages and small-scale societies
like the Zapotec of Juchitan, in the Mexican Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
Clifford (1988) suggests that instead of trying to determine whether
particular cultural complexes or movements are traditional versus invented
or new versus old, we should analyze the syntheses formed by their unique
combination of elements and gauge their political consequences. This per-
spective can shed new light on the polymorphous cultural and political
phenomena that are emerging in places like Juchitan. Building on the work
of Clifford, the approach I am suggesting combines a Marxian focus on class
Campbell / POLITICS OF ISTHMUS ZAPOTEC CULTURE 85
divisions and political economic change with postmodernism's analysis of

cultural collage and the multiple nonclass determinants of human life.
Marxist analysis is a necessary addition because postmodernist anthropology
has too often become bogged down in introspective discussions of the
fieldwork process or apolitical cultural analysis that begs important questions
about the power relations that shape culture (cf. Sangren, 1988; Brass, 1991).
Examining the Coalicion Obrera Campesina Estudiantil del Istmo (The
Isthmus Worker-Peasant-Student Coalition-COCEI) of Juchitan from this
point of view may produce deeper insight into the politics of Isthmus Zapotec
culture.
The COCEI is perhaps Mexico's most successful recent grass-roots op-
position movement. In 1981, it defeated the long-dominant Partido Revo-
lucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party-PRI) in munic-
ipal elections in Juchitan, making this the largest community to be controlled
by the left in Mexico since the 1920s.4 Juchitan, the largest of the Isthmus
Zapotec towns, with a population of about 75,000, is also the center of a vi-
brant indigenous cultural revival movement linked to the COCEI (Campbell,
1989) and the home of Francisco Toledo, one of the country's best-known
artists and a COCEI supporter. The COCEI won Juchitan elections again in
1989, another rare accomplishment in Mexican leftist politics. Although the
movement has suffered many setbacks, such as periods of repression and vote
fraud, its leaders have consistently argued that it is based on Zapotec tradition
(see Campbell, 1989, 1990a, 1990b; Rubin, 1987, 1990).
THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Oaxaca, one of the poorest states in Mexico, has 15 indigenous groups,

more than any other state in Mexico. Of these the Zapotec is the largest. The
Isthmus Zapotecs inhabit a hot, dry coastal plain with tropical vegetation.
The region is located near major transportation routes and economic mar-
kets, is a rich source of salt and fish, and has good land for farming, and
therefore many different groups have fought to control it (see Zeitlin, 1989;
Brockington, 1989; Tutino, 1993; Campbell, 1990a). Zapotecs conquered it
in the 14th century and maintained independence from the Aztecs despite
several wars. After the Spanish conquest they were involved in a series of
protests and revolts, the most famous of which is the Tehuantepec rebellion
of 1660, in which 6,000 Zapotecs killed Spaniards and set up a government
that lasted for a year.
Zapotec rebellions occurred throughout the colonial period and the 19th
century (Hart, 1988: 249-268; de la Cruz, 1983). In the late 1840s, Juchitecos
led by a charismatic leader killed local officials and reclaimed lands taken
by Spaniards. This rebellion lasted for four years before being crushed by the
Oaxaca government (Tutino, 1993). In 1866, in a major incident that galva-
nized Zapotec ethnic opposition to outsiders, Juchitecos wiped out a battalion
of Napoleon's troops. The last major Juchiteco rebellion was the Che Gomez
movement of 1911, during the Mexican Revolution, the second largest armed
revolt of the time (Knight, 1986).
After the revolution, life changed dramatically in the Isthmus. Formerly
the region had been very poor, but between 1930 and the 1960s relative peace
was maintained and there was rapid economic development (Binford, 1985).
Juchitan, located near the Pan-American Highway, became a major commer-
cial center. Until the 1950s, it had been primarily a peasant town with only
a few rich families. Economic growth led to the development of a rich
Zapotec merchant class that built large, elegant homes and bought cars and
stylish clothes. Streets were paved, and hospitals, schools, and other urban
facilities were installed. The majority peasant population, however, contin-
ued to work the fields with oxcarts and to wear sandals or go barefoot.
Juchitan today has the atmosphere of a city and a peasant village at the same
time. Pigs and cattle share the streets with fancy cars and trucks; modem
houses with satellite dishes are located next to adobe huts with dirt floors.
Class differences increased in the 1960s and 1970s as a result of two major
development projects: the Benito Juairez dam and irrigation system and a
massive oil refinery in nearby Salina Cruz. Heavy spending on these projects
created an economic boom. In the climate of unfettered growth and social
instability that resulted, land prices rose, and many peasants lost their plots
to businessmen and corrupt politicians (Binford, 1985). In general, develop-
ment made the rich richer and the poor poorer. The peasants blamed the
government and the wealthy Zapotecs for their problems. Whereas pre-
viously Juchitecos had united to fight against outsiders, now they began to
fight among themselves.
The COCEI was created in 1974 by Juchiteco student veterans of the
1960s Mexican protest movement. These activists organized displaced peas-
ants, recruited aggressively in poor neighborhoods and among workers and
younger students, and set up an extensive political network in Juchitain and
surrounding villages. The COCEI eventually included the majority of Ju-
chitecos. COCEI leaders claimed that the movement was the contemporary
manifestation of the Zapotec rebellious spirit expressed in earlier protests.
Their major tactics were land invasions, strikes, and other direct actions.
After years of struggle with the local elite, the COCEI allied itself with
the Mexican Communist party and won the municipal election in 1981. It
called its administration the "People's Government," flew a large red flag
with the hammer and sickle over Juchitan City Hall, and installed posters and
statues of Marx, Lenin, and Che Guevara in its offices. Yet the new mayor,
Leopoldo de Gyves, said that his governmentwas based on Zapotec cultural
principles. For two years Juchitan was a kind of political laboratory. Zapotec
was spoken in the mayor's office, land was given to peasants, and there were
frequent strikes and highway blockades. Radical graffiti and political posters
were plastered all over town, and politicized street theater performances took
place in front of City Hall. Pro-COCEI artists painted murals with themes
from Zapotec history on buildings, fences, and walls. Political demonstra-
tions were modeled on the local fiestas (velas) that are one of the prime
symbols of Isthmus Zapotec collective identity. COCEI rallies were a kind
of ethnic performance in which emotional speeches in Zapotec linked current
struggles to the "great Zapotec past." Juchitan became the most politicized
community in Mexico, reminding some of Nicaragua, Cuba, or El Salvador.
The media depicted it as a center of Communism and Indian rebellion.
At the same time, there was a kind of cultural renaissance.5 The Juchitan
Cultural Center assembled a group of bohemian Zapotec poets, painters, and
intellectuals, a sort of rural Mexican version of the Beat Generation, whose
members gather in local cantinas such as La Flor de Cheguigo (The Flower
of Cheguigo)6 and Ra Bache'za (The Rendezvous) to talk about politics, art,
and philosophy. Among the members of this indigenous intellectual circle
are Victor de la Cruz, a poet and the author of many studies of local culture
and history; Macario Matus, poet, folklorist, and chronicler of Juchiteco
history; and Sabino L6pez, a student of Francisco Toledo, whose brightly
colored surrealistic canvasses of Isthmus animals and erotica are attracting
attention in the United States as well as in urban Mexico (Campbell, 1990a).
While the COCEI governed Juchitan, the movement supported the intel-
lectuals and the Cultural Center in a variety of projects, including Zapotec
language classes, oral history research, and the publication of dozens of
books of poetry (Campbell, 1990b). A group of Juchitain writers and artists
founded a multigenre cultural magazine called Guchachi' Reza (Sliced
Iguana). (Iguanas are a powerful symbol for Isthmus Zapotecs and tne
COCEI because they are feisty and can go for days without food or water.)
Guchachi' Reza is devoted to Zapotec folklore, language, history, and culture.
Each issue contains colorful art work by Isthmus painters, ethnographic
photos, and historical documents. The quality of the writing and graphics is
excellent. There is nothing else like it in rural Mesoamerica. COCEI intel-
lectuals also set up a radio station in City Hall that became the first indepen-
dent station in Mexico to broadcast mainly in an indigenous language. Its
programming was oriented toward the poor and the peasantry as well as local
intellectuals and, in addition to Zapotec music and poetry, included dis-
cussion of agricultural techniques, workers' rights, and COCEI agrarian

activism.
In the summer of 1983 the Mexican government, no longer willing to
tolerate the COCEI's radicalism, impeached the leftist administration and
shut down its radio station. When COCEI activists refused to leave City Hall,
the government responded by sending troops to occupy Juchitain. The stand-
off lasted for five months. In this period, Juchitan attracted journalists from
the United States, Japan, and Europe, and stories about the COCEI appeared
in the Wall Street Journal and Time as well as the Mexican press. Amnesty
International (1986), in a report on human rights in southern Mexico, focused
on government abuses committed against COCEI members.
Finally, in December 1983, federal troops occupied the City Hall, and the
PRI regained control of Juchitan. After several years of street battles and
government repression, Juchitan gradually quieted down. The COCEI slowly
regrouped and began organizing peasants and running candidates for local
office. By 1989, it was once again strong enough to win the municipal elec-
tion, and it currently dominates the political life of the community (as of
summer 1992 the mayor was a coceista, but the PRI was also represented on
the municipal council).7
ZAPOTEC "TRADITION" AND COCEI IDEOLOGY
According to Robertson (1990), one of the most salient features of po

modern society is nostalgia in response to the increasing homogenization of
global culture. In the Zapotec case, this nostalgic turn is exemplified by an
intense interest in the "great Zapotec ancestors" (binni gula'sa') and the
"glorious" conflicts of the ethnic past. The COCEI has used claims of con-
tinuity with this past and cultural authenticity as weapons in its political strug-
gles. COCEI ideology invokes a selective view of history and Zapotec culture
to legitimate the movement's current politics.8 This ideology has two main
dimensions: continuity and parallelism. The COCEI is viewed as the contin-
uation of Zapotec struggles for independence since pre-Hispanic times. In a
speech delivered to President Carlos Salinas, Juchitan mayor Hector Sanchez
expressed these ideas as follows:
The Zapotec were the first to rebel against the arbitrary actions of colonialism.
In 1660, a group of valiant women, tired of seeing their dignity and rights
trampled on, led the struggle against the Spanish.
Our struggle, Mr. President, has always focused on democracy and the right
to land. Che Gregorio Melendres, Che G6mez, Heliodoro Charis, Adolfo C.
Gurri6n, Roque Robles, and Valentfn Carrasco [Zapotec heroes] are examples
of the dignity of the Isthmians who gave their lives for the defense of their
lands and for justice and democracy founded on reason and rights (COCEI,
1990: 1, my translation).
When COCEI members fought the Mexican army in Juchitan in 1983, they
compared their actions to Che Gomez's fight against the federales during the
revolution. The three main COCEI leaders model their behavior on that of
charismatic leaders like Gomez. In Juchitan, the past is very much alive in
the present. Dead COCEI members are treated as martyrs and compared to
the heroes of local folklore. This has a particularly powerful effect because
the cult of the dead is very strong in Zapotec society. Most Zapotec homes
are decorated with dozens of photographs of deceased relatives, sometimes
placed on small shrines, and cemeteries are the sites of elaborate rituals
dedicated to the dead. The COCEI has exploited this cultural concern with
the dead to generate support for the movement. Since 1974, 25-30 coceistas
have been killed by police, soldiers, or right-wing gunmen (Amnesty Inter-
national, 1986), and they serve as a rallying point. Placards, banners, and
posters bear their images, and poems and songs are composed in their honor.
Their female relatives sometimes wear pictures of them around their necks.
No COCEI demonstration is complete without chants of "Free Victor Yodo!"
(referring to a popular COCEI activist "disappeared" by the Mexican military
since 1978).
Zapotec women are also a major theme in COCEI ideology. According to
Mexican folklore, Isthmus Zapotec society is matriarchal (see Chinias, 1983;
Campbell, 1990a), and the COCEI seizes on Zapotec women's powerful
image in photographs and posters that show them protesting against the
government dressed in colorful huipiles and long, flowing skirts. COCEI
intellectuals say that these women carry on the tradition of a Zapotec woman
who killed a Spaniard during the Tehuantepec rebellion. Thus Isthmus
women become key symbols of defiance, Zapotec ethnic identity, and
conservation of tradition. Depicted as heroines and the wives and mothers of
martyrs (analogous to the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina), they
are also repositories of moral righteousness and militancy. In photographs
portraying their market role-carrying baskets of totopos (a local variety of
tortilla), fish, hammocks, or iguanas on their heads-women represent
industry and the nurturing of the community. With these images and symbols
the COCEI has tapped into the rich community oral tradition and national
mythology about "matriarchal" Zapotecs that continues to shape both local
and external perceptions of Isthmus women.9
The leaders explain these ideas at the COCEI's large, colorful political
demonstrations, which may draw as many as 10,000. Apparently spontaneous
events, they are in fact carefully planned to resemble Isthmus fiestas. Women
dress up in their bright ethnic costumes and gold jewelry. There are proc
sions with bands in which women and men are segregated and carry banners.
Marimba music fills the air, fireworks explode, women sprinkle red confetti
on people's hair, and other ritualized activities associated with Zapotec
fiestas occur at appropriate intervals (Campbell, 1989). The speeches are
almost always in the native language and tend to include picaresque jokes in
Zapotec that only insiders can understand (Campbell, 1990a). COCEI crowds
respond enthusiastically with applause, cheers, and laughter. Speakers praise
Zapotec society and attack capitalism. They use terms such as guendalizaa
(sharing and cooperation) and tequio (communal work) as familial metaphors
for the movement's political activities.10
COCEI members call each other bichi, a kinship term which implies that
all Zapotec men are brothers. They give their children Zapotec names such
as Sicabi (Like the wind), Nadxielii (I love you), or Guie'xhuuba' (Jasmine),
and they deliberately speak Zapotec instead of Spanish (although most
Juchitecos are bilingual). COCEI leaders defend peasant agriculture, local
arts and crafts, and the indigenous marketplace and criticize agribusiness, the
oil refinery, and big retail merchants. They argue that local cultigens such as
zapalote corn are superior to the sugarcane and rice introduced by the
government and that the oil refinery pollutes the air and the water. They claim
that the refinery has produced profits for the government but given nothing
to local people. Conversely, they view crafts such as hammock and pottery
making as preserving local traditions. Likewise, they see the female-run
marketplace where produce, women's ethnic clothing, and pottery are sold
as a center for equal exchange and the preservation of tradition. They attack
supermarkets and chain stores for being impersonal and interested only in
profit.
Francisco Toledo's paintings, including Isthmus animals such as the
iguana and the turtle and symbols from Zapotec folklore, portray the Isthmus
as a pristine natural environment in which myth and reality are intertwined.
They show Zapotecs living in harmony with animals and plants and the
COCEI heroically defending the natural world against the destructive forces
of industrial society, capitalism, and so on.
THE APPEAL TO TRADITION EXAMINED
The analytical question posed at this point by Hobsbawm and Ranger

would be "Are COCEI members the bearers of true tradition or inventors of
tradition?" The literature on Latin American grass-roots organizations would
ask, "Is the COCEI a new or an old social movement?" I suggest that the
COCEI represents neither tradition nor invention but both and more. It com-
bines cultural elements from Zapotec society and many other sources in a
politically charged environment. It is a mixture of the old and the new, and
it is a movement based on both class and ethnicity.
Isthmus Zapotecs do indeed have a long history of rebellion. There is in
fact continuity between the COCEI and earlier Juchiteco movements because
the COCEI is fighting for Zapotec control of the same community lands
defended by previous Juchitecos. Likewise, the COCEI's struggle for polit-
ical autonomy is comparable to that of earlier Isthmus opposition groups.
Yet, clearly, the COCEI is not simply the reincarnation of past Juchiteco
political movements, nor are COCEI leaders modern Che Gomezes. For one
thing, the COCEI reflects a shift in Mexican politics after 1968 in which
veterans of the Mexico City student movement returned to their villages to
organize local people, bringing with them leftist ideology and tactics used in
Nicaragua and Cuba and sophisticated knowledge of how to influence public
opinion through the mass media. Therefore, the COCEI is less home-grown
and more cosmopolitan than past Juchiteco political organizations, its ideol-
ogy a creative blending of Marxist and Zapotec ideas.
Furthermore, the COCEI's version of the Zapotec past is based on a
selection from the historical record. For example, it omits mention of the
Zapotecs who fought on the side of the government during the revolution,
and it tends to deny that wealthy Zapotecs are also heirs to the history of
resistance. Periods of peace, accommodation, and social harmony are glossed
over in favor of times of struggle and confrontation with outsiders. Despite
COCEI rhetoric, Zapotec women suffer from many of the inequalities shared
by women cross-culturally, and in fact COCEI political decisions are made
almost exclusively by males.
In the economic area, things are equally complex. For example, the COCEI
defends traditional agriculture, but it is government money-extracted
through ethnic-oriented political mobilization-that sustains that agriculture.
Similarly, the COCEI's support of labor is a response to the proletarianization
of Isthmus society rather than a revival of the Zapotec rebel tradition.
Moreover, the COCEI's ideological invocation of Zapotec kin unity and
communal solidarity occurs in a context of increasing economic class polar-
ization. Finally, COCEI appeals to collective and reciprocal traditions, con-
fronting a reality of growing commodification of many aspects of Isthmus
life.
The cultural movement best exemplifies the COCEI's collage of cultural
styles and politicized mixture of new and old. Certainly, the COCEI's fiesta-
like political demonstrations are something new created from older cultural
elements. Moreover, its emphasis on the Zapotec language implies both con-
tinuity and change. On the one hand, by speaking Zapotec, COCEI members
carry on a pre-Columbian tradition. On the other hand, this may involve the
use of modem technology, for example, in Zapotec-language programs on
its (now defunct) radio station. It may also include new ways of using the
language, such as writing poetry in Zapotec for the first time (until recently
there was no Zapotec alphabet) or translating Brecht and Neruda into Zapotec
for publication in Guchachi' Reza.
The COCEI painters also mix "traditional" and "modern" forms. Toledo's
paintings depict Isthmus animals and plants in magical realist and cubist
styles influenced by Picasso, Dali, and other avant-garde artists. His themes
come from Zapotec folklore and mythology, but he uses the finest painting
supplies money can buy, his techniques are innovative, and his work is on
the cutting edge of Latin American art (Markman and Markman, 1989). Thus,
although Toledo is known as a Zapotec who wears "Indian" huaraches,
headbands, and white peasant garb, his paintings sell in exclusive art galleries
in Paris, London, and New York. A millionaire said to have homes in Europe
and Mexico City, he continues to paint Zapotec cultural artifacts, give his
paintings indigenous names, and maintain his image as a primitive artist.
In the Juchitdn Cultural Center, a museum of Zapotec antiquities sits right
next to a modern art gallery which often includes paintings by famous
European and Mexican artists. The center's futuristic murals were painted
by a visiting Japanese artist. Juchiteco poets such as Macario Matus and
Enedino Jimenez glorify the customs of the peasants in rhymes and free-form
stanzas inspired by Mayakovsky, Langston Hughes, and L6pez Velarde.
Guchachi' Reza prints obscure Zapotec folktales with comments on the
Zapotec by well-known foreign intellectuals like D. H. Lawrence, Eisenstein,
and Paul Radin and critiques of these by Zapotec intellectuals. Ironically, the
Juchiteco intellectuals have already outdone the postmodern anthropologists
who are busy "writing culture" by creating an ethnographic/literary journal
that is multivocal, reflexive, and experimental without being narcissistically
personal or mind-bogglingly obscure.
The most original recent discussion of the forms of ethnic identity dem-
onstrated by Oaxacan indigenous groups is that of Kearney (1991; also
Nagengast and Kearney, 1990a, 1990b). While in many ways the Juchitan
and Mixtec cases are quite different, there is an interesting resemblance
between the syncretic Juchiteco cultural movement and the "transnational-
ization" of Mixtec identity that Kearney discusses. In the Mixtec case, in-
digenous Oaxacans have reformulated their ethnic identity in a new setting
after crossing international boundaries.11 In the Juchitan case, Zapotec intel-
lectuals and COCEI activists have fused socialist internationalism and Euro-
pean avant-garde artistic and literary styles with an intensely localist, if not
xenophobic, ethnic identity to form a political and cultural movement that is

strikingly cosmopolitan yet firmly rooted in indigenous soil. In this sense,
the COCEI is also part of a global process of "transnationalism," a process
Kearney (1991: 55) defines as "a reordering of the binary cultural, social,
and epistemological distinctions of the modern period."
For these reasons, to reduce the COCEI to an invention of tradition would
be an oversimplification. In particular, Zapotecs' historical research and schol-
arly publications on local history and culture are serious intellectual produc-
tions. Calling them invention reflects an ethnocentric judgment whereby only
Western academics' writings are considered scientific. At the same time, we
must recognize the overt political content of the Zapotec cultural movement,
an aspect of contemporary culture sometimes neglected by literary postmod-
ernism. The movement's cultural creations have an ideological aspect, and
the Zapotec intellectuals' work was made possible by the COCEI's political
strength and control over the Juchitdn municipal budget. The Zapotec cultural
movement is a political phenomenon also in that it is part of the Juchiteco
lower classes' attempt to wrest control of local society from the Zapotec
merchant and professional elites and, finally, in that it reflects the Zapotecs'
efforts to assert their ethnic identity within a mestizo-dominated society.
CONCLUSIONS
The COCEI case demonstrates the limitations of analyzing social move-

ments or customs within the dichotomies of tradition versus invention or new
versus old. Using an approach that combines postmodernism's focus on
creative cultural mixture with an analysis of the political and economic pro-
cesses that shape cultural production, I have found that the COCEI's political
success and cultural creativity are the result neither of blind adherence to
tradition nor of spontaneous invention but of the movement's capacity for
bridging the contradictions between local and external political forms, cap-
italist and communal economic practices, and "indigenous" and modern
urban culture.
At a more general level, the COCEI case illustrates the relevance of
postmodernism to discussions of radical politics and political movements, a
relationship Turner (1990: 10) considers "the most pressing issue of contem-
porary social science." Despite the denigration of postmodernism by one of
political economy's most insightful spokesmen (see Polier and Roseberry,
1989), in my view Marxists have much to learn from it. As Graham (1988:
65) notes, "The challenge of postmodernism to Marxism is potentially very
exciting. Postmodern anti-essentialism invites us to free ourselves of the
burdens which we have long carried-the burden of explaining a complex

and multifaceted history with a limited set of categories, of revealing rather
than constituting the centrality of class, of waiting for politics rather than
entering politics." At the same time, Marxism can offer postmodernism the
sophisticated analysis of class structures and global political economy that it
often lacks. Indeed, both approaches are needed in order to move beyond
the essentialism of the tradition-versus-invention dichotomy and the new-
social-movements literature's overemphasis on the decline of class in an age
of pluralism and difference.
NOTES
1. This dichotomy is expressed by Hobsbawm (1983: 8) as follows: "the strength and

adaptability of genuine traditions is not to be confused with the 'invention of tradition.' " For
discussion of the politically sensitive issues raised by the invention-of-tradition literature, see
Jackson (1989) and Linnekin (1991).
2. Whereas the invention-of-tradition literature is rooted in the Marxist historiography of
Hobsbawm, the new-social-movements literature has multiple roots but is often linked to the
supposedly "post-Marxist" political writing of Laclau and Mouffe (1985).
3. This is not to deny the emergence of substantially "new" movements such as the Mixtec
organizations studied by Kearney (1991) but to suggest that an essentialist obsession with
newness versus oldness may detract from a more eclectic understanding of the complexities of
such movements.
4. Alcozauca, Guerrero, among other municipalities, has also been a hotbed of socialist
political activity, but the Juchitan case has attracted the most attention nationally and interna-
tionally, and the COCEI has become a powerful symbol of socialist/indigenous insurgency in
the countryside for left-wing critics of the PRI. I thank Federico Besserer for his observations
on this point.
5. The roots of this renaissance reach back to the 1930s, when a group of Isthmus Zapotec
students residing in Mexico City created an ethnological/literary publication called Neza ("the
road" or "the way" in Zapotec) and produced books of poetry. A second generation of cultural
revivalist activity in the late 1960s focused on the journal Neza Cubi (the new road).
6. Cheguigo is a sprawling, semirural barrio west of downtown Juchitan across the Rio de
los Perros. In addition to being the site of beautiful large silk-cotton trees and other native vege-
tation, Cheguigo has produced a large number of the Zapotec poets and artists and many COCEI
activists.
7. In 1992, COCEI again won Juchitan municipal elections and currently governs the city.
8. Much of the information for this section is derived from fieldwork I carried out in the
Isthmus of Tehuantepec between 1986 and 1991.
9. The COCEI leadership is predominantly male, though women make up at least half of
the rank and file. Glorification of Zapotec women's powerful image by male COCEI politicians
and intellectuals is ironic considering that women are excluded from most formal political and
juridical positions in Isthmus society and are the subjects of gender discrimination in their daily
lives. Zapotec women do, however, have substantial independence in local and long-distance
petty commerce.
10. In Oaxacan villages, historically, communal work parties known as tequios have been
used to build roads and undertake other public works. Participation in tequios is a customary
requirement of community citizenship. Prior to the advent of the COCEI regime, this custom
was no longer used in Juchitan to maintain municipal buildings because the town had become
so large that its city services were handled by a full-time staff of municipal employees. PRI
municipal governments preceding the COCEI, however, had badly neglected the upkeep of the
City Hall. The first COCEI municipal government rebuilt it with volunteer labor that was called
tequio.
11. Nagengast and Kearney (1990b) note that in the Oaxacan Mixteca ethnic identity is
primarily village-centered. The emergent pan-Mixtec identity that they discuss hardly existed
before Mixtec peoples began to relocate to northern Mexico and the United States.
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Tradition and the New Social Movements: The Politics of Isthmus Zapotec Culture

Author(s): Howard Campbell

Hobsbawm and Ranger's influential The Invention of Tradition (1983) has

Howard Campbell is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology

continuations of earlier forms of political activity.2 Much of the recent

divisions and political economic change with postmodernism's analysis of

THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Oaxaca, one of the poorest states in Mexico, has 15 indigenous groups,

cussion of agricultural techniques, workers' rights, and COCEI agrarian

ZAPOTEC "TRADITION" AND COCEI IDEOLOGY

According to Robertson (1990), one of the most salient features of po

THE APPEAL TO TRADITION EXAMINED

The analytical question posed at this point by Hobsbawm and Ranger

xenophobic, ethnic identity to form a political and cultural movement that is

The COCEI case demonstrates the limitations of analyzing social move-

burdens which we have long carried-the burden of explaining a complex

1. This dichotomy is expressed by Hobsbawm (1983: 8) as follows: "the strength and

Eckstein, Susan (ed.)

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