The purpose of this essay is twofold: to contribute to the general ethnographic record of the Huave people and, through the study of their community organization, to enable an understanding of the processes by which once isolated Indian enclaves. The focus of this study is San Mateo del Mar, home of the Mareno.* Located in the Pacific coastal region of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, San Mateo is the largest (population 5,500) and the most culturally conservative of the four major Huava-speaking farm and fishing villages. Some useful information can also be gleaned from the reports of ethnologists who have made brief visits to Huave villages since the turn of the century.
Huave-Spanish bilingualism, on social structural change in San Mateo del Mar (196la, 1961b, 1966), has written a very useful descriptive article on the Huaves, which appears in Handbook of Central American Indians (1969). The other goal of this essay, the study of community organization in San Mateo del Mar, is pursued in terms of time depth and contemporary processes: historically, within Mareno memory; and currently through personal observation of the dynamics of change in process during the two periods of the writer's stay in the community. San Mateo is located about a third of the way out on a sand bar that runs from west to east and is about 35 miles long and averages a mile and a half wide.
San Mateo itself is next to a long, narrow lagoon that separates it from the beach and the open sea, and on quiet nights the crashing of the ocean waves can be clearly heard in the village. According to local church documents, construction of this building began in 1591 and ended in the second decade of the following century, when all but the two bell towers were completed. Before we move on to a closer look at Mareno's community organization and the. processes by which it is currently being transformed, a brief regional historical background will first be presented to add perspective to the subsequent description of today's San Mateo.
CHAPTER II
Therefore, even before the Spanish conquest, the traditional homeland of the Huave-speaking Indians existed as a cultural and geographic enclave, bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the south, and lands to the west, north, and east. Despite the lack of documentary evidence, since the Spanish conquest, the Huavas seem to have shared a great deal of similarity in experience with other relatively isolated Mexican Indians, especially in relation to the major historical stages of the colonial era. Thus, in the first major period, the members of the Dominican order directly governed, resided and. led the construction of large stone churches in the larger communities of Huave San Mateo del Mar, San Dionesio del Mar. now Pueblo Viejo, Old Town) and San Francisco del Mar (today San Francisco del Mar Viejo).
During the second colonial period, from the secularization of the mission system in the 1720s until independence, Mexican Indian communities generally underwent a process of radicalization. They enjoyed not only a superiority in numbers and military power, but also the position of legal authority in the isthmus: the Zapotec cities of Tehuantepec and Juchitan, as capitals of the two ex-distritos in the region, are the direct administrative superiors of the main Huave communities. As a result of the loss of their valuable lands in the 1990s and the steady advance of the Apotecs since then, the Huaves have found themselves economically dependent on the surrounding Zapotecs for agricultural products and goods from the outside world.
What elements of Huave culture may have long ago become part of the basis of the general culture of the Isthmus is not known, but recent history shows that the flow of cultural diffusion has been overwhelmingly from Zapotec to Huave. In this century, most of the Huave cities were partially acculturated to the national culture - but by the Zapotecs (eg, teachers, merchants, . administrators), who carried out the process of culture change according to their principles and introduced the Huave with innovations that are a blend of their particular traditions. Mareno, which alludes to both the main livelihood and place names of Huave communities, is most commonly used today in specific reference to the conservative Huave community which embodies with Isthmenos the most stereotypical aspects of traditional Huave culture - San Mateo del Mar .
San Mateo, on the other hand, is Huave's most culturally conservative community. This demographic trend, which caused population pressure within the village itself and the dispersion of the .. population into small hamlets in the municipality, increasingly damaged the traditional San Mateo. the ability of a small administrative organization to represent and control all segments of the population. And socioculturally, this was influenced by the opening of public schools where Mareno children were taught by Istmefio teachers – usually Juchiteca – and increased migration and interaction with other peoples in the region.
The continued presence of this numerous,. unassimilated, economically powerful group of representatives of the surrounding dominant society has seriously challenged the traditionally closed, homogenous character of Mareno society. By asserting his control over church and religious affairs, he has successfully ... challenged the authority and viability of society's civil-religious hierarchy and traditional religious beliefs and . practice.
CHAPTER III
Among his duties is the selection of the secretario municipal, a position that lies outside the learning system. Level seven is composed of the first and second alcaldes, the highest positions in the civil-religious hierarchy. They also supervise the proper functioning of the church officials and the care of the church.
Thus, in the upper stratum they unite state and church and coordinate the smooth interaction of the sub-systems of community organization. Apart from the offices of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, a number of other options are available to those who want them. Another type of mayorship!a, one that mixes secular and sacred functions, is that of the Mardom Awan (Mayord~ de Municipio, of the city hall).
Most of the city's cofradés are organized around the veneration of crosses in the small chapels that stand at many intersections. The most important cofrad!a is that of the Apostoles, a group of older men who oversee the ceremonial activities of Easter Week. Moreover, despite the increasing recognition of young people's responsibility for their own actions, a young man would have to flee.
At the section level, attempts to maintain the balance of the city's old structural subdivisions failed. Moreover, some who no longer live on their cabecera plots for even part of the year claim to reside there to maintain their eligibility for political office. The Municipal Committee and the Municipal League of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Mexico's ruling political party) both work behind the scenes to manipulate Mareno politics.
In 1971 the two associations were about equally strong and instead of causing a repeat of the electoral crisis. But the failure of some to participate limits the freight system's effectiveness in maintaining economic equality. In addition, the municipal offices themselves do not bring any economic victims and due to the decline.
However, since his arrival in the early 1960s, the resident American priest has assumed control of the church and will not interfere with municipal officials in religious matters.
CHAPTER IV CONCLUSION
In this, at least theoretically, the well-being of the community becomes more important than that of the individual. In theory, the well-being of the individual, or of a specific group, is placed before that of the community. For example, although envy would be present in both types, it would play a different role in both types: in the open society it would fuel individual competition, while in the closed society it would serve as an institutionalized leveling mechanism (Wolf 1955: 460).
A measure of the relative openness or closure of a community can be seen in the function performed by ritual kinship. To some extent, these contrasting models are based on historical differences that distinguish semi-autonomous Indian villages from lowland communities that developed out of the plantation system. But they do not indicate how the difficult transition will take place, delineate the processes by which the disorganization of the former leads to the reorganization of the latter, or explain how polar opposition becomes a continuum of gradual transition.
It is certainly a holding action, and San Mateo's organization, like the other Huave cities, will undoubtedly increasingly adapt. Such attempts to maintain traditions as the reassertion of traditional communal land rights certainly cannot succeed in the long run; but neither is the community of San Mateo. The processes of social change transforming San Mateo today can best be interpreted in terms of alternatives.
For the young, fishing and ceremonial dancing now have the alternatives to school and baseball; for the adult, apart from participation in. In light of these new possibilities, one of the traditional strengths of San Mateo's monolithic civil-religious community organization is the ideal of. Therefore, with the increasing viability of alternatives on the one hand, and the increasing separation of church and state and the secularization of civil office on the other, San Mateo's community organization will grow to resemble them more.
There is not the remotest indication that Mareno youth may eventually try to restore the integrity of the community's traditional. Should the "Huave Plan" be fully implemented, San Mateo and the other Huave cities would be greatly affected. Therefore, San Mateo could conceivably be transformed from a semi-isolated Indian village of peasant fishermen and farmers into a company town of rural proletarians.
Now that its turn has come, San Mateo, like other Huave communities, is on the path of gradual integration and acculturation into the Isthmian regional variant of Mexican society.
