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J. Lat. Amer. Stud. , – © Cambridge University Press doi:./SX 1 2 ‘ ’ 3 Civilising the Savage : State-Building, 4 Education and Huichol Autonomy in 5 6 Revolutionary Mexico, – 7 8 9 Q1 NATHANIEL MORRIS* 10 11 12 13 Abstract. Attempts to use schools to assimilate the Huichols into the Revolutionary nation-state prompted the development of divergent partnerships and conflicts in 14 their patria chica, involving rival Huichol communities and factions, local mestizos, 15 government officials and Cristero rebels. The provocations of teachers, the cupidity 16 of mestizo caciques, rebel violence and Huichol commitment to preserving communal 17 autonomy undermined alliances between Huichol leaders and federal officials, and led 18 to the ultimate failure of the government’s project. If anything, the short-lived Revolutionary education programme equipped a new generation of Huichol leaders 19 with the tools to better resist external assimilatory pressures into the s and 20 beyond. 21 22 Keywords: Huichols, Mexican Revolution, state-building, education, Cristero rebel- 23 lion, assimilation 24 25 Between the accession of Álvaro Obregón to Mexico’s presidency in , and 26 the end of Lázaro Cárdenas’ presidency in , the federal government 27 sought to politically, culturally and economically ‘incorporate’ the country’s 28 Indian peoples into the nation-state, predominantly via the efforts of the maes- 29 tros rurales (rural schoolteachers) of the Secretaría de Educación Pública 30 (Secretariat of Public Education, SEP). The case of the Huichols of northern 31 Jalisco (see Map ) – described in the early s by government officials as ‘an 32 almost savage tribe’, whose members ‘go around naked and subsist on 33 34 Nathaniel Morris, Research Fellow, University of Warwick. Email: nathanielmorris@ 35 gmail.com 36 * While all errors of fact or interpretation in this article remain my own, I owe a great debt of 37 thanks to Alan Knight, for his patient and perceptive help in putting together the thesis upon which this article is based; to Johannes Neurath, for sharing his time and insights with me as I 38 struggled to write up the article itself; and, most of all, to the Huichols of Santa Catarina 39 Cuexcomatitlán, San Andrés Cohamiata, San Sebastián Teponahuaxtla and Tuxpan de ff 40 Bolaños, who o ered me information, shelter, food and friendship throughout my research into the history of their communities. ¡Pamparios! 41 Diego Hernández to Departamento de Educación y Cultura Indígena (Department of 42 Indigenous Education and Culture, DECI), June , Archivo Histórico de la 84 83 82 81 80 79 78 77 76 75 74 73 72 71 70 69 68 67 66 65 64 63 62 61 60 59 58 57 56 55 54 53 52 51 50 49 48 47 46 45 44 43 ahne Morris Nathaniel
Map . The Huichol Communities of Jalisco Fig. 1 - Colour online, B/W in print
Source: Author’s elaboration from Plan Lerma Asistencia Técnica, Operación Huicot (Guadalajara: Poder Ejecutivo Federal, ). ‘Civilising the Savage’ 85 hunting and fishing like prehistoric man’ – provides a particularly dramatic 86 example of the failures of this assimilatory programme. However, despite 87 the popularity of the Huichols with anthropologists, and of Revolutionary 88 state-building with historians, the SEP’s failures in the Sierra Huichola in 89 the period have been mentioned only by Beatriz Rojas and Alexander 90 Dawson, and then only briefly, and without reference to the s. Nor do 91 most Huichols themselves remember the SEP’s early ‘civilising’ mission in 92 the Sierra Huichola, testament to its ultimate failure. 93 Although government officials tended to blame this failure on what they 94 saw as the extraordinarily low ‘cultural level’ of the Huichols, I contend 95 that Huichol resistance was the primary obstacle to their ‘incorporation’, 96 and that it was both the nature of the federal education system itself, and, 97 more importantly, the behaviour of its local representatives, that galvanised 98 this opposition. Through an analysis of how Huichol participation in the 99 Cristero rebellions and the Cardenista agrarian reform was conditioned by 100 their relationships with federal schoolteachers, this article sheds light on the 101 nature and outcomes of the Revolution in the Sierra Huichola, and also pro- 102 vides insights into the sometimes disastrous consequences of the discrepancies 103 between official government policies and their local-level implementation, as 104 well as the more radical effects of Revolutionary state-building on rural, and 105 particularly indigenous, Mexican communities. 106 Some scholars have taken a relatively sympathetic view of Revolutionary 107 efforts to assimilate Mexico’s Indians. For example, Andrae Marak writes 108 that while ‘the oppression that the Tarahumara suffered at the hands of local 109 110 111 Secretaría de Educación Pública (Historical Archive of the SEP, AHSEP), Mexico City, / 112 C//E/. 113 J. G. González to José Vasconcelos, Apr. , AHSEP-/C//E/.. 114 Beatriz Rojas, Los huicholes en la historia (Mexico City: Instituto Nacional Indigenista (National Indigenist Institute, INI), ), pp. –; Alexander Dawson, Indian and 115 Nation in Revolutionary Mexico (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, ), pp. – 116 , p. . 117 Interviews with Salvador Sánchez, elder in Tuxpan de Bolaños, Mar. ; Mauricio 118 Montellano, middle-aged member of gobierno tradicional in San Andrés Cohamiata, Mar. ; Antonio Candelario, community leader in Las Latas (Santa Catarina 119 Cuexcomatitlán), Apr. ; and Jesús Mercado González, elder in Tuxpan de 120 Bolaños, Feb. , who, having studied at the Bolaños internado (boarding school), 121 was the only one to remember anything about schools prior to the s, while asserting that the internado was the first school ever established for Huichols. 122 Cf. Mary K. Vaughan, Cultural Politics in Revolution: Teachers, Peasants, and Schools in 123 Mexico, – (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, ); Adrian Bantjes, As if 124 Jesus Walked the Earth: Cardenismo, Sonora, and the Mexican Revolution (Wilmington, DE: SR Books, ); Stephen Lewis, The Ambivalent Revolution: Forging State and 125 Nation in Chiapas, – (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 126 ); Dawson, Indian and Nation. Nathaniel Morris 127 mestizos was self-interested and calculated … that which they suffered at the 128 hands of the SEP, for whatever it was worth, was meant to improve their 129 lives’. However, such interpretations often reflect an overreliance on the dis- 130 course of SEP ideologues, and on the frequently exaggerated reports of rural tea- 131 chers (whose jobs, after all, depended on their success in ‘civilising’ their 132 charges). These views also frequently ignore the Indians’ own, more critical 133 voices, and overemphasise the federal education system’s attempts to socially 134 and culturally ‘rehabilitate’ the nation’s most marginalised groups, while under- 135 playing the abuses of rural teachers, the conflicts created by their attempts to 136 open up Indian lands and resources to outsiders in the name of ‘progress’, 137 and the fundamental ethnocentrism of the SEP curriculum, which, especially 138 in the s, sought the destruction of Indian identity, language and culture 139 in order to create a homogenous, Spanish-speaking Mexican nation. 140 Under Cárdenas, national-level SEP policy-makers did increasingly promote 141 the material improvement of the conditions in which Mexico’s Indian popu- 142 lation lived, and became more tolerant (or even, on occasion, admiring) of 143 Indian cultural ‘difference’. However, throughout the s most of the 144 SEP officials active in the Sierra Huichola continued to view Huichol 145 language, autonomous power structures, subsistence-based economy and polit- 146 ico-religious customary practices – which for the Huichols were all inseparable 147 parts of a complex known as el costumbre – as obstacles to their assimilation. 148 They therefore sought to destroy such ‘primitive’ beliefs and customs, or trans- 149 form them into picturesque ‘folklore’ drained of all meaning. Throughout 150 the period, many Huichols therefore saw schools as directly challenging 151 their political autonomy, ethnic identity and costumbre – the destruction of 152 which, according to Huichol belief, would cause the world as a whole to dis- 153 appear, or never to have been in the first place. Even those more 154 155 Andrae Marak, ‘The Failed Assimilation of the Tarahumara in Postrevolutionary Mexico’, 156 Journal of the Southwest, : (), p. . Dawson, Indian and Nation, pp. –. 157 Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán, Teoría y práctica de la educación indígena (Mexico City: INI, ), 158 pp. –. 159 Ibid., p. ; Dawson, Indian and Nation, pp. –; Vaughan, Cultural Politics, pp. –, 160 p. . Ibid., pp. –, pp. –; Dawson, Indian and Nation, pp. –, pp. –. 161 Alexander Dawson, ‘From Models for the Nation to Model Citizens: Indigenismo and the 162 “Revindication” of the Mexican Indian, –’, Journal of Latin American Studies, : 163 (), pp. –. Note the Huichols’ idiosyncratic masculine version of the word costumbre to refer specifically 164 to their political-ceremonial complex, so as to distinguish it from las costumbres in general. 165 Aguirre Beltrán, Teoría y práctica, p. –; cf. Dawson, Indian and Nation, pp. – and 166 especially p. . Cf. Jesús Jáuregui and Johannes Neurath (eds.), Fiesta, literatura y magia en el Nayarit: 167 Ensayos sobre coras, huicholes y mexicaneros de Konrad Theodor Preuss (Mexico City: 168 Centro de Estudios Mexicanos y Centroamericanos, ). ‘Civilising the Savage’ 169 cosmopolitan Huichols who had had positive contacts with mestizos in the 170 past, and were therefore less worried about such metaphysical threats, felt 171 that the activities of several rural teachers directly threatened the physical 172 integrity of their communities. I would therefore position the SEP’sofficial 173 programme in the Sierra Huichola between and , and, more import- 174 antly, the actions of many SEP teachers and inspectors into the s, as an 175 example not only of Revolutionary efforts towards ‘forjando patria’, but 176 also within the educational paradigm that Mary Vaughan, drawing on the 177 work of Marjorie Becker and Brian Street, describes as 178 179 [that] undertaken for the purposes of promoting state control and market penetration … [and] conceptualized and carried out within cultural constructs oblivious to the logic of local practices 180 of productive, reproductive, and ritual labor. [Such programmes] are disruptive of the delicate eco- 181 logical and social balances that sustain life upon a precarious resource base. The discourse between 182 community and teachers is likely to be antagonistic, characterized by resistance, or absent. 183 184 Just as in the Indian communities of Sonora and Puebla that Vaughan uses as fl 185 examples of this ipside to rural education’s ‘empowering’ potential, the 186 nature and intensity of Huichol opposition to SEP programmes varied 187 greatly from community to community, and depended heavily on the behav- 188 iour of its local representatives. Huichol resistance to their activities often 189 involved the use of Scottian ‘weapons of the weak’ such as foot-dragging, non- 190 compliance, evasiveness, obfuscation and the use of native language to confuse ffi 191 outsiders. However, on occasions the meddling of SEP o cials in local pol- 192 itics, their perceived facilitation of mestizo land-grabs, or their ‘forced recruit- 193 ment’ (some would say kidnapping) of children became too much for local 194 people to bear, which prompted their use of more violent forms of resistance. 195 Sometimes this meant threats against teachers or even the selective assassin- ffi 196 ation of these and other government o cials; but as Adrian Bantjes found 197 in Sonora, where a SEP-led anti-clerical campaign provoked a short-lived 198 199 Dawson, Indian and Nation, pp. –. Forjando patria (‘Forging a nation’, published in 200 ), by the ‘father’ of Mexican anthropology Manuel Gamio, was a manifesto for the cul- 201 tural assimilation of Mexican Indians. – ‘ 202 Vaughan, Cultural Politics, pp. ; cf. Marjorie Becker, Black and White and Color: Cardenismo and the Search for a Campesino Ideology’, Comparative Studies in Society and 203 History, : (), pp. –, and Brian Street, Literacy in Theory and Practice 204 (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, ), pp. –, pp. –. 205 Vaughan, Cultural Politics, pp. –, cf. Ben Eklof, Russian Peasant Schools (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, ), pp. –. 206 James Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, CT, 207 and London: Yale University Press, ), p. xvi, pp. –; cf. Elsie Rockwell, ‘Schools of 208 the Revolution: Enacting and Contesting State Forms in Tlaxcala, –’, in Gilbert Joseph and Daniel Nugent (eds.), Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the 209 Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, ), 210 pp. –. Nathaniel Morris 211 Mayo uprising in the s, the resistance of some Huichols to the cultural, 212 political and, in particular, the territorial pressures exerted upon them by the 213 actions of SEP teachers and their Huichol or mestizo allies extended to their 214 open rebellion against the Mexican state. 215 216 217 Indigenismo, Caciquismo and Factional Conflict in the Sierra Huichola 218 While both ‘New Age’ anthropologists and the Mexican public at large have 219 tended to see the Huichols as eternally resisting the intrusions of the outside 220 world in order to preserve their ‘ancestral’ way of life, recent research has done 221 much to locate Huichol political identities, territoriality and costumbre within 222 wider Mesoamerican or Mexican contexts (although their participation in 223 the Revolution remains little studied). In line with this newer scholarship, 224 I argue that the story of Huichol interactions with the SEP in the 225 Revolutionary period is not exclusively one of resistance. For although the 226 Mexican state failed to directly impose control on the Sierra Huichola by 227 means of schools, my research again coincides with that of Vaughan in 228 showing that the state did manage to exert some influence on particular 229 Huichol communities when, rather than employing force, it tried to negotiate 230 with local people. 231 That such negotiations could be carried out in the first place, however, was 232 largely due to the fact that different Huichol communities, factions, and 233 individuals – particularly the caciques – attempted to use the federal 234 schools, and, more to the point, the teachers in charge of them, to their 235 own ends. As in much of Mexico, those Huichols most willing to negotiate 236 with the state were ambitious young men with vested interests in promoting 237 Revolutionary political and economic change, which they hoped would 238 open up to them avenues to power and wealth previously inaccessible in 239 their traditionally gerontocratic and subsistence-based societies. As further 240 Bantjes, As If Jesus, pp. –, pp. –. 241 Cf. Johannes Neurath, Las fiestas de la casa grande (Mexico City: CONACULTA-INAH, 242 ); Paul Liffman, Huichol Territoriality and the Mexican Nation (Tucson, AZ: 243 University of Arizona Press, ). – ‘ 244 With the exception of Rojas, Los huicholes, pp. ; Víctor Tellez Lozano, Lozadistas, revolucionarios y cristeros’, in Víctor Rojo Leyva, José Reyes Utrera and Adrián Rangel 245 Aguilar (eds.), Participación indígena en los procesos de independencia y revolución mexicana 246 (Mexico City: CDI, ), pp. –; Phil Weigand, ‘El papel de los indios huicholes 247 en las revoluciones del occidente de México’, in Phil Weigand, Ensayos sobre el Gran Nayar (Mexico, CEMC-INI, ), pp. –; Nathaniel Morris, ‘“The World Created 248 Anew”: Land, Religion and Revolution in the Gran Nayar Region of Mexico’, Unpubl. 249 PhD diss., University of Oxford, . 250 Vaughan, Cultural Politics, pp. –, pp. –. Cf. Rockwell, ‘Schools’, p. , p. , and Jan Rus, ‘The “Comunidad Revolucionaria 251 Institucional”: The Subversion of Native Government in Highland Chiapas, –’, 252 in Joseph and Nugent (eds.), Everyday Forms, pp. –. ‘Civilising the Savage’ 253 reward for their cooperation, they also sought the government’s support for 254 their communities’ agrarian or territorial claims, taking advantage of the 255 links that the teachers provided with a government that officially promoted 256 the idea of agrarian reform to shore up its legitimacy. 257 However, my conclusions as to the success of such negotiations for either 258 party do not always coincide with Vaughan’s findings that ‘factions of villagers 259 who welcomed and allied with teachers pushed SEP policy in specific direc- 260 tions and not in others’. Despite the evolution of SEP policies in the 261 s, the only teacher to really advocate for Huichol rights in this period 262 (Inocencio Ramos; see below) quickly lost his job. Meanwhile many of his col- 263 leagues’ activities continued to provoke Huichol opposition, which by 264 had forced the suspension of SEP efforts to ‘incorporate’ them. In fact, if any- 265 thing the SEP’s programme in the Sierra Huichola provided a generation of 266 future Huichol leaders with new ways to avoid assimilation in all but its 267 most superficial aspects. Contact between mestizo teachers and a small 268 group of young Huichol men enabled the latter to become literate in the 269 national language, form connections with government officials and learn 270 about the culture and politics of the mestizo-ruled nation-state then being con- 271 structed on the edges of their homeland. As Johannes Neurath points out, 272 273 [f]or the Huichols, knowing how mestizos think, and knowing how to be a mestizo, is strategically beneficial. They practice accumulation of contradictory identities in shamanism, but also in every- 274 day life. For them the alternative is not to be Indian or Mestizo, but Indian or Indian and 275 Mestizo. 276 277 In many other parts of Mexico, literate Indian ‘scribes’ and bilingual teachers 278 used their positions as ‘link-men’ between their communities and state 279 officials to increase their wealth and power, and by the late s constituted 280 a new class of communal-level cacique, often just as corrupt, violent and 281 282 Ibid., pp. –. 283 Eyler N. Simpson, The Ejido: Mexico’s Way Out (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North 284 Carolina Press, ); cf. Daniel Nugent, Spent Cartridges of Revolution: An 285 Anthropological History of Namiquipa, Chihuahua (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago – 286 Press, ), pp. . Vaughan, Cultural Politics, pp. –. 287 Weigand, ‘El papel’; José Torres Contreras, Relaciones de frontera entre los huicholes y sus 288 vecinos mestizos (Zapopan: Colegio de Jalisco, ), pp. –; Fernando Benítez, Los 289 indios de México, vol. (Mexico City: Ediciones Era, ), pp. –, pp. –. Johannes Neurath, ‘Contrasting Ontologies in the Struggle against Roads and Mining 290 Companies: Wixarika Cosmopolitics and Ecology’, paper presented at Annual Meeting of 291 the American Anthropological Association (Denver, CO, ), p. . 292 Alan Knight, ‘Caciquismo in Twentieth-Century Mexico’, in Knight and Wil Pansters (eds.), Caciquismo in Twentieth-Century Mexico (London: Institute for the Study of the 293 Americas, ), pp. –; cf. Paul Friedrich, Agrarian Revolt in a Mexican Village 294 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, ), pp. –. Nathaniel Morris 295 exploitative as their predecessors. In contrast, many of their Huichol equiva- 296 lents refrained from advancing overly individualistic or factional agendas, and, 297 while representing the state within their communities, simultaneously opposed 298 those government programmes – such as mining, logging and road-building 299 projects – that they saw as threatening communal integrity and autonomy. 300 State weakness, the superficial nature of federal schooling efforts in the 301 region, the traditionally extreme decentralisation of power within Huichol 302 communities, the continued, ritually-legitimised moral authority of elders 303 over the population, and a strong sense of collective identity and widespread 304 belief in magical sanctions for transgressive leaders limited the extent to 305 which younger, ‘cosmopolitan’ Huichols abandoned older patterns of 306 thought and behaviour in the s and beyond. Instead, they used what 307 they had learned from the SEP in the Revolutionary period to manipulate 308 official discourses of ‘patriotism’ and ‘nationhood’, not only to win state con- 309 cessions for themselves and their followers, but also to facilitate and legitimise 310 their defence of communal territory and identity from external pressures. 311 Thus throughout the twentieth century, and both despite and because of the 312 SEP’sefforts, the Huichols were able to hold on to a higher level of cultural, 313 territorial and political autonomy than either their mestizo neighbours, or 314 other Indian peoples such as the Yaquis, Mayos, Purépechas or the highlanders 315 of Chiapas. 316 317 318 The Sierra Huichola, from Conquest to Revolution 319 320 At the turn of the twentieth century, the vast majority of the Huichol popu- 321 lation – then conservatively estimated at around , individuals – were 322 dependent on subsistence agriculture and lived in small settlements scattered 323 across the mountains of northern Jalisco. These settlements, or rancherías, 324 were inhabited by extended families whose lives were governed by politico-reli- 325 gious leaders based at the nearest tuki, or Huichol temple (pl. tukite). These 326 leaders, called kawiterusixi,officiated over rituals involving all the inhabitants 327 of the surrounding rancherías, which reaffirmed the politico-religious and 328 kinship links between participants, and guaranteed both their own and the 329 Rus, ‘Comunidad Revolucionaria Institucional’; Paul Friedrich, The Princes of Naranja 330 (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, ). 331 Cf. Scott, Weapons, p. . Johannes Neurath, ‘Ambivalencias del poder y del don en el sistema politico ritual wixarika’, 332 in Berenice Alcántara and Federico Navarrete (eds.), Los pueblos amerindios más allá del 333 estado (Mexico City: UNAM), pp. –. 334 For similar tactical use of education in Tlaxcala, cf. Rockwell, ‘Schools’, p. . Bantjes, As If Jesus; Friedrich, The Princes; Rus, ‘Comunidad Revolucionaria Institucional’. 335 Censo General de la República Mexicana (Mexico City: Gobierno de la República, ). 336 Carl Lumholtz, Unknown Mexico (New York: Charles Scribner and Sons, ), vol. , p. . ‘Civilising the Savage’ 337 annual maize crop’s health. At a higher level, the different tukite and their 338 dependent rancherías came together to form four distinct Huichol comuni- 339 dades: Santa Catarina Cuexcomatitlán, San Sebastián Teponahuaxtlán, 340 Tuxpan de Bolaños (which was partially politico-religiously dependent on 341 San Sebastián), and San Andrés Cohamiata (whose tuki district of 342 Guadalupe Ocotán was by this point semi-independent) (see Map ). Each 343 comunidad was ruled by a gobierno tradicional – made up of cargo-system 344 officials and the leaders of each community’s constituent tukite – based at a 345 ceremonial centre, or gobernancia, named after the comunidad itself, and 346 which housed little more than a Catholic church, a tuki, a jail, and the 347 houses and headquarters of the gobierno tradicional. Communal festivals, cele- 348 brated at both the church and the tuki, regulated and legitimised the power of 349 the gobierno tradicional, and emphasised the overall unity of the community, 350 regardless of the frequent rivalries between different tuki districts. 351 These politico-religious structures developed during the Colonial and 352 Independence periods, during which the Huichols enjoyed a high level of cul- 353 tural, political and territorial independence vis-à-vis both Church and state, 354 comparable to that of the Yaqui or perhaps the ‘pagan’ Tarahumara. 355 However, from the mid-nineteenth century, the Mexican state encouraged 356 mestizo ranchers and hacendados to ‘colonise’ Huichol landholdings in the 357 name of ‘productivity’. Especially after , when the government finally 358 defeated and killed regional bandit chieftain-turned-agrarian revolutionary 359 Manuel Lozada and began to reassert itself over his former strongholds, the 360 physical integrity of the Huichol communities was threatened by settlers 361 from nearby mestizo towns and haciendas. 362 Both Church and state also attempted to culturally and politically assimilate 363 the Huichols into mainstream Mexican society. Catholic schools were estab- 364 lished in San Andrés and San Sebastián as part of new missions run by the 365 Zacatecan ‘Josefino’ order, and the Bishop of Zacatecas took several 366 Huichol children to be educated in a seminary in that city. The missionaries 367 also encouraged mestizo settlement in San Andrés and San Sebastián, to help 368 369 Cf. Neurath, Las fiestas. 370 Rojas, Los huicholes, p. . Liffman, Huichol Territoriality, p. . 371 Rojas, Los huicholes, pp. –; cf. Evelyn Hu-Dehart, Yaqui Resistance and Survival: the 372 Struggle for Land and Autonomy, – (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin 373 Press, ); Roberto Salmón, ‘Tarahumara Resistance to Mission Congregation in Northern New Spain, –’, Ethnohistory, : (), pp. –; Lumholtz, 374 Unknown Mexico, vol. , pp. –. 375 Rojas, Los huicholes, pp. –, pp. –, p. . 376 Sebastián Herrera Guevara, ‘Memorias de la misión de San Andrés Cohamiata en el Nayarit, circa –’, Relaciones. Estudios de historia y sociedad, : (), pp. –. 377 Archivo General de los Misioneros Josefinos (General Archive of the Josephine Missionaries, 378 AGMJ), Zacatecas, FUN--MJ, Calixto Guerrero, ‘Informe’, Oct. . Nathaniel Morris 379 them ‘civilise’ the ‘savage’ Huichols. Furthermore, government-run schools 380 were also opened in San Sebastián in , and a decade later in Guadalupe 381 Ocotán and San Andrés, where, according to official propaganda, ‘only a few 382 years ago … Huichol fire worshippers sacrificed human victims’. However, 383 the inhabitants of Guadalupe Ocotán soon caught their teacher stealing mules 384 and forced him to leave, while San Andrés’ teacher ‘coerced and extorted 385 them’, and was also expelled. But although the Huichols thus resisted the 386 abuses of those charged with ‘civilising’ them, they struggled to defend their 387 communal landholdings against the incursions of mestizo ranchers, which exa- 388 cerbated territorial conflicts between the different Huichol communities 389 themselves. 390 However, just as missionaries, government officials and foreign explorers 391 and anthropologists began to forecast the imminent demise of the Huichols 392 as a people, the outbreak of the Revolution in gave them an opportun- 393 ity to reclaim their political and territorial autonomy. By , many 394 Huichols had organised themselves into ‘Defensas Rurales’: these were militias 395 armed by the Carrancista Revolutionary faction and played a key role in 396 defeating the Villista remnants then roaming northern Jalisco. The leaders 397 of the Huichol militias also violently expelled almost all of the mestizo settlers 398 and missionaries from their communities, and at the same time increasingly 399 contested political control of their communities with the traditionally para- 400 mount cargo-holders and elders. 401 After , however, the Huichol Defensas and gobiernos tradicionales 402 began working together to try and stall renewed mestizo land-grabs, which 403 were encouraged by municipal authorities who coveted access to the forests, 404 405 Ibid. Michele Stephens, ‘“… As Long as They Have Their Land”: The Huichol of Western 406 Mexico, –’, Ethnohistory, : (), p. . 407 ‘Fragmento de un estudio sobre la raza indígena’, Revista de la Enseñanza Primaria, Aug. 408 . Rojas, Los huicholes, p. . 409 Ibid., p. –. 410 Ibid., p. ; Stephens, ‘As Long as They Have Their Land’, pp. –. 411 Joaquín Pérez González, Ensayo estadístico y geográfico de territorio de Tepic (Tepic: 412 Imprimadores de Retes, ), p. ; Aleš Hrdlička, Physiological and Medical Observations among the Indians of Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico 413 (Washington, DC.: Government Printing Office, ), p. ; Lumholtz, Unknown 414 Mexico, vol. , p. xvi. 415 Ivor Thord-Gray, Gringo Rebel: Mexico – (Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, ), p. . 416 Interview with Pedro Landa, in Manuel Caldera and Luis de la Torre (eds.), Pueblos del viento 417 norte (Guadalajara: Secretaría de Cultura de Jalisco, ), pp. –. 418 Guerrero, ‘Informe’, Oct. ; in Chiapas, the Chamulas similarly fought to regain autonomy and expel mestizos from their lands in this period: cf. Rus, ‘Comunidad 419 Institucional Revolucionaria’, p. . 420 Morris, ‘The World Created Anew’, pp. –; cf. Nugent, Spent Cartridges, pp. –. ‘Civilising the Savage’ 421 pastures, watering holes and mineral riches of the Sierra Huichola. In 422 response, many Huichols – particularly those of San Andrés and Santa 423 Catarina – looked to the state and federal governments for support. Much 424 like their Porfirian forebears, however, Mexico’s Revolutionary politicians 425 and ideologues saw the Huichol communities as isolated bastions of savagery 426 that needed to be ‘incorporated’ into Mexican civilisation for their own 427 good. Given the conflicted relationship between the Huichols and the muni- 428 cipal authorities, and the weakness of the federal army’s presence in the Sierra 429 Huichola, the state’s main instrument in its attempts to assimilate the 430 Huichols was the SEP, founded by José Vasconcelos in October . 431 Before the Revolution, Carl Lumholtz reported that the Huichols ‘[did] 432 not want schools’, because of the abuses committed by the teachers, and 433 because they believed that literacy and contact with outsiders would lead 434 their children to ‘lose their native tongue and their ancient beliefs’. 435 Lumholtz thus recommended that ‘the white teacher’s aim should be to 436 incite the desire for instruction rather than to force his pupils to listen to 437 his teachings; not to destroy the Indian’s mental world, but to clear it and 438 raise it into the sphere of civilisation’. However, Vasconcelos and other 439 early SEP policy-makers saw the destruction of ‘primitive’ Indian political 440 structures, languages and ‘superstitions’ as essential to liberating them from 441 poverty, ‘improving’ them racially, uniting them around a Revolutionary 442 and nationalist ideal, and opening up for the nation’s benefit the previously 443 untapped human and natural resources of the countryside. Many 444 Huichols therefore saw this project as a threat to their culture, language, 445 and family-unit agricultural production. ‘Our parents wouldn’t let us go 446 [to school]; they told us, “You’ll come out of school and never want to 447 help [in the fields], you’ll sell out your community.”’ Some also saw the pres- 448 ence of mestizo teachers in their communities, and especially their involve- 449 ment in questions of agrarian reform, as compromising their own continued 450 control of communal political life, lands and resources. Just as Vaughan 451 452 Robert Shadow and María Rodríguez Shadow, ‘Religión, economía y política en la rebelión 453 cristera: El caso de los gobernistas de Villa Guerrero’, Historia Mexicana, : (), – – 454 pp. ; Jean Meyer, La cristiada, vol. (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, ), pp. , pp. –. 455 Aguirre Beltrán, Teoría y práctica, pp. –. 456 Vaughan, Cultural Politics, p. . 457 Lumholtz, Unknown Mexico, vol. , p. . Aguirre Beltrán, Teoría y práctica, p. , pp. –; p. ; Dawson, Indian and Nation, 458 pp. –; Vaughan, Cultural Politics, pp. –, p. . 459 Cristóbal Magallanes to Archbishop of Guadalajara, June , Archivo Histórico del 460 Arzobispado Guadalajara, Gobierno, Parroquias: Totatiche, C/ Exp. . Author’s interview with Julio Robles, Las Latas (anexo of Santa Catarina Cuexcomatitlán), 461 Jalisco, April . 462 Cf. Nugent, Spent Cartridges, pp. –. Nathaniel Morris 463 and Dawson observed in other indigenous regions, the SEP’s early activities 464 therefore provoked concerted Huichol opposition. 465 However, some of the Huichol Defensa leaders who had come to power 466 during the Revolution – and were more accustomed to dealing with mestizos – 467 saw cooperation with the SEP, and thus with the state itself, as a route to amas- 468 sing further power and wealth, and winning government protection of their 469 lands and a measure of autonomy within the new Revolutionary Mexico. 470 This version of autonomy would, however, be safely overseen by themselves 471 and a few other members of the emerging elite of young, ambitious 472 Huichols who, even if they had yet to be incorporated into the national pol- 473 itical system, had at least been exposed to the cultural and economic influence 474 of mestizo society. As in much of Mexico, the SEP therefore became caught up 475 in factional and generational conflicts then emerging within the Huichol 476 communities. 477 478 ’ – 479 The SEP s Early Efforts in the Sierra Huichola, 480 In June , Diego Hernández became the first of the SEP’s maestros misio- 481 neros (missionary schoolteachers) charged with ‘civilising’ the Huichols. 482 However, Hernández was reluctant to give up the comforts of the regional 483 mestizo hub of Colotlán, and claimed that heavy rains, the Huichols’ 484 concern for their crops, and their dispersed settlement patterns, would make 485 heading directly for the Sierra a waste of time and effort. Thus the commu- 486 nities of the Sierra Huichola were largely ignored until late , when a new 487 SEP budget allotted , pesos for the founding of ‘indigenous cultural 488 centres’ across the country, and rural ‘missionaries’ and teachers were 489 sent out into the countryside. In September Hernández suggested 490 founding schools in San Sebastián and Santa Catarina, as their inhabitants, 491 ‘usually so opposed to education, are interested in having schools’. 492 However, the teachers Hernández nominated to run these schools refused 493 to transfer to either community, and in November a school was instead 494 opened in Tuxpan. 495 496 497 Vaughan, Cultural Politics, pp. –; Dawson, Indian and Nation, p. . 498 Cf. Rockwell, ‘Schools’, pp. –; Rus, ‘Comunidad Revolucionaria Institucional’, p. . 499 Hernández to DECI, June , AHSEP-/C//E/. ‘SEP Presupuesto –’, July , AHSEP-/C//E.; in addition to the 500 Huichols, schools were also planned for the Tarahumaras, the Chamulas, the Yaquis, the 501 Mayos, the Tarascans, the Zapotecs, the Mixtecs, the ‘indios’ of the Sierra Norte de 502 Puebla, and the Tepehuanos of Durango. Vaughan, Cultural Politics, p. . 503 Hernández to DECI, Oct. , AHSEP-/C//E/.. 504 Hernández to DECI, Sept. , AHSEP-/C//E/.. ‘Civilising the Savage’ 505 According to the reports of Tuxpan’s teacher, the school was an extraordin- 506 ary success. Forty-nine children and adults were initially enrolled, and in 507 December not a single student dropped out and attendance averaged at only 508 one below the maximum possible; while in January new students enrolled, 509 with average attendance now standing at . These figures were almost cer- 510 tainly grossly inflated, but the school, surrounded by test-plantings of modern 511 commercial crops such as coffee, oranges, avocados and bananas, did at least 512 exist, and Hernández and his subordinates were thus by now actively engaged 513 in trying to transform the Huichols into ‘true industrialists who would know 514 how to exploit the natural resources they possess’. 515 The Delahuertista rebellion of late put a temporary stop to these 516 efforts. However, after the rebels’ defeat, Tuxpan’s school was reopened, 517 and another was established in San Sebastián. A rather outlandish and com- 518 pletely inaccurate total of ‘ Huichols’ (‘ children and adults’), all of 519 them male, were apparently enrolled at the latter. It is interesting 520 that Tuxpan and San Sebastián – which had still not demanded agrarian 521 reform – were chosen as sites for the Sierra Huichola’s first schools, rather 522 than San Andrés and Santa Catarina, which were in much closer contact 523 with the Revolutionary state. Perhaps, precisely because they lacked contact 524 with the state, it was regarded as more important to bring the former commu- 525 nities into the national fold. However, it is also possible that the local muni- 526 cipal authorities, motivated by their interest in San Sebastián and Tuxpan’s 527 landholdings, influenced the SEP’s decision. 528 Inspector Hernández enjoyed a cordial relationship with the cacique (and 529 then municipal president) of Villa Guerrero, Adolfo Valdés y Llanos, to 530 whom Hernández presented himself on October as a prelude to his 531 first major expedition to the Sierra, and who approved the seemingly unre- 532 liable reports submitted by the teachers of San Sebastián and Tuxpan (in place 533 of the presidents of Mezquitic and Bolaños, the municipalities to which these 534 communities respectively belonged). The Valdés family, who together with 535 the Sánchez controlled the economic and political life of Villa Guerrero, 536 537 J. Rodríguez, ‘Informe’, Nov. , AHSEP-/C//E/.. ‘ ’ ‘ ’ 538 Rodríguez, Informe , Dec. , AHSEP-/C//E/; Rodríguez, Informe , Jan. , AHSEP-/C//E/. 539 Rodríguez, ‘Informe’, May. , AHSEP-/C//E/. 540 Hernández to DECI, June , AHSEP-/C//E/. 541 F. Antuna, ‘Informe’, Mar. , AHSEP-/C//E/. Ibid. 542 Valdés y Llanos to DECI, Apr. , AHSEP-/C//E/. 543 Hernández to DECI, Oct. , AHSEP-/C//E/.. 544 Hernández to DECI, June , AHSEP-/C//E/. Shadow and Rodríguez Shadow, ‘Religión, economía’, p. ; Valdés y Llanos to DECI, 545 Apr. , AHSEP-/C//E/; PM Sta María to DECI, Oct. , AHSEP- 546 /C//E/.. Nathaniel Morris 547 were united by close commercial, familial and political ties with the Guzmán 548 family of Bolaños and the Muñoz family of Huajimic (across the state border 549 with Nayarit). These families had, during the nineteenth century, seized 550 almost all of the formerly communal lands on the southern edges of the 551 Sierra Huichola, and were now actively working to take over the lands of 552 Tuxpan and San Sebastián. 553 Hernández, on his first visit to San Sebastián’s new school, dedicated his 554 time to what he called the ‘bringing together of mestizos and Indians’. This 555 involved bringing Luis Huerta, Petronilo Muñoz and Leandro and 556 J. Guadalupe Sánchez to visit the school and meet with the community’s gov- 557 ernor. Together, these men represented the main cacical clans of the region; 558 Leandro Sánchez, for example, was a rich landowner and rancher whose family 559 led the takeover of the lands of the nearby Tepecano community of Azqueltán 560 during the Porfiriato; while Petronilo Muñoz (son of Nieves Muñoz, cacique 561 of Huajimic) had only the year before seized lands belonging to Guadalupe 562 Ocotán, and in , under cover of the Cristero Rebellion – or 563 ‘Cristiada’–stole more than , hectares of San Sebastián’s communal 564 territory. 565 Seen in the light of Hernández’s plans for the community’s school and for 566 the community itself, and in the context of San Sebastián’s future agrarian 567 conflicts with these same men and their families, it is difficult to believe the 568 meetings that Hernández organised and facilitated did not, at least in part, 569 concern the potential mestizo settlement of Huichol lands. Typical of the indi- 570 genista rhetoric espoused by SEP policy-makers in this period, Hernández 571 saw the Huichols as ‘poor Indians, living monuments to our glorious 572 people’, who failed to understand that ‘man needs to work, and he who 573 574 575 Meyer, La cristiada, vol. , p. . 576 Robert Shadow, ‘Production, Social Identity and Agrarian struggle among the Tepecano Indians of Northern Jalisco’, in Ross Crumrine and Phil Weigand (eds.), Ejidos and 577 Regions of Refuge in Northwestern Mexico (Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press, 578 ), pp. –. 579 Indeed, the mestizo inhabitants of these towns are today still locked into an often-violent fl 580 territorial con ict with Tuxpan and San Sebastián. Members of the latter communities recently occupied hectares of lands that an agrarian court ruled had been illegally 581 seized by ranchers from Huajimic ‘in the first half of the twentieth century’. Juan Partida, 582 ‘Recuperan huicholes de Jalisco tierras en Nayarit’, La Jornada, Sept. . 583 Antuna, ‘Informe’, Apr. , AHSEP-/C//E/. Shadow and Rodríguez Shadow, ‘Religión, economía’, p. . 584 Auts. Trads. to J. Martínez, Oct. , AGA-D///leg./CCA/Dotación/San 585 Andrés. 586 Unnamed agronomist’s report, June , AGA-D/.//leg./CCA/RTBC/San Sebastián. 587 Dawson, ‘From Models’, p. , pp. –; Lewis, The Ambivalent Revolution, p. . 588 Hernández to DECI, May , AHSEP-/C//E/.. ‘Civilising the Savage’ 589 works hardest will live most comfortably’. To that end he actively advocated 590 that ‘the lands of the Sierra in which the “Huichol” lives, be populated by 591 honest and hardworking [mestizo] families, whose resolve, honour and work 592 will infect, forgive me the word, the semi-savage “Huichol”’, which he believed 593 would bring about ‘the miracle of civilisation in these lands abandoned to 594 indifference and selfishness’. 595 Hernández’s view of the commercial potential of Huichol communal 596 lands – which he claimed possessed ‘natural riches which have never been 597 exploited to anyone’s benefit; sites for bountiful timber, cattle, mineral and 598 agricultural production’ – was similar to those of the region’s mestizo caci- 599 ques who, using almost identical arguments, had long been trying to seize 600 them. Hernández, together with his patron, Valdés y Llanos, and the 601 scions of the cacical clans who came with him to San Sebastián’s school, 602 were therefore natural allies. And it was perhaps because of their combined 603 influence, motivated by both ideology and economic self-interest, that 604 Tuxpan and San Sebastián were chosen as the first Huichol communities to 605 receive federal schools, which Hernández himself openly envisaged as spring- 606 boards from which to launch the colonisation – or recolonisation – of indigen- 607 ous lands by ‘hardworking’ mestizos. Although there is no documentary 608 ‘smoking gun’ that proves beyond doubt that this was indeed the case, 609 Huichol opposition to such plans on the part of Hernández and his 610 mestizo allies would also help to explain the closure of the schools in San 611 Sebastián and Tuxpan shortly afterwards, as well as the subsequent com- 612 plaints of San Sebastián’s authorities that ‘the municipal authorities and 613 private individuals have long abused our ignorance in order to rob us of our 614 lands’. 615 Hernández petitioned hard for the reestablishment of San Sebastián’s 616 school, and the establishment of new schools in Santa Catarina and San 617 Andrés. In response, in April a school was approved for San Andrés 618 for the first time since , where the scale of Huichol resistance to the med- 619 dling of Hernández and his colleagues in communal agrarian problems was 620 soon brought into clearer relief. As mentioned above, the new school’s ante- 621 cedents were far from positive, and, in choosing Antonio Reza to run the 622 Hernández to DECI, Apr. , AHSEP-/C//E/. 623 Hernández to the DECI’s successor, the Departamento de Escuelas Rurales e Incorporación 624 Cultural Indígena (Department for Rural Schools and Indigenous Cultural Incorporation, 625 DERICI), Sept. , AHSEP-/C//E/. Ibid. 626 Cf. Rojas, Los huicholes, pp. –. 627 Hernández to DECI, Jan. , AHSEP-/C//E/. 628 Inocencio Ramos to Governor of Jalisco (hereafter Gob.Jal.), Dec. , Archivo General Agrario (General Agrarian Archive, AGA), Mexico City, D///leg./CCA/ 629 Restitución/San Sebastián. 630 Hernández to DECI, Jan. , AHSEP-/C//E/. Nathaniel Morris 631 school, Hernández repeated the same mistakes as his predecessors, for Reza 632 was already an unpopular figure in San Andrés. Reza had been one of several 633 ‘huicholitos’ taken from San Andrés to Zacatecas before the Revolution to 634 receive the ‘great benefit’ of a religious education. In , Calixto 635 Guerrero, former head of San Sebastián’s Josefino mission, described these 636 Huichol students as having been ‘corrupted by the vices’ they were exposed 637 to in the city, and notes that on returning to their homes, they became ‘real 638 monsters of dishonesty and sin, forcing the Huichols, in view of the evils 639 these learned men caused them, to join together in taking their lives or 640 driving them into exile’. The people of San Andrés killed one of them 641 during the Revolution, but two others, including Reza, had ‘miraculously’ 642 escaped this fate in spite of the ‘continuous torment’ they had inflicted on 643 their community. 644 Reza had returned to San Andrés by March , when he reappears in the 645 documentary record as the author of a request for agrarian reform for the com- 646 munity – in spite of the fact that ‘restitution’ proceedings had already been 647 initiated by the community’s leaders in . Such a unilateral action, 648 taken by an already unpopular figure and without the approval of the commu- 649 nity as a whole, would have met with local opprobrium, which we can assume 650 was compounded by the activities of unnamed SEP officials who, in , 651 recruited Huichol children for the recently established Casa del Estudiante 652 Indígena (House of the Indigenous Student) in Mexico City ‘using unconsti- 653 tutional measures’ – that is, by forcibly ‘seizing them from their lairs’. 654 Whether or not Reza was directly involved, local people would naturally 655 have associated him, as a representative of the SEP, with such abuses. It is 656 perhaps not surprising, then, that in September Reza was ‘assassinated 657 by the tribe’. It was furthermore alleged that they ‘they lynched [Reza] 658 in the community’s TUKI’, suggesting that the community’s kawiterusixi 659 at least approved Reza’s murder, and indicating that the opposition of conser- 660 vative elders towards the work of the SEP, and its ‘cosmopolitan’ Huichol rep- 661 resentative, had become a matter of life or death. 662 Reza’s killing left the Sierra Huichola once again bereft of schools, and was a 663 ‘clear demonstration of the feebleness of our strength, given the scale of this 664 665 666 Hernández to DERICI, Apr. , AHSEP-/C//E/. 667 Guerrero, ‘Informe’, Oct. . Reza to Comité Nacional Agrario (National Agrarian Committee, CNA), Mar. , 668 AGA-D/.//leg./SRA/RTBC/San Andrés. 669 V. Poirett to R. Durand, Jan. , AHSEP--/C//E/. 670 G. Rodríguez to R. Durand, n.d., quoted in R. Durand to DERICI, Jan. , AHSEP- -/C//E/. 671 DERICI, Jalisco, ‘Informe’, Nov. , AHSEP-/C//E.. 672 Ibid. (capitals in original). ‘Civilising the Savage’ 673 work’. It is also a clear indication of the depth of the resistance of many 674 Huichols to the practical application of the Revolutionary nation-building 675 project. This resistance was by now matched by that of the region’s mestizos, 676 who were affronted by the increasingly anti-clerical policies of both the Jalisco 677 state and federal governments. Faced with growing opposition in both the 678 Huichol communities and the surrounding mestizo-inhabited regions, the 679 SEP’s activities in northern Jalisco were paralysed from late , and defini- 680 tively cancelled from August after the outbreak of the Cristiada. 681 The majority of the inhabitants of San Sebastián, under the leadership of 682 Juan Bautista, enthusiastically joined the ‘Cristero’ rebels. Although the 683 rebels saw the Huichols as ‘heathens’, they shared common enemies in 684 the form of the government schools and maestros rurales, as well as the 685 mestizo caciques of Mezquitic, Bolaños, Villa Guerrero and Huajimic, who 686 sided with the government. However, the leaders of San Sebastián’s semi- 687 autonomous anexo of Tuxpan refused to declare allegiance to the Cristeros 688 due to long-standing political tensions with their ‘mother’ community. 689 Santa Catarina’s leaders also remained loyal to the federal government, due 690 to a similar long-running feud with San Sebastián, their continued faith in 691 the state for a solution to their agrarian problems, and furthermore – as no 692 government rural school had been established in Santa Catarina between 693 and – their lack of contact with abusive or exploitative teachers 694 who might otherwise have turned them against the government. However, a 695 dissenting minority faction took the opposing, pro-Cristero side, and many 696 more of those who wanted to stay neutral fled their homes to escape the 697 fighting. San Andrés was also split by the rebellion, as the community’s 698 leaders remained hopeful that the state would help them resolve their agrarian 699 conflicts, but local hostility toward the SEP, made explicit with the murder of 700 Antonio Reza, seems to have tempered local enthusiasm for the federal govern- 701 ment and its representatives, and even led some comuneros to side with the 702 rebels. 703 704 705 706 707 Hernández to DERICI, Sept. , AHSEP-/C//E/. 708 Robert Curley, ‘Anticlericalism and Public Space in Revolutionary Jalisco’, The Americas, 709 : (), pp. –. Maestro in Purificación, Jalisco, to DECI, Jan. , AHSEP-/C//E/.. 710 Interview with Simón Martínez, in Caldera and de la Torre (eds.), Pueblos, pp. –. 711 Weigand, ‘El papel’, p. ; cf. Jennie Purnell, Popular Movements and State Formation in 712 Revolutionary Mexico (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, ), pp. – ; Philip Dennis, Intervillage Conflict in Oaxaca (New Brunswick, NJ, and London: 713 Rutgers University Press, ), pp. –. 714 Morris, ‘The World Created Anew’, pp. –; pp. –. Nathaniel Morris 715 The SEP’s Return to the Sierra Huichola, – 716 In June , a treaty –‘Los Arreglos’–between the government and the 717 rebels officially brought the Cristiada to an end. The fighting had devastated 718 northern Jalisco, and, regardless of which side they had taken, all the 719 Huichol communities had suffered famine, depopulation and the destruction 720 of their gobernancias and tukipa (temple complexes), which had weakened 721 their control over communal landholdings. In fact, San Sebastián was still 722 being attacked more than a year after the conflict officially came to an end, 723 when it was reported that ‘the Chief of Mezquitic’s Defensa Social … is steal- 724 ing the few cattle they still have left’. However, despite the ongoing vio- 725 lence, in the federal government renewed its efforts to incorporate the 726 Huichols into the fabric of the Revolutionary Mexican nation-state. The 727 SEP was once again the main vehicle for these efforts; this would have been 728 impossible without the support of pro-government Huichol leaders, who con- 729 tinued to act as mediators between the SEP’s regional representatives and their 730 home communities. 731 As in previous years, however, conservative cargo-system officers and kawi- 732 terusixi, and anxious Huichol parents, contested the influence of mestizo 733 schoolteachers and their Huichol allies, especially as new SEP campaigns 734 against ‘superstition’ increasingly targeted the costumbre that regulated 735 Huichol religious, social, political and economic life. In the name of increas- 736 ing rural ‘productivity’, or with a view to personal gain, certain SEP officials 737 also again encouraged mestizo attempts to ‘colonise’ Huichol lands. 738 Huichol resistance to both the cultural and territorial threats posed them by 739 the SEP, mestizo ranchers and regional municipal authorities thus continued 740 to obstruct their ‘incorporation’, and also exacerbated inter-communal and 741 inter-factional conflicts rooted in the recent violence. 742 In early , Inspector Ramón Durand was sent to the Sierra Huichola 743 and instructed, in line with national-level policy, to recruit more Huichol stu- 744 dents for the Casa del Estudiante Indígena in Mexico City, rather than set up 745 schools in the shattered Huichol communities. Victorio Poirett, a teacher 746 working near Colotlán, warned Durand that ‘we will not manage to recruit 747 them through persuasion’, and instead suggested sending ‘some armed men 748 to surprise the Indians in their huts and grab their kids’, just as had been 749 750 751 Robert Zingg, Los huicholes: Una tribu de artistas, vol. (Mexico City: INI, ), p. ; Ezequiel Haro to Puig Casauranc, Aug. , AHSEP--/C//E/; unnamed 752 agronomist’s report, Sept. , AGA-D/.//leg./CCA/RTBC/San Sebastián. 753 Ramos to Director de Educación Federal, Jalisco (Director of Federal Education, DEFJ), n.d. 754 [late ], AHSEP--/C//E/. Vaughan, Cultural Politics, pp. –. 755 Simpson, The Ejido, pp. –. 756 Durand to DERICI, Jan. , AHSEP--/C//E/. ‘Civilising the Savage’ 757 done in . Poirett added that the mestizos of Mezquitic, Bolaños or 758 Chimaltitán, the towns closest to the Sierra Huichola, could be counted on 759 to help them in this endeavour – reflecting the violence that typified the 760 relations between the Huichols and their mestizo neighbours. Alternatively, 761 Poirett suggested that ‘a very pro-government Huichol friend of mine’ 762 could assist them, as long as they did not try to recruit children in 763 San Sebastián, because ‘this Huichol cannot meet those Indians, as they 764 are Cristeros’–demonstrating the extent to which tensions between pro- 765 and anti-government groups continued to dominate life in the Sierra 766 Huichola. Durand forwarded Poirett’s advice to his superiors, who recog- 767 nised that arming local mestizos to forcibly recruit Huichol children for the 768 SEP would only create new tensions between the Huichols and the state, 769 and replied that ‘if it is impossible to get the Indians to come of their own 770 free will, it would be preferable not to bring them at all’. Shortly after, 771 however, another local teacher, Genaro Rodríguez, delivered five Huichol chil- 772 dren to the Casa. He did not explain how he had recruited them, but given 773 that they ran away within a month, it appears they were unenthusiastic about 774 leaving their homes and their families, perhaps forever, for an education in 775 Mexico City. 776 In the wake of this failure, and with national indigenous education policies 777 once again promoting the establishment of schools for Indian children within 778 their own communities, Inocencio Ramos replaced Durand as inspector in 779 the Sierra Huichola in late . In line with the increasingly radical indigen- 780 ista discourses emanating from the SEP’s national offices, and in sharp con- 781 trast to the actions and attitudes of the officials previously sent to the region, 782 Ramos was determined to defend ‘the interests of the Indian … with a 783 prudent attitude and within Constitutional norms’, and quickly won 784 the cooperation of Huichol leaders by bringing their problems to the attention 785 of the federal government. 786 In San Sebastián, for instance, Ramos drafted a complaint on behalf of the 787 communal authorities, informing his superiors that local pro-government 788 Defensas were stealing their cattle, and asked that they ‘give [them] guarantees. 789 Because otherwise [they] are in danger, and you have said we have to open our 790 791 792 Poirett to Durand, Jan. , AHSEP--/C//E/. 793 DERICI to Durand, Feb. , AHSEP--/C//E/. DERICI to Rodríguez, Feb. , AHSEP--/C//E/. 794 DERICI to Rodríguez, Mar. , AHSEP--/C//E/. 795 Alexander Dawson, ‘“Wild Indians,”“Mexican Gentlemen,” and the Lessons Learned in 796 the Casa del Estudiante Indígena, –’, The Americas, : (), pp. –. Dawson, ‘From Models’, pp. –. 797 DEFJ to DERICI, July , AHSEP--/C//E/. 798 Cf. Rockwell, ‘Schools’, pp. –. Nathaniel Morris 799 eyes to the Indian.’ Ramos also began to help the Huichol communities 800 with their various agrarian claims, which had been frozen since as a con- 801 sequence of the Cristiada, and which the municipal authorities, who sup- 802 ported the mestizo settlement of Huichol lands, were trying to block. 803 In return for his help, San Sebastián’s elders gave Ramos permission to 804 establish a school ‘under the roof of their courthouse’ until new classrooms 805 could be built, while Tuxpan’s communal assembly also approved a new 806 school. A few months later, San Andrés’ authorities similarly sought to 807 demonstrate their loyalty to the government by not only approving a 808 school, but also promising to set aside , square metres of land on 809 which teachers could demonstrate new crops and improved agricultural tech- 810 niques, the products of which would support the school and its pupils. 811 Ramos must have felt buoyed by these successes, and by the increased 812 importance that Narciso Bassols, appointed Education Secretary in October 813 , accorded to indigenous education. Bassols was a Marxist, an anti-cler- 814 ical and a prominent supporter of agrarian reform, and immediately set about 815 reforming the curriculum, ‘supplement[ing] existing policy emphasising 816 peasant behaviour reform with an intensified attack on superstition [and] reli- 817 gious practice’, which he sought to repackage as ‘folklore’, or, when this 818 was incompatible with social and economic ‘progress’, to replace with civic cel- 819 ebrations. He also ordered SEP officials across the nation to introduce anti- 820 alcohol and sanitation programmes into the communities in which they 821 worked, set up local postal services, encourage sporting events and estab- 822 lish boarding schools – internados indígenas – which he viewed as the best 823 means of transforming Indians into productive members of Mexican 824 society. All of the federal schools would teach Indian children Spanish, 825 basic literacy and numeracy, and introduce improved agricultural techniques, 826 logging, tanning, and other small-scale industries into their communities. 827 Just as in the schools set up for Indian and Aboriginal children in the 828 Ramos to DEFJ, n.d. [late ], AHSEP--/C//E/. 829 Comisión Local Agraria (Local Agrarian Commission, CLA) of Mezquitic, to Gob.Jal., 830 June , AGA-D/.//leg./SRA/RTBC/San Sebastián. 831 Ramos, ‘Informe’, Nov. , AHSEP--/C//E/. 832 Ibid. DEFJ to DERICI, Mar. , AHSEP--/C//E/. 833 Vaughan, Cultural Politics, p. . 834 Ibid., p. . 835 Ibid., p. , p. . Narciso Bassols, Obras, cited in Aguirre Beltrán, Teoría y práctica, pp. –. 836 Vaughan, Cultural Politics, p. . 837 Ibid., p. , pp. –; Gilbert Joseph, ‘Rethinking Mexican Revolutionary Mobilization: 838 Yucatan’s Seasons of Upheaval, –’, in Joseph and Nugent (eds.), Everyday Forms, p. . 839 Vaughan, Cultural Politics, pp. –. 840 DEFJ to DERICI, Mar. , AHSEP--/C//E/. ‘Civilising the Savage’ 841 United States and Australia at around the same time, in the Sierra Huichola 842 ‘the manual labor of young children [was seen as] critical for the efficient 843 conduct of the schools’. 844 Knowing that winning government support for Huichol land claims was 845 key to keeping them on his side, and encouraged by Bassols’ agrarista tenden- 846 cies, in late Ramos travelled to Guadalajara to secure a land registry 847 certificate for San Sebastián. This secured him the friendship of former 848 Cristero leader Juan Bautista, who – contrary to Phil Weigand’s assertion 849 that, after the collapse of the rebellion in , he continued fighting a ‘defen- 850 sive war’ in the mountains – had instead returned peacefully to his commu- 851 nity, where Ramos described him as ‘President of the Indians’. Bautista 852 probably saw supporting the government school as a way of reconciling with 853 the state and saving the lives of himself and his followers, and he agreed to 854 become head of the local ‘education committee’. On July he helped 855 organise a meeting between Ramos, a federal military commander and San 856 Sebastián’s traditional authorities. With Bautista translating, Ramos explained 857 to them 858 859 the mission that the teachers, on behalf of Jalisco’s Federal Education Department, in its grand desire for learning, would develop among the Huichol tribe, so as to bring them closer to the 860 Civilised Peoples … [The Huichols] understand they must send their children to the school 861 that, from the st of this month, has been opened for their instruction, and they are satisfied 862 with the benefits that the government gives them. 863 864 In return, the communal authorities demanded ‘the government’s frank and ff 865 e ective protection, as this tribe has long been harassed by elements at the 866 service of the neighbouring municipal authorities’. Ramos’ advocacy of 867 these claims seems to have surprised and perhaps even worried Jalisco’s 868 Director of Federal Education, who responded by warning his own superior, 869 Rafael Ramírez, that ‘I am about to bring the complaints of [Ramos] and 870 the Indians to the appropriate authorities … but I am letting you know in ffi 871 advance in case this will provoke any di culties’ – probably a reference fl 872 to potential con icts between government agencies sympathetic to the 873 Huichols’ plight, and the municipal authorities accused of persecuting them. 874 James Carroll, ‘The Smell of the White Man Is Killing Us: Education and Assimilation 875 among Indigenous Peoples’, U.S. Catholic Historian, : (), p. . 876 Simpson, The Ejido, pp. –, pp. –; Aguirre Beltrán, Teoría y práctica, pp. –. 877 Ing. Balderas, ‘Informe’, Nov. , AGA-D///leg./CCA/Restitución/San Sebastián. 878 Weigand, ‘El papel’, p. . 879 Ramos to DEFJ, n.d. [late ], AHSEP--/C//E/. 880 Ramos, ‘Informe’, Nov. , AHSEP--/C//E/. Ramos, ‘Informe’, July , AHSEP--/C//E/. 881 Ibid. 882 DEFJ to DERICI, July , AHSEP--/C//E/. Nathaniel Morris 883 Ramírez did not obstruct Ramos’ activities, which now included petitioning 884 for the ‘restitution’ of Huichol lands on behalf of San Sebastián and 885 Tuxpan. The traditional governors of both communities, as well as local 886 caciques Cenobio de la Cruz, Zenón Romero, Santos de la Cruz, Pascual 887 González and Juan Bautista, all signed Ramos’ petition. These men had 888 fought one another during the Cristiada, and would soon be divided again 889 by the so-called ‘Segunda’ Cristiada. For the moment, however, their collective 890 anxiety over the security of both communities’ landholdings triumphed over 891 the long-standing tensions between them. 892 In January , the process of ‘restitution’ for San Sebastián and Tuxpan 893 officially began. The authorities in Mezquitic attempted to block the 894 communities’ joint claim, arguing that ‘titles or documents mentioning the 895 theft of lands about which the indigenous complain are inexistent … 896 Furthermore … this authority is not responsible for these imaginary disposses- 897 sions.’ However, in February the communities’ claim was published in the 898 Diario Oficial, and in July Ramos and a commission of Huichols again 899 travelled to Guadalajara, where they received a provisional title to San 900 Sebastián and Tuxpan’s lands. Shortly after, three agronomists arrived in 901 San Sebastián to survey the community’s territory, which they judged to be 902 larger than needed, and tried to surreptitiously reduce by around , hec- 903 tares. However, the agronomists’ activities aroused Huichol suspicions and, 904 as ‘experience has taught these people that such pretexts are used to seize their 905 lands’, Ramos accompanied the community’s authorities to Mexico City ‘to 906 prove their case with titles in hand at the National Land Registry’. There 907 they managed to have the agronomists’ decision overturned and file a new 908 claim for the restitution of all their traditional territory. 909 While Ramos provided invaluable assistance to various Huichol communi- 910 ties, few Huichols reciprocated by sending their children to the new schools. In 911 San Sebastián, despite Ramos’ attempts to organise farming and logging coop- 912 eratives, build separate classrooms for boys and girls, and sow five hectares of 913 communal land to supply grain for the school and its pupils, attendance 914 remained low. As in many other parts of Mexico, the community refused 915 to allow girls to attend until a female teacher could be found for them, 916 917 Ramos to Gob.Jal., Dec. , AGA-D///leg./CCA/Restitución/San Sebastián. 918 José Egurvido to CLA Mezquitic, Feb. , AGA-D///leg./CCA/Restitución/ 919 San Sebastián. Diario Oficial de la Federación, Feb. . 920 Ing. Balderas, ‘Informe’, Nov. , AGA-D///leg./CCA/Restitución/San 921 Sebastián. 922 Ramos to DEFJ, Aug. , AHSEP--/C//E/. Ramos, ‘Informe’, Nov. , AHSEP--/C//E/. 923 Cf. Vaughan, Cultural Politics, p. –, pp. –, pp. –. 924 Ramos to DEFJ, May , AHSEP--/C//E/. ‘Civilising the Savage’ 925 while the majority of the boys who attended were orphans or fatherless chil- 926 dren who lacked clothes and food. When supplies of maize – the only 927 food available – were exhausted, such pupils returned home until Ramos 928 could secure enough grain to feed them again. In the run-up to the rainy 929 season, even the few Huichol children who were sent to the school to learn 930 Spanish and other skills, rather than just to get free meals, were withdrawn 931 by their parents to help with family-unit agricultural labour, often at 932 rancherías several days’ walk from the school. 933 Meanwhile, schools in San Andrés, Tuxpan and Santa Catarina had ceased 934 to function due to the ‘lamentable failures of the teachers charged with estab- 935 lishing them’. However, as Ramos’ superiors refused to dismiss these 936 indifferent and inefficient teachers, preferring instead to transfer them to 937 mestizo villages in less remote areas, the Huichol schools remained 938 unstaffed. Conflicts within Jalisco’s SEP administration, together with 939 the brief rebellion of a group of former Cristeros in the Jalisco–Zacatecas bor- 940 derlands, soon forced even San Sebastián’s school to close, and further 941 delayed any new SEP initiatives in the Sierra Huichola. 942 The defeat of the rebels, and appointment of Erasto Valle as Jalisco’s 943 Director of Federal Education, which put an end to internal SEP 944 conflicts, allowed Ramos to reopen San Sebastián’s school in February 945 , and establish another in Santa Catarina in March. Luis Carrillo, 946 one of the few Huichol alumni of the Casa del Estudiante Indígena not to 947 have returned to ‘the customs of his race, with tendencies to continue the 948 nomadic life of their ancestors’, was put in charge in Santa Catarina. 949 Meanwhile Valle himself announced a project to establish boarding schools 950 for the Huichols on state-owned land. Referencing the colonial policy of ‘con- 951 gregation’, and Vasconcelos’ more recent ideas of teachers as ‘missionaries’, 952 Valle envisaged the dotación (concession) of state lands to Huichol families as a 953 way of concentrating the population, ‘as in the remote past they congregated 954 Ibid. 955 Ibid. 956 Sevilla to DEFJ, May , AHSEP--/C//E/. 957 DEFJ to DERICI, July , AHSEP-: C//E/; Sevilla to DEFJ, May 958 , AHSEP--/C//E/. Sevilla, ‘Informe’, July , AHSEP--/C//E/. 959 DEFJ to Sevilla, July , AHSEP--/C//E/. 960 Zenaido Pimienta, Episodios históricos de la educación en Jalisco (Guadalajara: Talleres Vera, 961 ), p. . Ramos, ‘Informe’, Apr. , AHSEP--/C//E/. 962 Pimienta, Episodios históricos, p. ; cf. Vaughan, Cultural Politics, p. . 963 Sevilla to DEFJ, Apr. , AHSEP--/C//E/. 964 ‘Las Noticias’, Mar. , AHSEP--/C//E/. Sevilla, ‘Informe’, Apr. , AHSEP--/C//E/. 965 Lino Gómez Canedo, ‘Huicot: Antecedentes Misionales’, Estudios de Historia Novohispana, 966 : (), pp. –. Nathaniel Morris 967 around churches’. In turn, this would solve the problems that dispersed 968 Huichol settlement patterns had long presented the SEP. 969 In March, Valle set off on a tour of the Sierra to find potential sites for the 970 planned internados. On his return, he reported that the Huichols numbered 971 around ,, were ‘greatly attached to their customs and reluctant to assimi- 972 late themselves to the customs of the whites and mestizos’, and lived ‘miser- 973 able’ lives due to their ‘ancestral laziness … preferring to hunt rather than 974 raise animals and [being] resistant to farming, except in a small-scale and rudi- 975 mentary manner’. However, despite having suffered ‘the worst disillusion 976 on realising that from this tribe one can expect neither material nor moral 977 aid’, Valle suggested establishing internados in San Sebastián, San Andrés 978 and Las Latas (one of Santa Catarina’s most important tukipa). 979 Foreshadowing the emphasis that the SEP under Cárdenas would put on 980 improving material conditions in Mexico’s indigenous communities, each 981 of Valle’s planned Huichol internados would be staffed by a male director 982 and a female assistant, who would together teach pupils to speak, read 983 and write Spanish, raise crops and animals more efficiently, build ‘better’ 984 houses, eat ‘better’ food, and wear ‘better’ clothes. Once they had been 985 trained, the Huichol graduates would receive agricultural equipment and 986 plots of land near the school, while local teachers would try to ensure that 987 the graduates ‘do not disconnect themselves morally and intellectually from 988 [either] the school or their families’. 989 However, the huge projected cost of the project – at , pesos per year – led 990 Valle’ssuperiorstorejecthisplans, while the Huichols themselves also used 991 mestizo ignorance of the Huichol language to undermine Valle’sattemptsto 992 impose on them a ‘foreign’ culture. In San Andrés, for example, one of 993 Valle’s subordinates managed to win local approval for the establishment of an 994 internado. But just as a communal assembly was to officially confirm its support, 995 996 An old Huichol … asked in his language that [the traditional governor] pause, and then bowing his head three times spoke a few words [in Huichol] to the others, which they discussed ani- 997 matedly. Then the governor asked me: ‘You will yourself direct the school and be responsible 998 for the other teachers who come?’‘No’, I said, ‘I have no academic titles or diplomas and further- 999 more, the government will decide whom to send.’ He [the governor] replied: ‘The community ’ ’ 1000 doesn t want the school if you will not direct it, and so we will not [approve it]. 1001 DEFJ to DERICI, Feb. , AHSEP--/C//E/. 1002 ‘Las Noticias’, Mar. , AHSEP--/C//E/. 1003 Ibid. Dawson, ‘From Models’, pp. –. 1004 Cf. Vaughan, Cultural Politics, pp. –; pp. –. 1005 Valle, ‘Plan educativo’, May , AHSEP--/C//E/. 1006 Ramírez to Valle, June , AHSEP--/C//E/. Cf. Scott, Weapons, pp. –. 1007 Macías to newly-formed Departamento de Educación Indígena (Department for Indigenous 1008 Education, DEI), Feb. , AHSEP--/C//E/. ‘Civilising the Savage’ 1009 Given their past experiences with mestizo teachers, it is not surprising that the 1010 elders of San Andrés would trust only those whom they had already met and 1011 who would take personal responsibility for any conflicts that their presence 1012 might cause. Thus the errors of Valle’s predecessors in dealing with the 1013 Huichols now scuppered his own plan to establish new internados in their 1014 communities. 1015 Meanwhile northern Jalisco’s mestizo ex-Cristeros were again on the 1016 warpath. Armed ‘fanatics’ now posed a growing threat to the region’s 1017 SEP officials, one of whom was murdered near Colotlán in August, and 1018 by December many local schools were unable to function because it was no 1019 longer safe to travel on local roads. In January Bassols added sexual 1020 education classes to his controversial ‘socialist’ curriculum, which further 1021 enraged both Catholic parents and ex-Cristeros, many of whom, a month 1022 later, declared war on the Revolutionary state. Throughout the new rebel- 1023 lion, Santa Catarina’s authorities remained as strongly pro-government as they 1024 had been during the first Cristiada. The leaders of Tuxpan’s pro-government 1025 Defensa also continued to look to the federal government to protect them 1026 from mestizo land-grabs, and with Ramos’ recent support in their agrarian 1027 petitioning and their feud with San Sebastián’s ex-Cristeros still fresh in their 1028 minds, they remained pro-government throughout the Second Cristiada. 1029 Meanwhile both Cristeros and pro-government militiamen threatened San 1030 Andrés’ lands, and the community tried again to remain neutral, while 1031 many in San Sebastián again sided with the rebels, at least in part as a reaction 1032 to the provocative actions of the teacher Apolonio González (see below). 1033 1034 1035 The SEP and ‘La Segunda Cristiada’, – 1036 In August , Inocencio Ramos was dismissed from his post on charges of 1037 ‘exploiting the Huichols’. However, these accusations were never substan- 1038 tiated, and seem unlikely given his well-documented advocacy on behalf 1039 of Tuxpan and San Sebastián, with which he persisted, first in a private cap- 1040 acity, and later as an employee of the Departamento de Asuntos Indígenas 1041 ‘ fl – ’ 1042 David Raby, Los maestros rurales y los con ictos sociales en México, , Historia Mexicana, : (), pp. –. 1043 Valle, ‘Informe anual’, Aug. , AHSEP--/C//E/. 1044 Rubalcaba to DERICI, Dec. , AHSEP--/C//E/. 1045 Braulio Rodríguez, ‘Circular’, Jan. , AHSEP--/C//E/. Ibid.; DEFJ to DERICI, June , AHSEP--/C//E/. 1046 C. de la Cruz, Z. Romero and P. Chino to CNA, Mar. , AGA-D/.//leg./ 1047 SRA/RTBC/Tuxpan. 1048 Communal leaders to CNA, May , AGA-D/.//leg./SRA/RTBC/San Andrés; Balderas, ‘Informe’, Nov. , AGA-D///leg./CCA/Restitución/San 1049 Sebastián. 1050 Valle to DERICI, Mar. , AHSEP--/C//E/. Nathaniel Morris 1051 (Department for Indigenous Affairs, DAI). In fact, it was probably precisely 1052 this advocacy, and the ire it aroused amongst the region’s mestizo caciques, 1053 which led an unknown but clearly influential claimant to level these accusa- 1054 tions against him in the first place. After all, even Valle himself had noted 1055 that those who exploited Mexico’s Indians often used the support of ‘very 1056 influential persons’ to evade charges brought against them by conscientious 1057 indigenista teachers; this ‘sometimes leads to the punishment of the teacher 1058 himself, which makes the Indian lose his faith on seeing that [the teacher] 1059 is powerless to do anything in his favour’. Reinforcing the hypothesis 1060 that powerful local interests orchestrated Ramos’ dismissal is the fact that 1061 his successor, a mestizo from just outside Mezquitic named Apolonio 1062 González, was closely connected to the region’s mestizo elite, and had in 1063 fact co-founded Mezquitic’s Defensa force, which his close friend 1064 Griseldo Salazar now commanded. 1065 Soon after González took up his post in the community, he and Salazar, 1066 ‘with wicked intentions and [taking] advantage of the ignorance of the 1067 Huichol Indians’, together applied on behalf of San Sebastián for a govern- 1068 ment ‘dotación de ejidos’ (roughly speaking, ‘communal land grant’), in an 1069 attempt to void the community’s existing application for ‘restitution’ and 1070 so ‘take control of these lands for themselves’. González’s flagrant abuse 1071 of his position to threaten the community’s landholdings, in partnership 1072 with no less than the hated Griseldo Salazar, was compounded by his selling 1073 mezcal from inside his classroom, and contributed to Juan Bautista 1074 drawing back from reconciliation with the Revolutionary government and rea- 1075 ligning himself with the region’s resurgent ex-Cristeros. However, San 1076 Sebastián’s traditional authorities were reluctant to back Bautista’s new rebel- 1077 lion, given their suffering during the first Cristiada, and the positive relation- 1078 ship they had enjoyed with Inocencio Ramos. The community was left 1079 divided, and many of San Sebastián’s families fled to pro-government 1080 Tuxpan in an attempt to escape involvement in the conflict. 1081 Rebel violence reached the Huichol communities in December , when 1082 two bodies were found near San Sebastián’s contested boundary with Santa 1083 Catarina. Griseldo Salazar used this as an excuse to step up his Defensa’s 1084 Valle to DERICI, Feb. , AHSEP--/C//E/. 1085 Martínez, in Caldera and de la Torre (eds.), Pueblos, pp. –. 1086 Enrique Cárdenas, ‘Informe’, Nov. , AGA-D/.//Leg./SRA/Restitución/ 1087 San Andrés. Ramos to DEFJ, Feb. , AHSEP--/C//E/. 1088 Tomás de la Rosa Estrada to Pres. Cárdenas, Dec. , Archivo General de la Nación, 1089 Fondo Lázaro Cárdenas (National General Archive, Lázaro Cárdenas Foundation, AGN- 1090 LC), ./. Julio Vindiola to Dept. Agrario, Sept. , AGA-D///leg./CCA/Restitución/ 1091 San Sebastián. 1092 Ramos (now working for the DAI), to DEI, Oct. , AHSEP--/C//E/. ‘Civilising the Savage’ 1093 attacks on San Sebastián. In the same month, Apolonio González was 1094 forced by Bautista’s rebel fighters to flee back to his home near 1095 Mezquitic, where he was killed soon afterwards by Cristeros led by Juan 1096 Bautista’s mestizo compadre, Pepe Sánchez. A few weeks later, Bautista 1097 and Sánchez joined forces and ambushed and killed Commander Salazar 1098 himself, somewhere in the Sierra near San Sebastián. 1099 Even as at national level the number of SEP teachers in the countryside 1100 reached a high of ,, and Jalisco’s school inspectors boasted that 1101 across the state ‘the teacher … is [now] the soul of the community’, 1102 the renewed violence disrupted the SEP’s mission in the Sierra Huichola, 1103 and the last school in the region, in Santa Catarina, was closed in April 1104 , due to ‘the tenacious resistance of the Huichols to the National 1105 Government’s cultural work’. Although no replacement schools could be 1106 set up in the Sierra Huichola itself, plans were nonetheless made to establish 1107 an internado for Huichol children in Bolaños, where it would be guarded by 1108 the local Defensa. Once again, the SEP hoped to congregate the dispersed 1109 Huichol population around the internado in order to better ‘attract them 1110 to culture’, while, in line with the materialist bent of the SEP’s programme 1111 under Cárdenas, its staff would promote ‘the exploitation of the region’s 1112 raw materials … taking into account that as the Huichols are hunters, they 1113 have the necessary components for the manufacture of shoes’. 1114 The internado in Bolaños opened its doors in late , but few Huichol 1115 parents would send their children there. The building was windowless and 1116 in terrible condition, the students were neglected and mistreated, and one 1117 Huichol child died there as a result. The school’s director ‘responded to 1118 these problems by acting [in an] increasingly authoritarian [manner]’, 1119 and asked President Cárdenas to send federal troops to ‘visit the indigenous 1120 pueblos in order to convince them to contribute a contingent of students to 1121 the school’. Such coercive tactics only increased the opposition of parents 1122 and children to the school, while Bautista and Sánchez’s rebels frequently 1123 1124 Rosa Estrada to Pres., Dec. , AGN-LC/./. 1125 Samuel Pérez to DEFJ, April , AHSEP--/C//E/. 1126 Federación de Maestros Feds. de Jal. to Gob.Jal., Apr. , AHSEP--/C//E/ ; Jesús Sánchez Martínez, A contra corriente (Guadalajara: Palibrio, ), p. . 1127 Aurelio Muñiz Vargas to Pres., June , AGN-LC/E//. 1128 Vaughan, Cultural Politics, p. . 1129 ‘Meeting of Jalisco School Inspectors’, Sept. , AHSEP--/C//E/. DEFJ to Samuel Pérez, Apr. , AHSEP--/C//E/. 1130 Montoya to DEFJ, Oct. , AHSEP--/C//E/. 1131 ‘Las Noticias’, Sept. , AHSEP--/C//E/. 1132 Dawson, Indian and Nation, p. . Ibid. 1133 Ávila Vázquez to Pres. Cárdenas, Oct. , AGN-LC/C//E/./. 1134 Interview with Jesús Mercado González (see note ). Nathaniel Morris 1135 ambushed the teachers, pro-government Huichols and their armed escorts 1136 during their recruiting missions. In early , Cristero attacks and 1137 general Huichol resistance forced the internado to close. The ongoing 1138 regional violence, the dispersal of the Huichol population in the face of the 1139 fighting, and, most of all, their by-now extreme distrust of schools, prevented 1140 the SEP from establishing replacements in the ruined Huichol gobernancias, 1141 even after local support for the rebels evaporated with Bautista’s death at 1142 the hands of Tuxpan’s Defensa in . Thus SEP policy-makers, already 1143 disillusioned by their previous failures and stretched for funding, abandoned 1144 any further attempts to ‘incorporate’ the Huichols until well into the 1145 s, and teachers would not return en masse to the Sierra until the 1146 launch of the regional ‘Huicot’ development plan in the late s. 1147 1148 1149 Conclusions 1150 Between and , then, the Huichols managed to defy the attempts of 1151 the Revolutionary state to ‘incorporate’ them into the Mexican nation, con- 1152 founding turn-of-the-century predictions that they would ‘soon disappear by 1153 fusion with the great nation to whom they belong’. In part, their survival as 1154 a distinct people was due to the willingness of some Huichol leaders to com- 1155 promise with the state. By portraying themselves as eager for education, these 1156 individuals won (limited) federal government support for communal claims, 1157 which at the very least resulted in the launching of the restitution process 1158 for San Sebastián and Tuxpan in the early s. However, examples of 1159 rural teachers and Huichol leaders working together for the good of the com- 1160 munity – epitomised by Inocencio Ramos managing to bring together former 1161 Cristeros and pro-government Defensa leaders in order to work towards 1162 winning official recognition of their joint landholdings – are few and far 1163 between. And even Ramos’ own efforts, in line with shifts in national-level 1164 SEP policy towards working with rural people to ‘identify and defend commu- 1165 nal interests’, were undermined by the provocative actions of other teachers 1166 and government agronomists, and by the cupidity and obstructionism of 1167 regional actors who coveted Huichol landholdings. 1168 1169 1170 G. Ceja Torres to DEFJ, Nov. , AHSEP--/C//E/; Antonio López 1171 Mendoza to Pres. Cárdenas, Feb. , AGN-LC/C/. Dawson, Indian and Nation, p. . 1172 ‘Murió en un tiroteo el rebelde Bautista’, El Porvenir, Sept. . 1173 Guillermo Liera to DAI, Feb. , AHSEP--/C//E/. 1174 Plan Lerma Asistencia Técnica, Operación Huicot (Guadalajara: Poder Ejecutivo Federal, ). 1175 Lumholtz, Unknown Mexico, vol. , p. xvi. 1176 Vaughan, Cultural Politics, p. . ‘Civilising the Savage’ 1177 For despite evidence that, during Cárdenas’ presidency, rural teachers across 1178 the country faced up to ‘their own limitations and … vigorous community 1179 defence of cultural practices’ and moderated their often iconoclastic zeal, 1180 most SEP officials continued to see the Huichols as ‘backward’ and ‘savage’ 1181 throughout the Revolutionary period. They depended on coercion to recruit 1182 Huichol students for unpopular schools, and even, in some cases, used agrarian 1183 legislation and their ties to municipal authorities to machinate against their 1184 Huichol hosts. Ultimately, these officials caused as many problems for the 1185 Huichols as the Huichol leaders’ demonstrations of loyalty to the Mexican 1186 state could solve. 1187 The Huichol response to the threats posed by federal and municipal officials 1188 and their local mestizo allies to their political, cultural and territorial auton- 1189 omy was thus also typified, throughout the Revolutionary period, by wide- 1190 spread resistance. Huichol use of ‘weapons of the weak’, and more violent 1191 tactics such as assassinations or even, in the case of San Sebastián and minority 1192 factions elsewhere, armed rebellion against the state, obstructed their assimila- 1193 tion into the Mexican mainstream. Even in pro-government Santa Catarina, 1194 local opposition and regional violence forced the community’s school to 1195 close in the mid-s. Thus towards the end of the Revolutionary period, 1196 a single internado was left to serve the entire Huichol population of northern 1197 Jalisco, and, in the face of rebel attacks and the refusal of Huichol parents to 1198 allow their children to attend, even this was forced to close. 1199 While the Huichols suffered greatly during the two decades of tumult that 1200 followed the end of the armed phase of the Revolution in – a period in 1201 which many tukipa and the communal gobernancias were destroyed and an 1202 unknown number of Huichols were killed and many more were forced to 1203 flee their homes as refugees – the Huichol population as a whole therefore 1204 emerged from the Revolutionary period still in possession of a distinct 1205 culture, a high level of political autonomy, and vast areas of communal land. 1206 This does not mean, however, that federal government agencies, regional 1207 caciques and local mestizo ranchers ceased to threaten them. Towards the 1208 very end of Cárdenas’ presidency, the agronomists whom the Huichols had 1209 long been asking for finally arrived in the region. However, far from helping 1210 the Huichols to defend their territorial claims as might be expected of repre- 1211 sentatives of Cárdenas’ indigenista regime, they reported, using language close 1212 to that of their Porfirian predecessors, that ‘demarcation [of their lands] with 1213 not resolve the Indians’ problems, as these are not agrarian, but rather 1214 1215 1216 Ibid., pp. –. Phil Weigand, ‘Differential Acculturation among the Huichol Indians’, in Thomas Hinton 1217 and Phil Weigand (eds.), Themes of Indigenous Acculturation in Northwest Mexico (Tucson, 1218 AZ: University of Arizona Press, ), pp. –. Nathaniel Morris 1219 economic, racial and ambient’. They then reiterated Inspector Hernández’s 1220 earlier proposals: that, in order to ‘improve this terrible situation, migrations 1221 in both directions must be brought about; that is, colonise Huichol lands, and 1222 attract large numbers of [Huichols] to the major population centres’. This 1223 was already happening in practice, as mestizo ranchers from Nayarit, supported 1224 by that state’s government, embarked on violent new incursions into the ter- 1225 ritories of Tuxpan, San Sebastián and San Andrés, while the federal govern- 1226 ment provisionally awarded an insultingly small title to its long-term allies 1227 in Santa Catarina. 1228 Many Huichol leaders – including some who had previously believed that 1229 supporting government schools would win them government support for 1230 their agrarian struggles – saw the agronomists’ recommendations, the 1231 resumed mestizo land-grabs and the outcome of Santa Catarina’s struggle 1232 for title to its lands as a betrayal. They accused all the federal government’s 1233 representatives – including those they now described as the SEP’s ‘inept 1234 and unsympathetic teachers’ – of being as committed to destroying their 1235 communities as were the mestizo ranchers. Thus into the s, even the 1236 ‘cosmopolitan’ Huichol elite became more combative in their dealings with 1237 the Mexican state, as at the same time a new generation of Huichol 1238 leaders began to emerge, many of them former students of the short-lived 1239 federal schools. 1240 However, in contrast to the situation in many other Indian regions, and 1241 testament to the ultimate failure of the SEP’s programme in the Sierra 1242 Huichola between and , schooling had not transformed these 1243 men (and they were all men) into ‘Mexicans’ amenable to cooperation with 1244 regional elites and the federal government, but rather into resolutely 1245 ‘Huichol’ leaders who were now better equipped to negotiate communal 1246 demands with the emergent PRIísta regime. By manipulating the official 1247 discourses of ‘patriotism’ and ‘nationhood’ that they had picked up from 1248 the maestros rurales, as well as their ability to speak, read and write the national 1249 language, leaders like the Huichol teacher Agustín Carrillo Sandoval were able 1250 1251 The neo-Porfirian attitudes of these agronomists, and their lack of traditional Cardenista ‘ ’ fl 1252 sympathy for oppressed Indians , re ect the growing power of conservative forces in Mexican (and especially provincial) politics in the late s, culminating in Manuel 1253 Ávila Camacho’s accession to the presidency in ; cf. Vaughan, Cultural Politics, 1254 p. ; Bantjes, As If Jesus, p. . 1255 Alonso Guerrero to Dept. Agrario, Apr. , AGA-D/.//leg./CCA/RTBC/ Tuxpan. 1256 Morris, ‘The World Created Anew’, pp. –. 1257 Mijares Cossío to Pres. Cárdenas, July , AGN-LC/C//E/./. 1258 Community representatives to Dept. Agrario, Feb. , AGA-D/.// leg./ CCA/RTBC/San Sebastián. 1259 Rus, ‘Comunidad Revolucionario Institucional’, pp. –. 1260 Benítez, Los indios, vol. , pp. –, pp. –, p. –. ‘Civilising the Savage’ 1261 to facilitate and legitimise their continued use of subversion, accommodation, 1262 evasion, and active, sometimes violent resistance, in defence of the cultural, 1263 political and territorial autonomy of their communities that the SEP, between 1264 and , had tried so hard to destroy, and which, despite its subsequent 1265 efforts alongside other government agencies, the Huichols of northern Jalisco 1266 still enjoy today. 1267 1268 Spanish and Portuguese abstracts 1269 1270 Spanish abstract. Los intentos por utilizar la escuela para asimilar a los huicholes 1271 dentro del estado-nación revolucionario promovieron el desarrollo de diferentes alian- fl 1272 zas y con ictos en su patria chica, involucrando a comunidades y facciones huicholes rivales, a mestizos locales, a funcionarios gubernamentales y a rebeldes cristeros. La 1273 provocación de los maestros, la avaricia de los caciques mestizos, la violencia rebelde 1274 y el compromiso huichol para preservar su autonomía comunal, minaron las alianzas 1275 entre los dirigentes huicholes y los funcionarios federales, lo que ultimadamente llevó 1276 al fracaso del proyecto gubernamental. Como ninguna otra situación, el programa edu- 1277 cativo revolucionario de corta vida equipó a toda una nueva generación de líderes huic- holes con herramientas para resistir mejor las presiones asimilacionistas externas de los 1278 años y después. 1279 1280 Spanish keywords: huicholes, revolución mexicana, construcción estatal, educación, 1281 rebelión cristera, asimilación 1282 1283 1284 Portuguese abstract. Tentativas de utilizar escolas para assimilar Huichóis ao Estado- nação revolucionário levaram ao desenvolvimento de parcerias divergentes e 1285 conflitos em sua patria chica, envolvendo comunidades e facções Huichóis rivais, 1286 mestiços locais, funcionários do governo e rebeldes cristeros. As provocações de profes- 1287 sores, a avareza de caciques mestiços, a violência de rebeldes, e o comprometimento 1288 Huichól em preservar a autonomia comunal minaram as alianças entre líderes 1289 Huichóis e funcionários federais, levando, ultimamente, ao fracasso do projeto gov- 1290 ernamental. Se de fato algum resultado foi alcançado pelo programa de educação revolucionário de curta existência, este foi, na verdade, equipar uma nova geração de 1291 líderes Huichóis com ferramentas para melhor resistir às pressões assimilacionistas 1292 externas durante a década de e décadas subsequentes. 1293 1294 Portuguese keywords: Huichóis, revolução Mexicana, construção de Estado, educação, 1295 guerra Cristera, assimilação 1296 1297 1298 1299 1300 1301 Torres Contreras, Relaciones de frontera, pp. –; interview with Antonio Candelario 1302 (see note ).