In Álvaro's House: Fisher Leaders, Family Life and The

Liina-Maija Quist IN ÁLVARO’S HOUSE: FISHER LEADERS, FAMILY LIFE AND THE ETHNOGRAPHER AT MEXICO’S OIL FRONTIER abstract In this essay, I examine the practice of ethnographic knowledge-production through my fieldwork encounter with Álvaro, a political leader of fishers in Mexico’s oil-producing state, Tabasco. Exercising ethnographic reflexivity, I analyze how my relations with Álvaro and his family in a context of conflict between fishers and the oil industry shaped my analytical lens on the politics of resource access. The essay focuses on ambiguity as an overriding characteristic of the research encounter, and suggests that paralleling ambiguities in my analysing of Álvaro during fieldwork and in my own, gendered and racialized positionality within the family were formative for my perspective on fisher – oil industry politics. Furthermore, the analysis shows how my knowledge about the ‘field’ was made in the intersection of my and the family’s mutual efforts to draw each other into our categories of thinking, Álvaro’s reflection about his role in politics, and the wider historical and political economic context shaping the relations between the fishers and the oil industry in the Gulf of Mexico. This analysis draws attention to the importance of ethnography in showing the complexity and situatedness of politics of resource access. Key words: ambiguity, ethnography, fishers, gender, oil, politics, reflexivity Introduction: Fisher of Fisheries… But I don’t like to open up politics and family life1 like this. That’s why they’re scared of me… I don’t know why the government is the But to find those unmapped destinations way it is. I don’t know, but I don’t want I would have to abandon the purposes that them to shape [manage] everybody… first drove me down that road, and learn to Liina, don’t ask me any more questions. ask directions from those who lived along (Field notes from discussion with Álvaro it. (Michael Jackson 2012: 11) Vázquez in 2011) I’ve always defended my place. Others Álvaro Vázquez2 was a respected oldtimer look for their own interests… I was a in fishers’ cooperatives and in the sea fishers’ representative in the federal Federation political leadership in Tabasco, Mexico’s suomen antropologi | volume 41 issue 3 autumn 2016 21 Liina-Maija Quist oil-producing state. He had grown up during embark on fieldwork in a fisher family and the height of the government-introduced familiarize myself with fishers’ organizations. cooperative movement and the corporativist However, a secretariat official had suggested politics of authoritarian Mexico. My fieldwork that for reasons of security, I live with one of took place in 2011–2012 and concerned the fisher leaders rather than a rank-and-file a prolonged conflict over offshore areas between fisher. He had then come up with the idea of my fishers and the oil industry at a time when staying in Álvaro’s household. At the meeting Mexico’s resource politics were undergoing to discuss my fieldwork with Álvaro and four a profound shift towards privatization. While other fisher leaders, the secretariat official I was trying to learn about fisher leaders’ and actively promoted the agenda of a fisher leader fishers’ politics vis-á-vis the oil industry, Álvaro hosting my fieldwork, telling the leaders that by and his family opened their home to me for three welcoming me, they would be returning a favour months. Álvaro’s role in the conflict was troubled, to the government for its ‘important support for because he operated as a mediator between the the fisher community’. There was an ease in the demands of thousands of internally-divided way the five fisher leaders slid into a filial role as fishers and the co-optation pressures of the oil the official addressed them paternalistically. As industry. In this setup, entering the family’s I expressed my hopes for fieldwork to the fisher intimate sphere to examine Álvaro’s role in the leaders, it was Álvaro who reacted immediately, tense political situation underscored the difficult inviting me to live with his family without compatibility of my researcher / ‘daughterly’ hesitation. role in the family in ways that confounded me. My six-month PhD fieldwork in 2011 In this essay, I analyze my navigation within and 2012 involved actors—sea fishers and the ambiguity of immersion in both resource government and oil industry representatives politics and family life and within a tension in particular—immersed in a prolonged between my preconceptions and my findings. controversy over Tabasco’s coastal and offshore Exercising ethnographic reflexivity, I also show areas. I was especially interested in how fishers how my attempts at making sense of Álvaro’s, to were making sense of, and reacting politically to, me, ambiguous political position corresponded radical restrictions on their access to traditional with my own ambiguous place in the family. I fishing grounds at a time when the oil industry further show how my analytical insights about was both under major restructuration and our relationship shaped my perspective onto expanding extraction to new areas. Since resource politics in Tabasco. the early 2000s, intensified exploration and My first meeting with Álvaro took extraction of hydrocarbons in the Gulf of place at a government secretariat in charge Mexico had caused continued tensions between of mediating the relations between Tabasco’s the oil industry and the fishers. At the same agrarian communities and the para-statal oil time, the Mexican government had opened company, Petróleos Mexicanos3 (Pemex), and the energy sector to global investment and gave me an idea of the control the government given transnational companies access to oil had in the resource conflict. I had recently exploration and drilling via subcontracts with begun fieldwork and, still inexperienced in Pemex, until recently a para-statal company. Mexico and the politics of fisheries and oil The major controversy between the fishers and at the Gulf-of-Mexico coast, I was hoping to the oil industry concerned the establishment of suomen antropologi | volume 41 issue 3 autumn 2016 22 Liina-Maija Quist an offshore zone of exclusion in 2003, which debate regarding the oil industry’s privatization had been reserved for the exclusive use of was fierce. At the same time, along the coastline national and foreign oil industry actors. During of Tabasco, foreign companies were busy fieldwork, I learned that after initial protests, exploring new reserves of oil. the fishers’ efforts to oppose the restrictions Having moved in with Álvaro’s family, I saw had fragmented and diminished, and the fishers’ that the secrecy and suspicion that characterized leadership, including Álvaro, had decided, rather, the actors I studied also pervaded my relations to engage in what the leaders called ‘pacific with Álvaro, complicating my efforts to negotiation’ with the oil industry. In retrospect, understand how politics operated among the I have come to see that the difficulties of doing fishers and oil industry and government actors. fieldwork in Álvaro’s family amidst the latent ‘Álvaro keeps a distance with me which has so conflict were formative for my perspective far made me careful with the questions I ask on resource politics. In reflecting on this, him,’ I wrote in my diary in the early days of I must inevitably downplay the warmth and my stay. It was from the beginning obvious that friendliness with which we related to each other it was in his nature to try to influence what during most of my stay in Álvaro’s house. kind of information I was to obtain. Álvaro was In Tabasco, a key task for me was to reserved in his dealings with me, and careful to understand the politics of resource access by point out that he operated within the framework learning how state power operated in Mexico of the law, which he knew profoundly. While and, a related matter, what oil—which had had I was aware that secrecy was an inevitable part of a fundamental role in shaping the relations the political dynamics of the extractive industry, between the state and people in Mexico—meant I was nevertheless unaccustomed to dealing to Tabascan fisher leaders and fishers. Since the with it on a daily basis for months, within the expropriation of the oil industry from foreign intimacy of family life, and had not considered ownership by president Lázaro Cárdenas this difficulty beforehand. My entering as an in 1938, the nation’s oil had worked both as alien to ‘snoop’ around Álvaro’s lot had quickly a powerful popular symbol in political claims created an atmosphere where suspicion and for sharing wealth, and as a strategic resource familial relations of care coexisted in a strange in sustaining the political elite (Breglia 2013; and vulnerable status quo. Zalik 2012). Despite the corruption involved In this essay, exercising ethnographic in the relations between the state and the oil reflexivity, I focus on the ‘how’ of ethnograph- industry, the recent years’ political campaigns ically studying the politics of resource access. against the privatization of the oil industry More specifically, I analyze the tension between show the continued popularity of the idea of my pre-expectations and findings to examine the nation’s oil. Furthermore, the Mexicans’ oil how ways of seeing and categorizing, mediated nationalism was of a specific kind, given the by gender, race and culture, including academic political economic context wherein Mexico’s culture, figure in the interpretation of politics, close economic relations with the United the operation of which is partially hidden to States reconfigured the livelihoods and lives the ethnographer. In doing this, I bring together of millions of Mexicans. During my fieldwork, reflexive analyses of researcher–interlocutor which coincided with Mexico’s presidential relations (Cerwonka and Malkki 2007; and congressional election campaigns of 2012, Coleman 2009; Kondo 1986; Landes 1986), suomen antropologi | volume 41 issue 3 autumn 2016 23 Liina-Maija Quist anthropological discussion on representing of ‘resistance’ among the local fishers.

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