ritual, rumor and corruption in the

constitution of polity in modern

mexico

introduction
This paper provides a perspective on the connections between ritual and
polity in Mexico. Constructing even the roughest map of this relationship is
a daunting task, both empirically and conceptually. Nevertheless, as the
number of historical and anthropological studies of ritual and politics
grows,1 so does the need to construct various organizing perspectives. I shall
propose such a vantage point here
by exploring the historical conabstract
nections between various sorts of
This paper provides a novel
rituals and the development of
perspective by
emphasizing the
significance of ritual in the national
local and national public spheres.2
public sphere, and the relationship
My ultimate goal is to clarify the
between ritual, rumor and the
connection
between political ritual
dialectics of state expansion in
Mexico. It considers the historical
and the constitution of political
development of political regions in
communities in the national
Mexico; outlines the development of
space.
local public and national public
spheres; then discusses the role of
In order to carry out this aim,
ritual in Mexican political geography.
I propose a line of historical and
The author provides theoretical and
spatial inquiry that is driven by a
methodological innovations, clarifying
the connection between political
set of methodological and theoritual and the constitution of political
retical innovations that may be
communities in the national space.
summarized as follows. First, I
hypothesize a complex relationship between the existence of
areas of free political discussion, "public spheres," and the centrality of
political ritual as an arena where political decisions are negotiated and
journal of latin american anthropology 1(1):2<M7. copyright C 1995, american anthropological association

20

Journal of latin american anthropology

claudio lomnitz
university of Chicago

enacted. At any given local level, the relationship between public discussion
and ritual is negative: ritual substitutes for discussion and vice-versa.
However, in an integrated national space, the relationship can be
complementary: localized political rituals become the stuff from which a
(restricted) national public sphere derives its legitimacy.3 Second, I propose
a few characteristics of the geography of public spheres emphasizing the fact
that civic discussion in Mexico
has been segmented along class
resumen
and regional lines, and that the
consolidation of national public
&** frab?i P/esenta una perspective
,
.
, r
nueva at enfocar el significado del
opinion has always been a ritual en la esfera publica nadonat y ta
problematic affair. Third, I posit
relacion entre el ritual, el rumor y la
that the creation of a national
dialectica de la expansion estatal en
Mexico.
El trabajo considera el
public sphere in this spatially
desarroiip
hjstonco
de regiones politicas
segmented field of opinion and
en Mexico; traza ef desarrollo de
discussion involves creating
esf eras publlcas locales y nacionales;
y luego discute el papel del ritual
mechanisms for privileged interen Ta geografia politico
pretations of a diffuse "popular
Mexicana. El autor presenta
will." I therefore explore the
novedades
teoricas
y
relationship between political
metodologicas mientrasque aclara
los lazos entre el ritual politico y la
ritual, rumor and the dramatizaconstitucion de comunldades ponticas
tion of political interests. Finally,
en el espacio nacional.

I argue that there is a general

relationship between political
ritual and localized appropriations of state institutions (corruption). The expansion of state institutions is
historically linked to the conflicting demands of antagonistic local groups, a
factor that strengthens the importance of ritual, of festivities, and of the

ritual, rumor and corruption In mexlco

21

redistribute actions that are associated with them. As a result, there is a

connection between footing the bill of these rituals and the ways in which
state institutions are appropriated. The inception and growth of state
institutions involves the production of ritual, so the patrons of these rituals
have a degree of control over the local branches of those institutions.
This paper is divided into three parts. First, I offer general
considerations on the historical development of political regions in Mexico
as necessary preliminary groundwork for an adequate understanding of the
geography of public spheres. Readers who are familiar with the history of
Mexican political geography may wish to skip this section. Second, I provide
an outline of the development of local public spheres and of a national public
sphere. Finally, I discuss the relationship between ritual, rumor, and
corruption and their role in the representation of political interests and in the
production of boundaries within the polity.

political regions in historical perspective

A spatial perspective of Mexico's public sphere requires a general
understanding of the development of the political and cultural regions in that
country: political regions because those are the communities that public
spheres are organized to discuss; cultural regions because they reflect the
existence of discussion, display, consensus and dissent. For reasons of space,
I shall focus my discussion here on political regions and shall make reference
to cultural regions only when it is indispensable.4
I shall briefly sketch the evolution of Mexican political geography by
summarizing the inter-connections between four dimensions: transformations in administrative units, transformations in the sort of power that was
concentrated in them, types of bureaucratic organizations that were utilized,
and forms of representing the people in the administrative units. This review
serves the purpose of clarifying various levels and kinds of political
communities in Mexico. In particular, I want to stress that interconnections
between "a people" and "the state" vary in different kinds of political
regions.

colonial organizations
Understanding the history of territorially-based politics in Mexico must
perforce begin in the colonial period,5 and specifically in the 1530s, when the
crown began wrenching political jurisdiction over Indians out of the hands of
encomenderos and into those of appointed corregidores. During these early
years, the crown established an administrative system that was essentially
three-tiered. The viceroy, at the top of the system, concentrated all civil
22

Journal off latin am^rlcan anthropology

branches of government and retained an important role in the religious

branch as well. The second tier was the corregimiento and the alcalde
mayor,6 which were the main provincial units during the whole colonial era.
These units had at their apex a corregidor or an alcalde mayor (since these
titles became equivalent in many cases, I shall use alcalde mayor to stand for
either), who concentrated all four branches of civil government in their hands
and could apply them equally to all races and castes.
State officials were expected to make money off of their posts.7 One
significant form of raising personal revenue for an alcalde mayor was
monopoly control over commerce.8 This bureaucratic system implied a
certain de-centralization of state functions and widespread corruption. In
this context, the mediating role of the church was crucial, with a
concomitantly high political significance of local ritual.9 The third
administrative tier was the town government, which had different
compositions depending on the significance of the town and on whether it
was a Spanish villa or an Indian pueblo. Spanish towns had cabildos
(councils), the head ofwhich was the alcalde mayor. Indian jurisdictions had
an Indian governor as well as a council made up of local notables
iprincipales) who had minor posts.10 Spanish cities with Indian barrios often
had both forms of government running simultaneously, with the Indian
government ultimately accountable to the Spanish cabildo}1
In sum, there were three levels of territorial organization, but the truly
significant power was concentrated in the upper two levels (the vice royalty
and alcaldias mayores), both of which were headed by crown appointees.
Popular representation was largely confined to local governments, especially
after the "concentration" of Indians into centralized villages was effectively
accomplished (ending roughly 1605).12

early changes
One early change, implemented in 1786, was the inclusion of alcaldias
mayores and corregimientos into larger units of administrative control, the
intendencias. These units were ruled by an intendente, who was in every
respect like an alcalde mayor (re-named sub-delegado) except that there
were fewer of them, they were salaried professionals accountable to the
crown, they did not exercise or allow a monopoly over local commerce in the
benefit of any minor official, and they had greater military strength at their
disposal. The system of intendencias sought to heighten the crown's control
over regions and to make possible an overhaul of the whole system of
commerce and taxation.13
The intendencia was the ideal system for central control both in the
Bourbon period and until the 1910 Revolution, since it placed alcaldes
mayores (renamed sub-delegados and later transformed into jefes politicos)

ritual, rumor and corruption In mtxlco

23

under the surveillance of a higher authority that could limit their power and
consolidate revenues for central authorities. Whereas alcaldias mayores
were much larger than modern-day municipios (there were 116 of them in
New Spain fewer than the number of municipios that exist today in the state
of Oaxaca alone), intendencias were very much the seeds of modern-day
states. Thus, New Spain's alcaldias mayores were incorporated into nine
intendencias: Antequera (Oaxaca), Guanajuato, Mexico, Puebla, San Luis
Potosi, Valladolid (Michoacan), Guadalajara and Durango (Gerhard
1993:17). On the other hand, many states were created out of major historiccultural regions that had found recognition in the territorial organization of
the church such as Oaxaca, Chiapas, Yucatan, Veracruz, Puebla, Tlaxcala,
Michoacan, and Jalisco. Some states, such as the state of Mexico,
encompassed several historical regions, some of which eventually split off
and became states in their ownright(Guerrero, Hidalgo, Morelos).14 In other
cases, historical regions were prevented from becoming states (such as the
failed state of Iturbide in the Huasteca), or significant political rifts split one
region (the case of Campeche and Yucatan).
A corner-stone of the centralizing reforms of the Bourbons was to wrest
control of the tax-base from local elites. This was carried out by
professionalizing the bureaucracy and, just as importantly, by relying on the
distinction between Peninsulars and Creoles. The Bourbons gave
Peninsulars a privileged position in the new bureaucracy because, being
outsiders to New Spain, Peninsulars necessarily relied on the crown as their
most significant ally. However, this resource was obviously not available to
Mexican governments after Independence.
Thus, the independent Mexican state had enormous difficulty in trying to
reconstitute a professional bureaucracy. In the process, the material base for
a powerful central government was lost, and regional caudillos were able to
effectively assert their demands and power until they controlled the middle
tiers of government, including the state government. So, although the
federated state was in principle the heir of the intendencia, it passed out of
central bureaucratic control after Independence.

the modern era

This geography of power was slowly transformed by Porfirio Diaz, who
managed to consolidate a relatively centralized regime based largely on the
railroads. Diaz effectively brought state governors under presidential control
although this was not accomplished by a professionalization of the
bureaucracy as much as by the creation of a complex balance between the
acknowledgment of the privileges of major regional families and the
assertion of the primacy of the president's will in any particular case.15
Despite Diaz's success in creating a strong central government, his
24

Journal of latin amerlcan anthropology

reigning coalition burst asunder during the Revolution. And central power
was painstakingly recreated through the decades of the 1920s and 1930s in
a system that far surpassed the efficacy of Diaz: the Revolutionary party.
From a territorial point of view, the 1917 constitution eliminated a critical
historical figure, ihejefe politico, who was the most hated governmental
representative of the Porfiriato. Instead, municipal governments were
consolidated, with nothing between them and state governments. This move
was complemented under Lazaro Cardenas with extensive agrarian reform,
which furthered the concentration of elites in cities, reorienting most of their
economic activity towards industry and commerce, giving somewhat greater
autonomy to villages and municipios.
Evidently, this move was successful because it occurred in tandem with
conditions that were favorable to industrialization. As a result, power was
centralized in the presidency and in the federal government far more
effectively than under Diaz, leading to weak provincial governments that
posed no serious contest to presidential power. Moreover, industrialization
under a state-led system of import substitution led to the formation of new
sorts of economic enclaves and organizations that cut across local and state
boundaries, and were organized nationally with some local chapters, again
strengthening national over regional identity, and national power over local
power.
On the other hand, post-revolutionary public administration did not
follow a simple process of professionalization. Instead, the system has been
characterized by a mixture of rational bureaucracy and systems of prebendal
control known as caciquismo. The connections between a professionalized
civil service and entrenched power holders reflect the currently existing
geography of power.
In sum, Mexican political geography has recognized three to four main
levels of political communities. Of these, the city, town or village is the only
political unit with an uninterrupted history of having matched government
with the representation of a people and of a popular will. In this respect, the
use of the term pueblo (people) to refer to any town is not without
significance. Higher levels of government (alcaldias mayores, intendencias,
provinces or states) have more shallow traditions of popular political
representation since representation at those levels involves articulating
various and diverse sorts of political and cultural collectivities and, perhaps
more importantly, because mid-level political units were designed mainly to
aid kings, presidents and regional elites to wrest resources and power from
local hands. As a result, representations of 'the people' have tended to be
strongest at the local and the national level, and weaker in the intermediate
political communities.16 Correspondingly, one might expect bothritualand

ritual, rumor and corruption In mexlco

25

public spheres to operate in distinctive ways at the various levels of Mexican

political organization.17

locating public spheres

Historian Francois Xavier Guerra has produced a political portrait of
Mexico's 19th century in which he maintains that Mexico's real political and
social organization was left without a corresponding political ideology and
program after Independence. Without a monarchy, the nation's regions, its
political bosses and clients, its corporate indigenous communities,
hacendados and retainers had to create and accommodate to a system of
political representation that was, in theory, based on equal individual rights.
This situation led to a system where an idealized national community
was created by an elite made up of military leaders, hacendados, miners,
merchants, and intellectuals whose discussions occurred in the commercial
press, free-masonry forums, a few urban literary and scientific institutes, and
salons and social gatherings (tertulias). This elite formed the national public
opinion that mattered, and their ideas and ideals were formally nationalized
in institutions such as congress, the supreme court and the national
presidency.
As a result, there was considerable distance between what occurred in
the national public sphere and the way in which the country was actually
governed, for government relied almost entirely on private negotiation
between politicians. So, for example, Porfirio Diaz maintained a
remarkable, continuous correspondence with all of his governors and some
jefes politicos and local notables. In this private correspondence, regional
issues were discussed, instructions were received, and suggestions were
provided. Governors would, in their turn, meet with representatives of what
Guerra calls the principle "collective actors" of their regionsrepresentatives of villages, jefes politicos, heads of elite families of
hacendados, merchants and miners and they would engage in closed-door
discussions that paralleled those that had been carried out with Diaz. Finally,
these leaders would institute the new policies.
This implied that the national public sphere was constituted almost
exclusively by elites (both regional and national), and that there was no open
national or regional forum for civic discussion during the Porfiriato or, a
fortiori, in any of the previous regimes. On the other hand, the various
collective actors whose leaders were brought together in closed-door
discussions also had their own local forms and forums of communication,
some of which involved free public discussion and some of which did not.
This is why it is necessary to speak of public spheres.

26

Journal of latin amorican anthropology

overview of mexican public spheres

Mexican cities in the pre-industrial age had as their main collective
actors local urban elites, artisanal guilds, petty merchants, Indian
community members within the cities, and an urban rabble which at times
acted collectively but had no official corporate status. In rural areas, major
relevant collective actors during this early period included obraj'e, mine
workers and inhabitants of haciendas, ranches and peasant communities.
Most of these collectivities were organized in the religious plane around
cofradias (corporations for the cult of saints) and also found discrete places
in the period's most inclusiverituals,such as the bullfight, major religious
festivities, and the entrada of a viceroy, archbishop, alcalde mayor or
priest.18 Much participation in these cofradias was an occasion to discuss the
internal affairs of the collective actors. This is probably the root cause of the
prohibitions that were raised against slave and black cofradias (see Palmer
1976). The organization around the cult of each collective actor's patron
saint also allowed discussion and expression of collective interests within
each of those groups.
Colonial society offered no political arena in which these various
discussions could be publicized and broadened. Newspapers, which were
introduced in the 1720s and were monthlies throughout most of the 18th
century, were not a forum for public discussion. There were no editorials,
letters to the editor or opinion pieces. Rather, there were short information
briefs announcing therituallife of the city and glorifying the political life of
the colony.
Thus, collectivities were represented in therituallife of the kingdom but
their problems were not discussed or examined in a national forum of public
opinion. All of these collectivities were constructed out of or into smaller
networks of families, friends, neighbors, patrons, clients, and allies, most of
which did and still do not serve as miniature forums for free dialogue and
discussion. Elite families, for example, have been known to gather hundreds
of members in significant familialritualsand to construct complex webs of
communication and decision-making processes within these large groups.
On the other hand, most of these familial decisions and debates could not be
said to occur within miniature public spheres because members do not confer
in an unrestricted fashion, but rather discussion occurs in a hierarchical
context where women and men argue in different ways and places, where
there are rules of seniority, and where significant status differentials between
major power-holders and their (familial) clienteles systematically inhibit
discussion. Thus we get arichrituallife in elite families, where the results of
complex negotiations, alliances and decisions are displayed, but no familial
public sphere operates.19

ritual, rumor and corruption In mexlco

27

The same sort of argument can apply to the typically smaller kindreds of
peasants, workers, artisans, and small merchants. They have significant
familial rituals, strong channels of information and opinions coming from all
members ofthe family, but only limited intra-familial discussion by members
as equals. Instead, information and opinions are weighed by powerful family
members who make up their minds and impose their decisions.20
Of the main agrarian collective actors mentioned (hacienda and ranch
dwellers, mine and obraje workers, and peasant communities) only peasant
villages developed well-established local public spheres. Unions were
prohibited in haciendas, factories and mines, and the fact that workers lived
on the land of the owners limited open discussion between members of the
collectivity. Instead, discussion was informal, with no forum to collectively
focus on a single issue and to sound out a collective will. Discussion amongst
equals operated as rumor, while public life was dominated by ritual and by
centrally controlled forms of publicity.
In most peasant communities we have both a ritualized display of
community and a local public sphere. This public sphere has had various
types of compositions, and we have institutions such as town meetings,
meetings of the juntas de mejoras, the Lion's Club or the asociaciones de
padres defamilia, that serve as forums of discussion. Discrimination by sex
in these forums varies and has not yet received systematic attention from
either anthropologists or historians. Although my impression is that they are
usually dominated by men, there is also plenty of female participation, and
many key instances where women are the central players.21 But it must be
noted that in addition to the various community-wide forums there are sexspecific forums of discussion and debate, including such classical lowerclass forums as the cantina (bar) for men and the lavadero (water-well or the
washing area) for women, and these should alert us to the need for describing
the gendered spaces of discussion and their inter-connections in various local
contexts.
In sum, the institutional spaces that stand out as having been arenas of
discussion amongst equals are associated with village or urban life. The bar,
the well, the village or school association, the cofradia, the Rotaries or the
town meeting allow for some public discussion that may have been somewhat
less limited by the strictures of family authority on one side, and state
authority on the other.
On the other hand, overall interconnections between the various local
and national public spheres have had six major moments of transformation
in Mexican history: (1 )Independence and the constitution of a national public
sphere, (2)the birth of modern industry during the Porfiriato, (3)thc
incorporation of a worker's sector to the reigning party after the Revolution,
(4) the emergence of middle-class professional groups (first major
28

journal of latin a merle an anthropology

manifestation of which were the doctors' strikes in 1964-65), (5)the

emergence of an independent union movement (1970s), (6) the emergence of
social movements that do not explicitly represent class interests but focus
rather on selected issues such as housing, women's rights, and defense
against development projects.
Although I have no space to detail each of these developments here, a few
considerations on the transformation of the public sphere are needed. First,
with Independence, a national public sphere emerged for the first time, with
the commercial press and congress as its two main forums. This transition
meant that arbitration from the political center was no longer the only, or
even necessarily the main way of arguing for therightsof a collective actor.
Instead of merely expressing the collectivity's inclusion in the realm by way
of the main fiestas, these collectivities sometimes found their fundamental
usos y costumbres (traditionalrights)being debated and changed in the new
national public sphere. This was notably the case of indigenous
communities, whose traditional institutions came under attack almost
immediately after Independence, and who lost most of their legal protection
by the middle of the century.
Moreover, most of the collective actors of the period were illiterate and
lacked property and other characteristics that were deemed central to being
a citizen. Because of this, theritualizedrepresentation of a national order
continued to be of central significance, although Liberal governments fought
hard to wrench this system of representation out of the hands of the church
and into those of civil authorities. This process was politically painful and
was never achieved in its entirety. I would argue that the difficulty was in part
due to the fact that the civilframeworkset up by Liberals had no room for
formally recognizing many of the collective actors who were on the scene,
whereas these had previously been acknowledged in the organization of
cofradias, in the commemoration of patron saints, and in major religious
fiestas such as Corpus Christi and Easter. In other words, the creation of a
national public sphere, "fictitious" and highly imperfect though it was, was
a real threat for the traditional status of collective actors since it set up an
arena where new rules could be made that affected the very acknowledgment
of the collectivities in question.
The second significant point to note regards the formation of a modern
proletariat and its historical connections to a public sphere. In the initial
phases of modernization, the Mexican proletariat found very little room for
expression or representation in government. Proletarian public spheres did
emerge, however, around trade unions and with the help of the penny-press,
and it produced two of Mexico's most noteworthy intellectuals, namely,
Ricardo Flores Magon and Jos6 Guadalupe Posada. In other words, the early
stages of modernization- especially in mining and in textiles- saw the

ritual, rumor and corruption In mexlco

29

constitution of proletarian collective actors and the articulation of the

proletariat to the national public sphere, although both of these processes
were hindered by state repression as well as by low literacy rates and by the
many social ties that the Mexican proletarians have maintained with nonproletarian kinsmen and friends.
After the 1910 Revolution, such proletarian organizations and voices
found much support from government, which took a lead in organizing and
coordinating a union confederation first the CROM and later the CTM,
which still hobbles along today. This process, however, also led to the formal
inclusion of unions into the official party apparatus, a situation that
ultimately weakened that class' internal public spheres, and compromised
proletarian inclusion in civic, non-governmental forums. A comparable
process occurred with peasants who, thanks to the political strings that were
attached to land reform, were effectively incorporated into the state's
"masses." Thus we get relatively weak connections between these two
classes and the national public sphere. This meant that these collectivities
maintained arbitrated andritualizedrelationships with the state that were in
some respects comparable to those that existed in the colonial era, except for
the fact that the state - through a particularlyrichdevelopment of nationalist
mythologywas able to wrench most of theseritualfunctions away from the
church.
The first collective actors to run headlong against this "neo-baroque"
system were from the new middle classes. Pozas Horcasitas (1993) has
described this process in his study of the medical doctors' movement of early
sixties. These doctors cared little for Revolutionary rhetoric. They had
already been trained in a fully modern era, and expected the benefits of
modernity without the forms of state tutelage that had been imposed on most
peasant and working class collectivities. They also expected to control their
internal discussions and to have access to the media of the national public
sphere: the press and public policy makers.
The government showed a distinct unwillingness to open up to these new
political actors, either by way of conceding a fortified internal collective life
or by giving greater freedom of access to media and policy-making.
Repression of the emerging middle classes occurred during the medical
strike (1964-1965), and culminated in the student massacres of 1968 and
1971, after which point the government proceeded to develop pragmatic
negotiations as well as a series of political reforms.
These middle class pressures (movements of doctors, school teachers,
students, parents' associations, etc.) grew in tandem with the development of
the so-called "new social movements" that were no longer strictly class based
and were not directed toward the control or redistribution of the benefits of
production, but centered rather on the conditions of reproduction: housing,

30

journal of latin am^rlcan anthropology

urban services, pollution control, schooling, parks, transportation costs,

women's rights, etc.
It is important to say, with regard to these movements, that many of them
are not new in a strict sense. For instance, Castells (1983) has described a
renters' strike in Veracruz in 1915. What is new about the movements
beginning roughly in the 1970s is (1) their scale, which reflects the
vertiginous growth of cities, particularly Mexico City, (2) the diversification
of demands on government as an institution responsible for providing an
ever-expanding set of services and forms of social protection, (3) that these
movements were less amenable to centralized control than either labor or the
peasant movement, (4) that, being goal oriented, these movements sometimes
lacked mechanisms for defining participants as stable members of
collectivities. This final point meant that movements usually jelled around
leaders and issues and could die down to such an extent that they defined a
generation rather than a collectivity that reproduced through time.
All of these conditions together meant that the "new" social movements
had enormous potential for widening the national public sphere, since they
were not easily incorporate to the sectorial apparatus of the official party
and the state. The combination of these variegated pressures, including those
from professional and proto-professional middle-classes and nonincorporated unions and peasant communities, forced the state to develop
new strategies of encompassment and inclusion, as well as an expansion of
access to the national public sphere.
I have provided a historical overview of Mexico's main "collective
actors" and have pointed to their internal forums of discussion and to their
connections to the state throughritual,closed-door discussion and decisionmaking, and the national public sphere. In addition, I have given some
elements with which to imagine these various collectivities in their regional
locations. It is in connection to these factors that a profitable discussion of
the place and role of politicalritualscan take place.

political ritual in national and regional space

A poignant introduction to the role ofritualin consolidating Mexican
political communities can be found in the early contact period, which was a
time when the capacity for dialogue between Spaniards and Indians was
minimal, and powerful interests were vested in maintaining some
miscommunication between them.22 At that time, a Franciscan Friar, Jacobo
de Testera, sought to create an atmosphere that was propitious for the rapid
conversion of Indians, an atmosphere that would not require extensive
communication between Indians and priests. For this purpose he created a
form of pictographic writing wherein icons were to be spoken out in
ritual, rumor and corruption In mxlco

31

indigenous tongues, while the sounds that were thereby emitted

approximated those of the Latin orations of the Mass. Through a mock form
of reading, Testera put Christian orations in the Indians' mouths. They read
out "flag" and "prickly pear" (pantli, noxtli); he heard something quite like
"Pater noster^
and this misunderstanding allowed both parties to
participate in a critical communitarian ritual. Thus, at a time when there was
no public sphere in Mexico, before the existence of a national language or
even of a coherent project for a national language, rituals were a fundamental
arena for constructing political boundaries and relations of domination and
subordination within the polity.24
Gruzinski (1990) has written extensively on the crucial significance of
non-discursive forms of communication in the conquest and colonization of
the Indians. He has shown the centrality of icons in this communicative
process, and has even spoken of a "war of images." At the level of images,
and especially in ritual, pragmatic accommodations between participants
occur without any necessary accommodation at the level of formally stated
policy or discourse. This sort of politics pragmatic accommodation while
formally adhering to a discursive orthodoxy has been insistently remarked
upon by observers of Mexico, some of whom trace its beginnings to Hernan
Cortes, whose dictum to King Charles "I obey but I do not comply" has
become famous.
This profoundly anti-dialogic trend did not die along with the CounterReformation. Mexico's Enlightenment and Positivist eras were also
characterized by the use of modernity as a discourse more than as a set of
adopted practices.25 Generally speaking, anthropologists and historians have
recognized that Mexico has a legalistic, formulaic tradition that is combined
with keen political pragmatism, a pragmatism that has often been compared
to Machiavelism.26 The flexibility lacking at the level of formal political
discourse and discussion appears in political practice, and these
accommodations are enacted in ritual and its imagery. Correspondingly, the
study of ritual allows us to witness the ideological articulations of a society
that has always been both highly segmented, and systematically
misrepresented in formal discourse.
In sum, ritual is a critical arena for the construction of pragmatic
political accommodations where no open, dialogic, forms of communication
and decision-making exist. In other words, there is an inverse correlation
between the social importance of political ritual and that of the public sphere.
Moreover, one could add a culturalist argument to this sociological one: once
the Spaniards abandoned all serious attempts to truly convince and
assimilate Indians to their society, certain aesthetic forms were developed
(the "baroque sensibility"), and these became values that permeated the
society deeply, affecting family relations, forms of etiquette, and other social
32

Journal of latin american anthropology

forms in all social strata. Thus Mexican ritual and ritualism would have deep
sociological and cultural roots.
However, this very general appreciation is merely a starting point, for in
order to organize the variegated literature on political ritual and,
furthermore, to propose an agenda for future research, we need to arrive at
a more precise formulation of the specific sorts of political work that ritual
does and has done in different regional and historical contexts. I focus on
three main points here.
First, I argue that politicalritualreflects the dialectics of opposition and
appropriation between state agencies and collectivities. This point leads us
awayfroma simple opposition between popular and stateritual.Second, I
shall discuss some of the interconnections between ritual and rumor.
Specifically, I shall argue that both ritual and rumor can be seen as
occupying spaces of expression that cannotfindother ways into the public
sphere. Ritual can serve as a way of constructing a high level of regional
integration with only a minimum substratum of common culture and,
especially, of discussion. This view leads us awayfromlooking at Mexican
history as a simple secular process towards democracy and modernity.
Finally, I shall discuss the connections betweenritualand corruption. This
point helps us understand the ways in which the state is locally appropriated
and in which a hegemonic order is constituted.

ritual and the expansion of state institutions

A good starting point is to pair the relationship between Foucaultian
institutions and their techniques of bodily discipline withritualsthat aim to
construct an image of consensus around a notion of 'the people' {el pueblo).
In a study of the history of patriotic festivals in the state of Puebla (19001940), Vaughn (1994) shows that the interconnection between schools and
festivals passed through two stages. During the Porfiriato, festivals were
organized by the local jefe politico with the aid of the local elite of
hacendados, ranchers and notables. The system of schooling mainly catered
to the notable families and, to a lesser extent, inhabitants of the main
cabeceras, but decidedly excluded the rural and poor majority. After the
Revolution, the strength of schools was undermined concomitantly with the
strengthening of the agrarian community and the weakening of the regional
elites. School teachers did not have the coercive power that ihejefespoliticos
had, so they could not organize local work-parties in support of the school
and federal funds were insufficient. This situation began to turn around in the
1930s through the revival of the patriotic fiesta by the teachers, who used
competitive sports as their main draw. These sporting competitions became
a venue for local social life as well as for traditional forms of competition and

ritual, rumor and corruption In m#xlco

33

sociability between villages and barrios. As a result, local agrarian

communities vied for getting schools built and provided the badly needed
support for their sustenance.
Hence perhaps the most fundamental modern institution of discipline
and uniformity, the school, spread not so much as a result of state imposition
as by its own capacity to bridge and reconcile state plans with various forms
of local politics. The school became, in fact, an alternative arena for giving
materiality and visibility to local communities in a way that is analogous to
the role that the church had played in the colonial period, and ritual (the
patriotic festival, with its attractive sports features) played a central role in
the expansion of schools just as the religious fiesta, with its secular
attractions, was central to the expansion of the church.
Thus Vaughn provides a clue for understanding the ways in which the
Revolutionary state succeeded in taking representational functions over from
the church. In the Porfirian arrangement, schools and patriotic festivals were
mainly organized by and for regional elites, while the church still provided
the broadest arena for the political assertion of collective force in its fiestas.
It is only after the Revolution, with the decline in the coercive power of local
politicians and the introduction of competitive sports (which were cheaply
available to everyone), that the civic fiesta became a forum in any way
comparable to the church fiesta and, interestingly, it is only at this point that
rural school teachers mustered the local support they needed to really expand
the school system with the tight budgets that they have always had. In other
words, state institutions expand in a fashion that is dependent on the local,
regional and national politics of culture. The institutions that create an idea
of simultaneous national development are also constrained by the various
local cultural and political forces.
The results of this situation have varied historically as the force of
modern institutions has grown, but overall they may be synthesized as
follows: national reality in Mexico, public opinion and national sentiment
still have public popularritualas their fundamental forum, and the leveling
media of the bourgeois public sphere (schools, newspapers,television,
parliament) have generally been used as a tool for providing a discursive
interpretation and solution to theritualmanifestations of "popular will."
Evidently, this situation is deeply intermingled with the lack of a formal
democracy in Mexico, but it would be a deep mistake to attribute this lack of
democracy exclusively to a dictatorial imposition from the presidency, since
authoritarianism is the product of complex interconnections between various
local, national and international forces. Moreover, there has been longstanding cultural accommodation to these circumstances, such that
established forms for expressing political demands, for interpreting them and
for resolving them do exist.

34

Journal of latin am^rican anthropology

These forms of political expression and of conflict resolution are

multiple, since they must respond to needs at various points in national space
and, because of this variety, they do not lend themselves to be easily
shoehorned into a single constitutional order. On the contrary, the system of
mediation/representation that was handed downfromthe colonial period is
better suited as a model for this situation, since it allows greatflexibilityin
the consideration of the specific needs of individuals and collectivities (it
institutionalizes an exceptionalism) and still provides an outlet for collective
representations.
This does not mean, however, that the role of politicalritualhas more or
less remained constant in Mexico since the baroque era. I am not even
implying, as Paz (1982) has done, that the Revolution allowed for a return to
the womb of the baroque. Neither does my argument imply a simple
substitution of churchritualby stateritual.I believe that cults of various
saints still uphold a standard ofcommunity and a certain purity of motive visa-vis staterituals,and they must therefore be taken account for in political
analysis. I simply mean that the system of political and cultural
representation of the baroque needs to be seriously considered in order to
understand the role of politicalritualto this day, and that this is due to the fact
that religious and civicritualis a key to understanding the expansion of state
institutions in Mexico.
I shall now turn to the significance ofritualin the articulation of various
collectivities into a hegemonic order. My argument is presented in two
stages. First, I discuss the connections betweenritual,rumor and the public
sphere. In that section I shall argue that the social salience of rumor in
Mexico makesritualizedpublic manifestations into the primary signs of the
public sphere. Finally, I shall conclude with a discussion of the connection
betweenritualand local appropriations of the state.

rumor, ritual and the public sphere

In our discussion of the spatial and class distribution of public spheres,
I argued that there were various social organizational forms and collective
actors that had no internal public spheres, no forum for open discussion and
evaluation of decision-making processes. This does not imply, however, that
communication does not exist within these groups, or that they are incapable
of constituting a general public sentiment. It means, simply, that public
sentiment is formed in communicative contexts other than those of an open
dialogic public sphere.
Hierarchical organizations such as land holding families, haciendas, or
factories did not have internal public spheres, and neither could their
individual members freely participate in a national public sphere since they
had highly restricted access to the media. In these organizations, opinion was

ritual, rumor and corruption In mxlco

35

formed in the sort of context that Erving Goffinan has called a "back-stage91:
in the kitchen, in the washroom, while bending down to plant or pick, in the
market place, or sotto voce in the anonymity of a crowd.
These are the spaces where information flows. Because these spaces are
backstage, they are typically seen as subversive of official truths as well as
of the national public sphere, and they are correspondingly feminized. Thus,
in Mexico "frank," "open" talk at public meetings is often contrasted to
"washer-woman's gossip" (chismes de lavadero o de asotea). Political
dialogue is characterized as "manly" (direct, open, rational), whereas rumor
is cowardly (it occurs behind one's back) and considered "women's talk"
(chisme de viejas). Evidently this form of mapping gender onto the
frontstage/backstage relationship between public spheres and the multistranded currents of rumor should be understood firstly as a ploy for
undermining the validity of rumor and it should not be taken as a de facto
correspondence between a masculine/feminine dichotomy and public sphere/
rumor. The same rumors that are feminized and called "washer-women's
gossip" one day can be hailed as the "sentiments of the nation" the next day.
Moreover, backstage communication is not only engaged in by women just
as women engage in the national public sphere (although usually in markedly
different contexts than men).
It is useful to think of rumor as following the negative mold of the various
public spheres that we have discussed. Wherever civic discussion and open
argument is precluded by the asymmetries of power, alternative
communicative relationships emerge and rumor predominates. In Mexico the
national public sphere has never achieved widespread respectability and
credence; too many voices are excluded from it. Because of this, people
always prefer a personal source of information ("gossip") to merely an
official one.27
This situation leads to Mexico's classical legitimacy crisis: how to
interpret, conform or channel what Jose Maria Morelos called '*the
sentiments of the nation." Intellectuals have had a leading role in filling this
communicational void, just as newspapers have become a privileged media
for the interpretation of national sentiment. At the same time, intellectuals,
like the oracles of old, need signs. Going out and asking citizens in a
systematic fashion was always seen as problematic, and has only begun
gaining some ground in recent years.28 This is because the poll involves
making the backstage front stage. In other words, it involves constructing a
free-flowing, confessional relationship between citizens and the state, a
relationship that involves a corresponding notion of governmental
accountability. Since this accountability is not readily forthcoming, a candid
relationship is not buildable except in cases where "citizens" feel that they
have little to loose and perhaps something to gain.

36

Journal of latin arrwican anthropology

The signs that intellectuals and politicians read are therefore complex,
since political manifestations are interpreted mainly in their expressive and
symptomatic dimensions. Hence the work of interpreting national sentiment
does not end with the gathering of opinions, for opinions that are unlinked to
action, opinions that have no practical consequence, are easily discounted as
"women's gossip" or "talk." The true national sentiment is only meaningful
in connection to public action, to political ritual. I say ritual here because the
weakness of Mexico's national public sphere guarantees that political events
will be interpreted symbolically, with expressive dimensions counting at
least as much as instrumental ones.29
Moreover, significant differences emerge between political manifestations that are geared to the media and political manifestations that are
oriented to direct action in smaller-scale collectivities. Interesting in this
respect is the use of masks in two recent cases, that of Superbarrio in Mexico
City and that of the neo-Zapatistas in Chiapas. The use of masks allows for
a more abstract identification of a movement with "the people." As such its
points can be put forward in a clearer way to the public and the specter of
cooptation of a specific leader or of a small constituency diminishes. In effect
the masks are a Brechtian sort of move, effacing the individual and stressing
the social persona via a reliance on images derived from the mass-media.
This is entirely different from ritualized social movements that are not
directed to the media of the national public sphere, for example in small
towns. In those cases, "the people" are represented directly by known people,
and it is the presence of particular individuals that convinces others to join in
the movements. Correspondingly, these movements are not mediated by a
national public sphere. They are direct expressions of local public spheres
and, although at times they seek support from national media and public
opinion, they do not usually entertain high hopes for the efficacy of these
mediations.
Also interesting is the usage of inversions of public and domestic realms
in mediated versus face-to-face movements.30 Whereas in local movements
these sorts of inversions are direct appeals to revolt, in mediated movements
they serve as pointed appeals to public opinion and are thus gestures of
revolt. Thus, middle and upper class women take to the streets of Mexico
City to protest the construction of a highway or to protest the high costs of
a devaluation. Similarly, ranchers from the Altos de Jalisco filled
Guadalajara's central square with tractors in protest against new
agricultural policies. These sorts of inversions are subversive in smaller
communities, where local public opinion is immediately swayed by them.
For example, when women took to the streets in Tepoztlan in 1978, the men
backed them and took over the municipal presidency; when the Chamulas in
19th century Chiapas appropriated the Christfigureout of the church, they

ritual, rumor and corruption In mexlco

37

revolted and laid a siege on ladino Ciudad Real (San Cristobal). In the
mediated urban context (which is an ever-growing field, given the current
expansion ofthe national public sphere into ever-deeper levels ofthe regional
system) inversions are directed as appeals to a public sphere that will then
exert pressure on government by non-violent means.
In sum, whereas many collectivities are routinely recognized and
reconstituted in rituals that substitute an internal public sphere, there are also
political manifestations of public sentiment that are created in backstage
contexts, socialized through rumor, and converted into specific movements
that are rightly analyzable as ritual because their significance is
systematically re-interpreted and given a certain directionality in the public
sphere.
The centrality of ritual in the constitution of polity can therefore be
understood in two dimensions. On the one hand, rituals can be expressions of
collective vitality and interests within the sanctioned political order. On the
other hand, public political manifestations are understood as expressions of
a public sentiment that is constructed in the backstage, and that has therefore
not (yet) been harnessed by the state. This second dimension means that
political movements are heavily ritualized. They are in fact the main signs
that political interpreters read.31

corruption and ritual

I have thus far suggested three important roles that ritual has in the
constitution of political communities in Mexico. On the most general level,
ritual is crucial because social segmentation and power relations undermine
mechanisms for dialogic understanding and negotiation between members of
the national community. Secondly, ritual has been strategically utilized to
construct alliances between local collectivities and state and church. The
dialectics of this process involve competition or struggle between
collectivities or classes, and alliances with state or church are used to further
local interests in those struggles. Finally, I have suggested that ritual is
critical to the constitution of a national public sphere in an authoritarian state
because it is the principal sign that interpreters read, occupying a role that is
analogous to that of the poll (and that is no less manipulatable). In this final
section I shall provide some considerations on the relationship between ritual
and corruption in the Mexican system.
The problem of corruption needs to be understood on three levels: first,
on a functional level (what it does for government, individual participants
and victims); second, at the level of accusations (what a discourse of
corruption does in the world of politics); and third, at the level of the moral
sensibility of a people (how discourses and practices of corruption affect
personal attitudes, definitions of self, and how is corruption cleansed or
38

Journal of latin amorlcan anthropology

avoided).
Throughout Mexican history, corruption has consisted of appropriating
portions of state or church machinery for private benefit and (arguably) to
the detriment of the state's interest as well as to those of non-functionaries
(subjects or citizens). However, these appropriations serve various functions
and have varying implications in the different periods. For example,
throughout the colonial period official governmental posts were seen as
prizes that the crown handed down in recognition either of social proximity
or of past favors, or else in exchange for money. Correspondingly, officials
were expected to profit from their posts, and were in no sense "civil
servants." A comparable situation has extended well into the modern period.
On the other hand, because the church was the fundamental arena for
collective expression and because it had its own independent sources of
taxation, corruption in the church was also important. Local constituencies
could at times play these two sets of ambitions off against each other.
Villagers participated fervently in theirfiestasin part as a show of alliance
with the church that might then intervene in their favor against the abuse of
landowners or officials. On the other hand, suits and revolts against priests
were brought to civil authorities. Finally, local ritual could stand as an
affirmation of localrightsagainst both church and state, both of whom could
easily conspire against the subaltern classes. Thusritualhad a fundamental
mediating function in the colonial period, where the boundaries, strength and
rights of a collectivity could be expressed at the same time that alliances were
forged with the church or the state.
In this context of negotiation, which survived the colonial era albeit in
different terms, corruption was reflected in what may be called an extended
"cargo system." Anthropologists have been prone to take a narrow view of
what religious cargos are about, stressing their significance in indigenous
communities and their links to forms of prestige that are allotted only within
the limits of traditional communities. In fact, variations of "cargo systems"
exist and have existed throughout the national space, and the burden of
paying for celebrations has usually reflected the expected distribution of the
benefits of reigning. So, for example, Mexico City notables and officers had
to come up with money for all sorts of commemorations of the royal family's
affairs as well as those ofthe viceroy.32 On the other hand, smaller villas and
pueblos had to incur parallel expenditures to commemorate their saints days,
etc. But it was these very forms of public festival that also gave political
recognition to the pueblos and villas and allowed for the funneling of
resources to the community leadership.
This same logic survived into the national period. In Tepoztlan, for
instance, carnival became the most expensive and lavish fiesta and was
fundamentally bankrolled by the local notables. This contrasted with the

ritual, rumor and corruption In mexlco

39

humble barrio fiesta, which was paid for by collective contributions. Local
notables funneled their money into comparsas that represented their barrio of
origin, encompassing only three of Tepoztlan's seven or eight barrios. Thus
notables created solidarity with poorer members of their barrios and
subsequently depended on this local basis of support to successfully control
municipal offices during the whole of the 19th and most of the 20th centuries
(Lomnitz-Adler 1982).
De la Pena (1980) has described how hacienda owners in the Morelos
Highlands buttressed their own popularity and that of the municipal notables
by contributing resources to the local fiesta. Finally, in Zinacantan, the
classic and much debated instance of the so-called traditional "cargo
system", Cancian (1992) has shown that financing local fiestas was a crucial
item of prestige and local power for many years, and that the system only
came into crisis when the local economy diversified and the population grew,
creating a split between the older peasant notables and younger capitalist
entrepreneurs. The elders have kept the young generation from sponsoring
the fiestas, and the cargo system has therefore declined as a locus of political
expression.
This correlation between financing festivities and reaping the benefits of
the state (or of appropriating local branches of the state) has a marked
parallel with the ways in which the PRI's political campaigns have been
financed. Calculating costs of official party campaigns is practically
impossible in Mexico because instead of working with a centralized coffer
and budget, campaign costs are diffused amongst supporters, all of whom
either benefit or hope to benefit from the state, and most of whom appropriate
"their" local state resources for the purpose of supporting the campaign. So,
for example, governors and municipal presidents use up their budgets to
show their personal support of a presidential candidate and through that
personal support, the support of the collectivities to which they are linked.
Union leadership that has had privileged support from government uses
union funds and working hours to support the candidate.33 On the other hand,
as in the fiesta, participants in campaign events are also meant to gain things
for themselves: a day off from work, free food, a fiesta, or at least a renewed
relationship with their immediate patron.
Thus political ritual is tied to corruption because much of the financing
of ritual reflects the actual or expected ways in which local leaders and
communities appropriate portions of the state apparatus. They are
enactments both of personalized state redistribution and of the power of the
whole constituency vis-a-vis the more abstract national state.
But the connection between fiesta and corruption does not end here for
most fiestas combine a controlled and an unrestricted aspect. The mascaras

40

Journal of latin arrwican anthropology

a lo serio and a lofaceto are examples of this in colonial pageantry, but the
situation is almost entirely generalizable: solemn masses are followed by
mole, drinking and dancing; carnival ends with the High Mass of Ash
Wednesday; political rallies typically are followed by free-flowing streams
of alcohol. Even the most apollonianrituals,such as the once popular oratory
contests had certain frothy interstices while secular festive events such as the
bullfight or the cockfight tended to receive a certain amount of governmental
supervision, with formal moments where this supervision was asserted.
This combination of political control and unrestrained popular
expression made thefiestasplaces where a certain complex hegemony was
enacted, for popular expression was at once unrestrained and encompassed
by the authorities. This is the most subtle sense in which politicalritualcan
be said to be tied to the history of corruption:fiestasassert the significance
of a collectivity vis-a-vis the state and as such they have been used to jockey
for position in the national map. On the other hand, once a collectivity is
receiving some benefits from the state, once they have a leader or a class that
appropriates the state and represents it locally, these leaders are expected to
foot the bill of much political ritual, for the ritual will serve as a
manifestation of the collectivity's continued vitality to higher officials. Thus
fiestas are usually signs both of the vitality of "the people" and of "the state".
"Corruption" underwrites this whole relationship because the state is only
extended into these collectivities on the condition that it be locally
appropriated (usually by local elites) and that some of the benefits of this
appropriation spill over to the rest of the local population.
Finally, rituals present popular moral standards regarding corruption.
Ungenerous leaders are shunned, as are leaders who do notfinancefiestasor
do not recognize or acknowledge their own people.34 In general an ethics of
respect, generosity, and communion are enacted, and these values provide
the rudiments of a technology that is used for articulating the national polity.
In this respect, the Catholic ritual stands as a standard that continually
haunts the politician. These pervasive connections between ritual and
corruption, both in relation to local appropriations of state machinery and in
the construction of an ethics of those appropriations, demonstrate the critical
significance of the study of ritual for understanding hegemony in the
Mexican national space.

conclusion
I have explored the connection betweenritualand political communities
by looking at the geography of public spheres developmentally. In the
process, I have suggested relationships between rumor, ritual and

ritual, rumor and corruption In mexlco

41

corruption. This analysis leads us away from three trends in the study of
political ritual. The first is the one that divides ritual simply into statist versus
popular; the second is the trend that tries to construct a secular progress
between pre-modern ritual and modern democracy. Against the first
position, the perspective developed here stresses the dialectics of opposition
and appropriation between state agencies and various collectivities. This
dialectic affects both the constitution of subjectivities by the state and the
ways in which state institutions are locally appropriated. Against the second,
our perspective stresses the persistent obstacles to the creation of a bourgeois
public sphere in Mexico. Our modernity continues to segment and to exclude
large numbersfromthe promised benefits of citizenship and modernization,
and this has allowed for a continuous re-constitution of a ritual life that has
its origins in the baroque era.33 For these reasons, the specter of an Ancien
Regime seems never to die in Mexico; it survived the 1857 constitution, it
survived the Revolution, and it may even survive the current neo-liberal
period. The regional study of ritual offers a way of specifying these
relationship, a way of understanding their historical evolution, and of
clarifying the nature of social change in the polity.
Finally, a third position that must be modified is the one that seeks to
synthesize national culture by way of the study of national rituals. Our
contribution to this perspective is to show the significance of developing an
overall geography of ritual as a necessary prior step. Once this is done (and,
evidently, this paper is only a beginning of such a geography), the social and
political referents of rituals can be clarified and placed in their proper
perspective. Since our fundamental thesis is that political ritual is
substituting for arenas of discussion and argumentation, creating hegemonic
idioms of agreement between various and diverse points of view (cultural and
political), the study of these rituals can serve as an entry to understanding
hegemony geographically, but they cannot be used to homogenize the culture
of their participants in any simple way.

notes
1. The role of ritual in the construction of a national polity is a venerable line of inquiry, with Wolf
(1958) and Turner (1974) as the most prominent founding ancestors. The role of ritual in the consolidation
of local communities has received much more attention, notably in arguments over Wolfs typology of
peasant communities, as well as in debates over the so-called "cargo system" (cf. Cancian 1963, 1992;
Smith 1977) and in studies on the connections between ritual and local politics (cf. De la Pena 1980;
Lomnitz-Adler 1982). Interest in political ritual has also emerged in ethnographies of various dimensions
of Mexican urban life (cf. Velez-Ibaflez 1983; LLomnitz 1987b) and in the anthropology of social
movements (cf. Alonso 1986; Monsivais 1987). Finally, there is also work on politics as spectacle and on
the role of myth and ritual in bureaucracy (cf. Lomnitz, Lomnitz-Adler and Adler 1994; Ruy Sanchez
1981). In the past decade or so, interest in these fields has also gained prominence amongst historians, who
have attended similar themes in various periods and regions (cf. Beezley et al. 1994; Oruzinski 1990;
Joseph and Nugent 1994; Viqueira 1987). These titles are only a sample of the literature.

42

Journal of latin amorlcan anthropology

2. By 'public sphere' I mean "a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion
can be formed Access is guaranteed to all citizens. A portion ofthe public sphere comes into being in every
conversation in which private individuals assemble to form a public body. They then behave neither like
business or professional people transacting private affairs, nor like members of a constitutional order
subject to the legal constraints of a state bureaucracy. Citizens behave as a public body when they confer
in an unrestricted fashion- that is, with the guarantee of freedom of assembly and association and the
freedom to express and publish their opinions- about matters of general interest. In a large public body this
kind of communication requires specific means for transmitting information and influencing those who
receive it Today newspapers and magazines, radio and TV are the media ofthe public sphere." (Elley
1992:289) This Habermasian notion is useful not least because it presents an ideal type of communication
against which alternative forms, such as the rituals and rumors that I shall discuss here, can be compared.
3. In this paper I emphasize only the methodological utility of this premise, since it provides clues for
understanding the spatial logic ofcivic ritual. However, the point has general theoretical significance, since
most anthropological work on political ritual fails to problematize the spatial integration of political
systems, and so analyses of political ritual tend to be vague regarding the precise relationship between
rituals and the production of hegemony.
4. I initiated an analysis of Mexican cultural regions in Lomnitz (1992a, b).
5. However, Gerhard (1993) has shown the overlay that often occurred between pre-Columbian and
colonial territorial organization. See also Carrasco (1967: 4) for this point, and Lockhart (1992) for the
prolonged relevance ofthe pre-Hispanic political system at local levels in the colonial era.
6. Gerhard (1993:14) explains the evolution of these two terms. Initially, corregidores had exclusive
jurisdiction over Indian regions, and alcaldias mayores englobed Spanish towns. Gradually, the two
functions were fused and the two titles became interchangeable.
7. See Elliott (1984:293 and 299).
8. These monopolies were formally recognized by the mid-eighteenth century in the institution ofthe
repartimiento de comercio.
9. De la Pefia (1980) has shown how local Cestas were used to consolidate alliances between villagers
and priests.
10. See Carrasco (1967: 10-17) for a discussion of these.
11. For example, see Lira's (1983) work on the Indian barrios of Mexico City and Haskett's (1991)
work on colonial Cuernavaca.
12. Gerhard(1993:27)explains that "[I]n the first halfofthe 17th century, NuevaEspafia was in a sense
urbanized, with compact Spanish towns and cities and Hispanized Indian villages separated by vast
stretches of deserted land, a pattern visible today." Chevalier (1970) has shown the way in which these
concentrations affected the consolidation of landed estates and rural production.
13. For a synthesis, see Brading (1984:400-409).
14. For a history, see Macune (1978).
15. Guerra (1988) chapter 2 provides the critical description of this system.
16. The exception, of course, is in instances when regional elites appropriate state governments in
opposition to central power and try to rally regional support against the national state. This has occurred in
some contexts and occasions.
17. A parallel argument could be developed to specify different sorts of cultural regions, ranging from
minimal cultural regions (which in rural central Mexico tended historically to be lower-level marketing
regions or endogamous munidpios), to mid-level regions based on identity between minimal regions, to
mid-level cultural regions constructed out ofthe incorporation oflow-level regions into powerful economic
and political cores, to national regions. These various kinds ofcultural regions are characterized by various
forms of internal cuhural diversity, mechanisms of distinction, cultural forms of inclusion and exclusion,
etc. And whereas some of these cultural regions are buttressed or even created by state power and policy,
others are not
18. See Viqueira (1987) for a fascinating discussion of some ofthe transformations of collective
participation in public ritual during the 18th century.
19. See LLomnitz (1987a) for a discussion of family ritual and its connection to form of intrafamilial
communication and decision-making in the twentieth century.
2 0 . This is why LLomnitz (1987b), who has studied Mexican families of various social strata, insists
on the significance of'vertical' ties in that social organizational form.

ritual, rumor and corruption In mcxlco

43

21. For example, women have been quite vocal in Tepoztlan. So much so that the official party
organized as its most militant branch a local organization known asLaMujer Tepozteca. Friedrich (1986)
makes the point that women are able to publicly articulate opinions that would get their men killed. This
argument would seem to be borne out by the historical work on rebellion in Mexico (cf. Taylor 1979).
22. Greenblatt argues that the "discourse of the marvelous" was used to avoid transcuhural
communication in the contact period (1992:135-6). Gruzinski (1990) argues that attempts to foster true
dialogue between priests and Indians were more or less abandoned in Mexico c. 1570. I have argued that
ambivalence towards communication between urban elites and popular classes lies at the heart ofthe history
of Mexican anthropology (in press).
23. See Johnson (1987:15).
24. So much so that all ofthe early rituals and spectacles must be understood politically, including early
theater, which was oriented toward evangelization as well as to reformulating political relations. For
example, the attack on polygyny in early colonial plays served both to teach about the sacrament ofmarriage
and to undermine Aztec political organization, which used multiple marriages as an idiom of alliance for
empire-building.
25. See Guerre (1988 v. 1:182-201). See also the significance of lip service to democracy in the PRI's
1988 presidential campaign in Lomnitz, Lomnitz-Adler and Adler (1994). Escalante (1992) deals squarely
with this issue.
26. Most prominently by Paul Friedrich (1986).
27. Ilya Adler's (1986) study of the uses of the press in Mexico's bureaucracy is significant in this
respect. He describes how bureaucrats constantly present information that they have read from the
newspapers either as their own personal interpretation or as comingfroma personal source. The backstage
has greater claim to truth than official, public renderings in Mexico.
28. Nuestro Pais is the first journal devoted to public opinion in Mexico, and polls only began finding
their way into newspapers since the 1988 presidential campaign.
29. A full study of this phenomenon would have to focus on the press and its management of public
manifestations, a work that is yet to be done. However, examples and illustrations are easily available to
any reader ofthe Mexican press. In the past decade or so, crucial instances ofthese processes have occurred
in the aftermath of the 198S earthquake (what was "the meaning" of the popular and the governmental
reactions to the disaster), during the CEU's student movement, during the 1988 elections, after the
imprisonment of "La Quina," after the assassinations of Cardinal Posada, Luis Donaldo Colosio and Jose
Francisco Ruiz Massieu, during the Zapatista rebellion, and after the devaluation on the peso in 1995. All
of these events (and an infinite number of smaller ones) are the foci of political contention through the
interpretation oftheir "true" nature and meaning. An ethnographic description ofthe dynamics of political
interpretation during Mexican campaigns can be found in Lomnitz, Lomnitz-Adler and Adler (1994) and
in Lomnitz (1992b).
30. The most striking example of the distinction between directing actions to public opinion versus
directing them at specific political targets is the Zapatistas in Chiapas, who have essentially fought a war in
the media, and gained important triumphs through their gesture of armed revolt, and not through actual
armed victories.
31. In this respect, our findings on the 1988 presidential campaign are significant: political events and
public ritual produced a profusion of interpretation, meaning was never obvious and referents were always
disputed. These processes of interpretation, which were triggered by ambiguity of intention as much as by
a shared tradition of quasi-hermetic over-interpretation, produces closed-door, back-stage processes of
negotiation, the results of which are seen as post-hoc confirmations of one interpretation over others. See
Lomnitz, Lomnitz-Adler and Adler (1994) and Lomnitz (1992b).
32. Births of new members of the Royal Family, marriages of princes, entrances of new viceroys and
archbishops are all detailed in the Gaceta deMixico for the early and mid-eighteenth century.
33. For a description of this organization and of the overall organization of PRI campaign rituals see
Lomnitz, Lomnitz-Adler and Adler (1994).
34. Greenberg( 1995) provides interesting information for the Mixe. They discriminate between good
and evil merchants, whose money is respectively good and evil, depending on whether they organize a series
of prescribed rituals and on whether or not they are sensitive to the needs of community members.
33. I agree with Gruzinski'* sense that the baroque image is a significant antecedent to ritual and
communication in Mexico's post-modernity.

44

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