Trevor Critique

History and Anthropology
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Trajectories of Culture in West Mexico
Trevor Stack
To cite this article: Trevor Stack (2013) Trajectories of Culture in West Mexico, History and
Anthropology, 24:2, 274-301, DOI: 10.1080/02757206.2012.697382
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History and Anthropology, 2013
Vol. 24, No. 2, 274– 301, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2012.697382
Trajectories of Culture in West Mexico

Trevor Stack
Downloaded by [University of Aberdeen] at 10:13 09 February 2016
Explaining culture change requires a multi-dimensional approach, and so does explaining

cultural continuity. I combine several approaches to explain why the account given of a
Mexican town’s history changed between 1879 and 1992. I also identify and explain
what did not change during the period, as well as during the subsequent period of fieldwork
itself, 1992–2005. Rather than treat cultural continuity as the result of inertia, I follow
Urban ([2001], Metaculture: How Culture Moves Through the World, University of
Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN) in looking for what motivates the transmission of
culture as well as what pathways it takes, although I prefer to stress human agency in
writing of the trajectories along which people propel culture, in this case a town’s history.
One approach which I draw, for explaining the trajectories of culture, is Malinowski’s
seminal study of Trobriand myths (1926), but I combine it with the more recent approaches
that link versions of history to the interests of social groups; highlight the density of ties
between person, people and place; pay attention to the genre of narratives being trans-
mitted, and to the skewing of culture towards central places; and finally, consider shifts
not just in the figure of particular narratives but in the grounds that underlie them, such
as the criterion of truth against which narratives are measured.
Keywords: Cultural Transmission; Historical Knowledge; Genre; Ethnicity; Mexico
Accounts of culture change are often rather one-dimensional, and have also often taken
continuity for granted. I combine several approaches in this article to explain why the
history of a town in West Mexico changed between 1879 and 1992. In 1879, it seems
that residents said that Tapalpa was founded by Indians, but in 1992 I was told by resi-
dents and others that the town was founded as a hacienda, presumably by Spaniards.
I argue that this apparently simple shift in Tapalpa’s history—from town founded by
Correspondence to: Trevor Stack, Department of Hispanic Studies University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, AB24 3UB,
UK. Email: t.stack@abdn.ac.uk
2013 Taylor & Francis

History and Anthropology 275
Indians to town founded by Spaniards—actually takes considerable explaining. In
order to do this, I go beyond the literature on history-making, to draw on the literatures
on knowledge, genre, and authority, as well as on the transmission of culture. This kind
of cultural change has long been of interest to scholars. For example, Malinowski in his
1926 essay “Myth in Primitive Psychology” argued that Trobriand myths of origin must
have changed over time as some lineages came to dominate other lineages, since the
myths served precisely to justify the dominance of particular lineages (1992 [1926]:
93–99). Malinowski did not discuss the possible emergence of colonial “charters”,
and he mistakenly suggested that the Trobriand case was typical of “primitive”
societies. However, he did anticipate several more recent approaches, particularly
since the eclipse of structuralism when scholars became interested in change.
First, scholars since Malinowski, including those influenced by Gramsci, have linked
representations or ideologies to the interests of particular social groups, and have

shown how dominant groups, including colonial, national, and transnational elites,
impose their representations on others.1 Scholars have, for example, linked different
versions of history to the interests of different social groups (Appelbaum 2003;
Mallon 1995; Nugent & Alonso 1994; Trouillot 1995; Verdery 1993). This is a valuable
approach, and I draw on it to account for changes in Tapalpa’s history. I argue, for
example, that landowning families in Tapalpa managed to portray themselves as
“old” families, thus sidelining the “Tapalpan Indians” who claimed in the nineteenth
century to have founded the town. I also show how the post-Revolutionary government
had an effect in shaping what was told as Tapalpa’s history during the twentieth
century.
Second, Malinowski made it clear that myths were told in and about the places of the
Trobriand landscape, and he evoked the density of the ties between Trobriand notions
of person, people, and place (see also Feld & Basso 1996; Stewart & Strathern 2003). By
implication, changes in one notion, such as place, are likely to affect other notions and
could have far-reaching consequences in the fabric of social life. I argue that changes in
land legislation made redundant the identity of Tapalpan Indians. This coincided with
changes in ethnic categories that had far-reaching effects on notions of person and
place. Similarly, Thomas has shown how the building of roads affected ideas of
urban and rural in Madagascar, while Hutchinson describes shifts in the linked
notions of blood, cattle, and community in Nuerland (Hutchinson 1996; Thomas
2002: 378–383).
Third, Malinowski paid careful attention to genre and used the term “myth” quite
specifically for the liliu genre of Trobriand narrative (1992 [1926]: 86). Not all scholars
have followed suit. Some distinguish between oral and written accounts or between
“history” and “memory”, but few pay much attention to the different ways in which
the same people narrate events (Boyarin 1994; Halbwachs 1980; Zerubavel 1995).2 I
focus on what Tapalpans considered historia (history) as opposed to other kinds of nar-
rative. Historia was related to what is elsewhere often called “history” (Stack 2006). It
was not unlike the Colombian local historia described by Appelbaum (2003), the
German Heimatgeschichte described by Eidson (2005), the histoire handwritten by
the Zairean intellectual Tshibumba (Blommaert 2004), or indeed the kind of history
276 T. Stack
that I had learned in the UK. History has been a highly successful genre. But, in spite of
what Dirks (1990), Anderson (1991), and others have argued, the genre of history is not
just a product of nation-states and their schooling (Stack 2004: 64).
Genre was, for Malinowski, a kind of ground that lay below the shifting figures of
particular myths. But Malinowski did not consider that the ground might shift—
that the genre might change. By contrast, Hanks has traced how sixteenth-century
Maya elites developed the genres in which they addressed Spanish colonial authorities
in the Yucatán peninsula, while Abercrombie has looked at “the changes undergone by
Andean ways of recounting and accounting for the past” (Abercrombie 1998: 14;
Hanks 1987). In the case of Tapalpa, I show that the genre of history has not been
unchanging, and I observe that it also became more popular during the twentieth
century, partly due to schooling. I note the importance of differences between oral
and written history, and I argue that the genre became ever more oriented towards
an expanding State and the tourism industry (Stack 2012).
Genre is not the only shifting ground identified by scholars. As Fardon has noted:
Ethnicity in Africa has been a striking example of the simultaneous changes in item and
context that makes identity transformation so difficult to express in terms that are clear
without being oversimplifications. Our problem is that changes over time occur both in
the “figure” (say, a particular ethnicity) and in the “ground” (current anticipations of eth-
nicity as a type of difference). (2004: 80)
It is notoriously hard to define the “ethnic” and harder still to draw a line between
ethnic and class distinctions, and so on (Wade 1997: 97–100; Williams 1989). In the
case of Tapalpa’s history, what seemed liked a simple ethnic shift was not. To begin
with, it was not just that people switched ethnic identity. There was a shift in the cat-
egories themselves, as more people identified as mestizos (mixed-blood). The distinc-
tion was also one of civic status as much as ethnicity. People in the 1990s stressed
that Tapalpa was founded as a hacienda, not that it was founded by Spaniards. In a
similar vein, Friedlander wrote that being Indian in central Mexico in the 1970s was
really about lacking “culture”, while Briggs has argued that officials in the Venezuelan
Amazon in the 1990s used “culture” as a cover for a kind of “racial profiling”. Harvey
has also described how the Zapatistas turned from a peasant movement into an Indian
movement (Briggs & Mantini-Briggs 2003: 199–255; Friedlander 1975: 74, 80 –81;
Harvey 1998).
Another ground highlighted by scholars has been that of knowledge itself. Famously,
Foucault traced the emergence of objects of knowledge such as the individual, who is
measured against a norm and treated for deviation from that norm (Foucault 1979).
Anthropologists too have studied the shifting grounds of disciplines such as science
and history, as well as more traditional forms of knowledge (Basso 1996; Latour &
Woolgar 1979). Some have paid particular attention to the ways in which evidence is
evaluated, since this affects the plausibility of an account as well as the authority of
those in the know (Chafe 1986; Handler & Gable 1997; Hill 2000). I note the complex-
ity of this, too. For example, people believed that they should cite written documents to
support their account of Tapalpa’s history, but they seldom took their history from
what they read. As a result, what was said of that history was little affected by what was
written.
The question of change, beyond the individual mind, is obviously also a question
of transmission. Scholars have used various metaphors to discuss the transmission of
culture. For example, Philips notes that Appadurai and others have written of
“flows” of culture, but she prefers the metaphor of plant ecology to emphasize that
“When new ideas enter a discourse environment, their fates vary, depending in part
on the nature of their relationship with ideas already present in that environment”
(Appadurai 1996; Philips 2004: 247). I prefer Urban’s use of kinetic metaphors to
stress that culture moves through the world along “pathways” that culture opens up
for its own transmission, although I stress human agency by writing instead of the tra-
jectories along which people propel culture (2001). Urban goes on to argue that the
transmission of culture, whether myths, pots, or films, is affected by the properties

of the objects being transmitted, but is also guided by “metacultural” notions about
those objects, such as the value given to myths or the reviews that are written of
films. Similarly, I discuss a key notion held about Tapalpa’s history—residents con-
sidered history to be something to be told to outsiders and, as a result, drew on the
kind of history they had encountered in schools, magazines, and so on. That in turn
resembles Hanks’s argument that colonial Maya elites “oriented” the documents that
they wrote towards Spanish colonial authorities and, in so doing, drew on the genres
of those same authorities (1987: 677–678). But, I found that Tapalpans’ uptake
from official ideology was selective—they were more receptive to some elements
than others. Culture has complex trajectories, and talk about history is no exception.
Trajectories through the “Ethnographic Present”

I have said that anthropologists since the eclipse of structuralism have given consider-
able thought to how things change, but it could be argued that we have taken continuity
for granted. Inertia is not a sufficient explanation for cultural continuity—it is not
enough to say that people simply reproduce what is around them (Urban 2001: 18 –
20). That is true even of continuity through the “ethnographic present”. I ask in the
first half of this article why so many different people gave such similar accounts of
the town’s history through the period of my fieldwork from 1992 to 2005. I use the
past tense for this “ethnographic present” for three reasons. First, to avoid implying
that time stands still when we leave our field sites, leaving our subjects “out of time”
(Fabian 1983). But, the past tense pushes me, second, to historicize the period of my
fieldwork, in the sense of placing what people said and did in space and time, and
thus not to take continuity for granted by assuming that time stands still during the
period of fieldwork. Third, by using the same past tense for the periods during and
before my fieldwork, I am less tempted to dichotomize the “ethnographic present”
and “historical past”. I turn in the second half of the article to the period that I intended
originally to study, from 1879 up to the beginning of my fieldwork in 1992. I use not just
the same tense but also the same approaches to this earlier period. Just as for 1992–2005,
I begin by identifying certain elements that persisted from 1879 to 1992. Only towards
278 T. Stack
the end of the paper do I ask how certain elements of what was said in 1879 disappeared
and how other elements—such as the idea that Tapalpa was a hacienda—replaced them.
Talk about Tapalpa’s Founding, 1992–2005

I began research in West Mexico as a historian, shortly after graduating in Modern
History, with the idea of writing the history of a small town called Tapalpa.
Tapalpa had a population of around 7,000 inhabitants and was the seat of a municipal
district set in a highland area of West Mexico, just south of the state capital Guada-
lajara. I also did research in Tapalpa’s smaller neighbour, Atacco, two miles away and
with a population of 2,500 (see Figures 1 and 2). I became more interested, though, in
what others had to say about the history of the town. By history, I mean not just any-
thing that was said about the town’s past, but specifically the kind of narrative that
was usually known as historia. During various stays in the town between 1992 and
summer 2005, I listened to and engaged in many conversations about Tapalpa’s
history, although I will note that most Tapalpans were not especially interested in
history and as a result it usually came up fleetingly or in response to my presence.
The participants in these conversations included long-term residents of the town
but also newer residents, residents of other towns and villages, such as Atacco, the many
weekend visitors to the town, academics, and chroniclers who had written about the
town, migrants from the town working in California, and many others. I also read a
variety of written texts that made mention of Tapalpa’s history (Figures 1 and 2). In
other words, I found myself writing the ethnography not of a town but of an extensive
social field in which notions of Tapalpa’s history circulated (Stack 2012).
Figure 1. View (2005) from the corner of Tapalpa’s square, looking along one of its sides.
The sign on the first-floor railings to the left of the telegraph pole, reads Artesanı́as La
Hacienda (The Hacienda Craft Shop). This is where the Hotel Hacienda was sited.
Several of the vehicles belonged to weekenders. Photo by T. Stack.
Figure 2. View (2005) along Atacco’s main street. The arch on the left-hand side leads
into the churchyard, while the building on the near corner to the right was used as a
school during the 1990s. Few weekenders stopped in Atacco. Photo by T. Stack.
One such conversation took place late in 1997. I said to my landlady Carmen, while
she was making the main meal of the day, that Tapalpa, like its neighbour Atacco, had
been a pueblo indio (Indian town). Carmen agreed, tentatively, that this was possible,
even referring at one point to the Indians of Tapalpa as “us”. She said, however, that
the people of both Atacco and Juanacatlán, another nearby town, were more Indian
than the people of Tapalpa. She was also open to my suggestion that Atacco and
Tapalpa had been inhabited by different groups of Indians. I pointed out that most
Tapalpans said, by contrast, that Tapalpa had first settled as a hacienda by Spaniards,
and I emphasized that this implied that no one had lived there before. She volunteered
that, after all, Spanish settlers could hardly have built their large houses by themselves.
There must have been people there already to help them build those houses. I suggested
that the labourers could have come from neighbouring Atacco; she did not respond to
this. The idea of Spanish settlers settling among Indians in Tapalpa and marrying them
reminded her of her Spanish grandfather. He, she said, had married a woman “from
here”, very Indian and tall, with dark eyes. I asked whether Tapalpa looked like a
pueblo indio she began by contrasting the outgoing mayor with his white skin and
green eyes to the “very Indian” incoming mayor. I specified the architecture and she
said that Tapalpa did not look as “Indianised” as Atacco. There were more modern
houses in Juanacatlán than in Atacco, she conceded. But the people of Juanacatlán
were still Indian—and spoke as such—despite their houses. And so on.
280 T. Stack
This was just one in a long series of interconnected conversations that I had with
Carmen during the four years in which I was a lodger in her house and became a
close friend. A few days later, we returned to the topic of Tapalpa originating as a
hacienda. The conversation also fed into conversations we had on other topics.
Carmen often laughed, for example, about the fact that I visited Atacco so often,
warning me not to return too drunk, and joked that I was sending smoke signals
from the chimney stack to “my brothers in Atacco”.
It was not just Carmen who joked about the people of Atacco—so did many others
who had lived for any length of time in Tapalpa. I found resemblances, too, in what
people had to say about Tapalpa’s history. For one thing, there was a peculiar emphasis
on the fact that what was said should be correct. This truth could be established by refer-
ence to written documents, although it could also be established by reference to the oral
accounts of individuals. Indeed, this emphasis on truth and its relation to written docu-
ments was similar to the history I had learned at school and university in the UK. More
specifically, many different people said at different moments in my fieldwork that
Tapalpa had been a hacienda while its neighbour Atacco had been the town. Interest-
ingly, I heard that not just from people who had resided for many years in Tapalpa
but from most people who had spent any significant length of time there. For
example, in early 1998 a white-goods salesman, who had lived for only a few years in
Tapalpa, told me he had heard from friends that Atacco was older than Tapalpa: “I
didn’t believe it”, he said, “but it’s true”. I also heard much the same in Atacco.
Not a Simple Story

It is not easy to explain why, beyond inertia, the idea that Atacco was older than Tapalpa
got reproduced through the period of my fieldwork from 1992 to 2005. First, it survived
through a period in which much else changed in and around Tapalpa. The number of
hotels and restaurants in Tapalpa grew through the period, as more and more weekenders
came from Guadalajara and elsewhere. Tapalpa was made a Magical Town (Pueblo
Mágico) by the federal government in 2000, mainly as a result of the efforts of a business-
man in Guadalajara with close links to the state government and shares in a Tapalpan
hotel, which brought investment in the town’s tourism infrastructure—Tapalpa looked
quite different when I last visited in 2005. Despite this, increasing numbers of Tapalpans
migrated to work in Concord, California, especially after the glitch in the tourist industry
caused by the 1994 national financial collapse. Meanwhile, Atacco was affected by a 1992
constitution reform, which allowed members of its ejido (agrarian collective) to sell their
plots of land. Many have since sold their lands, especially after the 1994 collapse, and, for
the first time, increasing numbers of Atacco people have joined Tapalpans in Concord.
Politically, electoral competition increased dramatically during this period. Political
parties looked for support outside Tapalpa, particularly in Atacco. Partly as a result,
health centres and schools were built in Atacco and in several villages, and some roads
were also built, although the road from Tapalpa to Atacco remained in a pitiful state.
A second difficulty in explaining the continuity in what was told as Tapalpa’s history
is that the transmission of Tapalpa’s history was not institutionalized. Parents did not
sit their children down to tell them Tapalpa’s history, it was not played out ritually or
narrated in public gatherings, there were no plaques on the town square, and it was not
taught in schools, although pupils were required to write projects about local history. In
fact, residents did not usually find history particularly interesting: their attention would
turn quickly to more immediate concerns, such as children or gossip. Tapalpa’s history
was, in other words, transmitted through relatively diffuse encounters which occurred,
moreover, among a population that was quite dispersed, many long-term residents
leaving for Guadalajara and also for California while weekenders, teachers, bureaucrats,
and others were coming and going with some frequency.
Third, people did refer to some written accounts but they reproduced the same oral
history in spite of the fact that it appeared to differ from the written accounts. That was
after all why I made the argument that I did in my conversation with Carmen. I felt I
was doing good history by appealing to the evidence of archival documents, including
several cited in a magazine article written in the 1980s by a priest who was born in
Tapalpa (Méndez 1989). It was clear to me, from those and other documents that I
cite below, that Tapalpa had existed prior to that hacienda and that an “indigenous
community of Tapalpa” existed in the late nineteenth century. The same priest made
no reference to what was said about Tapalpa being founded as a hacienda, and
neither did other native Tapalpans in the histories that they wrote. I found, in fact,
that most written histories were lifted word for word from other written histories.
One example was the Monograph of Tapalpa that I was handed in the town library,
shortly after arriving in Tapalpa: “in antiquity this Town was a small Cacicazgo belong-
ing to the Tlatonazgo of Tzoallan” (Nava López et al. 1985: 2). Browsing further in the
library’s archive, I realized that the author had lifted this section word for word from
another library hand-out, which was typed in turn from a book, dated 1954, whose
author was a priest from Guadalajara (Orozco 1954). Conversely, I found that only a
few people drew on what was written when talking about “history”. The priest’s
article was easily accessible and had been read by several Tapalpans. Moreover, the
Monograph of Tapalpa that I cited above also appeared to indicate that Tapalpa had
been an Indian town. People referred to these writings but seldom made use of the
content in their conversation about history. I wrote in my own potted history of
Tapalpa that the town was settled originally by Indians—my readers did not object.
That explains the success of this history in spite of the difference from historical docu-
ments—people felt in principle that they should be citing written documents but they
did not generally do so in practice. But, it also illustrates the complexity of cultural
transmission that made it difficult to trace the trajectory of Tapalpa’s history. It was
not just that the conventions of genre were important to the transmission of
history—the conventions differed in principle and practice.3
Maintaining a Critical Mass

So why did Carmen respond to my argument in this conversation? One reason was that
I had authority as a history graduate. Moreover, during this conversation, I insisted on
the point in a way that she could not easily ignore. I emphasized the fact that most
282 T. Stack
people said or implied that no one had lived in Tapalpa before the hacienda, whereas I
had found evidence in written documents that there were Indians living in Tapalpa
before the hacienda. I did so by appealing to her own understanding of good
history—history could be known by consulting written documents. Despite that,
Carmen was still clearly reluctant to take my history onboard. I made a similar point
in many conversations with different people and received a range of responses but
most also expressed surprise at my argument and most took some persuading. I had
to insist and I was made to defend my argument, citing documents and
brandishing my authority.4 I had a similar experience with the residents of Atacco.
In this section, I attempt to explain that reluctance.
Resonance and interests

It is important that by 1992 the idea that Atacco was older had already reached
critical mass. When the salesman said “I didn’t believe it, but it’s true”, he was per-
suaded eventually because he found that so many people said the same thing about
Tapalpa’s history. But, how was this critical mass maintained from 1992 to 2005?
We have seen that Tapalpa’s history resonated with other things that were said and
done during this period, including jokes made about the people of Atacco. In other
words, Tapalpa’s history was tied into a broader complex of ideas of person,
people, and place. I found, indeed, that people were reluctant to give up on the
contrast between Tapalpa and Atacco, despite the many social changes that I
have outlined. But, they had different reasons for this reluctance. Tapalpa’s
history worked through the period as a kind of “charter” in Malinowski’s sense.
Different people had different interests in that contrast; different groups “signed
up” to this charter, which served to justify by precedent the various claims that
they were making (Malinowski 1992 (1926): 82). This charter was, in a sense,
negotiated among these different groups—my attempt to rework that history
failed because it deviated from the charter.
Tapalpan residents, to begin with, complained after municipal elections in 1994
and in 1997 that the “Indians of Atacco” had voted for the official party out of ignor-
ance. In other words, the electoral competition served only to reinforce the distinc-
tion between the towns. Tapalpans also often spoke of the “backwardness” of
Atacco’s residents, which resonated with the idea that Atacco had been eclipsed by
Tapalpa. In the late 1990s, for example, an Atacco civic group pushed for Atacco’s
status within the county to be raised officially. This entailed a greater measure of
self-government, at least in areas such as sports and “culture”. The municipal Sec-
retary argued against this, and is reported to have said that the people of Atacco
lacked the sufficient “culture” to carry out these tasks (Stack 2006: 432).5 This con-
trast was reinforced by the investment in Tapalpa’s tourism infrastructure, although
curiously some Tapalpans proposed in 2005 that Atacco also receive investment since
Atacco was older.
Among Tapalpan residents, some elite families showed particular interest in the idea
that Atacco was the town when Tapalpa was a hacienda. For those families, this history
gave them a place in Tapalpa’s founding: it was easier to claim antiquity in a “new”
place. For example, an elderly resident Manuel Preciado said that his family, which
owned lands and businesses in and around Tapalpa, had been one of the first to
settle in Tapalpa after the building of the hacienda. Around that time, he said, the
county seat moved to Tapalpa. In other words, he was able to stake a claim for his
family in this history of Tapalpa. He died in 1994, but at least one of his sons and
other younger relatives have shown an interest in this history.6
Meanwhile, Atacco’s residents were also keen to stress throughout this period that
Atacco was in fact older—they were one group that was particularly interested
(Stack 2004, 2006). Some said that “Atacco used to be the town” when complaining
about being sidelined from the county government, which was located in Tapalpa. Cru-
cially, Atacco residents continued to tell the same history throughout this period. Some
were indignant, indeed, that the Monograph and other documents appeared to deny
that Atacco was older—or made scant mention of Atacco. This despite the changes
in Atacco due to the weakening of the ejido: The civic group tried to use Atacco’s
history to raise its civic status, while another group aimed to restore Atacco as an
“indigenous community” (Stack 2006).
Authority
I have said that there was no institutional control over Tapalpa’s history—there was no
plaque or school textbook or ritual performance that might explain its remarkable
success. People turned instead to the two groups most interested in history; as I have
said, those groups continued to tell Tapalpa’s history in the same way through this
period. That helped to sustain the social charter throughout the period, despite the
social changes.
First, I was sent to talk to old people in and around the centre of Tapalpa through the
1990s. It was only later that I realized that these were often not just old people, but old
people considered to be from “old” families (although I did not often hear them called
that). When I asked other residents for Tapalpa’s oldest families, many listed Manuel
Preciado’s family as one of the oldest. The “old families” were not often cited as sources
and one person noted that there were many others who knew Tapalpa’s history.
However, they were large families to begin with and they were also highly visible in
Tapalpa, so it is likely that they played some part in keeping that history going. In
fact, Atacco’s residents had more obvious authority over the history being transmitted.
Whether Atacco’s antiquity was read as a sign of backwardness or of civic status, it still
gave Atacco’s residents some authority in the narration of history. I was sent to Atacco
to ask people about history and some members of the “old” families had also turned to
the people of Atacco. Don Manuel, for example, had lent agricultural equipment and
credit to Atacco residents as well as employing some residents, and he was familiar with
the narratives told there.
But, these were not the only two groups to whom people turned for their
history. I have said that most people, after giving the potted history of Tapalpa,
suggested that I talk to someone who knew more history of Tapalpa. People
284 T. Stack
often sent me to Don Lupe Nava, a former municipal president who was known as
someone with cultura (Stack 2004). They also sent me to an elderly lawyer, Alberto
Arámbula, who lived in Guadalajara, but was born in Tapalpa and owned a hotel
there that he visited regularly, as well as owning lands between Tapalpa and Atacco.
Other authorities included the municipal chronicler, who had studied a Diploma in
Regional History in Guadalajara and set up a small group in Tapalpa of people
interested in regional history, as well as the editor of the one Tapalpan magazine,
who published some articles on local history (see Figure 3). These learned individuals
helped to keep this history going through the period, although they added a number of
variations.7 Unlike most other residents, they were concerned to produce their own
histories, and to make their histories conform to the norms of good history. This involved,
among other things, citing a wider range of sources, ideally including archived documents.
Nevertheless, they still made—at least in conversation—the same distinction between

Tapalpa and Atacco, albeit with variations of their own. That was partly because they
had an interest in that distinction but also because that distinction was so familiar
(Figure 3). Alberto Arámbula cited “tradition” in his account of Tapalpa’s history and,
like Don Manuel, had obviously talked to Atacco residents, not surprisingly since he
had lands near Atacco. Arámbula also named certain families as the “oldest” in
Tapalpa, including the Preciados.
Figure 3. Meeting of the municipal chronicler (wearing glasses) with his group of
Diploma students in 2004, held in another hotel near the plaza of Tapalpa. Photo by T.
Stack.
Wider orientations
People often contrasted Tapalpa and Atacco during the period but, in order to keep this
history in such wide circulation, there also had to be enough talk about Tapalpa’s
history among the wider population. I have noted, however, that most other Tapalpans
did not find their town’s history (or history in general) particularly interesting. I often
heard people talk about their town’s history with outsiders of one kind or another—I
was not the only one. For example, weekenders sometimes asked questions about
Tapalpa’s history, bureaucrats were often asked to include a section on Tapalpa’s
history as a prelude to municipal reports, and school children were also asked to
write projects on Tapalpa’s history (Stack 2003, 2006). Indeed, the rationale given
for knowing Tapalpa’s history was often to be able to answer other people’s questions.
On several occasions, people said it was important to know Tapalpa’s history precisely
in case their children had to write a project on it.
As a result, residents tended to orient their history towards the expectations of others
(Hanks 1987). For example, bureaucrats also wrote the kind of history they thought
their superiors would like to read, residents gave answers to weekenders that were
designed to appeal to them, and school pupils were keen to conform to their teacher’s
understanding of history.8 They told Tapalpa’s history in a way that chimed not just
with things that other residents said and did, but also with notions of history that
they had picked up from elsewhere.9 But, that happened in specific ways. For
example, although Tapalpans talked about Mexican history as well as Tapalpa’s
history, few connected Tapalpa’s history to Mexico’s history in conversation. Schooling
did encourage people to talk about history and specifically to write projects of local
history, but the national history they learned at school did not necessarily influence
the history they told of Tapalpa. In other words, schooling was important to the trans-
mission of the town’s history because it kept people talking about Tapalpa’s history,
rather than because teachers taught a version of that history (Stack 2003).
By contrast, people moved from town to town, just as I did, and picked up
elements of the history of other towns whether from talk or from plaques of
various kinds. Not surprisingly, Tapalpa’s history ended up looking remarkably
like what was told as the history of other towns. Travelling around Mexico, I
found that towns had different histories but the histories generally followed the
same template: this town X was founded in Y year by people of Z ethnicity.
There were even other pairs of Indian and non-Indian towns like Atacco and
Tapalpa, which helps to explain why newcomers found it easy to pick up Tapalpa’s
history. “Atacco was the town when Tapalpa was a hacienda” was a familiar enough
history to most people.10 That is my final explanation, then, of why so many differ-
ent people said such similar things about Tapalpa’s history from 1992 to 2005, in
spite of all the social changes during this period. History was part of a dense
complex of local notions of person, people, and place; it appealed to the interests
of various social groups; people looked to particular local authorities, who saw fit
to keep turning out this history; finally, they looked to sources further afield
which kept reproducing these notions of history.11
286 T. Stack
Trajectories through the “Historical Past”
Anthropologists are used to critiquing the notion of an “ethnographic present” but less
used to questioning the idea of the “historical past”. We have been quick to join the
chorus that accounts of the past are contaminated by present perspectives, but slower
to interrogate the notions of “past” and “present” that this presupposes (Stack 2004).
When, after all, did the past stop and the present start? It is also too cosy a critique for eth-
nographers, because it leaves untouched our own claims to truth in an “ethnographic
present”. I began this article with a conversation with my landlady Carmen in 1997,
and followed elements of that conversation out across the time and space of my fieldwork.
I showed that there was considerable continuity through that period, and I drew on several
approaches to explain that continuity. In the second half of the paper, I trace some of those
elements back in time, before the period of my fieldwork, without assuming change in the
“historical past” any more than continuity in the “ethnographic present”.
Talk about Tapalpa’s Founding, 1879–1992

I begin with a municipal survey dated 1879 which included a section entitled “Found-
ing”. The report had been published in a Guadalajaran magazine in 1987, but had
apparently been out of circulation, probably buried in the state archive, for the previous
century. The authors of the report were two Tapalpa residents, one of whom had suc-
cessfully petitioned in 1878 Tapalpa’s rise in status from pueblo to villa (a status
between pueblo and city). Some elements of their history (unlike most of what was
written in the 1990s) seem to have derived from oral sources. First, the authors
begin by claiming that they drew on “tradition” rather than “datos [data]”—they
clearly meant orally transmitted information as opposed to written documents. They
would have cited written documents if they could have, especially in an official
survey for bureaucrats. The author of the 1879 survey of the nearby town of Sayula,
for example, stressed that he was relying on written documents (González 1971
[1879]-a: 4). Second, I have not found any written source for their account of “foun-
dation”, so the authors do genuinely seem to have drawn a blank.12
The authors gave the following account in 1879 of how Tapalpa was founded:
The population of Tapalpa has its origin, according to tradition since datos haven’t been
found, from a tribe of indigenous people from Zacoalco [a nearby town]. They came here,
at the beginning of last century, to tan hides, taking advantage of a raw material that was
then abundant, the thorn tree. Its bark is one of the main tanning agents, together with
water. These indigenous people built the first shacks to live in and, once settled, their
population began to increase and they began to progress.
In that period, many Spaniards and Creoles came to exploit silver and gold mines. . .
When the main mine San Rafael declined, all these miners moved to Tapalpa, and,
known as vecinos [neighbors or residents], they settled and integrated among the indigen-
ous people, from whom most of their children descend. The town of San Gaspar de
Atlanco—the present name Atacco is a corruption of this original name—already
existed, and was the county seat, made up of pure indigenous people who received
their conqueror Pedro de Alvarado. . . (Camarena y Gutiérrez de Lariz 1987)
The authors wrote in 1879, then, that Tapalpa was settled first by a “tribe of indigenous
people” settled in Tapalpa, while by 1992 most people said that Tapalpa was founded as
a hacienda, presumably by Spaniards. I focus on that change in the next section but I
first discuss an obvious continuity. The authors wrote that Atacco “already existed and
was the principal town, made up of pure indigenous people” just as people stressed in
1992 that Atacco was (already) the town when Tapalpa was founded (Camarena y
Gutiérrez de Lariz 1987: 24 –25).
Not a Simple Story

Again, it is no easy feat to explain the continuity in the idea that Atacco had been the
town when Tapalpa was founded.13 First, just as for 1992–2005, Atacco’s antiquity sur-
vived through a period in which much else changed. In 1879, power was held across
southern Jalisco by an oligarchy of landowners and industrialists. Three substantial
industries had attracted a fair amount of labour to the Sierra, while a handful of families
owned ranches in the Sierra although most built homes in Tapalpa, Atacco, and a
couple of villages. Tapalpa was the seat of the municipal government as the largest
town in the Sierra and its population grew quickly during the nineteenth century.
There was talk of opening more schools, particularly in the towns, but relatively few
children attended schools. De la Peña (1980) has argued that the building of a
railway from Guadalajara to the Pacific Coast passing through the adjacent lowland
valley crippled the industries of the Sierra from the late 1890s (50–52). Curiously,
these were still remembered in the 1990s as the years of “high society” that included
some of the industrialists who settled in the town as well as landowning families
such as the owners of the largest landholding, the Hacienda de Buenavista. From
around 1914, however, a series of rebellions, some linked to the movements of Villa,
Zapata, and so on, forced several wealthy families to leave the region. De la Peña
(1992) argues that the new post-Revolutionary governments managed to break what
was left of the “horizontal” regional oligarchy, which was replaced by a fragmented
“vertical” order in which different state and federal agencies exercised power
through local brokers (Zárate Hernández 1997: 170). These agencies included the
agrarian and education ministries. As a result of the post-Revolutionary land reform,
the Hacienda de Buenavista was broken up and an agrarian collective created in
Atacco in 1929 as well as in other towns and villages, although not Tapalpa. New
schools were opened at various points in the century, although mainly in Tapalpa.
There was also considerable migration from villages to towns, including that enforced
as a consequence of the Cristero war in the 1920s. The landowning families who had
settled in Atacco during the nineteenth century had move to Tapalpa by mid-twentieth
century, partly to participate in municipal politics. There was substantial migration
from both towns to Guadalajara and also growing migration, particularly from the
1980s, to the USA. An asphalt road up to Tapalpa from the Guadalajara-Pacific
highway was completed in 1961. Since then, Tapalpa attracted weekenders in
growing numbers from Guadalajara, which became a significant source of income
for many residents (see also Fernández 2004; Méndez 1989; Serrano 2002).
288 T. Stack
A second difficulty is that, just as for 1992–2005, there was no single source of
history to which people could turn between 1879 and 1992. The 1879 report itself
seems to have gathered dust in an archive in Guadalajara and was not cited in print
until the 1980s. Just as for 1992–2005, Tapalpa’s history was not taught in schools
(and regional history was not taught until the 1980s). In other words, the idea that
Atacco is older was transmitted through diffuse channels, which are hard to recon-
struct. Moreover, whereas I was able to observe the mouth-to-mouth transmission
of history from 1992 to 2005, I could not of course do that for 1879–1992. For that
period, I depend on written texts that show some uptake from oral sources or, alterna-
tively, on oral accounts of what people used to say or said at some point. I have argued
that the authors of the 1879 report did cite oral sources but it seems that most writers of
history stuck to what others had written, just as in the period 1992–2005. For example,
a parish priest in 1919 wrote a short history of Tapalpa in which he argued that Tapalpa
must be “very ancient, [founded] a long time before the Conquest” but he only cited
other historians in support of his argument (APT Libro de Gobierno 5: 65–68). The
documentary sources were already fairly scarce, not least because the municipal
archive was burned by Cristero rebels in 1928. That was a methodological problem
but it was also itself an issue of cultural transmission—it was an attack on the State’s
mechanism for transmitting information. Records since then were also patchy and I
was told that most municipal presidents were strangely reluctant to keep records.14
A third complication is that the contrast between Tapalpa and Atacco had more than
one dimension. To begin with, the 1879 authors distinguished between the founders in
terms of racial purity (the people of Atacco were of “pure indigenous race”) while
people in the 1990s did so in terms of “Spanish” versus “Indian”. But, they also distin-
guished between the towns in terms of civic status—Atacco was the cabecera (county
seat) in 1879 and in 1992 people said that Tapalpa was just an hacienda. Third, they
distinguished in terms of age Atacco in both 1879 and 1992 accounts is older than
Tapalpa.
Resonance and interests

I have said that in the 1990s Tapalpa residents used the idea that Atacco was older
mainly to mark Atacco’s backwardness (cf. Stack 2004). The authors of the 1879
survey did something similar: they played up Tapalpa’s progressiveness and used
Atacco to set that progress in relief. The image of Tapalpa as a progressive place was
important to the town’s elite. One of the authors had, the previous year, signed a peti-
tion to the state government, asking for Tapalpa to be raised in civic status from pueblo
to villa, and this petition had also made much of Tapalpa’s progressiveness (Fajardo
Villalvazo 1997). The petition was successful, which accounts for the celebratory
tone of the 1879 survey, titled “Villa de Tapalpa” even though it was supposed to rep-
resent the whole municipal district.15
I also noted that in 1992 the “old” families of Tapalpa had an interest in the idea that
Atacco was older because it helped them to claim antiquity in the “newer” Tapalpa. We
can see from the 1879 account that those families were not then considered the first
settlers—that honour went to the “tribe of indigenous people from Zacoalco”. But, it
looks like some Spanish and Creole families would have claimed to be older than
others—to descend from the first Spanish and Creole miners to settle in Tapalpa.
The Preciado family was likely one of those families since they already owned consider-
able land, and were closely linked to the Vizcaı́no family who owned the Hacienda de
Buenavista. I have cited the family history given by Manuel Preciado about the Vizcaino
founding Tapalpa and the Preciado settling there soon after. He and his sisters had
learned that history from their father, who had also complained endlessly about a
group of Spaniards who had arrived in Tapalpa in 1910 and set up a resin business
that took over the forests of the entire Sierra. Another family had settled first in
Atacco, and then moved to Tapalpa to compete with Tapalpa’s elite families, including
the Preciados, for control of the municipal government. Manuel Preciado’s father had
something of an interest in staking his family’s claim to Tapalpa over these new arrivals.
Atacco’s antiquity was also of interest to Atacco’s own residents throughout the
period. Two elderly Atacco men said in 1995, for example, that they had always
heard that Atacco was older, including from the old people of their youth. But, it
was of interest for different reasons at different times. In the nineteenth century and
in the early twentieth century, a town’s antiquity was of interest because an ancient
town still had rights to lands. For example, a group of agrarian activists from Atacco
applied in 1921 for a “restitution” of the lands of their “ancient town”. Seemingly in
support of this, one of the activists copied in 1923 a land title that, among other
things, contrasted the “old town” of Atacco with the “new town” of Tapalpa. The
post-Revolutionary government agreed instead to make an “endowment” of lands
simply on the grounds that they were peasants in need of lands to farm (cf. Craig
1983: 249–251). That made Atacco’s antiquity legally irrelevant at least with regard
to claiming lands—they sought the lands on the grounds of present need rather than
past possession. It was not until the 1980s that the idea of claiming lands on the
grounds of antiquity was revived by an Atacco group that had unearthed the 1923
copy of the land title (Stack 2006). But, antiquity could also be a mark of civic
status. The 1879 writers had insisted that Atacco had been not just a town but the cabe-
cera (county seat). From the 1980s, the Atacco civic group that I mentioned above
began to make much of Atacco’s former civic status—it was a source of pride to
them that Atacco had been the town.
Authority
Just as for 1992–2005, there was no central source for Tapalpa’s history to explain the
resilience of the idea that Atacco was the town. But, it seems that some sources were still
valued over others. It is difficult to show that people turned to the “old families” during
the period, although we have seen that the Preciado family transmitted Tapalpa’s
history together with family history within the family itself. It is more likely that
people turned to Atacco residents—the elderly Tapalpan lawyer Alberto Arámbula
had talked with his Atacco labourers and paid attention to their accounts of history.
In any case, certain individuals helped to carry Atacco’s antiquity—whether in scorn
290 T. Stack
or in admiration—through the period. One of the survey authors became municipal
president in 1902 but both had died or left Tapalpa by the 1930s. A priest native to
Tapalpa wrote in a history of a local Virgin in 1947 that there was little strife at the
time of Conquest in the region, and that “there were cases like that of Atacco in
which the Spaniard was allowed to settle alone in Tapalpa”. It is significant that he
believed that the people of Atacco had decided who could settle in Tapalpa—he con-
sidered that Atacco had been the primary town. Intriguingly, he cites documentary evi-
dence throughout his history but he does not do so at this point, which suggests that he
was citing what he had heard from other Tapalpans—from oral transmission. Resi-
dents also remembered that the priest used to take notes from conversations about
history when visiting the town. So it may well be that Tapalpans in the 1940s were
saying—as in both 1879 and 1992–2005—that Atacco was older than Tapalpa and
had originally been the town. In any case, Father Méndez’s account was likely taken
up by others, especially since he returned frequently to Tapalpa and talked history
with Tapalpans.
Wider orientations
The idea that Atacco had been the town was sustained by notions picked up from wider
circles, including the ideology of progress—for example, that one town could have
“progressed” more than another. The authors of the 1879 report oriented their
account to political circles, especially the Liberal state government. They also made
much of the Tapalpa schools and listed a fair number of children in Tapalpa as receiv-
ing some basic schooling. In other words, elite groups were already orienting them-
selves towards the nation-state—and that orientation was accentuated by the
“vertical” structures developed after the Revolution (de la Peña 1980). Municipal
and parish schools were then replaced by state government schools, exposing a
much wider range of children to the new textbooks (Friedlander 1975; Vaughan
1997). Meanwhile, ejidatarios—previously tied as serfs or as sharecroppers to regional
landowners—became clients of the federal agrarian ministry.16 One key element of
state ideology coming through these channels was the notion of progress—and that
some people are more backward than others (cf. Mignolo 2000: 3–4; Monroy 1956).
I have mentioned that elites were keen to portray Tapalpa as a progressive place.
This is clear in the 1879 report, as I have shown. It was also clear in municipal
records from the 1930s—successive presidents claimed to champion the literacy cam-
paigns, for example. On some occasions, locals were found wanting in progress such as
in a damning report on Atacco residents by an agrarian inspector in 1954.
The Elision of Indians

Another reason why Atacco remained the older town is simply that, by 1992, it was the
only Indian town. This brings us to the first of two differences between what some
people appear to have said in 1879 and what people were saying in 1992. In 1879,
some people were saying that Tapalpa was settled first by Indians, while I was the
one of few people to say this during the 1990s. Why did people stop saying that Tapalpa
was settled first by Indians then later by Spaniards and Creoles, while still saying that
Atacco was an older and Indian town? It seems like a simple shift in ethnic identity but
there were changes in both the contexts and the ways in which these terms were used
(Fardon 2004).
People had lost their two main reasons to talk of Tapalpan Indians by the early twen-
tieth century. First, the authors of the 1879 report wrote that “Tapalpan Indians” were
responsible for the chapel that faced the old parish church and there are also reports in
the parish register that link “Tapalpan Indians” to the care of that chapel (Camarena y
Gutiérrez de Lariz 1987: 33).17 By contrast, a resident in 1999 linked the chapel to the
last owner of the Hacienda de Buenavista, Vidal Vizcaı́no, who was buried in 1902
before the altar in the chapel. People came to associate the chapel with Vidal Vizcaı́no
rather than with Tapalpan Indians.

Second, people would also have talked about Tapalpan Indians in relation to land
disputes in the nineteenth century, but this was no longer relevant by the early twen-
tieth century (see also Frye 1996; Hale 1994; Rappaport 1990). A series of documents
indicate that people were still trying to claim lands in the name of an “indigenous com-
munity of Tapalpa” during the 1860s and 1870s (Colección de Acuerdos 1868: 349,
1879: 257 –258). Some lands were in fact given by the municipal council to “indigenous
people” in 1871, presumably in response to a federal law that pushed municipal gov-
ernments to distribute lands to indigenous peoples (Vanderwood 1998: 72). However,
the grant was not made to an “indigenous community”, but simply to the “neediest
indigenous persons” (Colección de Acuerdos 1879: 44–45). Indeed, one of these docu-
ments refers in 1874 to the “extinct indigenous community” (Colección de Acuerdos
1879: 367–368). No land claims by indigenous persons or an indigenous community
were mentioned anywhere in the 1879 survey (Camarena y Gutiérrez de Lariz 1987). In
the 1920s, Atacco residents changed their land claim from “restitution” of the lands of
their “ancient town” to “endowment” of lands on the grounds of present needs. Tapal-
pan activists also applied in 1932 for an “endowment” of land.18 By then it made no
sense to claim lands in the name of an “indigenous community”—it would no
longer support their land claims. At the same time, certain families were interested
in claiming antiquity in Tapalpa, especially in the face of threats from incoming
families, and their claim was also taken up and disseminated by authoritative individ-
uals such as Father Méndez (whose family also claimed Spanish descent and held lands
around Tapalpa). I have argued that he lifted his claim that “the Spaniard was allowed
to settle alone in Tapalpa” from what some people were saying at the time—that
Tapalpa was settled first by Spaniards (although he does not mention the hacienda).19
But, it was not just that people stopped talking about Tapalpan Indians—they
labelled themselves and others more often as mestizos (literally, mixed-blood). Figure
4(a) illustrates the ethnic contours of the 1879 survey. In that scheme, the population
of Atacco, represented as I1, had always been there. Tapalpa was settled in two waves:
first by Indians from a lowland town, represented by I2 and the bold arrow, and
second, by Spaniards and Creoles from nearby mines, represented by S and the
lighter arrow. The authors do also narrate the “incorporation” of Spaniards and
292 T. Stack
Creoles in Tapalpa among earlier Indian settlers “from whom their children descend”.
However, when the authors in a later section classify the population of the county, they
divide it into two groups of about 3,500 each, one of “indigenous race” and the other of
“white race”, and then list a third but much smaller group of about 350 individuals who
were “descended from both races” (as well as a handful of foreigners). It seems that they
considered very few people to be mestizo fruit of this “incorporation” between Spa-
niards and Indians.20
By contrast, most people in the 1990s considered themselves and most others to be
mestizo and that is reflected in their account of Tapalpa’s history. Figure 4(b) shows the
ethnic contours of what people told as Tapalpa’s history in the 1990s. When residents
said in 1992 that “Atacco was the town, Tapalpa was the hacienda”, they sometimes
followed this by saying that people came from Atacco to work on the hacienda, then
built their houses around its core. This was also an account of mestizaje, an account
of how a mestizo Tapalpa was founded, but it was quite a different version of mestizaje
to that of 1879. In this scheme, the only Indians (marked with an I) were the Indians of
Atacco who had not yet moved to Tapalpa, leaving their Indian-ness behind. Mean-
while, Tapalpa was left with a single core, made up of the least Indian mestizos.
There was no room for Tapalpan Indians—they were squeezed out of the picture.
Where did that notion of mestizaje come from? I have said that some people already
picked up notions of progress from the nineteenth century State, and that people were
increasingly oriented towards its “vertical” structures from the 1920s, despite some
resistance. People took mestizaje from post-Revolutionary ideology, in the form of
school textbooks and other media (cf. Friedlander 1975: 128 –164; Lomnitz-Adler
1992: 277 –280; Vaughan 1997). Figure 4(c) illustrates dominant notions of Mexican
society in the nineteenth century: The population was divided into those of Spanish
descent (S), on the one hand, and Indians (I) on the other hand, together with a rela-
tively small group identified as mestizo (M). According to post-Revolutionary ideology
(Figure 4(d)), Indians were people on the periphery who had not yet been incorporated
into the modern mestizo nation. In the Sierra de Tapalpa, people by the 1990s were
saying that the only Indians were in Atacco—they had not yet moved into mestizo
Tapalpa.
It has often been noted that ethnicity and other kinds of identity are relational (Wade
1997: 109). However, ethnicity in this case involves not just a relation between cat-
egories, but an entire orientation in space and time (see also Hanks 1987: 685). The
authors of the 1879 document seemed to think that the Indians of Atacco were fine
where they were, while in 1992, by contrast, the Indians of Atacco were those who
had been left behind. In other words, the arrows in the diagram, pointing both
across time and over space, are at least as important as the symbols. This orientation
is a critical part of what changes over time.
The Rise of the Hacienda

But, I am still simplifying. I began by saying that I was told in the 1990s that Tapalpa
was founded as a hacienda, presumably by Spaniards. More precisely, many people did
Figure 4. (a) Ethnicity in Tapalpa’s history in the 1879 survey. (b) Ethnicity in Tapalpa’s
history told in 1992 – 2005. (c) Dominant view of Mexican society in the nineteenth
century. (d) Dominant view of Mexican society after Revolution. I = Indian (in Figure 1,
I1 = first group of Indians; I2 = second group of Indians); M = Mestizo; S = Spanish or
Creole.
say, when prompted, that Spaniards must have founded the hacienda, but not all vol-
unteered this and a few were not so sure. In other words, people said in 1879 that
Tapalpa was founded by Indians, but by 1992, although there was still an ethnic dimen-
sion, most people stressed instead the kind of settlement that Tapalpa had once been—
a hacienda as opposed to a pueblo.21
How did the idea that Tapalpa was founded as a hacienda find its way into history?
And how did it achieve critical mass? First, people continued to talk about the hacienda
even after its demise. They talked in the 1990s, for example, about the bittersweet
experience of hacienda life. Land disputes from the 1920s onwards also referred
back to the extensive lands of the hacienda that were redistributed among the
various ejido communities in the Sierra. A handful of activists in Tapalpa were still
looking in the 1990s for documents about ownership of hacienda. Another reason
for resonance was physical location. The main house of the hacienda in the corner
of Tapalpa’s plaza was demolished in the 1960s, but the hotel built in its place was
called the Hotel Hacienda. During the 1990s, residents often pointed to the central
location of this hotel as evidence that Tapalpa was indeed a hacienda (see Figure 1).
This was also the nearest thing to a central source for Tapalpa’s history.
Various groups also showed particular interest in the idea that Tapalpa was a
hacienda. The Preciado family made reference to the hacienda in the 1990s—they
settled in Tapalpa shortly after the hacienda. Note that the older Preciados liked to
tell how they were part of the social circle of the hacienda owners, and were invited
294 T. Stack
to play as children in the hacienda. I argue that this made it interesting for them to play
up the idea that Tapalpa was founded as a hacienda, while also giving them greater
authority to tell it. Atacco’s residents, after the 1920s land reform, valued the antiquity
of Atacco as a mark of civic status, rather than of community land rights. Not surpris-
ingly, they also went from saying that they were two pueblos, one older than the other,
to find interest in the idea that Tapalpa was just a hacienda when Atacco was a pueblo.
People sometimes looked to Atacco’s residents as an authority on Tapalpa’s history.
Finally, the idea that Tapalpa was a hacienda was taken up and reproduced by the
authoritative individuals that I have discussed. None of them wrote of the hacienda
until the 1990s, but I found in 1992 that Don Lupe and others said that Tapalpa was
founded as a hacienda, even if they did not write the same history. Their written his-
tories did not compete with this spoken history because they were only rarely taken up
into speech. Not until the late 1990s did I hear some individuals talk of the “chiefdom”
described in the library Monograph and other writings.
But, people were also picking up their ideas about history from wider channels. To
begin with, talk about land disputes was provoked by the State land reform which
broke up the hacienda and, along with the ideology of mestizaje, the post-Revolu-
tionary state prided itself on having broken the power of the haciendas with its
agrarian reform. Floats, textbooks, and agrarian talk from the 1930s portrayed the
hacienda as a counterfoil for the Revolution, an emblem of cruel oppression (Ben-
jamin 2000; Vaughan 1997). I argue that, paradoxically, this propaganda helped to
turn the hacienda into a staple of small-town history. Travelling around, I found
that people in many towns played up the rise and fall of haciendas in the history
of their towns (cf. Uzeta 1997). A Guadalajaran in 2005 said she was amazed how
many towns seemed to have originated as haciendas. In other words, the idea of
the hacienda was resonant far beyond Tapalpa. More broadly, people talked more
often about Tapalpa’s history during this period, which helped to give a familiar
ring to the idea that Tapalpa was founded as a hacienda. This was partly due to
the extension of schooling—I noticed that people who lacked schooling were less
confident about giving even a potted history. There was still not a great deal of
talk about history, of course, but most people were able to talk history on
demand. As a result, the idea that Tapalpa was a hacienda was heard often
enough for people to take it for granted.
However, the rise of the idea that Tapalpa was founded as a hacienda was not just a
consequence of State schooling and ceremony. The Hotel Hacienda owners chose the
name partly because the tourist industry had already begun to glamorize the image of
the hacienda. In recent years, haciendas have featured in movies and in telenovelas (soap
operas), and have been advertised in glossy magazines as a site for society weddings,
weekend getaways, and so on. In other words, a new ground emerged in which
some old figures were given a new lease of life (see also Castañeda 1996; Evans-Pritch-
ard 1987; Norkunas 1992). Atacco may have been the pueblo, but Tapalpa was the kind
of place in which you could spend your weekends in seigneurial splendour. That also
helps to explain why, despite the toning down of Revolutionary rhetoric by the 1990s,
the hacienda did not slip back out of Tapalpa’s history. The tourist industry had given
people another reason to keep talking Tapalpa’s history in the first place—enough to
keep its critical mass afloat.
Trajectories into the Future?

I began by tracing trajectories of history through the period of my fieldwork, and then
back in time to 1879. I want to conclude, unusually, by looking forward in time. When
I return to Mexico in future years, I will ask again for the history of Tapalpa. What
might I hear?
There are various possibilities. One is that the ground of genre may collapse under
the figure of this particular history. If that happened, few if any Tapalpans would
understand my question or see any point to it, as was probably the case in 1879.
This might happen, for example, if people lost their interest in history: perhaps if
schools stopped requiring “local history” projects, or if weekend tourism dried up.
In other words, the genre’s own future is far from certain. Second, I may get a different
answer to my question and get that one answer from many different people. I think it
unlikely that this could happen quickly unless there was a drastic change in the trajec-
tory of talk about history. History, like many other kinds of culture, is not quite as fickle
as that. With the transmission of history as diffuse as I have described, a different
history of Tapalpa is unlikely to achieve critical mass overnight. It might happen, on
the other hand, if school pupils were required to reconcile oral and written sources
in their local history projects, and to work on delivering that history orally as well as
in writing, or if many people tuned to a single source of authoritative history, such
as a television documentary on Tapalpa’s history. It is more likely that, third, Tapalpa’s
history will lose its critical mass—inertia is not forever. In that case, I would receive
several different answers: perhaps some will say that Tapalpa and Atacco were both
old Indian towns, others that both were founded by Spaniards, still others that one
was older than the other but both were settled by various different groups of people,
while some will still say that Tapalpa was a hacienda when Atacco was the pueblo.
Or perhaps some will tell Tapalpa’s history with no reference at all to Atacco.
But, it is also possible that I will hear the same old answer from all these people. I
have kept this possibility until last to stress again that continuity is as hard to
explain as change. I suggest, again, that it would take more than inertia to maintain
the critical mass. There would need to be sufficient talk such that newcomers (as
well as children) could pick up this particular history. There would also need to be
some centralization, at least of the kind that I have described: people tuning in not
just to channels such as schooling and the tourist industry, but also to such groups
as Atacco and Tapalpa’s “old” families. Finally, there would need to be resonance
with other things being said and done across this social field. Otherwise, it might
take just the building of a Hotel Hacienda in Atacco to undermine the idea that
Atacco was the pueblo when Tapalpa was a hacienda.22 Or a shift in social relations:
a group from Atacco might take over the municipal government, while Atacco could
receive enough investment to leave Tapalpa looking abandoned. Or some might turn
to look for Tapalpa’s indigenous roots—perhaps inspired by the idea that Mexicans
296 T. Stack
remain Indian at heart despite adopting a mestizo mask. I have heard Tapalpans say that
kind of thing, but as yet few Tapalpans have used it to retell Tapalpa’s history.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Marie-Sophie Beier, Robey Callahan, Nicholas Ellison, Alex King,
Matt Tomlinson and others who read and commented on drafts of the article, includ-
ing the anonymous reviewers. Different stages of the fieldwork were supported by the
British Academy, Carnegie Trust, CONACyT, Royal Anthropological Institute and the
Universities of Aberdeen and Pennsylvania.
Notes
[1] Malinowski’s notion of a “charter” negotiated among various groups is not unlike Gramsci’s
“cultural hegemony” (Gramsci 1971). For example, Vaughan (1997), drawing on Roseberry,
argues that the Mexican State during the 1930s managed to establish cultural hegemony, not
in the sense of imposing a consensual ideology, but in building a national framework within
which people both consent and also dissent: a space for dialogue. She argues that the results
were different in each region, and that some groups even managed to shape the State’s ideol-
ogy, especially by resisting its anti-clerical line. Although, I cannot show that the State’s ideol-
ogy was shaped by groups in the Sierra, I do show that people picked up certain notions
peddled by the Mexican State even if they did not accept its ideology wholesale. That is
what I call orientation—people turned to engage with agents of the State (Hanks 1987).
[2] Malinowski also gives a fully “pragmatic” account of genre, including the circumstances in
which myths were told, during visits to a village, outside a headsman’s hut, usually in proxi-
mity to the holes from which lineage ancestors had emerged (cf. Bakhtin 1986; Briggs 1992;
Hanks 1987: 670). Such an account helps us to see how genre is linked to landscape, the inter-
ests of groups, and so on.
[3] To make matters still more complex, I detected subtle changes in those generic conventions
during the period. The municipal chronicler José Fajardo began to refer to some accounts
given by elderly men and women, for example, while on occasion I heard people take up
from written accounts, whether his or someone else’s. The shift in genre was only slight,
however. For the most part, these conventions were reproduced efficiently along with the
history itself.
[4] One example was a meeting in 2005 with the municipal chronicler and several elderly resi-
dents studying a diploma in the history of Jalisco. Fajardo had heard me insist before that
Tapalpa was also an Indian town, but he still insisted that they were different groups of
Indians.
[5] This history set the distinction between the two towns in time: it was not just that the people
of Atacco seemed backward—they had in fact been overtaken by Tapalpa. It also added an
ironic twist to the distinction: “Atacco was the town” serves to highlight its decline (Stack
2004: 61 –63). The white-goods salesman’s version of this was “I didn’t believe it but it’s true”.
[6] I did eventually find traces of other histories of Tapalpa. For example, my landlady’s elderly
mother remembered being told by an uncle many years earlier that several races were brought
together to found Tapalpa.
[7] I would call them “intellectuals”, in line with the scholarship of Florencia Mallon and others,
since they are recognized authorities and this recognition may give them the ability to shape
what gets said, and thus to further their own and others’ interests (Mallon 1995). However, I
do not want to confuse this with the conventional sense of historians as intellectuals.
[8] I conducted numerous interviews during this period with school teachers and pupils, and with
the library staff who wrote the Monograph of Tapalpa that I mentioned above, as well as dozens
of interviews with both weekenders and residents catering to weekenders (cf. Stack 2007).
[9] People also picked up on the Hollywood style of history in movies like Braveheart (1996) as
well as on the local history written for a readership of weekenders (Fernández 2004). The most
centralized channel was that of bureaucracy: county officials had sometimes literally to follow
a template of what a town’s history should look like (cf. Little-Siebold 1998).
[10] I visited several other towns as part of my research, mainly across Jalisco and Michoacán, and I
asked for history in most of those towns, as well as drawing on various ethnographic accounts.
I have not discussed this fieldwork in detail for reasons of space.
[11] That is not to say that the genre was static. For example, the municipal chronicler studied a course
in regional history at El Colegio de Jalisco, a postgraduate institute in Guadalajara, and then
taught a small group of enthusiasts in Tapalpa. His teaching did affect their way of telling Tapal-
pa’s history although by 2005 only that small group was talking in that way (see Figure 3).
[12] It is possible that the third paragraph drew on a colonial land title in the possession of Atacco’s
residents, or at least that Atacco residents drew on this document when giving their account.
I return to this document below.
[13] I consider inadequate as explanations not only cultural inertia but also the idea that Atacco’s
antiquity survived because it was a faithful reflection of the historical fact that Atacco was
older. In fact, both Tapalpa and Atacco are listed as “Indian towns” in the 1548 Suma de Visitas.
[14] Another difficulty (although one to which I pay less attention) is that genre was not necessarily
a constant during the period, any more than in 1992–2005. The authors of the 1879 report
wrote their account as history but the genre of history was then largely the preserve of the
lettered elite. If, for example, other residents were saying that Atacco was older, they were
not necessarily saying this as history—I suspect that relatively few people even talked of Tapal-
pa’s historia in 1879. That said, history was not, however, an entirely new genre in 1879. His-
tories of towns and cities had been produced since the colonial period and, around the time of
Independence historians also began to write national history, which was later taught in schools
(cf. Kagan 2000: 130; Pagden 1987; Stack 2006: 436– 437). Schooling helped the genre to
become more popular but it did not take over the history told and written of towns and
cities. The genre changed in other ways as well—Muriá notes of a regional history published
in 1911 how difficult it is for the modern reader (2003)—but the history told in Tapalpa in
the 1990s still resembled the history that I learned at school in the UK.
[15] It is also notable that the authors located only traditional industries (such as cactus-fibre
crafts) in Atacco, as opposed to the modern industries and mining that they linked to
Tapalpa (Camarena y Gutiérrez de Lariz 1987: 42 –45).
[16] That orientation towards the nation-state was complex (as Vaughan emphasizes). There was
some resistance, shown by support for the Cristero rebels in the 1920s, by the failure of Tapal-
pan peasants to secure an ejido in the face of landowners’ pressure. Landowning elites had
forged by mid-century a close relationship with the longstanding parish priest, even as they
remained stalwarts of the PRI (the party of government).
[17] APT Libro de Gobierno 3:241.
[18] ARA, Guadalajara 181:17. ARA, Guadalajara 564.
[19] It is possible that there was an accent missing from one of the words such that it should have
read “the Spaniard was allowed to settle only in Tapalpa” (emphasis added) (Méndez 1948).
The text has been fastidiously edited, but even in this case the implication is that Atacco had
jurisdiction over Tapalpa. For reasons of space, I can only state that I believe this was taken up
from what people were saying by 1947. Interestingly, Father Méndez in a 1989 magazine
article refuted the 1879 account of Tapalpa’s founding, which had been published in 1987
in another magazine. He even seems to have changed his mind about Atacco being older,
because he makes no reference to this in 1989 (Méndez 1989). He died shortly after
298 T. Stack
completing this article, which has been mined by the municipal chronicler and others writing
on Tapalpa’s history, although none has remarked on the disparity.
[20] The author of the contemporary survey of nearby Sayula divided its population into similar
proportions of indigenous and white race, but made no mention of mestizos (González 1971
[1879]-b).
[21] It may be that some people were saying in 1879 that Tapalpa had been a hacienda. If this was
common, however, I imagine the authors of the survey would at least have mentioned the
hacienda in their history. It is more likely that people started to say that Tapalpa was
founded as a hacienda after 1879.
[22] In 2001, the Hotel Hacienda was divided into two parts and the part opening onto the plaza
turned into a tiny shopping mall, so there is no longer a sign on the plaza for the Hotel
Hacienda. It is possible that this may make the hacienda a less obvious history for Tapalpa.
However, one person said when I visited in 2005 that the hacienda was the Casa de Mati,
which is another and more striking hotel further along the side of the plaza.
Archives
Archivo Parroquial de Tapalpa (APT). Libros de Gobierno 3 and 5.
Archivo de la Reforma Agraria, Delegación Guadalajara (ARA, Guadalajara). 181 Res-
titución, Atacco. 564 Dotación, Tapalpa.
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Trajectories of Culture in West Mexico

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Trajectories of Culture in West Mexico

Explaining culture change requires a multi-dimensional approach, and so does explaining

Keywords: Cultural Transmission; Historical Knowledge; Genre; Ethnicity; Mexico

2013 Taylor & Francis

representations or ideologies to the interests of particular social groups, and have

transmission of culture, whether myths, pots, or films, is affected by the properties

Trajectories through the “Ethnographic Present”

Talk about Tapalpa’s Founding, 1992–2005

Not a Simple Story

Maintaining a Critical Mass

Resonance and interests

Nevertheless, they still made—at least in conversation—the same distinction between

Talk about Tapalpa’s Founding, 1879–1992

Not a Simple Story

Resonance and interests

The Elision of Indians

rather than with Tapalpan Indians.

The Rise of the Hacienda

Trajectories into the Future?

American Folklore, vol. 100, no. 397, pp. 287–296.

Huerta Rodrı́guez, C. (1985), Monografı́a de Tapalpa, Jal, Biblioteca Pública Municipal de

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