Closed Corporate Peasant Communities
I. Eric Wolf (who also wrote Europe and the People without History)

• Interested in the reasons why many communities in Mexico and Central America are “defensive” and closed
• His view is that the colonial period transformed indigenous life into peasant life (campesinato in Spanish)
• As compared to a “survival” perspective  (indigenismo in Spanish)

II.  The Culture of Poverty

• Like Wolf, Oscar Lewis saw culture as a result of historic processes
• Poor people in cities, according to Lewis, share a lifestyle based on their poverty and oppression
• While Lewis was arguing the case for the cities, Wolf was arguing a similar case for the countryside
• Wolf argued that closed corporate communities existed in many parts of the world: the Americas, Indonesia, etc.

III. Wolf, continued (1957)

• What is a peasant?
• Agricultural producer
• Tied to markets
• Agriculture as a livelihood and not so much as a business or for profit
• Communities are based on an agricultural base
• While criticized, the concept of Closed Corporate Communities has been a major research orientation in studies in Mesoamerica

IV.  Closed communities

• Communal rights to land
• Redistribution of wealth
• Content with the rewards of shared poverty
• Defensive attitude towards outsiders
• Image of the limited good (George Foster)
• Limited channels of communication with the larger society

V. Closed vs. open peasant communities

• Ejido or usufruct rights found more in mountainous areas
• Private ownership of land in the valleys
• Communities in the mountainous areas are territorial based, not kin based
• Communal use rights go back at least to colonial epoch
• In Mexico these rights were made part of the constitution after the revolution

VI. Open communities

• Individual access to land
• Wealth not redistributed
• Ease of incorporation of new members through legal means and through compadrazgo
• God-parenthood for mobility
• Vs. for strengthening bonds
• Compadrazgo
• Innovation and plural strategies of the local economy
• Communities are more kin-based or based on economic and political structures
• Communities are heterogeneous and membership is voluntary

VII. Closed communities

• A result of population decline, the conquest, the breakdown of kin-based communities
• Each community is a separate socio-cultural universe
• Community differences are emphasized
• Membership is by birth
• Inherent conservatism and hostility towards displays or accumulation of wealth

VIII. Closed communities: The civil-religious hierarchy

• Membership is demonstrated by participation in religious rituals
• A prestige economy based on conspicuous consumption
• Elected offices that have both civil and religious components
• A step-by-step progression of families into positions of authority and prestige

IX. Civil Religious hierarchy, continued

• Offices ranked by
• Service in lower before moving to upper
• Community authority in the upper ranks
• System of fiestas as a way to redistribute wealth
• Egalitarianism vs class structures
• Godparenthood to strengthen the community

X.  Ranks of the c-r hierarchy (Guatemala in the 1930s)

• Alguacil (street cleaners, etc.)
• Cofradia (saints association)
• Majordomo (police)
• Regidor (taxes, justice)
• Alcalde (town leader)
• Principales (elder representatives)

A few bibliographic references

Oliver LaFarge: The Year Bearer’s People
Robert Redfield: The Folk Culture of the Yucatan
Evon Vogt: Tortillas for the Gods
Maning Nash: Machine Age Maya