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Inventing Tradition at Gunpoint: Culture, Caciquismo and State Formation in the Región Mixe, Oaxaca (1930–1959)
Author(s) -
SMITH BENJAMIN
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
bulletin of latin american research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.24
H-Index - 33
eISSN - 1470-9856
pISSN - 0261-3050
DOI - 10.1111/j.1470-9856.2008.00264.x
Subject(s) - state (computer science) , intimidation , indigenous , ethnic group , mexican state , position (finance) , sociology , political science , intervention (counseling) , state formation , political economy , gender studies , ethnology , anthropology , law , politics , economics , psychology , ecology , finance , algorithm , psychiatry , computer science , biology
This article examines the links between the creation of a post‐revolutionary Mexican culture and the maintenance of traditional forms of cacical control. Taking as a case study Luis Rodríguez, a cacique from the state of Oaxaca, it is argued that he utilised state notions of indigenismo and indigenous cultural production to assert and maintain his position as the strongman of the Mixe ethnic group. However, despite the employment of state discourses, Rodríguez’s fiefdom was never subsumed into the corporate revolutionary state. Rather, these claims of ethnic unity were used as a smokescreen to deter state intervention. As a result, Rodríguez was forced to use intimidation and violence to control pueblos outside his immediate sphere of influence during the 1940s and 1950s.