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Cultural Interbreedings: Constitutingthe Majority as a MinoritySERGE GRUZINSKIE.H.E.S.S.NATHAN WACHTELCollege de Franco

From the time of the Spanish invasion, in the Andean world as in Mexico, amere handful of conquistadores came to impose their domination upon theindigent masses. One cannot, therefore, begin by speaking of minorities nor ofthe marginalization of Amerindian populations, even when these decreasedramatically following the demographic catastrophe of the sixteenth century,for in spite of this they remain significantly more numerous than the Spanish.Yet it is true that the term Indian appears, from its origins even, as a derogato-ry term (see the flood of contemporary literature on savages, idolaters, and soforth) and that it is in fact applied even now in countries such as Peru andBolivia, where the autochthonous substratum survives in many regions, to thepopulations least integrated into national life, who might be considered, in thissense, as "marginal." What, then, has taken place during these last five centu-ries?T HE IN D IA N S OF MEXICO OR THE C O N S T I T U T I O N AS A MINORITYOF A MAJORITY POPULATIONAt the moment of their conquest, the Indians of Mexico City formed anagglomeration of 200,000 to 300,000 inhabitants. Against several thousandconquistadors, these Indians constituted a demographic majority throughoutthe sixteenth century. Even though epidemics greatly reduced their number,they were still the most important ethnic group of that city at the beginning ofthe seventeenth century.Our inquiry concerns the means by which this majority was progressivelytransformed into a minority by the play of constraints emanating from colonialdomination. To put it another way, we ask in what manner, in what stages, andin what rhythms did Occidentalization in its most diverse formsthe gaze,discourse, law, faith, workmodel and phagocytize the populations which itencountered by determining their status, their margins of expression, and theirmodes of existence.0010-4175/97/2220-4344 S7.50 + .10 1997 Society for Comparative Study of Society and History

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232 SERGE GRU ZINSK I AND NATHAN WACHTEL

MINORS, NEOPHYTES AND EXEMPTSIn the days after the Spanish conquest, a variety of institutional and juridicalmeasures assigned a minor status to members of the Indian population. TheIndians were, in the eyes of the Church, a population of neophytes whoneeded special attention and a separate status. This is why the tribunal of theInquisition did not hold any jurisdiction where the Indians were concerned.The formula of ellos son como ninos which the ecclesiastical chroniclersemployed reveals the state of mind of the monks who felt that the Indianswere placed under their tutelage and that they were to show the monks thefilial obedience that children owe to their parents. At this point, the Indianswere not yet a minority, properly speakingunless a spiritual onebut agroup treated in a special manner because they benefited from a paternalisticbenevolence and because they were regarded as needing protection as muchfrom the abuses of the Spanish1 as from themselves (for example, a return toidolatry).THE PRINCIPLE OF THE TWO REPUBLICSTo speak of Indians or rather of naturales, as do all of the Spanish, revertsto delimiting an irremediably distinct group from that formed by the invaders.To provide it with an institutional reality, the republica de Indios, and ajudiciary organism, the Juzgado de Indios, leads to differentiating it juridicallyfrom the rest of the population. The effect of this was to set apart the van-quished societies without necessarily respecting the pre-Hispanic differencesby which the indigenous world was distributed among a multitude of eth-nicities and states with distinct languages and origins. The Spanish domina-tion designated and characterized an Otherness by assigning objective con-tours to it.This separation, temporal and spiritual in principle, tended towards a physi-cal separation. The monks even envisaged totally isolating the Indians fromthe Europeans, fearing the bad habits and pernicious example of the latter. Byenclosing the Indian population within their network of churches and monas-teries, the religious orders strove to make material a line of demarcationbetween conquerors and conquered. By insisting that blacks, half-castes andthose of mixed blood should be chased out of indigenous communities, themonks hoped to render airtight the frontier which, it must be recalled, guaran-teed their hold over the natives.In the case of Mexico City, the distinction between the republic of theIndians and the republic of the Spanish established a physical and spatialseparation between the groups. The conquerors settled in the center of

1 "Defender estas ovejas de los lobos" in the "Carta colectiva de los franciscanos de Mexico alemperador" (17-XI-1532) published Fray Toribio de Benavente ('Motolinia'), Memorialed (Mexi-co : UNAM. 1971).


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CONSTITUTING THE MAJORITY AS A MINORITY 23 3Mexico-Tenochtitlan, while the conquered withdrew to the core of two par-cialidades, San Juan Tenochtitlan and Santiago Tlatelolco, located in theperimeter. Provided with its institutions, its police, and its resources, theIndian city offered to the conquered peoples a framework within which theycould preserve the remains of their heritage, maintain their own personality orrather fashion an identity and a mode of life better adapted to the colonialcontext. The Indians were not yet made a minority quantitatively nor system-atically marginalized, but they were already placed in the periphery relative tothe Hispanic center.INTERBREEDING AND MARGINALIZATIONThe politics of the regular Church and of the Spanish crown came to be linkedto the formation of the Indians into a group provided with a particular status. 2It was not a matter of making of them a minority but, rather, a category thatcould be integrated into an old-regime society formed of naciones,3 of bodies,of communities and corporations. Nevertheless, the Indians occupied a sub-altern position due to their situation as conquered peoples and as formerpagans.Multiple pressures, however, stood in the way of the closing and the consol-idation of the indigenous group. These pressures developed principally out ofthe demographic weakening due to the repeated epidemics that the indigenouspopulation suffered. They also came from the process of interbreeding set inmotion in the aftermath of the Conquest. Un ions legitimate or illegitimatemultiplied between Indians and Spanish. After the birth of the first half-castes,there rapidly appeared an intermediary group with a confused status whichwas sometimes assimilated into the Spanish group, sometimes thrown backinto the indigenous world. To this biological interbreeding was added thecultural interbreeding linked to the daily coexistence of Indians with Spanish.Contrary to the principle of separation, many Indiansdomestics, servants,merchantslived in the Spanish city and became accustomed to other modesof life. All this took place as if the interbreedings eroded the Otherness whichthe prejudices and the institutions of the Spanish attempted to circumscribe.But the effects of interbreeding were still more com plex. In the city, Indian-ization and Hispanicization played an unequal game. The attraction exercisedby the European sector prevailed and in the end largely swept away the other.This prompted the Indians and the half-castes to distance themselves fromtheir indigenous heritage or to modify it in noticeable proportions. From theseventeenth on and especially in the eighteenth century, the indigenous modeof life became a phenomenon if not of a minority, at least of marginalization

2 It would be suitable in this instance to compare the case of Americans with the earlier ones ofthe Canary Islands and of Grenada.3 "Esta nacion" concerning the Indians in "Carta colectiva de los franciscanos de Mexico alemperador," 438.


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234 SERGE GRUZINSKI AND NATHAN WACHTEL

in Mexico City. The irresistible Hispanicization of Indian elites, old nobilityand recently wealthy caciques, and of the mixtures of blood contributed toaccentuating the process of marginalization.THE EXOTICISATION OF THE PRESENTAt the same time, the transformation of indigenous modes of life and tradi-tions into expressions of a minority followed another path. In the sixteenthcentury, the place of the Indian city in Renaissance festivals is never second-ary or accessory. Whether it concerns a scenic representation of the Fall ofRhodes (1539) or the celebration of the funeral of Charles V (1559), theIndians and the authorities of the parcialidades participated in a manner thatwas as extensive as it was active. Their visibility, to use an anachronism, wasoptimal. In the following century, with the demographic decline of the Indianpopulation, the social deterioration of its elites, and the entrenchment ofHispanic society, this intervention would take a different turn. After the floodof 1629 which affected only the indigenous population of Mexico, the Indiansceased to constitute a majority. On the contrary, they appeared thereafter assurvivors of a group on route to extinction.

Throughout the seventeenth century, public and official usages of the Indi-an tradition developed which reduced it to exoticized forms or used it toreevaluate memories of a past abolished for good. The villancicos sung inMexico, for example, put on stage Indians whose language, accent, dress, andreactions entertained the audience. The artists of Creole and peninsular Mexi-co in particular exploited the indigenous vein with insistence and talent. Intruth it was impossible for the urban elites to ignore these Indians, who madeup an integral part of their daily routines. Again it was necessary to metamor-phize the Indian reality to better integrate it into the Baroque entertainmentand imagination. Musicians, poets, decorators, and painters employed it as asource of flashy exoticism. They treated it as an estheticized vision and, thus,stripped it of all displeasing or menacing harshness, purifying it of any foreignor disorienting note. This reflection of the Indian world could only be festive,the intervention of Mexicans on the stage being synonymous with joy andexhilaration:

Los Mejicanos alegrestambien a sus usanza salen.4In this expurgated form, the Indian world gained, throughout the seventeenthcentury, its place in the street festivals and in the most sophisticated entertain-ments given at the Court or in the city. It appeared in the ceremonial halls ofthe palace where one did not hesitate to display it before the gaze of viceroysand their retinue newly disembarked from the old world. The masterpiece ofJuana Ines de la Cruz, Los empenos de una casa, concludes with a sarao

4 Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. Obi as completas, t. II (Mexico. FCE). 16.


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CONSTITUTING THE MAJORITY AS A MINORITY 235of four nations in which the Mexicans participate. While the dances followone another, the choir sings:

I Venid, Mejicanos,alegres venid,a ver en un solmil soles lucir.5The same entertainment appears several years later in the Comedie de saint

Francois Borja of Matias de Bocanegra (1612-68). The students of the Jesuitcollege of San Pedro and San Pablo performed it on the occasion of a visitfrom the viceroy, the marquis of Villena. The finale of the spectacle wasassigned to graceful children in Indian costumes, who sang "tan vistosamenteadornados con preciosas tilmas y trajes de lama de oro, cactles o coturnosbordados de pedreria, copiles o diademas sembradas de perlas y diamantes,quetzales de plumeria verde sobre los hombros." The actors intoned a homageto the viceroy:

Salid, mexicanos,baila el tocotin,que al sol de Villenateneis en zenit6On that occasion sixteen children danced a tocotin or a mitote, a majestic

and solemn indigenous dance. The musical accompaniment strove to be faith-ful to Indian traditions: "A lo sonoro de los ayacatzitles dorados, que son unascuriosas calabacillas Ilenas de guijillas, que hacen un agradable sonido y alson de los instrumentos musicos, tocaba un nino cantor, acompanado de ostrosen el mismo traje, en un angulo del tablado, un teponaztle, instrumento de losindios para sus danzas, cantando el solo los compases del tocotin en aquestascoplas, repitiendo cada una la capilla, que en un retiro de celosias estabaoculta."The precision of this reconstitution betrayed an indisputable familiarity

with indigenous usages, instruments, colors, pieces of clothing. The effect ofexoticism that was produced was not therefore necessarily mixed with carica-ture or stereotype. The Creoles manifestly possessed a precise knowledge ofthe resources of the indigenous art, even of the nahuatl language. Sor Juanadid not hesitate to introduce nahuatl phrases and words into her Spanishvillancicos, even in series of couplets. An example follows:

5 Ibid., t.III, 180.6Trez piezas, 377-9. Conceived after the model of the plays of Lope de Vega, at onceedifying, humorous and pleasant, the Comedie de saint Francois Borja tells of the conversion ofa great Jesuit saint, the Duke of Gandia, grandee of Spain and viceroy of Catalonia. It ispunctuated by interludes and dances such as the branle and a part of the alcancias, earthenwareballs filled with flowers or ashes. Ten students of the highest nobility played a part in it that wasremarked upon.


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Solo Dios Piltzintlidel Cielo bajo,y nuestro tlatlacolnos lo perdono.

Latin, Castilian, and the Mexican language mingle to form what this nun calls:un tocotin mestizode Espanol y Mejicano.7

In any case exoticization equally concerns groups other than the Indians.The peoples of African origin were also present in the Baroque festivals. Inthis case, it is the accent reconstructed by the poet that gives rise to laughter,even if it restores for us the sonorous image of a lost world. But the miraclethat the acceptance of Africano-Mexican culture would have been did nottake place. The song was limited to expressing the manner in which theliterate Spanish imagined the blacks who surrounded them would speak. Thefigure of the good Negro accompanying Christian festivities with his jovialityalso belonged to the repertoire of stereotypes.The process of exoticization is linked to a cultural exploitation, in thecurrent sense of the term, of non-European groups. This exploitation suc-ceeded so well that it produced forms capable of being exported across theAtlantic. This was the case with the famous Indian dance, the tocotin, whicharrives in Spain around 1680, perhaps even earlier.8 This was not in any case anew phenomenon. Almost a century earlier, the vogue of African dances inMexico, New Spain, and the Caribbean crossed the ocean to spread through-out old Europe.9 In this way the chaconne and sarabande swept through ourcontinent.THE HEROIZATION OF THE PASTThe domestication of Indian traditions and of their patrimony operated also bythe bias shown in the recovery of the indigenous past. This time, the pastrecovered did not conflict with a daily reality which by necessity had to betransformed. It fell to chroniclers and historians to invent a past that was asglorious as it was inoffensive. They were so successful that at the end of theseventeenth century the prestigious memory of Mexican sovereigns fascinated

7 Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Obras completas, II. 41, 17. The "interbreeding" of cultures wasso evident and so familiar that the adjective itself mestizowas from the common domain, tothe point of being used in a villancico as popular and as burlesque as that of San Pedro Nolasco(1677).8 Marie Cecile Benassy, p. 31.9The recovery of Indian cultures took on occasion the route of mythological allegory: In 1713,a float presented by the corporation of pulque manufacturers vaunted the virtues of pulque, thefermented juice of the agave. A Creole poet took it upon himself to invent a creational myth toattach the Mexican plant to classical mythology. Created by Hercules, born of the milk of theGoddess Juno, the pulque became that "preciosisima bebida. tenida de sus aficionados por dignobrindis de la mesa de Jupiter, y aptisima para procerizarse a deidades."


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CONSTITUTING THE MAJORITY AS A MINORITY 237lettered Creoles and European visitors. This recovery was founded upon thefirst archeological works begun at the end of the seventeenth century. In thisperiod the Italian Gemelli Careri came to admire the sculpted stones whichfeatured an eagle on a nopal, or cactus, while literate Mexicans were alreadyspeculating about the site of the temple of Huizilopochtli which some amongstthem believed to be under the cathedral. 10 From this period the excursion toantiquities (for example, the pyramids) of Teotihuacan also became a mustrequiring an indispensable extension to any stay in Mexico. Teotihuacan wasto be visited in the same way: One went to the Church of Guadalupe.Gemelli Careri had the privilege of meeting the greatest connoisseur ofrelics of Indian civilizations, don Carlos de Sigiienza y Gongora. The latterhad gathered a collection of Indian codex so famous "alhajas tan dignas deaprecio y veneracion por su antigiiedad, y ser originales" 11 that he dreamedof presenting it as a gift to the libraries of the Escurial, the Vatican, andFlorence. The deciphering of the manuscripts, as well as his archaeologicalexplorations, had given him a broad familiarity for his era and was authorita-tive enough to allow him to impose his vision of the past. The image which heproposed concerning the ancient Mexicans is flattering.12 It contrasts sharplywith the vision of pagan idolaters plunged into sin and barbarity.But interest in the pre-Hispanic past was not merely an exercise in erudi-tion. It satisfied more immediate designs. During this period pre-Hispanicarchaeology was in tune with politics. Baroque festivals have provided us withthe example of the triumphal arch conceived by don Carlos in honor of themarquis de Laguna and on which Aztec kings allegorically embodied the"political virtues." The rehabilitated vision of Indianness served a doublefunction: It carried a message intended for the metropolis represented by theviceroy even as it served to root the memory of a young fatherland calledMexico in Indian prehistory. The Indians found themselves doubly dispos-sessed of their past.THE SACRALIZATION OF THE MEXICAN LANDAND OF ITS FIRST INHABITANTSDuring the same period, priests of the arch bishopric of Mexico succeeded inassociating the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe with the indigenous world inan irreversible manner. The blossoming of this devotion had multiple causeswhich we will examine here. It had num erous repercussions, among them that

10 Giovanni Gemelli Careri, Viaje a la Nueva Espana (Mexico: UNAM), 123.11Elias Trabulse, p. 19.12 Don Carlos de Siguenza y Gongora, p. 252: "genie arrancada de sus pueblos, por ser los masextranos de su provincia, gente despedazada por defender su patria y hecha pedazos por supobreza; pueblo terrible en el sufrir y despues del cual no se hallaria otro tan paciente en elpadecer, gente que siempre aguarda el remedio de sus miserias y siempre se halla pisada de todos,cuya tierra padece trabajos en repetidas inundaciones."


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23 8 SERGE GRU ZINSKI AND NATHAN WACHTEL

of making the Indians the guardians of a miraculous image of an exceptionalnature which allowed them to acquire a considerable influence in the Mexicovalley and then throughout all of Mexico. The legend set down in the middleof the seventeenth century said the Virgin appeared to, and left her portentousmark upon, one of the members of the Indian community, Juan Diego. TheIndians received in this way a certificate of Christianity and of Baroque piety:"non fecit taliter omni nationi."The perception of the present as folklore and as exotic, the rehabilita-tion and exaltation of the pre-Hispanic past, and lastly divine election werethe inventions of the Creole elites of the seventeenth century which providedthat indigenous group with an essential characteristic that remains their owntoday. Having become a minority, the Indians remained in the opinion of

Mexicans and in the eyes of tourists the exotic celebrants of feathered dances,the fallen descendants of the pyramid builders and the bearers of a super-stitious and sometimes fanatical piety. Significantly, the Indians were still anation and not yet a discredited minority. Further, although they were contem-porary with a discourse characterized in this way at the same time that discourseabout secta distinguished and severely condemned three minority groups inseventeenth-century colonial society"marranes" [maronites], "sodomites,"and "'idolaters"identified by sexual practice or religious deviation in con-trast to the way the Indians were viewed.THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND REPRESSIONThe Baroque city had encouraged and even promoted a festive Indianness andan exuberant religiosity eager for marvels and miracles. Around 1800, Mexicocounted 135,000 inhabitants, half of whom were Europeans. It harbored26,500 half-castes, about 12,000 mulattos, and another 33,000 Indians. To putit another way, the half-castes never constituted more than a strong minority;the Indians were far from having disappeared; and Europeans, or those consid-ered as such, were indisputably the majority. The town visited by Alexandrede Humboldt was comprised one quarter of mixed bloods, a quarter Indians,and one-half whites. It had not therefore become a half-caste townsincewhites and Indians still represented three quarters of its inhabitantsnor thebottomless melting pot which one might imagine.It is within this context, in which the survival of an important indigenousgroup contrasted with the decline begun in the sixteenth century, that thepolitics followed by the agents of enlightened despotism must be interpreted.In the second half of the eighteenth century, a series of measures marked achange in course. In 1769, the Church outlawed the nescuitiles, the representa-tions of the Passion, those of Pastores y Reyes, and forbade the palo delvolador and dances such as the santiaguitos, the fandango del olvido de losmaridos difuntos, and the bayle de la camisa. There was no longer a questionof the Indians offering incense to the horse of Saint Jacques (Santiago) or


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CONSTITU TING THE MAJORITY AS A MINORITY 23 9

or engaging in the frenzied dance that went with it. For the Church the argu-ments were strong: the indecency of the participants, the profanation of litur-gical ornaments and clothing, the mishaps, the excessive expenditures, and thegrotesque aspect of the celebrations. Civil authorities would no longer put upwith seeing Indians undressed in public: "La limpieza y aseo es uno de los tresprincipales objetos de la policia y este no solo comprehende las calles y plazasde las poblaciones, sino tambien las personas que las habitan cuyo trajehonesto y decente influye mucho en las buenas costumbres." In truth, wearingan indigenous costume was not forbidden, but the combinations which "dis-torted" traditional clothing were no longer tolerated: "con andrajos u otrossemejantes trapos, come suelen hacerlo a imitacion de los individuos de otrascastas." Also banished were, consequently, "m antas, sabanas, frezadas, jergaso lo que Ilaman chispas, zarapes u otro qualquiera giron o trapo semejante."Men of the Enlightenment also intended to normalize appearances, "con lainteligencia de que siendo como es en los hombres la desnudez un indiciovehementisimo de ociosidad o de malas costumbres."13 For a populationmaterially incapable of dressing themselves correctly, this was a signal forthem to be driven back into the squalid suburbs.In other terms, in the second half of the eighteenth century, under thepressures of enlightened despotism, numerous forms of expression in theIndian town suffered all sorts of restrictions: the suppression of the poorestconfraternities or those without proper and due authorization, the banning ofindigenous theater, limitations imposed upon processions, on marches, and onpublic demonstrations of indigenous religiosity, the destruction of chapelsbuilt by the Indians. This sequence of measures did not in any case concernonly the indigenous world but encompassed the ensemble of popular prac-tices, whether of half-caste, Spanish, or African origin. Projects envisioningthe imposition of the Castilian language completed a mechanism under whichthe motivation for public order, hygiene, and decency combined to justify aprogressive elimination of Indian visibility.THE LEGAL DEATH OF IND IAN S IN THE TOWNThe decrees of the Cortes of Cadiz and the decisions of the young independentstate became linked to the pursuit of Enlightenment politics in their attack oneven the structures of the indigenous group. In suppressing indigenous munic-ipal institutions, the civil and ecclesiastic tribunals reserved for Indians brother-hoods and communities juzgado de Indios, provisorato de IndiostheMexican authorities undermined the foundations and effaced the prerogativesthrough which the Mexican Indians had maintained a collective and juridicalidentity and a communal existence.

1 3 AGN (Mexico). Bando 20, no. 25.


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Having disappeared in principle from the census, the Indians became apoverty-stricken minority of whom the novels of the nineteenth centurysuch as Los bandidos del Rio Frio of Manuel Paynoand the stories of travelersportrayed a folkloric portrait of sordid lives. The descriptions of pilgrimagesto the Virgin of Guadalupe or to the Indian chinamperos of Xochimilcoevoked a picturesque minority, drawn back into its own past, although a farless menacing one than the leperos of the town.Not only did the modernization of the city create a minority out of theIndians, but the rapid expansion of industry and of urbanization acceleratedthe proletarianization of those who had survived the colonial epoch at thesame time that it drove back into the same lower-class colonias and the sameshanty towns Indians who were without community, immigrants withoutroots, and discarded from all places of origin.This rapid overviewnecessarily summary and without nuanceof thefate of the Indians of Mexico City illustrates the manner in which the succes-sive manifestations of Occidental dominationwhat we call Occidentalizationworked unrelentingly at transforming a defeated population first into Indians,then into a republic, and finally into a minority with a stereotyped profilebefore expunging them progressively from the territory of the city and theurban landscape.ANDEANISATION AND OCCIDENTALIZATIONThe Andean world was also, from the sixteenth century on, the theater ofmultiple cultural confrontations, of intermixings, migrations, and interbreed-ing that engendered new collective identities. The processes of acculturationdeveloped in both directions: On one side, the indigenous societies subjectedto the colonial system received, according to diverse modalities, Occidentalcontributions; and on the other, the Spanish were inevitably subjected to theinfluences of the American milieu (on this "inverse acculturation," whichproduced Creole culture, see the work of Solange Alberro on The Spanish inColonial Mexico).14 We are interested here in the phenomena of acculturationaffecting indigenous societies, which themselves appear complex, variable,and even contradictory. To summarize (and simplify), one can distinguish inthe Andean world two opposed types of acculturation:First, on the one hand, principally in the framework of indigenous commu-nities stemming from colonial reductions, Amerindian societies absorbed acertain number of occidental elements while integrating these in the systemsof representation governed by a specifically autochthonous logic: This type ofacculturation engendered what was defined precisely by the term Indiannessand corresponded eventually to a process of Andeanization.

14 Solange Alberro: Les Espagnols dans le Mexique colonial. Histoire d'une acculturation(Cahiers des Annales, Paris, 1992).


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C O N S T I T U T I N G T H E M A J O R I T Y A S A M I N O R I T Y 2 4 1

Second, on the other hand, the phenomena of interbreeding, at once biolog-ical and cultural, which developed principally in the urban and mining centers,gave place equally to a plurisecular social ascension, such that the boundariesbetween the interbred culture which resulted and Creole culture seemed some-times fluid, permitting all possible intermediaries as well as slippages in bothdirections but from an indigenous point of view was a process of Occidental-ization.If these movements of Occidentalization and Andeanization spread in aparallel manner in distinct milieu, they nevertheless did not remain separatedfrom one another, for these milieus continue to be linked by tight relation-ships, maintained by the migrations themselves and the intermixing of popula-tions, so much so that the processes in essence opposed each other and in fact

intersected, interfered, even imbricated with each other. To put it another way,these are contrary fluxes that one sees at work, in which the inverse effectsnevertheless react, one upon another, to the point of mutually reinforcing eachother in their antinomy: Andeanization produced an Indianness with specificcharacteristics which was subjected to Spanish and then Creole dominationand then committed to a path of marginalization; Occidentalization lead to amore or less progressive integration of the interbred classes into Creole soci-ety. More or less, for the process of Occidentalization followed neither aunilinear nor a uniform course. Between the Indian pole on the one hand andthe Creole pole on the other lies the complexity of interbred identities which,contradictorily, are at the same time signaled by their own traits and dissolvedin the face of moving boundaries. In this unstable context, the marginalizationof one appears all the more radical as the integration of the other becomesmore massive and complete. It is this combined play of exclusion and assimi-lation that our research must attempt to bring to light, including its particularrhythms and the respective periodizations themselves, which varied accordingto a regional or local situation. But we know that in the end, during the courseof centuries, within the same area, it is Occidentalization that ends up prevail-ing over Andeanization, of which nevertheless something remains, to theextent that the residual Indians find themselves in our day, in effect, moremarginalized than ever.

The question might be posed in another way: How do we make sense of thefact that Indians still remain in our own time, despite the diverse interbreed-ings exercised over Indianness for five centuries in a constant process oferosion? It is also appropriate to go back to the origins of colonial society andto observe that Indianness is itself the culmination of vast phenomena ofinterbreeding, not only with the Spanish, but also, and first of all, within theindigenous world.

At the time that they invaded the Inca Empire, the Spanish encounteredseveral dozen ethnic groups or political formations, which little by little losttheir own as they dissolved characteristics during the colonial transformation


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242 SERGE GRUZINSKI AND NATHAN WACHTELinto what has become, in effect, their community of Indianness. On the highAndean plateau around Lake Titicaca, the Incas had themselves imposed theirdominance, one or two centuries before, over a half a dozen chieftainships orrealms that still formed, at the time of the European invasion, distinct socio-political unities which the Spanish designated by the term naciones (contain-ing in turn diverse subdivisions). These Lupaqas, Pacajes, Carangas, Soras,and other Quillacas spoke the same language, Aymara, and shared a commonuniverse of symbolic representations. Where among these Indians lay thelimits of a sentiment of belonging to a collective entity? The lines of greatestseparation might lay within the Aymara whole, among the different nationsnoted by colonial documentation. But the lines of separation between differentsocial groups have a more or less strong intensity, allowing thresholds to shiftat various levels according to the historical conjuncture. It is in this mannerthat the politics of the regrouping of the population (reducciones), carried outprincipally by viceroy Francisco de Toledo, helped to disrupt the political andsocio-economic organization of the indigenous world: The Cacique hier-archies suffered a repeated series of ruptures while affirming new autono-mies. The Spanish authorities imposed in effect taxation (for the tribute andthe mita) within the framework of the regrouped villages, which in the endformed the basic units of viceroy administration. With this progressive frag-mentation, from the end of the sixteenth century to around the beginning ofthe seventeenth, the traditional networks of solidarity were forced to definethemselves within increasingly narrow limits, passing, thus, from membershipin a vast chieftainship to attachment to the indigenous community of colonialorigin.A remarkable phenomenon manifested itself in most of the regrouped vil-lages: They were always composed of two halves, generally designated ac-cording to the categories of High and Low, which regrouped the ayllus of newcommunities. To put it another way, despite the disruptions provoked by theEuropean invasion and by the process of dividing up the old chieftainships,the colonial communities were reconstituted everywhere on the basis of adualistic organization. In his advice to Francisco de Toledo for the Govern-ment of Peru,15 the auditor Juan de Matienzo officially recommended that thenew villages be placed into two principal districts: hence, the recognition andapplication by the Spanish authorities themselves of a specifically Andeanmodel. But the permanence of the principles of organization was from thattime on combined with profound changes regarding their exercise, for it wasthe same system of bipartite division and of interlockings, peculiar to Andeandualism, on which the definition of collective identities at a more local levelwas founded by lowering the threshold of the largest division. Despite thisreduction of underlying territorial unity, the principles of dualistic organi-

15 Juan de Matienzo. Gobiemo del Peru (Paris. 1967).


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CONSTITU TING THE MAJORITY AS A MINORITY 24 3zation nevertheless continued to inform the society globally and to assure amultiplicity of functions; it was also the same binary logic that everywhereordered the distribution of space, the redivision of social groups, the represen-tation of time, and finally the conception of the universe. The Andean dualis-tic schemes also appeared as powerful operators by means of which theindigenous world not only adapted itself to colonial domination but further-more absorbed the contributions of the Occident into the interior of a systemof representations which remained subject, despite reorientations and distor-tions, to preexisting logics.

This incorporation of foreign elements in an autochthonous unit whichconserved its principles of organization accounted in particular for the mostremarkable characteristics of the process of religious acculturation in theAndean world. This process did not simply amount to a series of recoveries,reinterpretations, or translations. It is known, for example, that Saint Jacques, theknight brandishing his sword, was assimilated into Illapa, the god of lightningand of thunder, jus t as the superposing of Christ onto the Sun w as favored by theproximity of the dates of the solstice and Corpus Christi. But in practice thenovelty of the process lay not in these identifications in and of them selves, but inthe fact that they took part in a system of classification and that the com ponentsof the syncretic combination, whether pagan or Christian, found themselvessubjected to pairs of binary opposites (high-low, right-left, masculine-feminine, and so forth) of the dualistic order. In the framework of sacredtopography, the saints quite logically cam e to occupy the upper extrem ity of thevertical axis, while the devils were symmetrically positioned at the lowerextreme. Moreover, the original traits of Andean dualism affected, even moresubtly, the Occidental contributions themselves: From the time that they enteredinto the play of classifying categories, they were in turn susceptible to infinitedivisions. In this way the Virgin disaggregated into different aspects: On the onehand she resided in the Upper World, with the saints; and on the other, shemerged with Pachamam a, the Earth-Mother and, in this aspect, belonged equallyto the Lower World. In an analogous m anner the ancient divinity for whom shewas a substitute, Copacabana, the great idol of Lake Titicaca, was on the one handtransformed into the Virgin of Copacabana, clearly celestial, but on the other,survived in the form of aquatic and infernal sirens. 16 In sum, despite changes, theperpetual logics in the Andean continu ities were what gave order to the religiousrestructurings in the colonial epoch, and particularly in the seventeenth century:In the end, it was an example of the phenomenon of Andeanization.

To summarize, the model governed by a dualistic order controlled thiscombination of a territorial unity with pagan-Christian syncretism on whichwere founded the new identities born of the colonial transformations. These16 Cf. Nathan Wachtel. Le retour des ancetres. Les Indiens Urus de Bolivie (XXeme-XVlemesiecle). Essai d'histoire regressive. (Paris, 1990). 549-58.


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did not, however, follow concomitant rhythms. The conjunctures differedaccording to the type of phenomenon envisaged and not without some over-lapping or discrepancies between contextual function and local conditions. Ifthe process of the fragmentation of ancient chieftainships began with theEuropean invasion and if the indigenous communities constituting the newfoundational units traced their origin generally to the reducciones ordered bythe Spanish administration in the second half of the sixteenth century, the tiesof solidarity that extended their networks across a large scale (regional, eveninterregional) often persisted up to the end of the seventeenth century anderoded only gradually. In the case of evangelization and the "extirpation ofidolatries," both collided with strong forms of resistance, so much so that in anearly period the two camps of belief, Christian and autochthonous, remainedwhile giving way to reciprocal reinterpretations and not merging in a synthesisuntil a period which may be located approximately in the second half of theseventeenth century. The institutional expression of this pagan-christian syn-cretism, namely the system of rotation of religious offices, did not in turnseem to emerge as a regular practice until well into the eighteenth century, sothat the crystallization of elements constituting the model to which AndeanIndianness conformed did not take place until after the restructuring workedout over nearly two centuries.

During this time an inverse movement of Occidentalization did its work,principally in the urban milieu and in the mining centers. The history of theIndians of the cities in the Andean world during the colonial period stillremains largely unknown. The case of the three principal cities of the highplateau in present-day BoliviaPotosi, Oruro, and La Pazwill be studiedas illustrations, allowing us to enter into the details of certain colonial trans-formations.Potosi, the Imperial City founded in 1545 at the foot of Cerro and wellknown for its fabulous silver mines, rapidly became one of the most populouscities of the Occidental world: At the beginning of the seventeenth century itspopulation was estimated at close to 130,000 inhabitants (6,000 Spanish and120,000 Indians). More so than Cuzco, the old Inca capital, or Lima, thecapital of the Viceroyalty, it is at Potosi that, with the flood of migrants fromall parts, the intermixing of the Andean populations began, followed by theprocess of internal interbreeding that resulted in the dissolution of ancientethnic identities.The census taken in the time of Francisco de Toledo, in 1575, registered atPotosi a list of 690 taxpayers listed in the category of yanaconas, which is tosay Indians who reside permanently in the city and who have already detachedthemselves from their community of origin.17 In fact, they come from regions

17 Ibid, 4 7 6 -7 .


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CONSTITUTING THE MAJORITY AS A MINORITY 24 5as far away as those of Cuzco (37 percent), Lake Titicaca (18 percent),Huamanga (11 percent), and more distant still, since certain ones amongstthem are originally from Quito, Bogota, and even from Mexico. The censusindicates that an enormous majority of the Indian yanaconas (536, or 78percent) are guayradores, or miners, who use traditional Andean techniques.For nearly thirty years , in effect, from 1545 to around 1575 (when the amal-gam was introduced), these Indians essentially controlled the extraction ofcrude ore that was later converted into silver. These Indians formed teams ofworkers who negotiated real contracts with the Spanish mining entrepreneurs:They procured the necessary tools for themselves and agreed to supply a fixedquantity of minerals while keeping the extracted surplus for themselves.Moreover, the Spanish had to employ the same indigenous teams to makesilver from their portion of the ore. Certain sectors of the Andean world,therefore, are to be found notably engaged in the new economic networksfrom very early on. The other yanaconas of Potosi were essentially artisanssuch as tailors, cobblers, saddlers, and carpenters, who worked at crafts thatthe Spanish introduced. There was even a complement of 47 merchants whosepresence appears all the more notable in the traditional economic organizationin the central and southern Andes founded on an ideal of complementaritywhich excluded commercial exchanges.An anonymous description of Potosi, dating from 1603, confirms th is inte-gration into the colonial economic system in another context (after the Indianshad long lost technical control over the production of silver). An enumeratedtable of the indigenous population indicates that 30,000 Indians worked in themines or performed the services linked to the exploitation of mines, while30,000 others "find themselves in this City occupied with diverse trades andactivities."18 Regarding the former, if the hardest tasks (mostly inside themine) were carried out by the 4,780 miners forced into obligatory labor,another 10,000 free workers were required at the various stages of production.Still, this half of the population received salaries (unequal according to wheth-er one is dealing with the mita or a voluntary engagement). The Indiansoccupied with other trades, which constituted the other half, appeared to beworking on their own behalf. Among these, one discovers 1,000 merchantswho supplied the construction timber; 2,700 who procured the wood for fuel;and, last, 10,000 Indians who transported to the city the necessary foodstuffsand fodder. The Indians in this last category were not limited to the tasks oftransport: Without a doubt they also included Indians coming from commu-nities to sell a part of their produce at Potosi and those who maintained in thisway (along with the other migrants) the multiple links between the ruralmilieu and the urban center.All of these Indians rubbed shoulders in Potosi, learning from one another

18 Ibid., 478-9 .


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to recognize their differences and their common condition. While it is true thatthe mitayos coming from the same corregimiento were attached to the sameparish (the Pacajes to that of the Concepcion, the Caracaras to that of SanCristobal, and so forth), they were not the only residents, as other Indianslived there as well; nor were their neighborhoods restricted to streets andmarkets, for they extended in the workplace as well: The mita in effectallocated to each of its beneficiaries contingents of Indians of different ori-gins, and inversely the mitayos of the same origin found themselves dispersedand regrouped with other Indians. There is all the more reason for free work-ers to have the same experience. The intermixing of the population thusaffected every aspect of daily life in Potosi, leading us to conclude that it verymuch represented the crucible in which the gestation of a new identity tookplace, one in fact of interbreeding but where at the same time the permanentcontact with the Spanish sector, the indefinitely renewed movement of socialascent, and the opening onto vast networks reaching even to the Old Worldconstantly sustained a strong process of Occidentalization.Analogous phenomena occurred in a city such as Oruro, even though itssilver mines were much less important than those of Potosi. It is not surprisingto find that the majority of the 1,246 forasteros registered in the census of theDuke of La Palata are,19 in 1683, employed in mining production; but onediscovers that, as in Potosi, a significant part of them exercised artisanal trades(181, or 14.5 percent) or occupations linked to transportation (159, or 13percent). Two remarkable traits, contradictory in appearance, distinguish thisgroup of forasteros. On the one hand, more than half of them (54 percent)were born in Oruro, descendants of migrants already settled in the city; andamong those who were not born there, more than a quarter (27 percent) hadresided there for at least five years: The constant flux of migrations did notprevent a certain stability in that urban population. On the other, despite thelong history of these migrations (of which many go back three or four genera-tions, all the way to the time of the founding of Oruro), a very substantialmajority (83 percent) of these forasteros continue to pay tribute to the caci-ques of their original villages. Moreover, more than half of them (54 percent)have even fulfilled their obligation of mita in Potosi "in silver" (which is tosay that they paid a monetary commutation to their caciques, and one men-tions only for the sake of the record the 2 percent who served in person). Toput it another way, even in this urban milieu, the majority of these forasterosstill conserved, at the end of the seventeenth century, ties with their commu-nities of origin. The crucible of acculturation in Oruro extended its influencewell beyond the limits of the city, through the multiple ramifications that unitethe urban Indians with the more distant countryside.

19 Ibid. 4 8 0 -2 .


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CONSTITUTING THE MAJORITY AS A MINORITY 247The third case, La Paz, represents another example, not a mining center 20but a commercial way station, one situated on the grand axis linking Cuzco toPotosi and which benefited as well from its proximity to the yungas, theAmazonian Piedmont in which cocoa leaves were produced. The city of LaPaz presents another peculiarity: its jurisdiction encompassed two, and laterthree, peripheral rural parishes organized after the model of the indigenouscommunity (San Pedro, Santa Barbara, and San Sebastian). During the coloni-al period, therefore, some of the Indians of La Paz were true urbanites, whileothers were suburban country dwellers.21If to begin with, one examines the global evolution of the population of LaPaz, to the extent that available documentation permits, one finds the indige-nous sector, taken in its ensemble, suffered long-term erosion. Our earliestinformation dates back to 1586, when La Paz contained 6,000 inhabitants, ofwhich 96 percent were Indians. The first decline appears in the middle of theseventeenth century. In 1650, the population rose slightly, to 7,500 inhabi-tants, but among these the Indians did not represent more than 81 percent,while the category of half-castes (recorded for the first time) increased to 13percent, and that of the Spanish only to 6 percent. A second decline appearedin 1675, when the total population had almost doubled to 12,000 inhabitants;but the Indian portion of the population had diminished to 60 percent, whilethe half-castes and Spanish (the two categories are confounded) made up 40

percent. Without a doubt the strong urban growth, accompanied by the swellof half-castes, meant once again great waves of migrations. 22 But then fornearly two centuries, if the population of La Paz continued to grow (above thefluctuations which we cannot examine here in detail), on the whole a certainstability in its composition can be observed: it is, thus, that in 1854, out ofsome 60,000 inhabitants, 58 percent are inscribed in the category of Indians,while 42 percent are half-castes and whites (categories still confounded). It isduring the second half of the nineteenth century that a new and markeddecline occurs, resulting in a profound disruption of the urban landscape bythe beginning of the twentieth century. The census of 1909 counted around80,000 inhabitants, among whom one may distinguish 30 percent Indians, 32percent half-castes, and 38 percent whites. Moreover, the evolution of the firsthalf of the twentieth century would only continue these shifts with recomposi-tions, thereby accentuating them. In 1942, La Paz counted more than 300,000inhabitants, of which 23 percent are recorded as Indians, 35 percent as half-castes, and 41 percent as whites. Every bit as much as Potosi or Oruro, butaccording to other modalities, the city of La Paz played the role of a cruciblefor the process of Occidentalization.23

2 0 Cf. Ro s s an a Bar r ag an . Espaeio urbano y dinamica etnica. La Paz en el siglo XIX. (La Paz ,Hisbol , 1990).

2 1 Ibid. 8 5 - 1 2 2 . 2 2 Ibid. 7 2 - 7 4 . 2 1 Ibid. 7 6 - 8 2 a n d 7 5 .


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248 SERGE GRU ZINSKI AND NATHAN WACHTELAfter this sketch, in broad strokes, of the global evolution of the populationof La Paz, we must call attention to several particular points and examine ingreater detail the distribution of categories of people in the different districts.Let us return therefore to the three rural parishes situated on the periphery. Fortwo of these, San Sebastian and Santa Barbara, the bipartite organizationseemed to disappear at the very moment of their creation following the divi-sion of the original parish, called de las piezas at the end of the seventeenthcentury. At San Pedro, on the contrary, the dualist order, with its two halves,Hanansaya and Hurinsaya, was still testified to in 1770 and did not fade inturn until after the great Indian uprising of 1781 (during which the rebel troopslaid siege to La Paz for six months, spreading terror throughout Creole soci-ety). Let us clarify here that the three rural parishes were not only peopled by

Indians of the community, for very early on these parishes underwent theprogressive intrusion of the Spanish, who established haciendas there. Theseencroachments accelerated after 1781, particularly in San Sebastian and inSanta Barbara, where the category of originarios Indians then disappeared(although it survived in San Pedro). A second acceleration, of a differentcharacter but acting in the same direction, occurred in the second half of thenineteenth century, with urban expansion: Santa Barbara and San Sebastiansaw themselves thereafter absorbed into the city itself. In fact, in 1877 thepopulation of La Paz reached 70,000 inhabitants. This included some 6,000more rural Indians, who concentrated in the parish of San Pedro, as a substan-tial majority (70 percent).24

When the three categories (Indian, half-caste and whites) are consideredtogether, it is possible to see that after the same census of 1877 they can all befound, in unequal distribution, in each of the eight districts which make up thecity, although San Pedro is distinguished anew by showing the most elevatedpercentages not only of Indians (30 percent) but also of half-castes (64 per-cent). Strong correspondences appear as well between the geography of thedistricts and the distribution of occupations: Most artisanal activity (from 70to 90 percent) of bakers, butchers, tailors, cobblers, hatters, and so forth) wasconcen trated in the peripheral districts. Conversely, it is remarkable that out ofthe entire population of La Paz, 32 percent of Indians and 36 percent of half-castes were nevertheless registered in the central districts, while 44 percent ofwhites were to be found also in the peripheral districts. That these last shouldbe distinguished by characteristics more clearly Indian or half-caste is not, inthe end, the least bit surprising; the essential matter is that in proportions thatwere, to be sure, variable, all the categories of people rubbed shoulders andintermixed in all the districts of the city.25

One other observation must be made on the sexual distribution within thecategory of half-castes, for the same census of 1877 indicates that for all of the2 4 Ibid. 96-122, and 185 passim. 2S Ibid. cf. table. 196-7.


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CONSTITUTING THE MAJORITY AS A MINORITY 24 9districts of La Paz, 61 percent were women, and only 39 percent, men. Thisstrong imbalance confirms, on the one hand, the vital role that women playedin the migratory movements towards the city and the processes of interbreed-ing. As recent work shows, it was generally migrants (or their descendants)who, from an early epoch of the colonial period, exercised the urban occupa-tions of domestics and, above all, the activity of sellers (regatonas) in themarket stalls.26 But the imbalance registered by the census also indicated, onthe other hand, the complex problem of identifying individuals attributed tothe category of half-caste. It will be recalled here that one of the most visiblecriteria, and one which denoted a self-designation, for example, that ofclothing, was in effect truly pertinent only for women. Half-caste men distin-guished themselves little, in this view, from the Creole members of society (ifnot by the quality of their clothing); while half-caste women, from the six-teenth century on and throughout the colonial and later republican periods,despite the many changing fashions, wore clothing that differentiated them asmuch from the Spanish as from the Indians. Even today (and since around theend of the eighteenth century), in La Paz as on all the high Andean plain, thefamous pollera (gathered and layered skirts), inherited from an ancient formof dress used by Creole women, is a quasi-emblematic sign of the chola.21Why does the latter, who does so much to distinguish herself from the Indianwoman, not follow the course of Occidentalization to its end? Her daughter,especially now, doubtless does so: Did not the pollera mark a stage in theprocess which has continued through generations? This apparently modestcostume raises the whole problem, which we may only invoke here, of theautonomy of a half-caste culture.

If the constitution of the Indians as a minority has followed, in Mexico andin the Andean world, distinct modalities and different rhythms, in the end itresults in a common effacement of the collective identities created by co lonialdomination. During several centuries Indianization and Occidentalizationhave produced opposite effects, but the processes in reality have becomeintermingled; and it is Occidentalization which, everywhere, has finished asthe victor. But this has not been entirely true, for Indians remain minorities allthe same, if one is to be precise. Is this a question of last vestiges before anineluctable and final disappearance, or will the construction of new con-sciousnesses of identity open other perspectives for them (as the "neo-indigenist" movements which have been developing over the course of the lastfew years seem to testify)? The question reaches beyond the bounds of ourbrief reflection here.Yet the Mexican case as well as that of the Andean world should perhaps

2 6 Ibid. 192 and pass im.2 7 Cf. Rossana Barragan , "Ent re po l l eras , nanacas y l l iq l l as . Los mes t i zos y cho las en l a

conformacion de l a "Tercera Republ ica , " in Tradition y modernidad en los Andes, H en r i q u eUrbano , ed . (Cuzco , 1993) , 4 3 - 7 3 .


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25 0 SERGE GRU ZINSK I AND NATHAN WACHTEL

incite us to reconsider the infatuation with which we interest ourselves thesedays with minorities, ethnic and other; to reflect on the manner in which theyspring up and construct themselves within our discourse and our imagination;finally, to scrutinize the manner in which they disappear when lucidity, usury,or the effects of fashion, take our attention elsewhere. The rhetoric of alterityequally merits review in the light of an historical experience which reveals theextent to which the Creole and European intellectual elites have long beenfond of a concept which embraces the most diverse strategies.

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