Description
Book SynopsisBased on thirty-five years of fieldwork, this is a masterful ethnographic historical account of the struggle to maintain landholding, livelihood, and civil-religious society in the peasant-artisan communities of Oaxaca from colonial times to the present.
Trade ReviewProvides one of the most thorough accounts of Central Oaxaca’s modern political and economic system. Cook skillfully weaves together archaeological, historical, and his own ethnographic data. . . . Although it will be required reading for any scholar of Oaxaca, Cook’s comprehensive work is an invaluable contribution to the study of the social relations embedded in Mexican and Latin American rural economies. * Journal of Anthropological Research *
This volume is a testimony to the lasting influences of social practices that anchor households to a territory that is historically and culturally constituted as a single entity, even when repeatedly crisscrossed by migration flows, contested national policies, and neoliberal reforms. . . . This book will be an illuminating experience for advanced undergraduate and professional readers interested in peasant survival strategies, agrarian struggles, and the social and economic anthropology of Meixco and Latin America. * American Anthropologist *
Table of Contents
- List of Maps and Tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1. The Teitipac Communities: Peasant-Artisans on the Hacienda’s Periphery
- 2. Hacienda San Antonio Buenavista from Two Perspectives: Hacendado and Terrazguero
- 3. San Juan Teitipac: Metateros Here and There
- 4. San Sebastián Teitipac: Metateros and Civility
- 5. San Lorenzo Albarradas, Xaagá, and the Hacienda Regime
- 6. "Castellanos" as Plaiters and Weavers: San Lorenzo Albarradas and Xaagá
- 7. The Jalieza Communities: Peasant-Artisans with Mixed Crafts
- 8. Santa Cecilia Jalieza: Defending Homeland in Hostile Surroundings
- 9. Magdalena Ocotlán: From Terrazgueros to Artisanal Ejidatarios
- 10. Magdalena’s Metateros: Servants of the Saints and the Market
- 11. Conclusion
- Photo Essay
- Glossary
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
