THE COLLAPSE OF COMPLIANCE:

NATIONAL IMPLICATIONS
OF LOCAL CHANGES

Frank C. Miller
University of Minnesota

hirty years ago, on the last day of Ph.D. fieldwork in the municipio of
T Huistan in the highlands of Chiapas, I took a final trip to the town center to
observe the voting in the presidential election held on the first Sunday of July
in 1958. Although I had read about the fabled efficiency of the Partido
Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) in conducting elections that would give a
landslide to its candidates, I nevertheless was impressed by the care with which
election officials showed the Huistecos how to vote by pointing to various names
on the ballot that carried the proper party designation. Every PRI candidate was
clearly marked with the party's distinctive symbol, yet the officials were taking
pains to ensure that no one voted accidentally for the wrong person.
Adolfo Lopez Mateos was elected president of the republic by the expected
landslide. I was not able to stay in Huistan to hear the results there, but I am sure
that all of the PRI candidates received virtually a unanimous vote.
As I began to write this essay in July of 1988, another PRI candidate, Carlos
Salinas de Gortari, was elected president, but this time there was no landslide;
on the contrary, there was even widespread skepticism that he had actually won
the popular vote. The official results, delayed by "computer problems" and
"atmospheric conditions" and announced eight days after the voting, gave 50.4
percent to Salinas, 31. 1 percent to Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, son of a revered
former president and candidate of the leftist coalition, and 17.1 percent to
Manuel Clouthier of the Partido de Acci6n Nacional (PAN), a right-of-center
party.
The results of the recent election are widely interpreted as evidence of a
dramatic shift in the Mexican political landscape, and there will no doubt be a
long debate among politicians, pundits, and professors about the reasons for the
results and their implications for the future of Mexico. An opening salvo was
rapidly fired by Jorge Castaneda, a professor of political science at the Univer­
sidad Nacional Aut6noma de Mexico and a frequent contributor to the Op-Ed
page of the New York Times. He argued that Salinas would carry a burden into
office because the p arty's credibility and legitimacy would "suffer dearly"
(Castaneda 1988). He detailed how well both of the opposition candidates had
run in Mexico City and most other large cities throughout the northern region
of the country, where PAN has been building strength for many years, and in
the state of Michoacan, where Cardenas had served as governor. He then
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COLLAPSE OF COMPLIANCE

suggested that the election was a "mosaic of paradoxes" because the man who
campaigned on a platform of political modernization owed his victory to "two
of the most backward and conservative sectors of Mexican society-the
peasants and caciques" (Castaneda 1988). (For the first time that I can remember
in the New York Times, "cacique" was neither placed in quotation marks nor
explained, perhaps indicating that this handy Mexican term for "political boss"
has become a loan word in English.)
Professor Castaneda (1988) asserts that the new president "is indebted to the
votes tallied, though not necessarily cast, in the poorest, most isolated and
ignorant parts of rural Mexico. . . . a slice of the nation that gave Mexico its soul
in the past but does not belong to its future." After summarily condemning
twelve million people, one -third of the electorate, to oblivion, he insists that
"Mexico is living its most important democratic experience in many
decades. . . . and could well emerge a happier, prouder and more stable nation"
(Castaneda 1988).
I fervently join in the hope that Mexico emerges as a more stable nation, but
I wonder what, in Castaneda's vision of the future, the poor, ignorant peasants
are going to be doing amid the happiness, pride, and stability. If they are expelled
from the future, they might take some action that would disturb the happiness
and stability that their compatriots will be enjoying.
This essay will present some impressionistic evidence for a more hopeful
vision of the role of the peasantry in Mexico's future. Since the evidence comes
from my personal experience with a tiny sample of the peasantry, I make no
claims that it can be generalized to prove an argument. Instead, I hope that this
account might serve as a wedge to open a crack in the wall that seems too often
to separate urban intellectuals from the common people in the countryside. This
essay is an exploration in the kingdom of possibility, not a documentation of a
well-charted domain.
The Mexican and North American social scientists who chart the peasant
territory11 ave increasingly come to agree about the means by which the national
state has incorporated and controlled the peasantry. Hewitt de Alcantara (1984)
offers an admirably comprehensive account. "Historical structuralism" is the
label that has been adopted for the consensus that emerged during the 1970s
after five decades of research. Some of the most influential works contributing
to the consensus are by Warman (1976, 1980), and a variant of the approach has
been applied to Chiapas by Wasserstrom (1983).
Influenced by these analyses, George Collier has recently interpreted peasant
politics in Chiapas within the same general framework. He applies Warman's
analysis of Morelos to Chiapas: "land reform initiated sustained market ex­
ploitation of the peasantry, enabling dependent industrial capitalism to develop
on the basis of cheaply fed and cheaply paid labor in a country no longer troubled
by peasant revolution" (Collier 1987:95). The land reform in Morelos began in
the 1930s, but was not implemented in Chiapas until the presidency of Lazaro
Cardenas in 1934-1940, the high point of the land reform. He then considers the
political consequences of the development program operated by the Instituto
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MILLER

Nacional lndigenista (INI ), focusing on the role of the promotores, the Indians
who were hired and trained to be agents of change in agriculture, education, and
health. These posts created new opportunities for brokerage and filled a vacuum
that had existed since the decline of the land reform and of the Union of Native
Workers that also has been established during the Cardenas administration.
Collier asserts that the INI program engendered fragmentation and fac­
tionalism by revising priorities and thereby undercutting one group of brokers
and supporting another and by turning its functions over to other agencies. For
example, health programs were turned over to the Secretarfa de Salubridad y
Asistencia, and the innovative educational effort was shifted to the Secretarfa
de Educaci6n Publica. The overall conclusion is that, by means of "land reform
and lndianist development, the State forged a quintessentially mid-20th century
compliance among the indigenous municipios of highland Chiapas" (Collier
1988:95).
Many questions could be raised about the empirical foundations of historical
structural analyses such as Collier's, but there is a deeper issue concerning the
relationship between human agency and social structure (Giddens 1979). I do
not wish to caricature the views of the historical structuralists, but it is difficult
not to notice the underlying message that the state pulls the strings and the
hapless peasant puppets dance. Perhaps compliance was not engendered
primarily by the ingenuity of national agencies playing off groups of brokers
against each other; perhaps the peasants made a political choice to cooperate in
order to maintain the flow of benefits-the land granted in the land reform, the
health services where none existed before, the vastly improved education in the
INI schools. Now that land is not being redistributed, health services are
restricted because of cuts in funding, and the schools have been entrusted to the
lethargy of the Secretarfa de Educaci6n Publica, the quintessentially mid-twen­
tieth century compliance may collapse with surprising speed.
I return now to the story of my personal encounter with some Huistecos, who
have taught me much about the issue of agency and structure. I am grateful to
them and to Evon Vogt, whose friendship, leadership, and wise counsel helped
to sustain me.
Vogtie and I arrived in Chiapas at the beginning of the "dog days" of August
in 1957. The expected break in the rainy season fortunately came to pass, for
our first task was to do a reconnaissance of the Tzeltal and Tzotzil zones in order
to select sites for research. Vogt's (1978:15) own account of this period reports
accurately that we traveled by Landrover, on horseback, and on foot, but
neglects to mention that he grew up on a sheep ranch in New Mexico and was
an expert horseman, whereas I grew up in Illinois and had ridden a pony for
about ten minutes when I was nine years old. When we arrived in Oxchuc after
a long day on wooden saddles, I began to realize that Vogtie was not going to
coddle me.
But I was going to respect age and rank. A local shopkeeper offered to
accommodate us and showed us a tiny room that had a single cot with a thin
mattress, so I insisted that my advisor take the cot. While I slept numbly but
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blissfully on the concrete floor, he fought a valiant but hopeless battle against
the fleas.
During that month I learned in the best possible way how to do fieldwork-by
watching a master do it. Whether he was explaining the purpose of the research
to Monsefior Flores, principal assistant to the bishop in San Cristobal, deflecting
the attentions of drunks on fiesta days, or interviewing municipal presidents,
Vogtie was able to connect on a direct and personal level with people, to engage
their interest, and to enlist their cooperation.
Meeting with the Monsefior was critically important because there was
growing Catholic-Protestant conflict in the region. North American linguistic
missionaries associated with the Summer Institute of Linguistics were having
an impact on some Indian communities. A few years before, an entire village (a
large one of about 10 0 0 people ) converted to Protestantism. As a counter to this
perceived threat, the Catholic church mounted an effort for religious renewal in
Indian communities. As anthropologists interested in learning Indian languages,
we were vulnerable to misperceptions of our role. The Monsefior assured us that
he would tell the priests that we were legitimate anthropologists and ask them
to pass the word around when they traveled their circuits to Indian communities.
My plan for research was to study the impact of the INI development program,
especially the diffusion of modem medicine. Since I wanted to observe the
process as it was actually happening, I hoped to do fieldwork in a village that
was changing rapidly. We sought the advice of Alfonso Villa Rojas, the distin­
guished anthropologist who was director of the INI Coordinating Center for the
Tzeltal-Tzotzil zone. He suggested Huajam, a village in the municipio of
Huistan, where an INI medical post was about to open. (The names of the village
and villagers have been changed to preserve privacy. ) He and Dr. Francisco
Alarcon, head of the medical program, took us there to ask permission for the
research. It was readily granted, and they arranged for my food and lodging. In
this and other ways, they offered many personal kindnesses and professional
advice and assistance.
I began fieldwork with special advantages: an exceptional mentor at Harvard,
who read my field notes and wrote detailed comments; institutional and personal
support from the INI director and other staff; the secular blessing of the bishop;
ample funding from a Doherty Fellowship; and the use of the Harvard
Landrover, which became my principal tool for reciprocity, as I quickly assumed
the role of chauffeur in weekly trips to San Cristobal for mail. Perhaps the most
important advantage was the receptive attitude of Artemio Bolom, leader of the
village, and Miguel Moshan, a young resident hired and trained by INI as a
promotor de salud to staff the new medical post.
I set up residence in Huajam on September 13 and spent two uneventful days
going around introducing myself and chatting with people. One of my main
concerns was whether or not to take photographs at the Independence Day
celebration to be held on September 15 in the school. I had been warned about
photography; some Indian people might think that cameras steal their souls, and
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using a flash would be particularly obtrusive. The ladino teacher made the
decision for me, once he learned that I had a camera, by insisting that I use it.
I had never worked with a film director before, and I was not sure that I met
his demanding standard of speed and efficiency. He was obviously in charge,
so I assumed that he would get the blame if any souls were lost. Apparently none
were, for the reaction to the flash was amusement, not fear.
That night I slept the serene sleep of a child who survived the first day at
school. While walking to the school early in the morning, I watched the smoke
from breakfast fires filtering through the hand-split pine-shingle roofs; it seemed
to welcome me into a tranquil domesticity.
The reverie was rudely interrupted at the school when a distinguished-looking
man with steel-gray hair and white beard berated me in Tzotzil. The teacher told
me that he was the grandfather of the health promoter and that he had said,
"Many of us don't want you here." A few weeks later the promoter, Miguel,
informed me that his grandfather and many others were suspicious that I was a
Protestant missionary."After all, " he laughed, "you look more like a missionary
than a Huisteco."
I launched into a long discourse on the religious situation in the United States,
explaining that there were many kinds of Protestants, that most Protestants and
Catholics got along well together, that my parents were Protestant but I did not
belong to any religious group.
Miguel seemed to be satisfied with this excessively elaborate explanation,
but other people kept raising the issue, usually when they were drunk. I quickly
learned not to try to persuade drunks with rational arguments, but I did not know
how to handle the issue, other than to hope it would wither away.
Professor Vogt had told me that one of the best ways to build rapport is to
leave for a while and promise to return. People are likely to be skeptical and
then reassured when the promise is kept. So I had an anthropological rationale
for doing what I planned to do anyway: visit my wife and children back home
in the United States.
The circumstances of my departure in late November reassured me about the
future. I had arranged for ethnomusicologist Sam Eskin to record some of the
musicians in Huajam. Most of the villagers turned out to watch the proceedings,
and many of the men bade me a surprisingly fond farewell. Then everybody­
men, women, and children-lined the road as we drove away, and they smiled
and waved until we disappeared around a distant bend.
After this send-off, I was not surprised when Vogtie's prediction about rapport
came true. When I returned, those who had been cordial the first time were
clearly glad to see me, and the reluctant ones were friendlier.As I steadily gained
trust and confidence, the suspicions about missionaries withered away after all.
The main goal of my research was to study change as it was taking place and
to seek to understand how the response to innovation was shaped by social
dynamics and community values. This interest led me naturally to an increasing
focus on decision-making by individuals, families, and the village assembly
(Miller 1965). In those days we were taught to control our subjectivity as much
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as possible, so my written works create the impression that the focus on

decision-making was entirely a scholarly choice of analytical strategy. The truth
of the matter is that I was fascinated by local politics and by the role of the
leadership in shaping but not controlling the process. For the first time in my
life, I witnessed a full-scale consensus-building system in action. In countless
hours of meetings, the will of the majority was never imposed on the minority.
If dissenters could not be persuaded to acquiesce, the proposal was abandoned.
When I lectured to classes about community dynamics in the development
process, I was not so cautious as I was in print, and I cited Huajam as an example
of consensus creating a capacity for effective action.
No one would deny that the village occupied an environment that imposed
many ecological, economic, and political constraints that were impervious to
any amount of participatory decision-making and effective action. The recog­
nition of limits produced, not a sense of defeat and despair, but rather, a
determination to explore the possibilities that were available. The citizens
debated alternatives vigorously and actively attempted to shape the direction of
change by selecting innovations perceived as strengthening the community.
They would be outraged if anyone were to label this process "compliance with
the national state."
For a year after I left the field, I sent letters, photographs, and Mexican stamps,
but heard nothing in return. I felt a strong nostalgia for Chiapas and intended to
go back some day, but other projects took priority. Then one day, after twenty
years, an unexpected telephone call from the World Bank led to a small grant
for a restudy that would be part of a twenty-six-nation study of appropriate
technology for water supply and sanitation.
My return to Huajam was heartwarming. This time I was accompanied by my
wife, Cynthia Cone, an anthropologist who was eager to share the experience,
and our youngest child, Emily, age five. Emily surprised us by her industry and
enthusiasm in helping people dry com and quickly made her reputation as a
hard-working peasant girl.We spent the first evening drinking with Don Artemio
and his family, talking about old times, and looking at all the photographs that
I had sent.
The next morning I went to visit the parents of Miguel Moshan, the former
health promoter who had moved up in the INI system and was now living in
San Cristobal. A young woman in the patio responded to my greeting and then
said brusquely, "Who are you, and where do you come from?"
Assuming she was a member of the family, I told her about my earlier
research, mentioning various Moshan names. She persisted, "Why have you
come back?"
I explained about the World Bank's interest in a follow-up study, so that
villages elsewhere in the world could learn to improve their water supplies and
sanitation.
"What is this World Bank? I've been to the state capital, and I haven't seen
any branches."
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MILLER

As I tried to answer that question, she interrupted: "What good is your study
going to do our community? What right do you have to come here and take
information back to some bank we never heard of? How is that going to benefit
us?"
I could not believe what was happening. Assuming she was one of Miguel's
sisters, twenty years before her grandfather had challenged me, and now she
was doing the same thing, only more effectively. During my earlier time there,
women lived rather secluded lives, �o I had never had a conversation with any
of them. Fortunately, her father came out of the house and welcomed me as
warmly as I had hoped. He assured my inquisitor that I was a friend of the family,
and she excused herself. She was indeed Miguel's sister, the first woman from
Huajam to go to high school in San Cristobal and now a teacher in a distant
Indian town. She was able to attend high school because she could live with
Miguel's family. One of her brothers was also a teacher, as were two cousins.
More than a dozen young people from Huajam were attending secondary school
in the city. About a third were women, most of whom worked as maids so that
they would have a place to live and money for clothes and books, plus a little
to send home to parents.
A few days later I asked Don Artemio about the condition of the INI
development program. "The rich get money and we get priorities, " he replied.
"You get priorities?" I asked.
"Nothing but priorities. The government is spending most of the money from
oil on building big factories. All we get is fine wurds about the goals of the
Revolution."
"INI isn't helping the Indians any more?"
"Well, INI has done lots of good things. The most important is education. The
schools are much better, and now girls can go to high school and become
teachers. Also INI brought us modern medicine and better breeds of pigs and
fruit trees. But the fields do not produce as much corn as they used to. Many
years ago, before you were here the first time, the agronomists wanted us to
plant what they said was a better variety of corn. Some of us tried it in part of
our fields. It hardly made food for the pigs. Later we learned that you need
fertilizer for that kind of com, and all we had was a little manure from the oxen.
Now you can buy fertilizer in San Cristobal, but it is too expensive for us, and
we can't get loans."
INI cannot deliver what does not exist. Agricultural research in Mexico has
shifted away from an emphasis on commercial monoculture and toward an effort
to improve peasant agriculture. For hilly regions above 1500 m the traditional
farming systems are still the most productive, and the altitude in Huajam is about
2500 m.
I asked Don Artemio about prospects for the future. He replied, "We'll have
to work harder and survive as best we can."
Our next trip to Huajam was in February of 1980. Don Artemio told me that,
if I wanted to do any research, I would have to talk to the new headman, a young
man who had been two years old in 1957.The new headman told me that I would
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have to present a petition to the town assembly. In the meeting all of my old
friends-Artemio, his son-in-law, Miguel MosMn's father, and others-spoke
in favor. Two young men, including Miguel's brother Pedro, were emphatically
against any research.
After a long discussion, the headman turned to me and said: "Don Francisco,
we are not agreed. You understand how we operate here. If we are not agreed,
permission is not given. " Once again, the majority would not impose its will on
a determined minority, and I was defeated by the very system that I had praised
so often. For the third time, a member of the MosMn family challenged my
presence. The challenge prevailed for reasons that I learned from Miguel two
months later:there was a serious conflict over land use, and no one really wanted
me to witness it.
In January, 1987, Cynthia and I traveled once again to Chiapas. The first
person we went to see was Miguel, who was sitting in his living room with two
large books in his lap. After welcoming us, the first thing he said was, "Now we
are Christians."
"Oh, you're a Christian, " I replied.
"Yes, I'm a Christian, I'm not a Catholic anymore."
"The Catholics aren't Christians?"
"They're not true Christians, they're Romanists."
"What do you think is the difference?"
"Romanists take orders from the Pope in Rome. We belong to the Mexican
Presbyterian church, which is not under foreign control. "
Miguel explained that he was studying the Bible with the help of a biblical
dictionary, because he was in training to be a lay minister. Every Saturday he
went to classes in theology and church history. Already he was helping to
organize congregations in Indian villages. The one in Huajam was meeting on
Sunday, and he would be happy to take us along.
On the way to the village we listened to Miguel's sophisticated exegesis of
the Bible and discussed the role of religion in the community. For him,
Protestantism seems to be as much an intellectual as a spiritual odyssey.Reading
the Bible is enormously important to him. He reads the old familiar stories and
ponders their significance for his own life and for the historical moment in which
he lives.Although he is not learning liberation theology in class, he tends to read
the Bible as the liberation theologians do: from the point of view of the poor
and the powerless. In the folk Catholicism that he formerly embraced, God and
Jesus are remote figures; the potent characters are the patron saints of the
community and the Virgin Mary, especially in her apparition as the V irgin of
Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico. In the New Testament the potent figure
is Jesus, acting vigorously in the world, driving the moneylenders out of the
temple and challenging the authority of the Roman rulers.By contrast, the statue
of the patron saint in the local church may be close physically, but to Miguel it
appears psychologically remote and politically passive.
The leaders of the congregation in Huajam were none other than the headman
and my two adversaries of 1980. Miguel introduced us to his brother Pedro by
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saying, "Don Francisco is one of us now." We were warmly welcomed and

addressed as "Brother" and "Sister."
What was I supposed to do now? Repeat my explanation of thirty years ago
that my parents were Protestants but I did not belong to any religious group?
The meeting adjourned and we departed. Pedro said, "Come back any time,
Don Francisco, you are welcome here."
This essay began with a question about the future of the peasantry in Mexico.
The spread of Protestantism is frequently seen as a source of conflict that will
make the future more problematic. It can also be interpreted as a sign of vitality,
just as the recent election is a sign of vitality. If Mexico can manage a transition
to greater pluralism in politics and religion, then Castenada's hope for a happier,
prouder, and more stable nation might well come to pass.