Sociopolitical Aspects of Canal Irrigation in the Valley of Oaxaca

164 Pages·1973·7.159 MB·English

by  Susan H. Lees

SOCIOPOLITICAL ASPECTS OF
CANAL IRRIGATION IN THE VALLEY OF OAXACA
Plate 1. Frontispiece. The main village tanque, or reservoir, above San Agustin Etla.
MEMOIRS OF THE MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
NUMBER 6
PREHISTORY AND HUMAN ECOLOGY
OF THE VALLEY OF OAXACA
Kent V. Flannery, General Editor
Volume 2
SOCIOPOLITICAL ASPECTS OF
CANAL IRRIGATION IN THE VALLEY OF OAXACA
BY
SUSAN H. LEES
ANN ARBOR
1973
© 1973 by the Regents of the University of Michigan
The Museum of Anthropology
All rights reserved

ISBN (print): 978-1-949098-45-7
ISBN (ebook): 978-1-951538-18-7

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AN INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME 2
OF THE SERIES
By Kent V. Flannery
This Memoir is the second step in our series of final reports on The J]niversity of Michigan
Museum of Anthropology project, "Prehistoric Human Ecology of the Valley of Oaxaca." It builds
directly on the foundation laid by Ann Kirkby in Volume 1, The Use of Land and Water Resources
in the Past a,nd Present Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, and in turn it provides a theoretical base for
several projected future publications on the rise of the Zapotec state. As in the case of Volume 1, the
research herein reported was supported by National Science Foundation Grants GS1616 and GS2121,
and the publication itself was financed by NSF Grant GN35572.
Dr. Susan Lees joined the Oaxaca Project in 1967, and during four field seasons (through 1970)
she slogged through the mud and dust of backwoods Oaxaca collecting data on the social and
political aspects of the land-use systems which Anne Kirkby reported in Volume 1. Often, in fact,
Lees and the Kirkbys worked hand-in-hand-interviewing amiable farmers, recalcitrant village officials,
garrulous drunks, and tight-lipped social climbers whose words concealed more than they com
municated about their accumulated wealth and prestige. By jeep, truck, Volkswagon, and sometimes
on foot, Lees reached 22 villages with canal irrigation systems and pried out data on the use,
distribution, and regulation of water. She waded through fertilizer, fell in at least one river, and
once-in Matatlan-found herself ankle-deep in mezcal tailings. In the course of this ethnographic
seasoning, she found time to participate extensively in our archaeological excavations at San Jose
Mogote, Abasolo, Tierras Largas, and Hierve el Agua; finally, she directed her own excavation, with
Henry T. Wright, at Santo Domingo Tomaltepec. Seeing the traces of pre-Columbian canal irrigation
come to light in our excavations, Lees was constantly reminded that one day she would have to
address herself to the role of irrigation in the rise of the state. Her conclusions are spelled out in the
final chapters of this Memoir.
Lees found the regulation of water in the Valley of Oaxaca as varied as the communities she
studies: the solutions found by each community came from within its pre-existing sociopolitical
institutions. No new polity arose to deal with water, no despotism separated upstream and
downstream villages. But canal irrigation, more than any other local form of water control, made the
village vulnerable to the intervention of the state. Where communities appealed for Federal dams, the
price of development was loss of autonomy: the dams came under Federal jurisdiction, the regulation
of water changed, and new rules were imposed on village governments which had changed but little in
the previous three or four centuries. Canal irrigation in Oaxaca thus provides a setting in which state
organization has a selective advantage, and the development of local canal resources becomes an
important vehicle for change. Irrigation does not create the state, as some have argued; but the state
can use canal irrigation to increase its centralization in ways that it cannot manipulate other land-use
systems in Oaxaca.
v
Since she completed this manuscript, Dr. Lees has carried her work to a still higher level of
abstraction. At the December 1972 meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Lees
presented a major new hypothesis on the difference between (1) the state's organizational response to
clear, short-term degradation of its environment or water resources, and (2) its organizational
response to long-term, almost imperceptible degradation) We are pleased to think that her continuing
theoretical contribution-work still in progress, with much promise for the field of anthropology
grew out of those days spent wading through canals in the Oaxaca hills.
Ann Arbor, Michigan
June 1, 1973
1 Susan H. Lees, Irrigation, Organization and Stability in Complex Societies. Paper presented at American
Anthropological Society meetings, New York, New York, December 1, 1972.
vi
CONTENTS
Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x
Plates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Area of Investigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Method of Investigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
I. Community Organization
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
The Village . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Historical Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
The Civil-Religious Hierarchy and the Cargo System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Economic Organization: Land and Wealth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Economic Organization: Exchange and Cooperation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Economic Organization: Community Cooperation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
The Village and the State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Political Units. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Village Government . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
The Village and the State .............. , . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
II. Problems of Water Control and Their Solutions
Introduction: Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Maintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Allocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Conflict over Water . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Change :. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
III. Political Control and Access to Water
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Tlalixtac de Cabrera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
San Juan del Estado . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
San Agustin Etla . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Summary and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
IV. The Roles of the Village and the State in Water Control
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Intra-Village and Inter-Village Water Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
The Village and the State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Change in Water Control Organization and the State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Summary and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
V. The Role of Water Control in Oaxaca's History
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Origins. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Post-Classic History. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Colonial Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Post-Colonial, Pre-Revolutionary History. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Since the Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Summary and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
vii