Between INAH and UNESCO: Questions of Heritage Governance in Oaxaca, Mexico (original) (raw)
Related papers
Ark_Magazine, 2019
The Mexican state of Oaxaca is a tapestry of human diversity with varied traditions of language, belief, socioeconomic interaction, food, music, dance, subsistence, and ways of being. Census information records the state's impressive statistics for the over one million native language speakers. Among these sixteen officially recognized languages, numerous dialects, sometimes mutually unintelligible, add to the diversity. When this multiplicity is considered alongside that of Oaxaca's ancient past, the information offered to the student of humanity astounds the mind. It is therefore unfortunate that the archaeology and ethnography of Oaxaca have tended to focus on just a few of the region's many groups and geographical areas. The resulting literature might lead a casual reader to imagine that Oaxaca's cultural diversity is not so great, or that smaller ethnolinguistic groups outside regions of prime farmland played no significant role in its prehispanic history. A scholarly preoccupation with the Valley of Oaxaca, with the Mixteca Alta, and with sometimes conquest-minded complex polities seem to imply that only Zapotecs and Mixtecs ever tread in ancient Oaxaca. Economic implications of heritage-based tourism, including the annual Guelaguetza celebration and the endless stream of visitors to the UNESCO World Heritage site of Monte Albán, exacerbate this situation and leave some native peoples disadvantaged politically, economically, and in terms of cultural capital, sometimes to the very ethnic groups who colonized their communities in the ancient past. In such a context, what about the Mixe or the Chinantec of the mountains beyond the Valley? What about the Chatinos or the Chontales of the coast? My purpose here is not to produce a list of scholars or institutions who have "done wrong" by Oaxacans. Instead, I hope to draw from the literature on cultural heritage, as well as from my own travels and studies in Oaxaca, to explore the ways in which we all might benefit, indigenous communities and national and international visitors alike, from a more democratic approach to cultural diversity. Scholarship and heritage development dedicated to Oaxaca have been impressive but too narrow in their focus. Ironically, the resulting "cultural abridgment" undermines the very thing that has drawn so many to visit and to stay in Oaxaca, both physically and intellectually: its great mosaic of human variety.
Expropriated Heritage: Indigenous Rights vs Internal Colonialism in Mexico
Land, Heritage and Internal Colonialism in Mexico. Dossier of Mexican Case Studies for the ILA Committee on the Implementation of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Maarten E.R.G.N. Jansen, ed.): 2-17, 2019
Reflections on the (lack of) implementation of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the studies of Mexican Indigenous Cultures and their social context.
Olaf Kaltmeier, Mario Rufer (coords.), Entangled Heritages. Poscolonial Perspectives on the Uses of the Past in Latin America, London, New York, Routledge, 2017. , 2017
The 50 th anniversary of the Mexican National Museum of Anthropology seems propitious to look back into its history, not to review its contents and retell it but to attempt a reflection on its fundamentals. In this paper I circle the relationship between anthropology-archaeology, the museum-heritage and the nation-State from a localized space. Without losing sight of the historical problems, I ponder the connection between the scientific disciplines and power, and I reflect on the ways in which the Museum and the disciplines are engaged with the State's reproduction, along with its institutions, its hierarchies and its forms of identity. In the end, after this reflexive effort, I go back to the Museum of Anthropology to ask myself what should be done with it.
Incidental Paper, Center for Indigenous America Studies, Leiden University, 2019
1. Expropriated Heritage: Indigenous Rights vs Internal Colonialism in Mexico (Maarten E.R.G.N. Jansen & Gabina Aurora Pérez Jiménez) 2. Reflections on Archaeology and Indigenous Rights in Ñuu Savi, the Mixtec Region (Liana Ivette Jiménez Osorio & Emmanuel Posselt Santoyo) 3. Implementación de los derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas en Ñuu Savi, la región mixteca (Omar Aguilar Sánchez) 4. Maya Peoples vs Mexico-Monsanto: A case study on the effects of transnational corporatism in the implementation of the UNDRIP (Manuel May Castillo & Nora Salomé Tzec Caamal & Álvaro Mena Fuentes) 5. Indigenous Communal Guards on the Nahua Michoacan Coast: the case of Santa María Ostula (Osiris Sinuhé González Romero)
Zborover_2014_Dissertation_Decolonizing_Historical_Archaeology_in_Southern_Oaxaca_Mexico
The cultural area roughly corresponding to the modern state of Oaxaca, Mexico, was a dynamic cultural arena which saw the rise and development of multiple complex societies and their respective historiographic traditions. This dissertation focuses on the development and application of integrative approaches to the archaeological, documentary, and oral records from the Chontal highlands in southern Oaxaca, with a particular emphasis on the Chontal community of Santa María Zapotitlán. Following a critique and reconfiguration of the methodological and theoretical tenets of 'historical archaeology', I propose to acknowledge and incorporate Mesoamerican indigenous literate societies within a more inclusive paradigm. Based on data collected in the 'Chontalpa Historical Archaeology Project', I draw my data from a rich documentary corpus of indigenous 'territorialnarratives', archaeological surveys and excavations, visual and archaeometric analysis of artifacts, ethnoarchaeology, and a systematic collection of oral traditions. By subjecting these epistemically independent sources to corroborative, complementary, and contrastive modes of inquiry, I explore low-level spatial and temporal correlates followed by high-level correlates of interregional interaction, colonialism, factionalism, and resistance. These integrative correlates are examined through five diachronic case-studies: 1) Monte Albán's imperialism in the Formative period and interregional interactions in the Classic period; 2) Mixtec, Zapotec, and Pochutec conquests and domination of the Chontalpa in the Early-Late Postclassic; 3) The Aztec incursion and multipolity/inter-ethnic factionalism in the Late-Terminal Postclassic; 4) Chontal and Spanish interregional competition, colonialism, and resistance in the Colonial Period; and 5) The Chontal historical image, from the Colonial through the Modern Period.
Zborover_Kroefges_2015_Bridging the Gaps: Integrating Archaeology and History in Oaxaca, Mexico
Bridging the Gaps: Integrating Archaeology and History in Oaxaca, Mexico does just that: it bridges the gap between archaeology and history of the Precolumbian, Colonial, and Republican eras of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, a cultural area encompassing several of the longest-enduring literate societies in the world. Fourteen case studies from an interdisciplinary group of archaeologists, anthropologists, ethnohistorians, and art historians consciously compare and contrast changes and continuities in material culture before and after the Spanish conquest, in Prehispanic and Colonial documents, and in oral traditions rooted in the present but reflecting upon the deep past. Contributors consider both indigenous and European perspectives while exposing and addressing the difficulties that arise from the application of this conjunctive approach. Inspired by the late Dr. Bruce E. Byland’s work in the Mixteca, which exemplified the union of archaeological and historical evidence and inspired new generations of scholars, Bridging the Gaps promotes the practice of integrative studies to explore the complex intersections between social organization and political alliances, religion and sacred landscape, ethnic identity and mobility, colonialism and resistance, and territoriality and economic resources. Contributors: Bruce E. Byland, Bas van Doesburg, Viola König, Peter Kroefges, Michael Lind, Carlos Rincón Mautner, Geoffrey G. McCafferty, Sharisse D. McCafferty, Liana I. Jiménez Osorio, John M. D. Pohl, Emmanuel Posselt Santoyo, Adam Sellen, Ronald Spores, Stephen L. Whittington, Andrew Workinger, Danny Zborover, Judith F. Zeitlin
2018
Among the significant advances of the field of critical heritage studies, one area that remains underexplored is the practice of the state workers in charge of implementing intangible cultural heritage (ICH) actions. The government is often portrayed as a monolithic apparatus, clearly distinguishable from other collective actors such as UNESCO and communities, and led by bureaucrats that seem to unreflexively reproduce nationalist and neoliberal mandates. This differs from my own experience as an ICH state specialist, where I remember complex interaction between multiple types of actors -each with different capacities and agendas. Despite the importance of these actors in ICH policy and practice, our knowledge on how cultural state workers develop and understand their practice remains scarce.
Aspects of Management Planning for Cultural World Heritage Sites, 2018
This chapter discusses the relationship between World Heritage Sites and management approaches found within internal contexts-the nation state-and external contexts-the international organizations. The focus of analysis is two examples, which are long enshrined within Brazil's rich architectural heritage and that also form part of the UNESCO World Heritage List (WHL): the city of Ouro Preto in the state of Minas Gerais and the ruins of the Jesuit mission of the Guaraní of São Miguel das Missões in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. The chapter is composed of three interconnected sections. Firstly, it seeks to bring a contemporary view of the concept of cultural heritage, expanding this concept to include recent considerations regarding the idea of World Heritage, and also examining the classificatory mechanisms utilized in international heritage directives and regulations. Secondly, the chapter seeks to examine and understand the process of declaration as cultural heritage of the two sites in question, keeping in mind the importance of local and national identity politics in the preservation of the sites. Thirdly and finally, the chapter seeks to take into account contemporary conflicts that have emerged from the consolidation of architectural heritage, revealing new protagonists in the use and resignification of the sites in question.
Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association, 2015
Since the 1980s, indigenous communities in Mexico have shown increased demand to control the narrative associated with the archaeological remains found on their communal lands. Subsequently, the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) has initiated a program for the development of communitarian museums, providing a means for people to present their heritage on their own terms, and therefore, establish the legacy between the modern and ancient communities. In this paper, I discuss the background behind this movement, as wells as my own experience curating the materials from archaeological investigations in the communitarian museum of an indigenous community in Oaxaca. [Zapotec, community museums, Oaxaca, archaeology]