The End of the Plantations and the Transformation of Indigenous Society in Highland Chiapas, 1974-2009 (original) (raw)

Several of the chapters (especially 2, 4, 5 and 6) also grew out of larger, multiresearcher projects. In those cases, I benefitted not only from my colleagues' help in developing the questions and methodology, but from their suggestions as the studies went on, and then their acute comments on my texts. For Chapters 2 and 4, support was provided by the National Science Foundation (SBR-9601370,-Rapid Social and Cultural Change in Southeastern Mexico‖), in collaboration with George Collier, Jane Collier and Diane Rus. For Chapter 2, I also inherited the 1974 economic survey forms of my original collaborator, Robert Wasserstrom, which proved invaluable. Chapter 5 was undertaken while I was a visiting fellow at the Center for US-Mexico Studies of the University of California, San Diego (2002-03), and continued with summer support in 2004 from the Centro de Investigación y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS), and then from 2005 to the present from the Centro de Estudios Superiores sobre México y Centroamérica (CESMECA) and the Instituto de Estudios Indígenas (IEI), both of San Cristóbal. In addition to Diane, Ian Zinn worked on the project with us in 2007. For Chapter 6, Diane and I were partially supported for two summers by the Jacobs Fund of Bellingham, Washington, and then in collaboration with James Diego Vigil of the University of California, Irvine, by a pilot grant from University of California/MEXUS and the UCLA Center for the Study of Urban Poverty. Polly Vigil and Carlos Ramos also participated in this second period. Finally, the two oldest chapters (1 and 3) were developed while I worked for the Instituto de Asesoría Antropológico para la Región Maya, in San Cristóbal. Beyond my immediate collaborators, there are many to thank in the community of vii scholars and activists in San Cristóbal for support, advice, or comments on all of my work during the years when these chapters were written. Chief among them are the late Andrés Aubry and Angélica Inda de Aubry, colleagues in the Instituto de Asesoría Antropológica para la Región Maya, where Diane and I worked full-time in the second half of the 1980s, and continued to have a home during the summers from 1990 through 2007. Together with Andrés we developed the model of collaborative community research that we used as long ago as the 1970s. Although as a Campesinista and Zapatista Andrés was firmly opposed to the urbanization and long distance, off-farm migration that are the subject of several chapters hereand constantly questioned us about whether in studying them we were not somehow legitimizing and perhaps encouraging themhe continued to offer support and careful readings of drafts until the end of his life.