Indigenous Communities Rooted in Tradition, Reaching for the Future
Indigenous communities in Mexico are undergoing rapid transformation. They are adapting to modern life while preserving cultural identity. The article challenges the stereotype of indigenous people as static relics, highlighting their agency and resilience in a changing world.
Cultures inevitably change, and those of indigenous groups in Mexico are no exception. Their members want to be part of the global, mainstream world; they would rather not be left out, said Enrique Rodríguez Balam, a researcher at the Peninsular Center for Humanities and Social Sciences (CEPHCIS) at UNAM.
However, in the political sphere and in some academic sectors, it is often still believed that it is better for them to remain “as they have always been” in certain aspects.
In Yucatán, for example, there is a commitment to highlighting the folkloric part of the native groups. “There is the idea that they should continue using the huipil or cooking in the traditional way, because their ancestral knowledge is ‘nourished’ by tourism, the academic world and political agendas that must maintain a quota of ethnic minorities.”
However, culture advances and that which does not adapt to changes tends to disappear. “It is a bit difficult to understand these transformations, but they are inevitable; In addition, indigenous people accept some cultural aspects, incorporate others, and some reject or ignore them,” he argued in an interview.
The university student said that the Internet “has come to revolutionize the issue of identities and culture; I hear young people using expressions from other countries because they play online with their friends; and we also export culture, and the chant of the Pumas soccer team was adopted by Real Madrid fans.”
That is what must be understood: we cannot live with idealizations and cultural romanticism. In anthropology, continuing to discuss absolutes in identities is quite outdated, anachronistic, and inappropriate if it is a serious discussion, he warned.
The indigenous people, the specialist explained, want to integrate into modern Mexico and be part of global transformations, be entrepreneurs, request loans, etc. Artisans who make huipiles want to have an Instagram account to sell them, or they modify their models to suit their customers' tastes, replacing bright colors with ochre tones, for example.
Break with traditions
The researcher in charge of the project The modernity of tradition. Worldview and religious change among the Choles and Mayas of southern Yucatan, mentioned that members of the first ethnic group arrived in that entity from Chiapas more than 30 years ago, so there are several generations that have inhabited Yucatecan territory, mainly the town of San Felipe, between Oxkutzcab and Tekax.
With his study, also captured in a book, the university student wanted to debate the ethnic homogeneity in Yucatan with the supposed unique presence of the Maya-speakers and to point out that there are also Choles, Tzotziles, Tojolabales or Kanjobales, migrants who change places to live.
He also specified that the Chol is not a single area, but that even within Chiapas this group has covered other territories beyond the vicinity of Palenque, and has crossed state borders. “It is a culture that moves and does not belong only to certain areas, as they try to pigeonhole it.”
There are numerous factors that explain this migration phenomenon: political conflicts (such as attempts to be recruited by the Zapatista Army) and violence due to border land problems are some, but the most important is their conversion to Adventism, a branch of Protestant Christianity.
“They say that when one of the Adventist pastors arrived to do his evangelical work, he had a kind of revelation and told them that if they left their places of origin they would prosper,” he said.
Although the numbers vary, in the so-called southern cone of Yucatan there must be more than a thousand Choles, complete families, and presence of several generations, calculated the academic from CEPHCIS.
When they arrive in new lands they break with traditional issues, for example clothing and food; however, they keep their language. “In fact, the people I was able to work with speak Spanish, Yucatecan Maya (especially those who were born in the state) and Chol, all three languages”; in contrast, there are few monolingual people, generally the older ones.
The same occurs with Yucatecan Maya, which persists although “linguistic catastrophism” determined its death years ago, Rodríguez Balam added.
The Chols have stripped themselves of numerous issues, beliefs and identity markers, and have known how to adapt to another sociocultural context.
They are people who, for example, are not afraid of jobs that have nothing to do with the primary sector; women at an early age, 15 or 16 years old, dedicate themselves to domestic work and men are hired in companies or maquilas; they grow crops, but for their own consumption. There are also businessmen, owners of bus or transport lines, beekeepers or ranchers.
They adapt well to the culture and the present in which they live, and they emigrate if they are offered a better life and work option; they do not have the roots that we see in other places. In addition, they relate to technology, the use of cell phones, cameras, etc., concluded Rodríguez Balam.
