CHAPTER 8 NATIVE MESOAMERICANS IN THE MODERN ERA 321cials referred to them as a “poor race that has been dejected and enslaved since the
Aztecs” (Dawson 2004:129).
The Otomí Indians along with other peasants in the Mezquital Valley had pre-
viously joined with the Zapatista and Villa forces during Mexico’s revolutionary war.
Their struggle had been directed against the landlords of large irrigated estates in
the valley who had taken over Otomí lands and converted them into productive
farms. To make matters worse, in 1900, the Díaz regime diverted Mexico City’s sewage
waters to the Mezquital Valley to be used by elite landlords there for irrigation pur-
poses. The Mezquital revolutionaries succeeded in driving out the landowners, and
with the help of Zapata and Villa, they recovered some of their lands in the form of
ejido grants (despite the efforts by Carranza to return the lands to the same wealthy
landlords). The struggle for land continued, however, as mestizo caciques and their
gunmen fought it out for control over the ejidos. As elsewhere in Mexico, the
strongest caciques assumed the office of ejido “commissaries” and usurped many of
the best lands for themselves and their clients. The disastrous history of the Otomí
Indians made them ideal subjects for the postrevolutionary indigenous models.
Through the years major investments were made by the Mexican government to
develop the Valley, including the founding of cooperatives, credit banks, schools, ir-
rigation projects, workshops on weaving, other hand-industries, and cattle ranching.
In l952, the indigenist program was given the title of Indigenous Patrimony of the
Mezquital Valley (PIVM) and underwent reorganization along the lines of the INI co-
ordinating centers located in other Indian areas of Mexico. Elaborate PIVM head-
quarters were built in the town of Ixmiquilpán. Around this time, too, the Summer
Institute of Linguistics (SIL) from the United States began to operate among the
Otomís of Mezquital, and in 1960 it established its headquarters in Ixmiquilpán. The
SIL missionaries translated the Bible into the Otomí language and introduced
the Protestant religion to the Otomís for the first time.
Despite all efforts, the expected development of the Otomís did not materialize.
Most funds found their way into “the pockets of local officials, caciques, business-
men, and mestizos” (Dawson 2004:133). Lands, cattle, irrigated farms, and even
schools were monopolized by the mestizo peoples of the Mezquital Valley. Although
dramatic social changes have finally taken place in the Mezquital Valley in recent
years, the indigenist development programs have played only limited roles in bring-
ing about these changes. Most social change among the Otomís resulted from de-
velopments in transportation and commercial agriculture. An elaborate highway
system eventually eliminated the Otomis’ geographic isolation, making it possible
for them to find work in the mines of Potosí, the streets of Mexico City, and the fields
of Texas and California. Equally important, the development of large, irrigated veg-
etable farms in the valley provided convenient work opportunities for the Indians as
farm laborers. The effect of these changes was to transform most Otomís from peas-
ants to wage laborers.
Mexican scholars, such as the sociologist Roger Bartra, have documented the in-
creasing capitalization of the Mezquital Valley and its impact on the Otomís and lower-
class mestizos. They found the Otomís to be profoundly proletarianized and thus