322 UNIT 3 MODERN MESOAMERICA
strongly integrated into the economic structure of Mexican society. In the process, it
is claimed, the Indians lost the last vestiges of native Otomí culture and could no
longer be distinguished from the exploited mestizo lower classes. The cacique inter-
mediaries, some of them Otomís, began to disappear too, as rural capitalists and gov-
ernment agents more and more dealt directly with the Indian workers. This strategy
represented a shift in native culture as well, since even though the caciques exploited
the Indians, they did so as “populists” whose authority derived from the promotion
of authentic native traditions. Paradoxically, the Indian culture is said to live on only
in the minds of the capitalist exploiters who, as indigenists, glorify the Indians and ad-
vocate the survival of their cultures at the very time that they bring about the de-
struction of those same cultures. Bartra (1982:93) explains as follows:... (the capitalist) after contributing to the social disappearance of the Indian, resur-
rects him to a level of cultural reality; the demagoguery consists in proclaiming that the
cultural Indian enters society through the main door—as the guest of honor—while the
real Indian has to go through the servants’ door, to be integrated—after being robbed of
his culture—as a proletariat.
Bartra accurately describes the most general social condition of Indians like the
Otomís of Mezquital, but two cautionary observations need to be made. First, Bartra
and his followers seem to argue that all the Indians of Mexico are in a similar “pro-
letarian” condition as are the Otomís of Mezquital. This argument is inaccurate, as
we shall see in the following section of this chapter. Second, the reputed loss of na-
tive culture is stated too categorically, for it fails to give adequate attention to the ef-
forts by the Otomís and other Mesoamerican Indians like them to reconstitute their
traditional native cultures and identities. Anthropological studies of the Otomís doc-
ument the loss of community solidarity and cultural patterns, but also the persis-
tence of important elements of the native cultures at the level of family and social
networks.
The Otomís have become painfully aware of their precarious social condition,
and in increasing numbers they have adopted Protestantism and other forms of mod-
ern culture. Nevertheless, they have not forgotten their rich and magical Mesoamer-
ican cultural heritage. This fact is well illustrated by the following narrative written
in the Otomí language by a Mezquital Indian on behalf of his fellow Otomís (Bernard
and Salinas Pedraza 1989:602–604):My brother! You are not alone in the world. You have had people who are your true
friends for hundreds of years. Surely, you will ask, “Who are they.” Brother, I must tell
you, then. They are the earth that you walk on; the air that you breathe; the sun that gives
you light so that you may see and walk and work, and so that you might live happily in the
world.... The birds who sing to you out in the countryside are your friends, as are the
animals that go about the surface of the earth and beneath the ground, as well. The stars
are also your friends, and so is the moon, and the darkness....
Then who are your enemies?... Those who tell you that they respect you but who
only exploit you daily for your work are your enemies. When you are young they respect
you but when you grow old and can’t work for them any more, they say that they don’t
know you. They pay you whatever they want to pay and not what your efforts demand of