Edward Abse
In this chapter, then, while offering few clues to a solution of the
ethical problem I encountered, I attempt to provide a concise ethno-
graphic description of the emergence of an entailed intersubjectivity
of shared ambivalence between fieldworker and host subject. I be-
gin by introducing the cosmological and social context out of which
the moral quandary developed, endeavoring to convey a sense of the
predicaments of contemporary Mazatec social life in which I partici-
pated—while also foreshadowing the inevitable consequences. Then
I present what is admittedly an elliptical narrative illustrating how I
inadvertently became the catalyst of a local conflict that led to deeper
insights into the ethnographer’s dilemma and into the social and psy-
chological dynamics of Mazatec sorcery.
Appearance and Reality in the World
of the Mazatecs of Southern MexicoThe Mazatecs are an indigenous Mesoamerican people who live in
the extreme north of the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, within a terri-
tory of about 2 , 500 square kilometers, with some further settlements
in adjacent areas of the neighboring states of Puebla and Veracruz.
There are between 170 , 000 and 200 , 000 Mazatecs inhabiting more
than 400 communities, the majority of which are either draped along
the steep hillsides, perched atop the narrow ridges, set beside the riv-
ers, or nestled down in the lush valleys of the Sierra Madre Oriental,
while others are located further to the east, on the coastal plains that
stretch toward the Gulf of Mexico. These places range in size from the
smallerrancherías of perhaps two dozen people, made up of a cluster
of households related to one another as a single patrilineal, patrilo-
cal extended family, to the exceptionally large Ciudad indígena and
municipal center of Huautla de Jiménez, inhabited by more than a
score of thousands.
Further details of demographics or of geographic setting would
hardly begin to express the Mazatecs’ conception of the world and
their own place within it. Objective descriptions of this sort do not
correspond very well to the Native’s point of view—what is in this case
a kind of pained “double vision” in the proud certainty of revealed
cosmological continuity, on the one hand, and a poignant awareness