Cofradías and Cargos An Historical Perspective On The Mesoamerican Civil-Religious

Cofradas and Cargos: An Historical Perspective on the Mesoamerican Civil-Religious Hierarchy Author(s): John K. Chance and William B.
Taylor Source: American Ethnologist, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Feb., 1985), pp. 1-26 Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/644412 . Accessed: 29/11/2013 09:15
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cofradias and cargos: an historical perspective on the Mesoamerican civil-religious hierarchy
JOHN K. CHANCE- University of Denver WILLIAMB. TAYLOR-University of Virginia
The Mesoamerican civil-religious hierarchy, variously known as the cargo, fiesta, or mayordomia system, needs little introduction to most anthropologists and ethnohistorians. Variants of the system have been described by ethnographers for many highland Indian peasant communities in Mexico and Guatemala, not to mention similar studies conducted in perhaps as many villages in the Andes. While these hierarchies have now faded or disappeared completely in many areas, most observers agree that historically the cargo system formed the heart of hundreds of Mesoamerican towns and villages since the 16th century. Ethnographers characterize the "traditional" or "classic" form of the system as a hierarchy of ranked offices that together comprise a community's public civil and religious administration (DeWalt 1975:91). All local men are expected to ascend this ladder of achievement during their lifetimes, alternating back and forth between civil and religious posts. Each elective office, or cargo, is held for one year and there are numerous "rest periods" along the way. The higher the cargo served, the greater the prestige enjoyed by the carguero and his family. Such rewards do not come without a price, however, for many cargos, especially the higher ones, require substantial financial outlays. Those who have the resources and longevity to make it to the top of the hierarchy retire from the system and join a select group of town elders. These elders, or principales, are men who have proven their moral worth and often exert considerable influence in local affairs. Overtly Spanish in structure, but with some indigenous underpinnings, this classic form of the system includes the offices of municipal government on the civil side, and positions in sodalities (cofradias or mayordomias) honoring the Catholic saints on the religious side. The expenses and associated prestige are connected with individual sponsorship of fiestas and other ritual occasions held for the local saints. Analyses of the functions and significance of this institution have varied widely, but there has been near unanimous agreement (with the recent exception of Rus and
Most accounts of the Mesoamerican civil-religious hierarchy assume either a pre-Hispanic or colonial formation of the system, despite the lack of convincing evidence. This paper presents unpublished archival data on colonial cofradias and civil cargos from four regions of Mexico: Jalisco, central Mexico, the Valley of Oaxaca, and the Sierra Zapoteca of Oaxaca. It is argued that while a civil hierarchy was well developed in colonial times, the civil-religious hierarchy was mainly a post-Independence development. Changes in the functions of the hierarchy and its mode of articulation with the larger society are also discussed. [Mesoamerica, peasant society, ethnohistory, religion, political organization] Association Copyright? 1985 by the AmericanAnthropological
0094-0496/85/010001 -26$3.10/1
origins of the cargo system
Wasserstrom 1980) that the origins of the modern cargo system and individually sponsored fiestas are to be found in the early colonial period, when Spanish and Indian societies reached their first accommodation. In this paper we challenge this assertion. We argue that it is in fact an assumption derived from an unwarranted projection of the ethnographic present into the colonial past. To support our argument, we will present unpublished documentary evidence from four regions of colonial Mexico: Jalisco, the central highlands, the Valley of Oaxaca, and the highland Sierra Zapoteca of Oaxaca.1 Published primary and secondary works on Michoacan and Chiapas provide a fifth body of materials. Our basic contention is that while a civil hierarchy and fiesta offices did indeed exist in highland Indian communities in colonial times, the civil-religious hierarchy was mainly a postIndependence development of the 19th century. We thus propose to deal with a very long stretch of time-roughly four centuries-and with a considerable amount of historical detail. But the issues we raise are more than historical, for they also have a direct bearing on the interpretation of contemporary cargo systems. Just as the structure of the system has changed over time, so have its functions and its mode of articulation with the larger society. While we seek to identify a general process of change, we also show that its regional manifestations differed significantly with regard to timing and precipitating factors.
ethnographic
models
Four "generations" of studies of the Mesoamerican civil-religious hierarchy have been carried out. Its general structure was first established in ethnographies done in the 1930s and 1940s, chiefly among the highland Maya (Tax 1937, Wagley 1949, Bunzel 1952). Then in the 1950s and early 1960s the hierarchy was systematized and analyzed as an institution in its own right, the core of Eric Wolf's closed, corporate community (Wolf 1959, Camara 1952, Nash 1958). In the view of Nash (1958:69) and Wolf (1959:216-218), the cargo system is a communal defense mechanism, protecting against intrusion and exploitation from without. Economically, it has a leveling effect on private wealth and provides the most acceptable channel for modes of personal display. Politically, it fosters a "democracy of the poor" in which no individual or group is permitted to monopolize power. Thus, the hierarchy inhibits the growth of class distinctions and helps preserve the status quo. To use Wolf's metaphor (1959:216), it is "like a thermostat activated by an increase in heat to shut off the furnace." The Wolf-Nash interpretation quickly gained wide acceptance, though in 1964 Marvin Harris offered a dissenting view. He argues that the cargo system cannot be viewed as an "egalitarian device" of the closed, corporate peasant community and doubts that the hierarchy really levels differences in wealth. He further maintains that, historically, the system has provided no effective "defense" of the community against outsiders. It is, rather, a "repressive and abusive" institution implanted in Indian communities by colonial Catholic priests. Rather than leveling wealth differences within the community, it pumps wealth out of the community, originally into the hands of the clergy, then after Independence into those of hacendados and merchants. These outside power holders provide the services and consumer goods needed for the religious fiestas (Harris 1964:25-34). The questions raised by these second-generation scholars are fundamental: (1) Does the civil-religious hierarchy level wealth differences or not? (2) Does it in fact pump a substantial amount of wealth out of the community or not? (3) Is the hierarchy best regarded as a community defense against exploitation by outsiders, or as an instrument devised by the very same outsiders to subjugate and exploit the Indian population? These issues were
american ethnologist
phrased in an either/or fashion which made them difficult to resolve, and the lack of a solid body of empirical evidence was also a severe handicap. It was not until the appearance of Frank Cancian's (1965) "third generation" study of the religious cargo system of Zinacantan, Chiapas, that the first question was rigorously tested. Cancian (1965) has demonstrated empirically that the cargo system in Zinacantan does not completely level differences in wealth. The more expensive cargos are taken by the wealthier men and the less expensive ones by poorer men, but it is impossible for all participants to reach the top of the hierarchy in this large community of several thousand inhabitants. Some leveling does take place, but the rich do not spend enough to jeopardize their relative economic standing, and many are able to pass wealth on to their descendants. Cancian's general conclusion is that if the cargo system has a tendency to level wealth, it possesses an even greater propensity to stratify the population and legitimize existing economic differences (Cancian 1967:292). In the nearly two decades that have elapsed since Cancian's landmark study, a general consensus seems to have emerged that the leveling hypothesis is mistaken and that a significant degree of stratification is not incompatible with a cargo system (Chick 1980; DeWalt 1975; Dow 1977; Greenberg 1981; Slade 1973; Smith 1977). There are definite limits, however, and Smith's (1977) work in Guatemala bears out Cancian's (1967:296) prediction that the fiesta system can be destroyed or weakened by, among other factors, increasing poverty or increasing prosperity. But while Cancian's study broke new ground in some areas, in other respects it remains very much in the same functionalist camp of Wolf and Nash. Much like his predecessors, Cancian views the cargo system as a homeostatic mechanism that is most sensitive to local, largely internal pressures. The Zinacantan study provides no compelling data or conceptual tools to help answer the second and third questions regarding the relationship of the system to the outside world. In contrast, the influence of external conditions is a major focus of several of the recent fourth-generation works on the civil-religious hierarchy (Aguirre Beltran 1967; Diener 1978; Dow 1977; Friedlander 1981; Greenberg 1981; Jones 1981; Rus and Wasserstrom 1980; Smith 1977; Wasserstrom 1978). Major differences in emphasis remain, however. While all authors agree that close attention to regional economic history and political economy is indispensable, some stress internal community mechanisms as most central (Aguirre Beltran 1967; Dow 1977) and others emphasize the determining external conditions (Diener 1978; Friedlander 1981; Rus and Wasserstrom 1980; Smith 1977). Stressing internal factors, both Aguirre Beltran (1967) and Dow (1977) claim, contra Harris, that ritual cargo expenditures maintain a system of economic reciprocity and redistribution within the community. On the basis of field work in a small Otomi village in Hidalgo, Dow (1977:221) argues that the fiesta system is ecologically adaptive for the Indian peasants because it puts "high-value food into peoples' stomachs." He sees the Indian subsistence economy as largely separate from the mestizo-dominated market economy. In this context, the Indian cargo system is a powerful motivation for production, since commercial incentives are monopolized by the mestizos. Thus, the cargo system is said to organize the local subsistence economy and reduce the exploitative pressures of the outside society. Despite his emphasis on the redistributive aspects of the system, Dow (1977:221) is quite clear that it does not work to eliminate differences in wealth among the Indians. As is so often the case, the greatest financial burdens fall most heavily on the most capable producers. A clear example of the contrasting expropriation view is found in a recent article by Judith Friedlander (1981). Like Harris, she stresses the externally imposed features of the system and concludes that in Hueyapan, Morelos, at least, "through the cargo system the Indians have been drafted to serve as accomplices in their own oppression" (1981:139).
Friedlander is less concerned with the economic than with the political aspects of the system, which in Hueyapan have been taken over by native school teachers. In this secularized version of the hierarchy, the saints have been replaced by national heroes and now external government forces manipulate the Indians, encouraging local political leaders to sponsor fiestas for Mexico's major revolutionary figures and national holidays. Furtherexamples could be mentioned, but it seems clear to us that most of the current issues surrounding the civil-religious hierarchy stem directly from the unresolved secondgeneration debate between Wolf and Nash on the one hand (the defense mechanism model), and Harris on the other (the expropriation model). The either/or dilemma is still with us. The most reasonable way out of this difficulty, it appears to us, is to work toward a mediation of these two views by developing better methods for testing them empirically in different times and places. As we will show later, particular community hierarchies may lean toward one or the other of these two extremes at different times. As for the contemporary ethnographic scene, some systems appear to occupy a middle ground. Here we follow James Greenberg (1981:17), who notes that "it is unquestionable that some redistribution occurs, but it is equally undeniable that the fiesta system pumps considerable sums of wealth out of the community." In his study of the civil-religious hierarchy of a Chatino community in Oaxaca, Greenberg (1981:149-152) attempts an empirical test of the redistribution versus expropriation controversy and finds some support for both sides. In Yaitepec, about half of the annual fiesta costs require cash expenditures, the other half consisting essentially of food and drink redistributed within the community. In all, Greenberg estimates that the total ritual system distributes 11.3 percent of the annual per capita cost of food, or enough to feed everyone for 41 days. The problem thus becomes how to explain the balance that a given community and its cargo system strike between the two poles of redistribution and expropriation at a given point in time. Population size is an important variable. A small communtity with a high level of participation in the system, like Dow's Otomi community in Hidalgo, should display more economic equality and redistribution. A larger community where proprotionately fewer persons are able to hold cargos, like Cancian's Zinacantan, should display more stratification and expropriation. Even more critical, however, is the ratio of cargo positions to population. According to Greenberg (1981:159), there are two reasons why adjustments in the number of cargos are made in some communities and not in others. First,a basic shift in the mode of production such as the penetration of cash cropping may encourage members of a community to limit their participation in the cargo system in order to free up necessary capital for agricultural enterprise. Second, the relationship between metropolis and satellite may change. As wider opportunities become available, it may be hard to develop the necessary consensus to add new cargos to the system. Under these circumstances it is often easier to eliminate cargos. Therefore, "the leveling and stratifying models are not contradictory but rather represent successive stages in the communities' dependence on and integration into the market" (Greenberg 1981:175). Greenberg's study is important because it leads the way to a synthesis of various propositions that were previously regarded as unrelated or mutually exclusive. In other respects, however, we must differ. By assuming that "the so-called traditional fiesta system is largely an artifact of colonial rule," Greenberg (1981:16) merely echoes the historical notions of Wolf and others without providing much evidence. We will present a detailed case against this view below. In order to do this, however, we must first briefly examine the arguments and the evidence for pre-Hispanic antecedents of the system.
pre-Hispanic antecedents?
Speculation about possible pre-Hispanic antecedents or origins of the civil-religious hierarchy goes back at least as far as the second-generation studies of the early 1960s. As Friedlander (1981:134) has recently remarked, these questions have received little comment of late, though the issues remain unresolved. We do not pretend to resolve all of them here, only to suggest how much remains to be done. Explorations of the pre-Hispanic antecedents of the cargo system have followed two lines of approach. Pedro Carrasco in his classic 1961 article assembles evidence from the colonial chronicles for Aztec central Mexico, Tenochtitlan in particular. Taking the essential features of the hierarchy, or "ladder system," from the ethnographic record, Carrasco then reaches back into the pre-Hispanic and colonial eras for clues to the system's preSpanish background and colonial development. Carrasco emphasizes that the cargo system is definitely of colonial, not pre-Spanish, origin.2 At the same time, however, he maintains that certain features of indigenous institutions facilitated the introduction of Spanish municipal organization and contributed to the eventual development of the civilreligious hierarchy. Unlike the Maya scholars we will discuss in a moment, Carrasco thus posits not a pre-Hispanic origin of the system, but rather a set of indigenous "antecedents" that helped shape later colonial developments (Carrasco 1961:485). The political antecedents Carrasco discusses are the three avenues of social mobility, or "ladders of achievement" of Aztec Tenochtitlan: warfare, the priesthood, and trade. He describes the ladders of military and priestly grades at some length, and makes briefer reference to achieved statuses among merchants and other professional groups (1961:485-489). His evidence for ceremonial antecedents consists of passages from Motolinia, Sahag6n, and Duran that refer to an indigenous practice of individual sponsorship of public functions by merchants, craftsmen, and others (1961:489-490). However, it should be kept in mind that all of these chronicles refer to the Aztec heartland (the Valley of Mexico), and to individual sponsorship in an unusual community of state rulers, priests, warriors, and merchants, rather than peasants. The other approach to pre-Hispanic antecedents specifically locates the origin of the hierarchy in pre-Conquest times, building upon the hypothesis that the lowland Classic Maya may have had a rotating cargo system similar to that found today in Zinacantan and other highland Maya communities. This idea was first proposed by Evon Vogt (1966) and subsequently adopted in one form or another by many others (e.g., Coe 1965; Henderson 1981; Price 1974; Rathje 1970). Vogt notes that the geography of contemporary Zinacantan closely resembles the settlement pattern of the ancient Maya with its sparsely populated cabecera or "ceremonial center" and sustaining area of outlying hamlets where the bulk of the population lives. A cargo system, he reasons, would have helped promote territorial integration in Classic times by taking men from certain lineages in the hamlets and rotating them in priestly offices in the ceremonial centers. Others have used Zinacantan's cargo system in somewhat different ways to explain aspects of Classic Maya society. William Rathje (1970), for example, proposes a diachronic model for the Classic period. The prerequisite of wealth for achieving the higher cargos in Zinacantan today could, if projected back in time, help to explain how ceremonial center elites developed among the Classic Maya. Barbara Price (1974) has taken a different tack and applied Harris's expropriation model to the Classic Maya. In her view, "the ecosystemic function of the cargo system is the regulation of inter- and intra-class competition, and the transfer of energy from producers to consumers" (Price 1974:459). Since Late
Classic Maya society was characterized by both "maximal population" and "maximal social stratification," she reasons that many of the jobs performed by contemporary Maya cargo systems "would have been necessary in late Classic Maya times as well" (1974:459, 461). Carrasco is the only scholar to attempt a direct historical reconstruction of the preHispanic background of the system, yet his political antecedents seem overly general. His basic claim is that mechanisms for achieving political and priestly office were common in Aztec society, and that the structural principles of the "ladder system" on which this was based continued in the guise of community cargo systems after the achievement Spanish conquest (Carrasco 1961:494). As Price (1974:449) has remarked, however, these antecedents are so general that they could apply to corporate advancement at IBM: Carrasco ... has no consistent basis for identifying and sorting out the pre-Columbian traits relevant to tracing the development of Colonial and post-Colonial social organization in central Mexico. His proposed antecedents from Aztec society constitute in large part simply the recruitment and weeding-out devices of any hierarchical social institution that one might expect to find in any stratified society. Even if we set Price's criticism aside and accept Carrasco's analysis for the communities of state leaders in the central highlands, it is difficult to generalize it across the board to all of Mesoamerica, or even all the highland regions.3 Ethnohistorical research of the last two decades has shown that pre-Hispanic sociopolitical organization in many areas differed sigand social nificantly from the "Aztec model." Variation in degree of stratification appear to have been greater than mobility-two key factors in Carrasco's analysis-now previously supposed. To take but one example, in the Oaxaca region in 1519 there were notable differences in complexity of social stratification and centralization of political power among the inhabitants of the Valley of Oaxaca, the Mixteca Alta, the Cuicatec Cafiada, and the Sierra Zapoteca (Chance in press). Even the most highly stratified region, the Valley of Oaxaca, did not approach the complexity found in the Valley of Mexico. Inwere present deed, it is difficult to say whether Carrasco's "ladders of achievement" Mixtecs and the existed anywhere in pre-Conquest Oaxaca. Some achieved statuses among as had reached not in high a level as it general Valley Zapotecs, but status achievement Whitecotton 1977:142-148). had in the Aztec heartland (Spores 1976:216-218; To what extent these regional differences were significant in shaping post-Conquest civilreligious hierarchies, we cannot say. It has been demonstrated, however, that differences in complexity such as those described for Oaxaca were important determinants of regional variants of colonial Indian society (Chance in press). Indeed, the populous, highly stratified communities of the Aztec heartland in late Post-Classic times were atypical of much of the rest of Mesoamerica. They had attained a high degree of social complexity that was often emulated but seldom achieved by communities in other regions.4 Carrasco's model recognizes the possible complexities of change in Mesoamerican cargo systems after 1519 but does not account for the evidence of regional variation within Mesoamerica. Nor does his model convince us that regional considerations are irrelevant to the problem. We are left, as it were, with no clear guidelines for future research. Should we turn to the archives to look for "antecedents" of the cargo system in all Mesoamerican regions and among all ethnic groups? Or should we engage in a more general effort at cross-cultural comparison and theory building? We will return to this point in a moment. The quest for a pre-Hispanic basis of the cargo system among the Maya offers a different set of problems. Here it is not a question of tracking down specific indigenous "antecedents," but rather of testing the hypothesis that the Classic Maya had a full-blown cargo system that was "something like" the modern religious one in Zinacantan. This involves the use of ethnographic analogy to interpret archaeological remains, and discussion
of the substantive data for the Classic Maya lies far beyond the scope of this article. But there are many pitfalls at both ends of the analogy. Ruz Lhuillier (1964) and Haviland (1966), for example, have criticized Vogt's original hypothesis on the basis that the Classic Maya were too rigidly stratified to permit a rotating religious cargo system to operate effectively in the manner he suggests. On the other end, the recent work of Rus and Wasserstrom (1980) on the history of the cargo system in Zinacantan calls into question the wisdom of using ethnographic analogy in this case. Their data suggest that the present system has its origin in the late 19th century; what was present in the community before that time is an open question. Later in this paper we will argue that the most likely sort of cargo system in colonial Mesoamerica was a civil system. Vogt's hypothesis can also be criticized for failing to provide a comprehensive theoretical rationale for why modern Zinacantan can be used to understand, say, ancient Tikal. Territorial integration of hamlet and ceremonial center would certainly be one element in such a theory, but what about the cargo system as a mechanism of community redistribution, of expropriation, of defense against outside exploiters? Do any of these apply to the Classic Maya? Price (1974) answers this question by explicitly endorsing Harris's (1964) expropriation model. But as we have seen, this model receives only qualified support from the ethnographic data (Greenberg 1981). As we will argue later, the expropriation model is most applicable to colonial situations; under other conditions it loses much of its explanatory power. We agree with Price, however, that a general theory of the cargo system-whether preHispanic, colonial, or contemporary-must be based on comparative research. As far as the pre-Conquest era is concerned, we believe that cross-cultural comparison and theory building are bound to be more productive than an exhaustive empirical search for "antecedents" in archives and archaeological sites. In our estimation, the data required for this kind of work will not be forthcoming. As Price (1974:462) puts it, what is needed is "a broader comparative picture of institutions from a range of peasant-organized societies which do the work of the Mesoamerican cargo system." Greenberg's (1981:21) suggestion that the system be viewed as a mechanism that mediates the contradiction between peasants' dependence on local ecology versus the demands of larger political and economic systems that impinge upon them should serve as a useful point of departure. While the identification of specific pre-Hispanic antecedents of the cargo system is fraught with difficulty, the extant data on village cofradias and civil cargos of the Spanish colonial period are much richer. We now turn to a discussion of our archival research in different regions, beginning with the key issues of community cofradia structure and the institution of individual sponsorship of religious fiestas.
colonial cofradias
A salient feature of modern fiesta systems in Mesoamerican villages is that the offices of the ritual celebrations are considered to be cargos, "a great economic burden" (Diener 1978:103). Scholars disagree on the purposes served by individual sponsorship of religious fiestas-whether a defense against colonial exploitation or a vehicle of that exploitation, or both-but the fact of individual sponsorship is almost universally accepted and widely understood to be an early colonial development, perhaps with pre-Hispanic roots (Carrasco 1961:491-492; Greenberg 1981:16). This shared view of the history of the fiesta system as a native political and ceremonial structure in early colonial dress is largely the product of what ethnohistorians call "upstreaming," a method that assumes that modern characteristics of traditional societies
represent structures that have remained unchanged for long stretches of time. In this case, since cofradias or Catholic lay brotherhoods were introduced by Spanish priests after the military Conquest, the cargo system-which certainly is attached to religious brotherhoods in the 20th century-is thought to begin then, too. The only extended study of cofradias in colonial Mexico by an historian, a 1976 doctoral dissertation by Francis Brooks, places these brotherhoods at the heart of collective identity in peasant villages. This conclusion echoes the revivalist interpretation of colonial cofradias without solid evidence for any particular place and does not deal with origins or development. In his Aztecs Under Spanish Rule (1964:131), Charles Gibson provides a more important lead to the origin and function of cofradias in the colonial period when he speaks of them as communal organizations developing in a time of decline, noting that the strong brotherhoods he can document for the Valley of Mexico date mainly from the 17th century-a century after the military Conquest-and suggesting that compulsion alone could not explain their growth in the late colonial period. The history of cofradias in central Jalisco, Oaxaca, and central Mexico casts doubt on their early colonial origins, their connection to the civil-religious hierarchy in the colonial period, the private sponsorship of community fiestas by cofradia officials, and their indispensable role in the collective identity of Indian villages. According to the founding records and several reports of the bishops' inspections of pious works, the cofradias of these three areas were established at widely different times but rarely did they begin with the first stage of religious conversion after the military Conquest in the 16th century. In central Jalisco and central Mexico, the foundings cluster in the 17th century (1600-40 for Jalisco and 1620-1700 for central Mexico); that is, near the low point of the Indian population curve, as Gibson suspects.5 In Oaxaca, some cofradias were founded in the 17th century but many apparently came later, in the 18th century, after the secularization of the Dominican parishes when the rural population was growing again. Just as an understanding of the Spanish roots of colonial haciendas changed when it was clear that this kind of estate rarely appeared in America until the late 17th century, these dates of origin for cofradias raise doubts that modern cargo systems are an unbroken continuation of preConquest cult sponsorship by individual Indians. The idea that cofradias before Mexican Independence in the 1820s operated like the cargo system and were part of a prestige ladder that stressed sponsorship of fiestas by wealthy individuals also remains to be demonstrated in these regional cases. Religious offices in the colonial period were centered in cofradias, which were founded to organize local support for the cult and pay for its expenses. These expenses included the food, supplies, and other ritual costs for the feast-day celebrations that were well established before the 1570s (Papeles de la Nueva Espana [PNE] 1905:VI:31; IV:64), wine and wafers for the Mass, and the fees of the priests for their services. There were at least four ways, sometimes in combination, that these expenses were met in the colonial period: (1) the personal contributions of the principal cofradia officers (the mayordomo and the prioste); (2) personal contributions of all cofradia members; (3) contributions of all families in the community, especially where cofradia membership included everyone, as it apparently did in the hospital cofradias established by the Franciscans; and (4) the rent or other fruits of communal property belonging to the cofradias. Records of fiesta sponsorship in central and western Mexico during the colonial period indicate that income from communal property was the standard means by which the expenses in most villages were covered there. The proceeds from endowments of land, houselots, houses, and especially livestock were more than sufficient to pay the ritual costs in many cases. Individual sponsorship was the exception, resorted to as a poor substitute mainly for the support of
neighborhood chapels when communal property was absent, insufficient, or disallowed by Spanish officials. In Jalisco, the principal cofradias were those attached to community hospitals founded in the Franciscan parishes during the late 16th and early 17th centuries.6 Hospitals were built along with the Franciscan monasteries and probably were operating by 1570 in the principal parish seats administered by the early Franciscans such as Tlajomulco, Cocula, Atoyac, Ajijic, Zacoalco, Sayula, and Tonala (C6dice franciscano 1941:151-160). Many others blossomed under Franciscan supervision in the smaller subject villages during the critical years of the early 17th century, when the Indian population of the region was reduced to perhaps ten percent of its pre-Conquest number.7 For example, the Franciscan curate of Jocotepec (a parish formerly headquartered at Ajijic on Lake Chapala), examining the official records of cofradias that supported Indian hospitals in the villages of his parish in 1794, reported that five of six were founded between 1609 and 1648: Ajijic, 1622; San Antonio Tlayacapan, 1623; San Juan Cosala, 1622; Jocotepec, 1609; Zapotitlan, before 1649; and Soyatlan, 1672. Father Antonio Tello, writing of Jalisco in the 1640s, reported hospitals in nearly all pueblos under Franciscan care (Tello 1942-45: libro III).These hospitals generally consisted of one or two rooms to lodge the sick and indigent, invariably attached to a chapel with its altar and image of the Virgin Mary of Immaculate Conception. Often the rooms were built around a pleasant patio garden. The costs of the hospital and its chapel and fiestas were met by a cofradia created for the purpose in the 17th century, also dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The property of these cofradias consisted mainly of livestock, money, and land, usually begun with each Indian family donating a cow or horse or a few sheep, and active members of the cofradia contributing four reales a year and leaving property to the brotherhood in their wills. In the 17th century, when village populations were small and land relatively abundant, grazing land within the pueblo's one square league community lands sometimes was assigned to the hospital cofradia. In other cases, lands nearby were purchased or rented for grazing the cofradia herds. Tlajomulco's hospital cofradia owned four ranches in the 18th century, the largest landholding of any Indian brotherhood documented for central Jalisco. Tlajomulco also owned a small piece of arable land that was farmed in common to support the hospital. As villages began to grow in population after the mid-17th century, the increasing herds of cofradia cattle posed a problem: their pastures were crowding out corn fields needed to feed the new population. Yet cofradia herds and property in most Indian villages of central Jalisco held their own or continued to grow into the third quarter of the 18th century. During this period, sheep and goats virtually disappeared from cofradia herds which now specialized in cows, oxen, horses, and mules. The Tala Immaculate Conception cofradia, for example, increased its livestock from 495 cows, steers, and oxen in 1708 to 600 head in 1764. Most hospital cofradias in Indian pueblos of central Jalisco had 150 to 500 head of cattle and horses in the mid-18th century (range established from four labeled boxes of colonial cofradia records in Cathedral Archive of Guadalajara [CAAG]).Some Indian cofradias diversified their holdings in the late colonial period, as in the hospital cofradia of Tequila which owned three houses, 143 furrows of sugarcane fields, and lands with 6703 mescal plants, all of which were rented out for a cash income of 1000 pesos a year. Salatitan, near Tonala, also planted mezcales on its cofradia lands in 1803. Other cofradias raised chickens, produced cheese, and stored grain harvested from small fields donated to the Virgin. After the 1770s, most cofradia herds became notably smaller. In the case of Tala, there were only 104 cows, steers, and oxen, and 23 horses in the Immaculate Conception cofradia's herd in 1802, down from over 400 head in 1770. The decreasing number of
livestock is especially apparent after 1767. For seven cofradias in the parish of Tlajomulco with livestock figures for 1767, 1801, and 1821, the number of livestock decreased by 67 percent from 1767 to 1801 (from 1128 to 373) and by another 45 percent from 1801 to 1821 (from 373 to 204). A decline was evident but not so dramatic in the five Indian pueblos of the jurisdiction of Zapotlanejo, where the cofradia herds declined by 20 percent between 1770 and 1801, from 1870 to 1497. At the end of the 18th century there were added pressures to use the property of the cofradias for other than religious purposes. Reports by parish priests suggest that the famine and epidemic of 1785-86 was an important factor in this decline. Villages with little food available from their own lands began to sell the cofradia animals in large numbers or to slaughter and eat them. This emergency brought to a head the problem of too many cofradia animals and too little grain. The cofradia herds occupied village lands that could have been distributed for farming. Thereafter, cofradia animals were more often sold without license to pay for village fiestas, the tribute tax, and other debts of the growing population. But this disaster alone was not the cause of the declining cofradia property. In his visita to central Jalisco in 1801-1803, Bishop Cabafas noted substantial declines in the years just preceding his visit and attributed them to Indian mismanagement. Some corrupt Indian officials had stolen animals and land belonging to the cofradias; unauthorized use had been made of the cofradia herds for community feasts and other celebrations; and livestock were being sold without permission to meet extraordinary community expenses. The many complaints lodged in the bishop's court in Guadalajara by villagers against their parish priests for taking cofradia property in the second half of the 18th century is both a sign of how difficult it was for a curate to subsist on the meager ecclesiastical fees he was. permitted to collect and another cause of depletion of cofradia herds. In addition, there was a three-way struggle from the 1750s among village leaders, the Church, and the colonial state over who should manage the surplus funds of Indian pueblos-a struggle that threatened to disperse the cofradia holdings. In 1758 a royal cedula called for disbanding cofradias that did not have royal authorization. By the 1 780s the royal government attempted to apply the alcabala tax to cofradias and to promote cajas de comunidad (town treasuries) in Indian pueblos which were subject to royal control at the expense of community properties attached to support of the cult (Brooks 1976: Ch. 4). The apparent decline of livestock on cofradia ranches from 1801 to 1821 may be due largely to destruction in the Independence War and breakdown in the administration of cofradias. However, there is also evidence that cofradia reserves were further reduced between Cabanas's attempt to impose conservation measures during his visita and the outbreak of the war. In Ixtlahuacan, near Chapala, the Immaculate Conception cofradia herd dropped from 129 cattle and horses in 1802 to 61 in 1807. Most of this decline resulted from poor care-cows wandering off, stolen, or neglected. There were cofradias in Oaxaca villages, too, but their history is quite different from those of central Jalisco. The Dominicans, who evangelized much of Oaxaca, were active in the religious and public life of their parishes-administering the sacraments, preaching, instructing, policing, and advising village officials-but they did not establish hospitals, and cofradias in their parishes generally came late, often after the Dominicans had been replaced by secular priests. As Oaxaca's bishop in 1790 reported (Archivo General de la Naci6n [AGN] Cofradias y Archicofradias 18, exp. 11), none of the Indian pueblos had hospitals or connected chapels dedicated to the Virgin of Immaculate Conception. One pueblo, Nochistlan, was reported to have a hospital in 1581, founded by the local principales but sponsored from a communally worked farm (PNE VI:211). In those pueblos with cofradias in the 1790s-and many did not have cofradias or had allowed theirs to
10
decline-the brotherhoods generally dated from 1700-70, a period of growth in contrast to the Jalisco foundings a century earlier. The significance to the community of the Oaxaca cofradias was different and more restricted than in Jalisco. Judging by the 1790 parish-by-parish report of the bishop on cofradias inspected during his visita, the Oaxaca brotherhoods generally were founded with a small legacy from one or two individuals rather than by donations from many families, as in Jalisco. Paying for the annual fiestas sponsored by the cofradia often fell to the mayordomo rather than to the brotherhood as a whole. Oaxaca's bishop in 1778 stated that if the income from cofradia properties was insufficient to pay for the community fiestas the mayordomo was faced with making up the difference from his personal resources (Brooks 1976:69-70). This prospect must have been common enough in Oaxaca in the late 18th century. The Corregidor of Oaxaca in 1777 reported that many cofradias in his district had incomes of just 3 or 4 pesos a year while the food and drink alone for a fiesta might cost 100 pesos (Brooks 1976:73). This figure for the cost of food and drink seems inflated, but even using the more likely sum of about 15 pesos as the minimum cost of a village fiesta (Gibson 1964:118), the cofradia income would barely cover one-quarter of the expenses of one fiesta. Additional evidence from the District of Villa Alta in the Sierra Zapoteca near the end of the colonial period suggests that universal contributions to support fiestas were giving way to individual sponsorship at that time. In 1808, a mayordomo of San Crist6bal Lachirioag complained to the alcalde mayor of Villa Alta about the great sums of money the four fiestas of the patron saint, Carnaval, Santa Cruz, and Trinidad cost him. Previously, the fiestas had been supported from one-half real contributions from all families and a portion of the community maize crop, but now the collections were forbidden and there was no community planting (Archivo del Juzgado de Villa Alta [AJVA]Civil 1793-1840, exp. 43). Universal contributions to support fiestas were still evident in Santa Maria Temaxcalapan near Villa Alta in 1788 (AJVACivil 1779-1802, exp. 71) and in 1821 a barrio of Santo Domingo Roayaga started universal contributions but was being pressured to return to the custom of having the mayordomo pay (AJVACivil 1821-33, exp. 52). Few, if any, were self-supporting like the Jalisco cofradias, and these cofradias in Oaxaca were more narrowly religious in origin and function. In addition to clear statements of little or no property in many village cofradias in Oaxaca that are recorded in the 1790 bishop's report (AGN Cofradias y Archicofradias 18, exp. 11), the Oaxaca visita of 1778-84 indicates that the bishop suspended many cofradias because they had few or no assets, only debts (Archivo General de Indias [AGI] Audiencia de Mexico 2588). The parish priest often administered the properties and kept the records in Oaxaca, and there was less room for confusion there about cofradia property being pueblo property rather than the property of the Church. The duties and expenses of the Oaxaca cofradias were more strictly confined to paying the costs of celebrating the Mass and keeping the parish church supplied with wax for candles, oil for the lamp, and sacramental wine. The modest wealth of most Indian cofradias in the Valley of Oaxaca in 1790 was limited to 100 or so pounds of wax and 50 to 200 pesos in cash. The cash was saved for Holy Week, a fiesta for the patron saint of the brotherhood, and payment for occasional masses; it was not productive wealth lent out at interest or invested in livestock or real estate. Many other brotherhoods lacked funds altogether and depended for support on alms collected before the feast days. A few Valley of Oaxaca cofradias such as those of Santa Ana Zegache received the harvest from small, communally worked maize fields, and, in a few cases, the brotherhoods were supported by livestock. More recently established, modestly supported, without their own buildings, and destined to maintain the parish church and the village priest, these Oaxaca cofradias stand
11
in contrast to the central Jalisco brotherhoods and their hospital-chapel compounds. While the cofradias were poor and operated less as village institutions in Oaxaca, the village cajas de comunidad there were impressive, consisting of community farmlands worked collectively by all families, and community coffers with hundreds, sometimes 1000 pesos in cash gathered from rental of buildings and lands and annual contributions by tributaries. Jalisco and Oaxaca appear to represent the extremes of wealthy and poor cofradias. For central Mexico and Michoacan in the late colonial period, the pattern of cofradia properties, individual sponsorship, and intertwining cargo systems falls somewhere in between and is more complicated. Several of the property-holding sodalities existed in nearly all Indian pueblos there, along with other groups that maintained neighborhood chapels. At the end of the 17th century, Vetancurt reported cofradias in most pueblos of the Diocese of Mexico, although fewer were attached to the chapels of Indian hospitals (Vetancurt 1961: for example, 173), and found them supported with landholdings, plots of tuna cactus, and livestock willed to the sodalities by local citizens or obtained from the patrimonial lands of the community. For Tacuba, Perez-Rocha found that the cofradias supported the religious fiestas of the community from lands planted with maguey and nopal cactus or rented the lands out for cash (Perez-Rocha 1978:12). Neither Vetancurt nor Perez-Rocha mention the practice of individual sponsorship of fiestas. The earliest cofradias like the one dedicated to the Virgen del Rosario in Chalco, founded about 1563, had many members and originally supported their activities from general contributions (PNE IV:64). By 1579 the cofradia had received land donations from various principales and other natives of the pueblo and was on the way to a self-supporting endowment. Writing on the Valley of Mexico and Michoacan, Gibson, Perez-Rocha and De la Torre document cofradias of widely varying sizes, resources, and degrees of complexity in the late colonial period (Gibson 1964:127-132; Perez-Rocha 1978:119-132; De la Torre 1967:421). In communities where cofradias held little productive land or few animals, the mayordomo might collect fixed monthly sums from all members of the cofradia and special contributions from local citizens before feast days.8 In Michoacan there was great variation in the wealth of cofradias and apparently much overspending and mismanagement of the brotherhoods' endowment during the late 18th century (De la Torre 1967:421; Carrasco 1976:75). If cofradia funds no longer supported the religious celebrations there in the late 18th century, this may have been a recent development, for in the middle of the 17th century the Indian cofradias of Michoacan were said to be well endowed with land and communal labor. The bishop's inspection of parishes in Michoacan in 1649 reported active hospital cofradias almost everywhere, with the support of landholdings worked by communal labor forces, contributions from traders, and community contributions in other forms (Arnaldo y Sassi 1982:61-204). Collective sponsorship of fiestas seems to have remained strong in central Mexican villages into the last years of colonial rule. The main change was not so much away from community support of religious fiestas as toward a clearer pattern of village officials appropriating much of the proceeds from cofradia harvests, rents, sales, and collections for their own private banquets (AGN Criminal 148:263 ff.). Little evidence of individual sponsorship in a cargo-like system has come to light. In several cases where cofradias apparently lacked the resources to pay for the expenses of the cult, money was withdrawn from the village treasury rather than imposing sponsorship on an individual (Chavez Orozco 1934). Although individual sponsorship of fiestas seems to have been unusual in Indian pueblos of colonial times, and cofradias were not clearly a natural extension of pre-Hispanic cult practices nurtured early in the colonial period, the intertwining of civil and religious offices still could have operated in colonial Mesoamerica. There were civil and religious offices and there is some evidence that individuals held both civil and religious posts and that all
12
officials of the community were elected at the same time (PNE V1:294).Warren and Staley suggest that by the mid-17th century some of the same individuals served both in civil and religious offices in Michoacan, offering the examples of Patzcuaro in 1647 and Uruapan in 1659 (Warren and Staley in press:20-21). Without producing examples, Sep6ulveday H. says that the majority of civil officials in Michoacan were cofradia mayordomos (Sep6lveda y H. 1974:60). The active cofrades of the hospital cofradia of Tlajomulco, Jalisco were said to be indios principales in the mid-18th century, which may be taken to mean that they had held civil offices (CAAG Cofradias 1754; also CAAG Cofradias 1765, the Santa Fe and Tecualtitlan prioste for two years was a "viejo principal'").But it is not certain whether a religious office was a prerequisite for a civil cargo or that a ladder system was clearly established. In the case of Jalisco, at least, it may be that cofradia offices came after service in the civil posts and were regarded as more prestigious than the civil offices which were closely connected to colonial government. Where numerous civil and religious offices were available in a community, there was potential for an ascending ladder of service, but it is noteworthy that many colonial cofradias, even in villages with as many as 1000 inhabitants, had few officers, really too few to speak of a religious ladder. And it is questionable to assume that mayordomos served for only one term, making way for others to take up the office.9 In central Jalisco where cofradias were founded relatively early and generally were well endowed with livestock, the cofradia offices usually were limited to a mayordomo elected annually or a mayordomo and a prioste, or a mayordomo and several vaqueros. 10 In the Jalisco cases, vaqueros are best understood to be hired hands rather than sodality officials because they were salaried (for example, CAAG Cofradias 1774, cofradia del Santissimo de Atoyac). The strong trend in the late colony for pueblos to rent out their cofradia lands and livestock was, according to Indian testimony in Compostela in 1804, largely due to the high cost of the salaries of those who tended the animals and the land (CAAG Cofradias 1804). Judging by the written records of cofradias in the archepiscopal archive in Guadalajara, the mayordomos of these well-endowed cofradias were more administrators of the properties than religious officers or fiesta sponsors. Their tenure was a form of community service because even though they did not sponsor the fiestas, ordinarily they were not paid for their time (CAAGCofradias Nov. 25, 1822, letter of Jose Maria Gil). They kept the records, approved rental agreements, and generally were in charge of the property, sometimes using their position to take a few cows or sheep or a slice of land belonging to the cofradia (CAAG Cofradias, complaint of Francisco Bias against his predecessors; CAAG Cofradias 1779, Alonso Francisco, indio mayordomo of San Sebastianito, accused of taking cattle from the cofradia). But this is typical of community structures in which the property of the cofradias was generally regarded by villagers as community property which was also-but not exclusively-for support of the cult. Cofradia funds might be kept in the pueblo offices (CAAG Cofradias Feb. 12, 1792, cura of Tabasco). Often the cofradia owned livestock but no land and grazed its animals on the community ejidos (CAAGCofradias 1769, indios of Tizapan "said that the money from the cattle was used in defense of the pueblo's lands which were used by the cofradias"). The conception of cofradia property as community property in the widest sense led to many disputes between curates and Indian parishioners in the bishop's court. By the late 17th century, if not earlier, Indian villagers in central Jalisco spoke of the cofradia lands and livestock as "our property" and used them to feed the people in times of food shortage, or sold animals to pay for land litigation and boundary measurements, Indian tribute, and individual debts, as well as to support the cult.11 Secular priests were quick to complain to the bishop of these uses of cofradia property. Oxen from the cofradia herds were sometimes lent or given to villagers to work their fields,
13
and the funds were sometimes used to buy liquor for community drinking bouts.12 If the parish priest attempted to limit the use of cofradia resources for religious expenditures or to compel mayordomos to get his permission before dispersing cofradia funds or selling livestock, he was certain to meet resistance and more litigation. Curates were even blocked by the Indians of some communities from using cofradia funds for cofradia expenses, though the real issue in these cases was not use of cofradia income for religious purposes, but whether the priest could have anything to do with the administration of cofradia funds (CAAG Cofradias, letter of cura of Tabasco, Jose Antonio Gonzalez de Hermosillo, dated February 12, 1792). Firm conclusions about the development of cofradias and the fiesta system in colonial Mesoamerica are checked by incomplete written records and what appear to be great variations between regions and within regions, too. But, taken together, the cases of Jalisco, Michoacan, Oaxaca, and central Mexico suggest that within the differences and variations, there was a history that does not clearly support the idea of individual sponsorship or the grafting of an indigenous ceremonial institution onto Spanish lay brotherhoods. Cofradias generally were not well developed in Indian pueblos until the late 16th and 17th centuries and even then the presence of cofradias did not necessarily signify the existence of a cargo system. Where cofradias were strongest in the colonial period, the institution long preceded its modern form and function as a ladder of prestige and individual sponsorship of community fiestas. Before the 1770s many, probably most, cofradias in central and western Mexico supported community fiestas from their corporate properties and without a large or elaborate ladder of offices which all men of the community would have mounted. In the second half of the 18th century, the demands on corporate wealth of the cofradias increased. The expenses of the cult seem to have been greater in the late 18th century (Carrasco 1976:78-79) and population growth in most pueblos required larger expenditures for food and drink at fiesta time. Land litigation, taxes, and famine also drained resources from the cofradias as did mismanagement and material needs of the local priest. Hospitals apparently were closed for lack of adequate support in Michoacan by the 1770s (Sepulveda y H. 1974:55) but this was not true of Jalisco. In both areas, the cofradias of the Immaculate Conception continued to function and hold property. The wealth of cofradias generally declined after the 1770s and the structure of religious offices and the support of community fiestas began to change as religious offices proliferated in some regions and individual sponsorship of fiestas became more evident (Sepulveda y H. 1974:64). The relationship between these two developments was close but not simple. Mayordomos of the cofradias had administered the properties and paid the expenses of the fiestas from the cofradia income. This is clear even in the early examples of fiesta management in the first years of the 17th century (PNE VI:294, Miahuatlan, Oaxaca), where an annually elected mayordomo dispersed the funds set aside for the pueblo's religious celebrations and other religious expenses and had his accounts checked by his successor. When the corporate income of the cofradia no longer met the expenses, the mayordomo naturally would have been expected to bridge the gap with collections from the cofrades and the community or from his own estate (Gibson 1964:129). But individual sponsorship still was unusual in the late 18th century and is best documented for Oaxaca where cofradias had been founded relatively late and were rarely well endowed even before the decline of cofradia income from endowments. Also the immediate reasons for individual sponsorship there seem to have been pressure from secular priests for better support of the cult and administrative policies that forbade universal contributions, rather than home-grown ideas of elite recruitment or redistribution of wealth within the pueblo.
colonial civil cargos

If we cannot document a civil-religious hierarchy with a full system of individual sponsorship of religious fiestas during the colonial period, is there evidence of a community
14
civil hierarchy with rotating officeholders ranked on a ladder of prestige? In the narrow sense, the answer to this question is clear: each pueblo had its cabildo offices, the higher ones all with Spanish titles, to which men were elected each year. This was required by law and annual elections had to be approved by resident priests and Spanish officials. The offices themselves-gobernador, alcalde, regidor, alguacil, mayor, for example-were arranged in hierarchical fashion and undoubtedly conferred differential power and prestige on the incumbents. Some of the lower offices, such as topil and tequitlato, had indigenous names and were carried over from pre-Hispanic times. But was the colonial Indian cabildo the core of a true community-wide cargo system as we have been discussing it? Virtually all of the published research on village political organization is silent on this matter. Much attention has been devoted to the duties and powers associated with various cabildo posts, election procedures, conflicts over office between nobles and commoners, and interference by Spanish priests and officials. But for the most part, detailed archival data that would document the functioning of a civil cargo system has eluded us, despite the considerable efforts of many researchers (see especially Carrasco 1952, 1961; Gibson 1964; Nutini and Bell 1980:319-327; Sepulveda y H. 1974). Given these admittedly severe limitations, we must confine our discussion of civil cargos to Chance's (1983) recent work on colonial Rinc6n Zapotec communities in Oaxaca. The data are limited, but they do provide us with a useful first approximation.13 In this poor, remote region within the colonial district of Villa Alta, dotted with small villages (most with only a few hundred inhabitants) and lacking any significant wealth differences either between or within communities, there existed in the 18th century a very well developed cargo system in virtually every town. Details varied from village to village, but all hierarchies were similar in that they encompassed the formal political offices introduced by the Spanish, as well as a few more lowly posts that probably had a pre-Hispanic basis. In these small communities, all adult men were expected to serve in the system at least until the age of 50, and the cargos had to be passed in ascending order. The offices in Santa Maria Yaviche in 1760 were typical: governor gobernador alcalde judge councilman regidor (2) police chief mayor policeman and messenger topil de comun topil de iglesia church-keeper general servant gobaz A clear distinction was made between the top three cargos honorificos and the bottom three, frequently referred to with disdain as servicios bajos. The office of mayor occupied an ambiguous middle position. Significantly, the 30 lawsuits and other documentation consulted do not mention any religious components of the system other than the lowly post of church-keeper. Various descriptions of civil prestige ladders and their cargos given by Indian witnesses from six different communities14 make no mention of celebration or care of the saints, mayordomias, cofradias, hermandades, or the like. Yet we know from independent evidence that religious brotherhoods headed by mayordomos were quite common throughout the district of Villa Alta at that time (AGI Audiencia de Mexico 2588). We have here, we suggest, a cargo system based on political officeholding which excluded the local mayordomos and other religious functionaries, or was at least incidental to the religious offices. This is not to say that the civil officials had no religious functions (they very likely did), but that in terms of its formal structure this system was the precise opposite of that in modern Zinacantan and many other communities where all cargos in the system today are religious ones. The Rinc6n civil hierarchies operated in a very highly charged political atmosphere where distinctions in social rank were of the utmost importance. Three basic strata or
15
status groups were recognized: the caciques (those who claimed descent from pre-Hispanic ruling families), principales (second-echelon nobles), and macehuales (commoners). In the 18th century, only the rank of cacique was determined strictly by inheritance. The statuses of principal and macehual were determined by a contradictory mix of both ascription and achievement (via cargo service). It was often said that there were two kinds of principales-de nacimiento (by birth), and de oficio (by office). The former occupied a rank nearly identical to that of the cacique families, and like the caciques, were permitted to enter the cargo hierarchy in the middle, at the level of mayor or regidor. The more numerous principales de oficio, however, were those individuals who as teenage macehuales began at the bottom of the ladder and attained the rank of principal later in life by completing the cargo of regidor."5 Since these were small communities, this ladder of achievement was open to all. With the Indian nobility thus constantly reinforced by both ascription and achievement, there was a vast increase in the size of the principal stratum over time and a corresponding decrease in the number of macehuales. In a few communities, caciques and principales together accounted for over half of their population by the late 18th century. The Rinc6n civil cargo system thus had a well-defined internal structure and set of motivations that were responsible for its perpetuation. Caciques and principales by birth sought political office as a means to legitimate their high rank in the absence of wealth or other tangible indicators. Macehuales sought the same offices in order to escape their commoner status and enter the ranks of the lower nobility. The rewards that the system offered its participants were not all internally derived, however. The Rinc6n hierarchy was a creature of colonialism in the fullest sense. Indeed, much of our description of the system is derived from Indian disputes over noble status and cargo holding that were taken for resolution to Spanish magistrates (alcaldes mayores) in the district seat of Villa Alta. Interestingly, the alcaldes mayores in most cases contributed to the swelling of the principal status group by routinely confirming without argument the claims of noble descent of most of the plaintiffs, even though the evidence they presented was always sketchy and unconvincing. Why was this the case? The district of Villa Alta offered its alcaldes mayores exceptional opportunities for enrichment through illicit trade in cochineal dyestuff and woven cotton cloth. This was accomplished through a monopolistic practice known as the repartimiento de efectos, described in detail for this region by Brian Hamnett (1971). Backed by private merchants in Mexico City or Oaxaca, the magistrates advanced cash and raw cotton to Indian households in all the villages of the district and forcibly bought back cochineal and finished cloth at below-market prices. This trading practice produced handsome profits for the alcaldes mayores and was obviously the main attraction of the post. For the Indians, the practice amounted to a blatant form of economic exploitation. It was an important mechanism by which their economic surplus was expropriated by outside power holders. The repartimiento de efectos had the effect of reinforcing the civil cargo systems in the communities since the trade was administered with the aid of Indian gobernadores, alcaldes, and regidores, who were given special powers of collection. Serving in these high cargos brought not only prestige in the eyes of one's fellows, but also a privileged position in which a man could partially recoup his repartimiento losses incurred during those years when he was out of office. As far as the alcalde mayor was concerned, it was simply good politics for him to satisfy as many Indians as possible in their status aspirations. He needed the Indian officials in order to exploit the communities, while the Indian nobility, short on wealth and hereditary prerogatives in this region, needed the legal confirmation of its status that only the Spanish magistrates could provide. The result of this dialectic, we submit, was a civil cargo system. Within the strictures imposed by the colonial regime, it had something to offer both colonizers and colonized.
16
Unfortunately, no data are available on possible ritual expenditures incurred by cargo holders in the Rinc6n.16 Clearly, however, this is a case where the cargo system itself was the primary determinant of internal community stratification-of status groups-in a region where everyone was poor, even the caciques and principales. This structure, abetted by Spanish political officials and economic interests, maintained a state of inequality at least until the time of Mexico's independence in the 1820s. With the dismantling of the colonial legal apparatus in the 19th century, rinconeros could begin to redefine themselves on a more egalitarian basis. The caciques and principales de nacimiento disappeared altogether (at least as formally constituted strata), and one could become a principal only through serving in at least some of the higher cargos. The colonial "status group" of principales was thus transformed into a small contingent of village elders and political advisors which today carries the same name.17 It is not certain to what extent the Rinc6n example is typical of colonial Mesoamerican cargo systems. In other regions of Mexico-central Jalisco is the one we know best-a civil ladder system may have been much less developed. Cabeceras provided a variety of civil offices to be filled, but the smaller subordinate pueblos may have had only one or two posts, hardly enough to speak of a hierarchy of service that would involve most adult men. For example, Amatitlan elected just two civil officers at the end of the colonial period: an alcalde and a regidor (Audiencia de la Nueva Galicia Archive [AJANG]Criminal, bundle labeled 1818, legajo 4, exp. 63). Until the matter can be clarified by further research, however, we posit that many colonial Mesoamerican communities with a full array of cabildo offices had civil cargo systems similar to the one we have described. The roles of the alcaldes mayores and other Spanish political officials no doubt varied according to local political and economic circumstances. Just how important these officials were to the operation of civil cargo systems in other regions remains to be demonstrated. We have dealt with colonial cofradias and civil cargos separately, for that is how they seem to have existed. Though the same individuals must have held offices in both types of organizations, rarely did this lead to a unified hierarchy throughout most of the colonial period. The important transformation to a civil-religious structure came late. It began in the latter part of the 18th century in some areas, but it was fundamentally a process of the post-Independence era. In the next section we discuss the major political reforms that would have promoted this transformation, and return once more to the pivotal matter of individual sponsorship of fiestas.
transformation in the 19th century

The declining corporate property of cofradias in Indian pueblos before 1810 required some response if community fiestas were to be as frequent and as elaborate as before. Villages might have reduced their expenses by holding fewer fiestas or offering less food, drink, and fireworks, but we know of no evidence that this was widespread. In Oaxaca and perhaps Michoacan, one adjustment in the late 18th century to the decline of corporate property was more sponsorship of fiestas by individuals. Judging by Jalisco evidence, the need to move much further in the direction of sponsoring village fiestas from private sources was greatly increased in the first 40 years of Mexico's national history, from 1821 to 1860. The cofradia properties that remained to pueblos in 1821 were much diminished by 1850 and could no longer support the local cult (for example, CAAG bundle of Tlajomulco cofradia records, 1840, Cajititlan). By September 5 and 7, 1860, a presidential order required the division and sale of all income property held by cofradias (Col. de acuerdos 1849-80, vol. 2:129). Followed shortly by state laws intended to implement it for cofradia land and livestock, this order was the final
17
attack on the corporate holdings that had supported local religious ceremonies (Col. de acuerdos 1849-80, vol. 2:109, 129, May 17, 1861, Dec. 20, 1866). But the records for Jalisco from 1810 to 1850 indicate that most cofradia property was lost decades before the presidential order of 1860. The period of the struggle for national independence from 1810 to 1821 had accelerated the loss of cofradia lands and animals in two ways. First, the war itself had diminished the herds. The cathedral records provide examples of insurgents and royalists occupying such places as Mascota, Tequila, and Atoyac. They slaughtered the animals to feed their forces, or, if the town was not occupied, stole animals a few at a time (CAAGCofradias, Mascota, 1812; Tequila, July 21,1812; Atoyac, 1815, "sobre conservaci6n de los bienes .. ."). or destroyed property if the community was loyal to the other side. In 1815, the royal intendant and military chief, Jose de la Cruz, confiscated the cofradia livestock of San Marcos in the jurisdiction of Etzatlan as punishment for the pueblo's support of the insurgents (CAAGCofradias, San Marcos, 1830, "sobre despojo de cofradias"). Second, the Cortes of Cadiz in Spain issued decrees for Spanish America on 9 November 1812, and 4 January 1813 that called for the division of community lands to individuals including up to half of the common lands of Indian pueblos (Dublan y Lozano 1876-1910: I, 396-399). These Cortes decrees had little immediate effect in Mexico, but they became the point of reference for a series of state laws after Independence to privatize community lands. Between 1822 and 1849 the lawmakers of Jalisco generally exempted from these distributions cofradia lands that had not been bought (Col. de acuerdos 1849-80, vol. 1: p. 17, Dec. 7, 1822; pp. 144-145, Feb. 2, 1848: p. 155, April 17, 1849). However, the state legislature in 1832 was undecided about the division of cofradia land in former Indian pueblos and a law of 1839 did not exempt purchased cofradia lands from distribution (Col. de acuerdos 1849-80, vol. 1: p. 56, July 23, 1832; p. 56,1839). But the lands as well as livestock were slipping away from the brotherhoods. On April 17, 1826, the state senate declared that cofradia livestock could be treated as propios-community property that was to be rented for cash to pay municipal expenses. There are a few instances of the state government specifically protecting cofradia lands from division (Col. de acuerdos 1849-80, vol. 1: p. 31, Etzatlan, May 22, 1826; pp. 50-51, San Miguel el Alto, Nov. 25,1830; p. 68, Ahualulco, July 21,1834; and Tesistan, Sept. 26,1834) and ordering that local cofradia lands not be treated as propios (Col. de acuerdos 1849-80, vol. 1: p. 42, Tlajomulco, July 3, 1828; p. 40, Teocaltiche, March 24, 1828) but the great weight of the evidence from 1821 to 1850 indicates widespread diversion of cofradia property to private ownership or municipal uses. The state government permitted some communities to treat cofradia lands as propios to support their new primary schools (Col. de acuerdos 1849-80, vol. 1: p. 90, August 18, 1838, Zapotlan; pp. 123-124, Guachinango, October 30,1842), a common practice in towns that did not bother to get legal approval (for example, 1828, AHJ Archivo Municipal de Acatlan de Juarez [AMAJ] packet of land records from 1820s). The struggle in these places usually was not between defenders of the cofradias and promoters of the municipal treasury but between the ayuntamiento (municipal council) officials who wanted to maintain some corporate holdings and former Indians who wanted to divide the land into private parcels (AEJ AMAJ packet of land records from 1820s; Col. de acuerdos 1849-80, vol. 1: pp. 162, 185). Legislative decrees and the cathedral records provide many examples of cofradia lands and livestock being divided, sold, or lost during this period. There were reports in 1842 of divisions of community lands including some belonging to cofradias in nearly all districts of the state (Col. de acuerdos 1849-80, vol. 1:103-114) and cofradia lands had already been divided in Cuquio before 1829 and elsewhere according to an 1832 report (CAAGCofradias 1829, Cuquio; Col. de acuerdos 1849-80, vol. 1: 53-54). Indians of Jalostotitlan demanded division of their hospital cofradia lands in 1847 (Col. de acuerdos 1849-80, vol. 1, p. 72, Oc-
18
tober 13, 1847). Two years later the division of Sayula cofradia property was permitted by the state government (Col. de acuerdos 1849-80, vol. 1:59) and Tequila was allowed to decide whether to distribute its cofradia property in family allotments (Col. de acuerdos 1849-80, vol. 1, pp. 185-186, May 14,1849). Fearing that all cofradia properties would soon be secularized, priests in Tuscacuesco, Cuquio, Tamazula, Zapotlan, and Chapala sold or attempted to sell cofradia land and animals in the late 1820s and 1830s (CAAGCofradias, Tuscacuesco, August 26, 1828; Cuquio, 1829, "el cura de Cuquio da cuenta de los procederes. . ."; Tamazula and Zapotlan, 1829-30, various petitions by curates; Chapala, 1830, complaint by curate Antonio Palacios), arguing that they should get what they could for the church now rather than wait to find that nothing was left. For the same reason, mayordomos took over for themselves most of the remaining cofradia property of Tlajomulco by 1840 (CAAG, Bundle of Tlajomulco cofradia documents, Feb. 11, 1840). The more general division of community lands that was taking place in this period also jeopardized the remaining cofradia livestock since many cofradias owned no land and grazed their animals on the commons of the pueblo.18 The effect of these additional losses of cofradia property before 1850 was to force the communities and brotherhoods to look elsewhere for money for fiestas. In the case of Tequila this meant alms and general contributions with the cofrades making up the difference between costs and collections (CAAGCofradias, July 21, 1812, report by Juan Jose Raya). We lack much evidence of where contributions were used successfully and where individual sponsorship had taken hold in the early 19th century, but by 1850, the stage was set throughout Mexico for individual sponsorship and the modern civil-religious cargo system. The Chiapas highlands near San Crist6bal de las Casas seem to offer a somewhat delayed history leading to the same end of individual sponsorship and a ladder of offices (Rus and Wasserstrom 1980:466-470). Apparently, the colonial cofradias there, like their Oaxaca counterparts, were modestly endowed, run by the parish priest, and organized to meet his needs (Rus and Wasserstrom 1980:468). Rus and Wasserstrom (1980:470) posit that the 18thand early 19th-century cofradias had many members who together bore the annual expenses of the fiestas sponsored by their brotherhoods. Then, at the end of the 19th century, as long-distance trade and the labor demands of coastal coffee plantations took many men out of the pueblos, the priests introduced individual sponsorship to assure adeqitate support of the cult, which led to the competitive prestige ladder as a kind of ideological resistance through public rituals to new conditions of exploitation and loss of land. Unfortunately, Rus and Wasserstrom do not establish that the Tzeltal and Tzotzil villages turned to general sponsorship by cofrades instead of individual sponsors in the late 18th and early 19th centuries when the cofradias were too poor to support the fiestas from endowments. But if they are correct about late 19th-century trends, the commercialization of agriculture in the region seems to be the major factor in the shift to the modern cargo system. The evidence for Oaxaca and Jalisco, however, suggests that the watershed of sponsorship came earlier-in the late 18th century for Oaxaca and more gradually from 1770 to 1850 for Jalisco, with individual sponsors generally replacing cofradia endowments and universal contributions. Economic and demographic changes were important in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, too-population growth, horizontal mobility, markets of growing provincial capitals encouraging commercial production of grains, and competition for scarce irrigated farmlands. However, the immediate reason for a pressing need to find a new way of supporting the fiestas was the struggle for control of cofradia property between church, state, and local residents dating from the 1770s, and the movement toward private property at the expense of corporate property, both in the society at large and in government policy from 1812 to 1860. Whether guided into individual sponsorship by the parish
19
priests in a time of rapid economic change and commercial agriculture or emerging more slowly with known precedents for individual sponsorship in neighboring villages and responding to conditions of less influence from curates and the national stage in the mid19th century, the cargo system and individual achievement through cargo service may be closely connected to the history of political reforms and the new state in Mexico from 1750 to 1850.
discussion and conclusions

The preceding analysis questions the popular model of a timeless Mesoamerican cargo system, born in the 16th century and persisting in structure and function until the present. We have tried to show the value of breaking down this system into three component parts-the civil hierarchy, the religious hierarchy, and the institution of fiesta sponsorship by individuals-and studying their separate but intertwined development. This perspective leads not only to the conclusion that there have been substantial changes over time, but it also underscores regional differences. Certain regularities do exist for highland Mesoamerica, but it is clear that the specific details (or sub-processes) of change and formation of cargo systems differ in significant ways from region to region. We have argued that a hierarchy of civil cargos developed by the late 16th century in response to colonial legislation, but originally it was not interconnected with the one or two religious offices of the early cofradias. This was essentially a civil hierarchy with a variety of restrictions on access to office (Taylor 1972:49-52) during much of the colonial period rather than a ladder of civil and religious offices. On the whole, we conclude that individual sponsorship of fiestas was more the exception than the rule during colonial times. Where it did emerge, it was not as a survival from the pre-Hispanic era, but a reaction and adaptation to a complex set of colonial political and economic circumstances. A transformation in the structure of the hierarchy occurred when civil and cofradia offices were fused into a unified ladder of cargos. Prior to this time, the civil hierarchy was not overtly concerned with religious ritual; the cofradias were, but they were not part of the hierarchy. The formation of a civil-religious cargo system seems to have occurred with the shift from collective to individual sponsorship of religious fiestas, although there is some evidence of cofradia officers being elected to civil posts in Michoacan as early as the 1640s. Together these changes give us the 19th- and 20th-century version of the cargo system so often labeled "traditional" by ethnographers.19 Cargo systems in Oaxaca were among the first to be so transformed in the late 18th century. They were responding to a dearth of cofradia property as well as the prohibition of communal support of religious fiestas by some Spanish political officials. The change must have been slow and discontinuous, however, for the 18th-century system we have described for the Zapotec Rinc6n was based squarely on the older civil model. In Jalisco, the crucial years were those between 1770 and 1850 which saw the steady erosion of cofradia property. Highland Chiapas seems to represent the late end of the continuum. Here, according to Rus and Wasserstrom (1980), the civil-religious hierarchy was stimulated in the most general sense by the commercialization of agriculture, and individual sponsorship of fiestas was primarily an introduction of parish priests. The same political and economic conditions that brought the cargo system into being and later effected its structural transformation also heavily shaped the system's functional consequences. We see the colonial civil cargo system as primarily a mechanism of expropriation of wealth and social control imposed on Indian communities by Spanish political officials with vested economic interests. It is admittedly difficult to generalize
20
from our Sierra Zapotec case study, but it would be hard to find a better example of Harris' (1964) "extractive pump." We part company with Harris, however, when it comes to locating the expropriating forces in colonial society. Our material points to the political system with its alcaldes mayores and corregidores, not the church and its parish priests. The early civil hierarchy of the Sierra Zapoteca type is best regarded as a dependent variable in a colonial stratifying process. In Oaxaca, at least, the colonial political economy acted, via the civil cargo system, to preserve distinct strata of nobles and commoners (principales and macehuales) in the Indian communities. The characteristics of these strata varied with economic and ecological circumstances. In the Zapotec Rincon they took the form of status groups. In the Valley of Oaxaca, on the other hand, the strata were more class-like and more apt to denote significant differences in wealth that were all but absent in the Sierra (Taylor 1972, Ch. 2; Chance 1981). Further research is needed in other regions to determine the precise characteristics of colonial Indian elites, but we believe that elites existed as significant entities in some form. Persisting inequality in colonial Indian communities, and the civil hierarchies that supported it, have too often been slighted in favor of a leveling hypothesis that stresses the reduction of economic and status differences. Our data suggest that not only were colonial civil hierarchies compatible with stratification (whether in terms of status or economic standing), but that they actively helped to maintain it. Our position is similar to one recently expressed by Eric Wolf (1982:146-148). While he still adheres (we think erroneously) to the view that colonial cargo systems were civil-religious hierarchies supported by individual sponsorship of fiestas, Wolf no longer maintains that they leveled wealth and promoted social balance: "The civil-religious [read: civil] hierarchies thus installed a system of elite domination within the communities, while at the same time allowing that elite to represent the community as a whole before external power holders and authorities" (Wolf 1982:148). Important changes came with the late-colonial and post-colonial shift from civil to civilreligious hierarchies based on individual sponsorship. While the expropriative aspects of the system never disappeared, the outside beneficiaries were no longer just political officials, but now priests and merchants as well. More importantly, these new cargo systems began to function also as internal redistribution mechanisms as greater numbers of individuals were compelled to finance village fiestas. This trend had the effect of diminishing the extractive functions of the system, and it is at this juncture that we can discern the beginnings of a leveling process. As pressure mounted for all families to share in the economic burdens of fiesta sponsorship and the colonial legal categories of Indian nobles and commoners were dismantled, the first casualties of the leveling process were the Indian social strata themselves. This process intensified during the 19th century, but as we have learned from ethnography, leveling was never, or at least rarely, complete. The important change was a shift in the basis of social inequality within Indian communities from the level of the stratum (classes or status groups) to those of the family and the individual. This change must be viewed as a consequence of the structural and functional transformations of the cargo system that preceded it. The changing character of cargo systems-from their early beginnings as expropriation mechanisms and devices for colonial social control to more complex systems involving redistribution and some social leveling as well-apparently intensified during the half century after national independence, from 1821 to 1870. In addition to the assault on communal and cofradia property, the end of the colonial period also signaled the end of other communal activities such as labor service and collective responsibility for the payment of tribute, and an end to the colonial legal definition of Indian in terms of membership in an Indian village. To survive as communities-and some did not-these villages had to find
21
different forms and ideologies to meet these circumstances. And there were other new insecurities. Political turmoil, the creation of district governments administered by jefes politicos, the growth of haciendas, and expansion of the market economy in some regions turned some villages more in upon themselves while opening others to wider influences from outside. In either case, the outside world impinged in new and unsettling ways. Property was increasingly privatized, peasant lands were alienated to outsiders, and local controls were challenged. Fewer priests were trained and fewer spent their energies in rural parishes as the issues of the Reform heated up. In absentia, the parish priests lost their key role as the indispensable brokers between the villagers and the larger society. It became clearer to villagers that the Church was not the priest, it was the faithful, the people. In this period after Independence, villages may have had greater leeway to reconstitute their ceremonial organizations and express religion in their own terms. Cargo systems from this time forward appear to be more inward-looking than their predecessors, more involved with internal ritual affairs and less concerned than before with representing the community to the outside.20 The modern civil-religious hierarchy in peasant villages, then, is more a product of encroachments and challenges of the 19th century than a colonial adjustment that crystallized in the early period of Spanish-Indian contact. But let us not forget that the system we call "modern" is what DeWalt (1975:90) and many others refer to as "traditional." As we indicated earlier, today's cargo systems are changing in new and different ways, but this is another topic and lies beyond the scope of this paper. We believe, nonetheless, that the historical analysis offered here sheds some light on the interpretive problems that continue to surface in the ethnographic studies. Either/orapproaches-does the cargo system level or stratify, expropriate or redistributedo not capture the complexity of the institution. When we look at the cargo system more as a process than a category, we find that important changes of function have occurred and that these have been tied to other equally important changes in structure. Variation in time is just as significant as variation in space. Both appear to be greater than we thought just a few years ago.
notes
Acknowledgments. Chance wishes to thank the National Science Foundation for supporting his research in Oaxaca with grant BNS76-81260. Taylor's research in Jalisco was made possible by a
and the Social Science Research MemorialFoundation fellowshipfrom the JohnSimonGuggenheim

Council. We also thank Pedro Carrasco and this journal's anonymous readers for their comments on the initial draft of this essay. We alone, of course, are responsible for any shortcomings that remain. An abbreviated preliminary draft of this paper was read at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Chicago, Illinois, November 16-20, 1983. 1 Taylor's research has concentrated on Jalisco, central Mexico, and the Valley of Oaxaca. His material comes from the Cathedral Archive of Guadalajara (CAAG),the Audiencia de la Nueva Galicia Archive (AJANG)in the Biblioteca del Estado de Jalisco (BEJ)in Guadalajara, the Archivo Municipal de Acatlan de Juarez in the Archivo Hist6rico de Jalisco (AMAJ),the Archivo General de la Naci6n (AGN) in Mexico City, and the Archivo General de Indias (AGI) in Seville. Chance's work on the Sierra Zapoteca is based on documentation from the AGN, AGI, and especially the Archivo del Juzgado de Villa Alta, Oaxaca (AJVA).Citations for all unpublished archival sources are given in the text of the paper and in the notes. Published documents cited in the text are listed in the References Cited. 2 In his 1975 article Carrasco does not postulate the existence of a cargo or ladder system during the early colonial period. Presumably, it developed in later years. In the conclusion to the present paper we suggest the hypothesis that a civil cargo system existed in many Mesoamerican communities by the late 16th century. 3 John D. Early (1983) has recently attempted to do for the highland Maya region what Carrasco (1961) did for central Mexico. In our opinion, Early's treatment of pre-Hispanic antecedents displays many of the same problems as Carrasco's. We do not think Early's data (limited to seven published chronicles) support his conclusion that "Ethnohistorical materials show that the hierarchy has deep roots in the pre-Columbian past and that it is not a later colonial or national creation" (Early1983:200).
22
Not only is it desirable to distinguish between ethnic and linguistic units-such as Aztecs, Zapotecs, and Mixtecs-but also between different types and sizes of communities. The "Aztec model" has always been weighted in favor of the atypical city of Tenochtitlan. Especially where sociopolitical organization is concerned, it would be inappropriate to generalize or extrapolate from a large capital city to smaller rural communities, regardless of the ethnic or cultural affiliations involved. 5Further evidence that most cofradias were formally constituted after 1580 may be found in the Relaciones Geograficas of the late 1570s where very few cofradias or other religious endowments were reported for Indian pueblos (PNE IV, VI). Under sections 36-37, the various reports specify no hospitals, cofradias, or endowments or they ignore these subjects altogether. There were exceptions such as Zacoalco with its hospital in the 1550s (Ricard 1933:156-157), Amatitlan in the jurisdiction of Sayula, Jalisco with "a great sum of pesos" and sheep and wool held by the Indian hospital in the late 16th century (CAAG Cofradias 1594) and the hospital-villages founded by Vasco de Quiroga in the 1 530s. 6 More description and documentation of Jalisco cofradias during the colonial period can be found in Taylor (1983). Archival references for specific information on colonial cofradias in Jalisco in our essay appear in Taylor (1983) except where citations are inserted in the text. 7 The Jalisco Indians in question were known as the Caxcanes, Tecos, and Cocas. See map facing p. 26 of L6pez Portillo y Weber (1976). 8 Gibson 1964:131. Sponsorship by all cofradia members and from alms was a common pattern in Spanish sodalities of late colonial Mexico, for example, Bancroft LibraryM-M 1760, account books of the Spanish cofradia of the Santissimo Sacramento and the Immaculate Conception from April 1776 to December 1777. 9 AJVACivil 1793-1840, exp. 43. The mayordomo for four annual fiestas of San Crist6bal Lachirioag, Oaxaca, clearly had served for more than one year. 10 Based on ten cases from CAAG Cofradias and AGI Audiencia de Guadalajara 352. 11 These various uses of cofradia income are documented in CAAG Cofradias (for example, 11 November 1690, bishop's investigation in which the mayordomo of Tizapan admitted to selling 37 bulls to pay for a trip by officials of the pueblo to Patzcuaro to get copies of land titles for litigation; 3 March 1765 letter of curate Pablo Miguel de Quitano of Santa Fe concerning Indians paying tribute with cofradia funds and buying liquor and eating cofradia meat on Friday; bundle of Tlajomulco cofradia records, 25 March 1834, curate of Caxititlan complained that mayordomos had taken over the cofradia property as their own) and AGI Audiencia de Guadalajara 352, cura of Chapala, Francisco Pintado, against Indians selling cofradia animals to pay their tribute. 12 CAAG Cofradias, 22 February1792, Jose Antonio Gonzalez de Hermosillo, cura of Tabasco, said that the mayordomo of the local cofradia, with the Indian alcalde's permission, was distributing cattle among members of the pueblo; 1683, cura of Ameca, Juan de Tapia reported in a letter to the bishop that the Indians have taken possession of 400 oxen belonging to the cofradia. 13 The remainder of this section is based on Chance (1983), which may be consulted for further details. The data come primarily from a group of 30 18th-century lawsuits in the AGN and AJVA. See Chance (1978) for an inventory of the colonial holdings of the AJVA. 14 The communities are Santa Maria Lachichina, Santiago Lalopa, San Juan Yae, Santiago Yagallo, San Juan Yagila, and Santa Maria Yaviche. 15 Preliminary evidence for central Jalisco also indicates that the principal group in some communities was defined mainly by service in elected civil posts. In 1788 the Audiencia of Nueva Galicia noted that the principales were confined to men who were past holders of civil offices. (Moscoso MS [a four-volume digest of laws and verdicts of the Audiencia de la Nueva Galicia in the late 18th century, located in the manuscript division of the Biblioteca del Estado de Jalisco, Guadalajara], vol. 1, fols. 292 ff.). 16 It was apparently not unusual for cargo holders in western Mexico in the late colonial period to incur ritual expenditures. Sepulveda y H. (1974:59) notes that civil posts in the Lake Patzcuaro area of Michoacan did require substantial expenditures of their holders. Another record from Jalisco in 1817 makes it clear that civil office ordinarily was not for subsistence farmers: the Indian alcalde of Amatitlan, Quirino de Hijar, reportedly had to be assisted in his duties because of his poverty (AJANG Criminal, bundle labeled 1818, legajo 4, exp. 63). 17 For details on civil cargos in two modern Rinc6n villages, see Nader (1964). 18 Divisions of community lands are documented in AMAJ Libro de Titulos de Tierras, 1827-34, for Acatlan de Juarez and Tizapanito, BEJ Moscoso legajos, vol. 1, Cuquio, 1791; and Col. de acuerdos 1849-80, vol. 1: 19, 55, 66, 67, 103-114, 205 for various Jalisco communities between 1824 and 1849. 19 We are not claiming that all religious celebrations were incorporated into cargo systems through individual sponsorship, nor do we wish to imply that individual sponsorship became the only method of financing fiestas. A number of variations are, of course, possible. For example, Phil C. Weigand (personal communication) points out that the Huichol in Jalisco have celebrated two kinds of Catholic fiestas since at least the early 19th century. One type is sponsored by individuals and is very much a
23
part of the community cargo system. The other type is communally sponsored and not part of the cargo system. Surely other examples could be brought forward, especially of individual sponsorship of neighborhood (barrio) religious activities. Whether these barrio activities were connected to a cargo system remains to be seen. It may also be useful to distinguish between community and private cofradias, as Early (1983:193) has done. Private cofradias are founded and administered by individual families and are not related to community civil-religious hierarchies. We have not dealt with private cofradias in this paper. 20 This is especially true today in communities where titles of former civil offices are now applied to religious offices. In these cases, the civil side of the hierarchy has usually atrophied because of new structures imposed by national governments (Carrasco 1952:30; Cancian 1967:284).
references
cited
Note: See Note 1 for a list of the archival repositories for unpublished documents cited in the text. Published documents cited are listed below. Aguirre Beltran, Gonzalo 1967 Regiones de refugio: el desarrollo de la comunidad y el proceso dominical en mestizo America. Mexico City: Instituto Indigenista Interamericano. Ediciones Especiales 46. Arnaldo y Sassi, Francisco 1982 Demarcaci6n y descripci6n de Michoacan (1649). Bibliotheca Americana 1(1):61-204. Brooks, Francis Joseph 1976 Parish and Cofradia in Eighteenth-Century Mexico. Ph.D. dissertation. Department of History, Princeton University. Bunzel, Ruth 1952 Chichicastenango: A Guatemalan Village. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Camara, Fernando 1952 Religious and Political Organization. In Heritage of Conquest. Sol Tax, ed. pp. 142-173. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Cancian, Frank 1965 Economics and Prestige in a Maya Community. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1967 Political and Religious Organization. In Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 6, Robert Wauchope, gen. ed., pp. 283-298. Austin: University of Texas Press. Carrasco, Pedro 1952 Tarascan Folk Religion: An Analysis of Economic, Social, and Religious Interactions. Middle American Research Institute, Publication 17. New Orleans: Tulane University. 1961 The Civil-Religious Hierarchy in Mesoamerican Communities: Pre-Spanish Background and Colonial Development. American Anthropologist 63:483-497. 1975 La transformaci6n de la cultura indigena durante la colonia. Historia Mexicana 25:175-203. 1976 El catolicismo popular de los tarascos. Mexico City: SEP-Setentas. Chance, John K. 1978 Indice del archivo del Juzgado de Villa Alta, Oaxaca: Epoca colonial. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Publications in Anthropology 21. 1981 Capitalism and Inequality Among the Colonial Zapotecs of Oaxaca: The Valley and the Rincon Compared. Paper read at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Los Angeles, December 2-6. 1983 Social Stratification and the Civil Cargo System Among the Rinc6n Zapotecs of Oaxaca: The Late Colonial Period. In Current Themes in Colonial Historiography: Essays in Honor of Charles Gibson. Richard L. Garner and William B. Taylor, eds. Bibliotheca Americana 1(3):204-230. in press Colonial Ethnohistory of Oaxaca. In Colonial Ethnohistory. Ronald Spores, ed. Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 3. Victoria Reifler Bricker, gen. ed. Austin: University of Texas Press. Chavez Orozco, Luis 1934 Documentos para la historia econ6mica de Mexico, Vol. 5. Las cajas de comunidades indigenas de la Nueva Espaha. Mexico City: mimeo. Chick, Garry E. 1980 Concept and Behavior in a Tlaxcalan Religious Officeholding System. Ph.D. dissertation. Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh. Codice franciscano: siglo XVI. 1941 Mexico City: Chavez Hayhoe. Coe, Michael D. 1965 A Model of Ancient Community Structure in the Maya Lowlands. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 21:97-114. Colecci6n de acuerdos, 6rdenes, y decretos sobre tierras, casas y solares de los indigenas, bienes de sus comunidades y fundos legales de los pueblos del estado de Jalisco (title varies). 5 vols.
24
1849-80 Guadalajara: Imprenta del Gobierno del Estado (vol. 1), Tip. de J. M. Brambila (vols. 2 and 3), Tip. de S. Banda (vols. 4 and 5). De la Torre Villar, Ernesto 1967 Algunos aspectos acerca de las cofradias y la propiedad territorial en Michoacan. Jahrbuch fur Geschichte von Staat, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Lateinamerikas 4:410-439. DeWalt, Billie R. 1975 Changes in the Cargo Systems of Mesoamerica. Anthropological Quarterly 48:87-105. Diener, Paul 1978 The Tears of St. Anthony: Ritual and Revolution in Eastern Guatemala. Latin American Perspectives 5:92-116. Dow, James 1977 Religion in the Organization of a Mexican Peasant Economy. In Peasant Livelihood: Studies in Economic Anthropology and Cultural Ecology. Rhoda Halperin and James Dow, eds. pp. 215-226. New York: St. Martin's Dublan, Manuel and Jose Maria Lozano, comps. 1876-1910 Legislaci6n mexicana o colecci6n completa de las disposiciones legislativas espedidas desde la independencia de la rep6blica. 44 vols. Mexico City: Dublan y Lozano, Hijos. Early, John D. 1983 Some Ethnographic Implications of an Ethnohistorical Perspective on the Civil-Religious Hierarchy Among the Highland Maya. Ethnohistory 30:185-202. Friedlander, Judith 1981 The Secularization of the Cargo System: An Example from Post-Revolutionary Central Mexico. Latin American Research Review 16:132-143. Gibson, Charles 1964 The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Greenberg, James B. 1981 Santiago's Sword. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hamnett, Brian R. 1971 Politics and Trade in Southern Mexico, 1750-1821. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harris, Marvin 1964 Patterns of Race in the Americas. New York: Walker and Company. Haviland, William A. 1966 Social Integration and the Classic Maya. American Antiquity 31:625-631. Henderson, John S. 1981 The World of the Ancient Maya. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Jones, Grant D. 1981 Symbolic Dramas of Ethnic Stratification: The Yucatecan Fiesta System on a Colonial Frontier. University of Oklahoma Papers in Anthropology 22(1):131-155. Lopez Portillo y Weber, Jose 1976 La conquista de la Nueva Galicia. facsimile edition. Guadalajara: Instituto Jaliciense de Antropologia e Historia. Nader, Laura 1964 Talea and Juquila: A Comparison of Zapotec Social Organization. University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 48(3):195-296. Nash, Manning 1958 Political Relations in Guatemala. Social and Economic Studies 7:65-75. Nutini, Hugo and Betty Bell 1980 Ritual Kinship: The Structure and Historical Development of the Compadrazgo System in Rural Tlaxcala. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Papeles de la Nueva EspaNa(PNE),Vols. IV and VI 1905 Madrid: Est. Tipografico "Sucesores de Rivadeneyra." Perez-Rocha, Emma 1978 Mayordomias y cofradias del pueblo de Tacuba en el siglo XVIII.Estudios de historia novohispana 6:119-132. Mexico City: UNAM, Instituto de Investigaciones Hist6ricas Price, Barbara J. 1974 The Burden of the Cargo: Ethnographical Models and Archaeological Inference. In Mesoamerican Archaeology: New Approaches. Norman Hammond, ed. pp. 445-465. Austin: University of Texas Press. Rathje, William L. 1970 Socio-Political Implications of Lowland Maya Burials: Methodology and Tentative Hypothses. World Archaeology 1:359-374. Ricard, Robert 1933 La conquete spirituelle du Mexique. Essai sur I'apostat et les m6thodes missionaires des ordres mendiants en Nouvelle Espagne, de 1523-1524 a 1572. Paris: Universite de Paris, Institut d'Ethnologie, Travaux et Memoires 20.
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Rus, Jan and Robert Wasserstrom 1980 Civil-Religious Hierarchies in Central Chiapas: A Critical Perspective. American Ethnologist 7:466-478. Ruz Lhuillier, Alberto 1964 Aristocracia o democracia entre los antiguos mayas? Anales de Antropologia 1:63-75. Mexico City. Sep6lveda y H., Maria Teresa 1974 Los cargos politicos y religiosos en la regi6n del Lago de Patzcuaro. Mexico City: INAH, Museo Nacional de Antropologia, Colecci6n Cientifica 19. Slade, Doren L. 1973 The Mayordomos of San Mateo: Political Economy of a Religious System. Ph.D. dissertation. Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh. Smith, Waldemar R. 1977 The Fiesta System and Economic Change. New York: Columbia University Press. Spores, Ronald 1976 La estratificaci6n social en la antigua sociedad mixteca. In Estratificaci6n social en la Mesoamerica prehispanica. Pedro Carrasco et al., eds. pp. 207-220. Mexico City: SEP-INAH. Tax, Sol 1937 The Municipios of the Midwestern Highlands of Guatemala. American Anthropologist 39: 423-444. Taylor, William B. 1972 Landlord and Peasant in Colonial Oaxaca. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1983 Indian Pueblos of Central Jalisco on the Eve of Independence. In Current Themes in Colonial Historiography: Essays in Honor of Charles Gibson. Richard L. Garner and William B. Taylor, eds. Bibliotheca Americana 1(3):231-272. Tello, Fr. Antonio 1942-45 Cr6nica miscelanea de la sancta provincia de Xalisco. 4 vols. Guadalajara: Editorial Font. Vetancurt, Agustin de 1961 Teatro mexicano. Descripci6n breve de los svcessos exemplares, hist6ricos, politicos, militares, y religiosos del nuevo mundo occidental de las Indias. 3 vols. Mexico City: Porrua. Vogt, Evon Z. 1966 Some Implications of Zinacantan Social Structure for the Study of the Ancient Maya. In Ancient Mesoamerica: Selected Readings. John A. Graham, ed. pp. 176-188. Palo Alto, CA: Peek Publications. Wagley, Charles 1949 The Social and Religious Life of a Guatemalan Village. Menasha, WI: American Anthropological Association Memoir 71. Warren, J. Benedict and Robert A. Staley in press Socio-Religious Organization in Early Colonial Michoacan (1522-1700). In Colonial Ethnohistory. Ronald Spores, ed. Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 3. Victoria Reifler Bricker, gen. ed. Austin: University of Texas Press. Wasserstrom, Robert 1978 The Exchange of Saints in Zinacantan: The Socioeconomic Bases of Religious Change in Southern Mexico. Ethnology 17:197-210. Whitecotton, Joseph W. 1977 The Zapotecs: Princes, Priests, and Peasants. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. Wolf, Eric R. 1959 Sons of the Shaking Earth. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1982 Europe and the People Without History. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Submitted 10 April 1984 Accepted 23 May 1984 Final revisions received 1 August 1984
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Cofradías and Cargos An Historical Perspective On The Mesoamerican Civil-Religious

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Cofradas and Cargos: An Historical Perspective on the Mesoamerican Civil-Religious Hierarchy Author(s): John K. Chance and William B.

cofradias and cargos: an historical perspective on the Mesoamerican civil-religious hierarchy

JOHN K. CHANCE- University of Denver WILLIAMB. TAYLOR-University of Virginia

origins of the cargo system

origins of the cargo system

origins of the cargo system

origins of the cargo system

origins of the cargo system

origins of the cargo system

origins of the cargo system

colonial civil cargos

origins of the cargo system

transformation in the 19th century

origins of the cargo system

origins of the cargo system

discussion and conclusions

origins of the cargo system

and the Social Science Research MemorialFoundation fellowshipfrom the JohnSimonGuggenheim

origins of the cargo system

origins of the cargo system

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