DIÁLOGO CON LOS PROFESORES, Y SUS SENTIRES EN EL TERRITORIO

The situation concerning political office-holders at Santiago Apoala during initial contact in 2002 was markedly different. Municipal elections had just been held, during which consider- able differences of opinion surfaced that centered on how the leadership of the community should take form. The four separate communities that constitute the Apoala municipality could agree on how the representation of these communities in the municipal authorities should be settled. In particular one of the outlying communities cherished a desire for more influence in the political authority of Apoala, and refused to acknowledge the outcome of the election. For this reason, the initial effort for a participatory project in archaeology did not come from the political office-holders, but rather from an inhabitant of Apoala who had not held any posi- tion of authority in recent years. He was, however, an older individual with a corresponding social position in the community.2 _{For several years, he had served in the municipal palace,}

climbing the ladder of social and political responsibility until eventually serving as Municipal President. In addition, he had pursued a scholarly career and established himself in Apoala and wider Oaxaca as an intellectual authority on the study of Mixtec language and history. Both characteristics made him a potentially valuable broker in establishing partnership with the cur- rent political authorities. His professional occupation as a linguist of the Mixtec language and his personal interest in Mixtec regional history, exemplifies him as someone who consciously nurtures pride in his place of origin, and Santiago Apoala was viewed by him as a particularly 2 Having been actively engaged with the study of the Mixtec language, he is a central figure in the revalorising

important place of origin; one that transcended the local sphere and filled a role as a cultural place of origin on a regional level.

This person initially introduced me and the other project members to the town of Apoala and he introduced us to the political office-holders. Due to the abovementioned election prob- lems, the political office was not held by local representatives at the time of our initial arrival; only an interim administrator (administrador) was present. The constitutional authority tem- porarily granted to him by the state government was not accepted by the majority of the com- munity, not only because he was not from Apoala or even the Mixtec region, but perhaps more determining, his political presence was not wanted in Apoala. Even though people certainly treated him with the respect that the social role of administrador entails, he was viewed as the materialization of the political failure in Apoala at that time.

Contrary to the Municipal President of Tilantongo, I already had been somewhat acquaint- ed with our above mentioned Apoala partner since our professional paths had crossed in the past. This obviously facilitated communication with him, and similarly enabled him to express his desires more candidly toward the project members. A downside was that, it also reinforced distrust toward him from other Apoala residents who, because of his opportunity to pursue further studies outside the community, had given him a negative cultural identity of a ‘know- it-all’ who had ‘abandoned’ the community to go and live in Oaxaca-City. The latter fact is an often recurrent reason in the Mixtec region for speaking negatively about a person, since it is perceived as deserting the community and responsibilities it entails. Moreover, popular opinion tends to regard this moving away from the community as a choice made possible by financial gains; gains most likely originating, it is inferred, from self-enrichment during the period of holding political office. Naturally, this was never expressed as detailed as this toward me or any of the project members, but it was a sentiment that clearly hovered under the surface of conversations with several Apoala inhabitants. These conversations habitually started out by stating the significant contributions that he had made to knowledge about Apoala history and culture, but at the same time there often were slight reservations noticeable when he and his role in initiating the archaeological project came up in discussions.

The initial meetings with the interim administrator proved two-sided. On the one hand, we were able to express our plans with him fairly directly: He resided in Oaxaca City; worked together with non-Apoala residents more often than not, and at the same time had had more exposure to archaeology in the past. This was experienced by us as easing the communication in relation to, for example, certain technical elements of what we were proposing to incorporate in the project. On the other hand, he also left everything entirely up to us and preferred to serve occasionally as a mediating element between us and the inhabitants. Even though he was the official holder of power, through his outsider status in the community, he effectively had

little directive or legitimating authority.3 _{There did not seem to be much more than a ‘formal’}

collaboration with the municipal authorities at the outset of the project; it was in fact one of individuals.

The introductory process in Santiago Apoala and the INAH role therein, was marked by the out of the ordinary opposition between the local Apoala secondary political office-holders on the one side, and the interim administrator and the INAH official on the other. The latter two had either had previous acquaintance or were connected socially based on their mutual place of residence in the state capital. This complicated matters during the negotiation noticeably. When we had our first introductory meeting at the municipal palace, the friendly greeting with the administrator stood out immediately. Up to that moment, we had not informed ourselves sufficiently on the political situation in Apoala, but this meeting left no doubt that there was a strong division between the administrator and his local auxiliary municipal staff. While we entered the meeting anticipating a possible long introductory explanation on our professional backgrounds and our goals for this project, the meeting actually diverged in a different direc- tion. The INAH official did not show his badge, nor did he expound on the legal parameters of archaeological patrimony and registration thereof, like happened in Tilantongo. Instead he joked with the office-holders (predominantly through the administrator) and enthusiastically introduced us to them. The difference to Tilantongo was stark; no stern faces, formal rhetoric and verbal emphasis on restrictions here.

Upon this first meeting with the administrator and some inhabitants, we experienced him to be rather disconnected from the specifics of Apoala as a community. He was there to do what he was assigned by the state government to do, which was to temporarily oversee municipal governance. Arguably, his superiors in Oaxaca City could just as well have positioned him in an entirely different community, and it would not have mattered to him. This made him a difficult actor in the collaboration with Apoala; one that cooperated well (in terms of ‘easing the way’), but partnered much less so.

Initial contact with the Apoala community thus was grounded in a personal initiative of a community-member. Using his social role as a senior authority, he placed the importance of the archaeological record on the municipal agenda and proposed collaboration with our project team, based on his previous knowledge of us. The extraordinary impasse that the municipal authorities found itself in at the time, made for a tempered initial enthusiasm from the com- munity at large.

As one of the identified toponyms in the corpus of Mixtec pre-colonial pictorial docu- ments, Apoala features as the place of origin in Mixtec narratives and as the ascription of this 3 The term ‘outsider’ is used in this chapter in combination with ‘insider’, wherein the former describes a person who is perceived not to belong to a group of persons, and the latter is a person that does belong to a given group. These groups can take any size and form, and are not to be equated with the concept of ‘indigenous group’, which is frequently regarded as a derogatory description for indigenous peoples.

cardinal role in present-day Mixtec oral and pre-colonial painted narratives provided us with a suitable historical counterpart to the Tilantongo project. In contrast, the interest expressed by the authorities leaned much more towards cultural heritage management in relation to the tourism that frequented Apoala and its surrounding landscape. Even though this was not in direct relation to the historical reasons of interest, this proved for us to be a welcome asset to the activities to be developed. Since it fell within the INAH parameters of registration and protection, Apoala was ideal for the implementation of effective protection and subsequent knowledge diffusion (the third INAH parameter). It became clear that interests for collabora- tion between Tilantongo and Apoala respectively, and our project team were never equal and at times opposed, but willingness to find mutually reinforcing emphases in the research design in the end enabled the project to take shape in both communities.

5.2.1.4 Summary

The issue of power turned out to be paramount in participatory efforts in Tilantongo and Apoala. Although different in its manifestations, political office-holders as well as INAH and the project team held particular power agendas, some of which were made explicit (such as in the case of the INAH representative), others were negotiated implicitly (such as in the case of us, and the local authorities). The aspect of power has a long history in archaeology, and goes back to the origins of the discipline itself, and needs not be expounded here in detail (see McLaughlin 1998 for an overview in US archaeology). The manifestations of power, however, in these two research project were not exclusively focused on the territoriality of archaeological sites, as it is in many existing examples, but rather on the personal power agendas. From an early stage onward these implicit power struggles over the shaping of the participation had their effect on the mutual trust between the partners, essential for a truly successful partnership. The triangle of directive power described above was not intended however, to be the main theatre of communication in these participations; my conviction at the outset of the project was to involve what I regarded as the ‘essence’ of the community itself: the individual stakeholders who owned and were knowledgeable of the local terrains.