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A Half-Century of Field Research in Tzintzuntzan, Mexico: A Personal View

George M. Foster (University of California at Berkeley; Professor emeritus)

In earlier statements (cf. Foster 1967), I have described Tzintzuntzan as a “peasant” community, using the term in the standard anthropological sense of a “part society” existing in a symbiotic relationship with urban centers, where the presence of the state is manifest in political domination of rural communities.  Marginality has been noted as one of the primary characteristics of peasants, who are seen as psychologically isolated from a culturally distant and little understood world.  In Tzintzuntzan, throughout its colonial history, and until about 1965, the gap between city and village in almost all aspects of life – occupation, education, clothing, access to health care, and to news – was very real.  Today, this is no longer the case.  By no stretch of the imagination can the villagers be described as “isolated” peasants.  Table l above indicates how the standard of living has risen in recent decades.

Today, Tzintzuntzeños are best described as Mexicans who reside in a rural area which is itself an urban hinterland for the nearby city of Pátzcuaro, for the state capital Morelia, for the national capital Mexico City, and for diverse metropolitan areas in the United States.  More and more, the residents of Tzintzuntzan are like their urban compatriots: their schooling is based on curricula set by the national government, they have access to the same kind of medical care (although in lesser degree, and often at greater cost), they drive the same motor vehicles, they watch the same television programs, they root for the same national sports teams, and they hold similar hopes for their children’s future.  Some anthropologists have used the expression “post-peasant” to describe communities like Tzintzuntzan.  The term is awkward, but I know of no better one.  In any event, if we can extrapolate Tzintzuntzan’s transformation during the past generation to the rest of the world, the term “peasant” is about to join “feudal” as appropriate only to historical discussions.

HYPOTHESIS FORMULATION

What theoretical or other considerations have guided me in asking questions and gathering data?  Why have I emphasized some areas, and perhaps neglected others?  Formulation of hypotheses in my office, to be tested by data specifically gathered to test these hypotheses, has played a very minor role in guiding my work.  This is not to say that I work without a sense of problem. When I returned in 1959, I assumed – with the “restudy” model in mind – that the principal justification for continued research was to exploit a detailed cultural baseline to measure subsequent developments to learn more about processes of change.  Consequently, I spent much time identifying innovators and noting how – in education, travel experience, work, and the like – they differed from less innovative personalities.  I have maintained this interest and, in addition to systematic updating of censuses, vital statistics, and similar data, I have taken pains to note the growing numbers of young people who leave the village to continue higher education, the numbers and destinations of emigrants, the widespread acceptance of television, of cars and trucks, gas stoves, and other signs of “modernization.”  Emigration has, of course, become a major research topic in its own right (see Kemper, this volume).

But, as time passed, I realized that the original Tzintzuntzan research barely scratched the surface, and that in all areas of life there was still much to be learned.  As a student of Kroeber and Lowie at the University of California (Berkeley), I was taught that all forms of behavior, all data, have meaning, and that they are relevant to interpretation and explanation, even if this relevance is not apparent at the time they are noted or recorded.

Consequently, I have been happy in Tzintzuntzan to continue with my earliest research habits of recording as many data as possible on everything that occurs to me.  When I become aware of data “out there,” I want them, even if I have no plans for their immediate use, and even knowing that their real significance may never be revealed to me.  I began recording dreams, for example, quite by accident.  One day a neighbor told a complex and colorful dream he had had the night before, and it dawned on me that a collection of dreams would constitute a rich lode of information about many aspects of village life.  It was not a topic that had previously interested me, and I felt deficient in the training in psychology necessary for the interpretation of dreams.  Still, I felt that through content analysis I should be able to learn a good deal about personality, world view, and perhaps other things.  So, without definite plans, I plunged into the task, asking friends to tell me their dreams.  I simply assumed that I was a sufficiently good anthropologist to be able to draw something meaningful – to recognize basic patterns – from a sizable collection of dreams.  The result was “Dreams, Character, and Cognitive Orientation in Tzintzuntzan” (Foster 1973).  Recording of 22 TAT protocols came about in a similar, largely unplanned, fashion.  Monograph-length treatment of these data remains to be done, almost certainly by someone else.

The amassing of data alone, no matter how detailed, does not in itself lead to important theoretical formulations.  Something more is needed.  In reflecting on the origins of my theoretical hunches, I am impressed by the way in which anomalies in my data have been thrown into relief by chance observations, leading me to formulate new interpretations.  Thomas Kuhn’s paradigmatic model, which stresses the importance of anomaly in scientific breakthroughs, is relevant here.  “Discovery,” he writes, “commences with the awareness of anomaly, i.e., with the recognition that nature has somehow violated the paradigm-induced expectations that govern normal science” (Kuhn 1962:52).  In my case, this awareness has been triggered by serendipitous – i.e., lucky, unplanned – observations.  Long ago, the sociologist Robert Merton recognized the “serendipity component” in qualitative research, a pattern that “involves the unanticipated, anomalous and strategic datum which exerts pressure upon the investigator for a new direction of inquiry which extends theory” (Merton 1948:506).  “An unexpected and anomalous finding,” he continues, “elicited the investigator’s curiosity, and conducted him along an unpremeditated by-path which led to a fresh hypothesis” (1948:509).  I will illustrate the role played by serendipitous observations in clarifying anomalous data in my research with several examples.

l) While doing doctoral research among the Popoluca Indians of southern Veracruz State in 1940-1941, I was intrigued to note that travelers – Indians and mestizos alike – when approaching each other on a jungle trail, would greet one another from a distance with adiós (“good-bye”) rather than with some form of “hello.”  Subsequently, I learned that this is a common Mexican practice, not limited to any group or geographical area.  Still, I puzzled over this anomalous (to me) linguistic form: why should “goodbye” be used as a greeting?

In Tzintzuntzan another linguistic anomaly puzzled me: why were friends, when separating, always careful to say “We will not say goodbye,” when a straight-forward “goodbye” seemed appropriate to me?  A serendipitous observation provided the key to the puzzle.  One evening I noted that Micaela, in kicking the dog out of the kitchen, addressed the animal with the respectful third person singular form.  Since children and other “social inferiors” are addressed with the informal second person singular, tú, I was again faced with an anomaly: why such courtesy to a bothersome animal?  This time something clicked: I recalled speakers addressing other adults whom they regarded as social inferiors with the respectful form Don (or Doña, depending on sex).  Formal address, I recognized, can be used to maintain social distance.  Earlier observations on verbal interaction, including adiós and “We will not say goodbye” quickly came to mind, and almost immediately it dawned on me that perceived and desired social relationships are expressed and manipulated through an elaborate system of verbal forms.  The dog clearly was being reminded that it was not human, and was not to take liberties in the house.  Adiós, I reasoned, is a way one conveys the message that “I see you, I respect you, I bear you no ill will, but I am busy and must be on my way; I have no time to talk.”  In contrast, “We will not say goodbye” conveys just the opposite message.  An unadorned “goodbye” sounds abrupt; it suggests that perhaps the speaker has no desire to continue the relationship.  To emphasize that the parting is not really “goodbye” counters this danger.  Within half an hour I assembled from my notes most of the illustrations found in “Speech Forms and the Perception of Social Distance” (Foster 1964a).

2) A serendipitous observation of what seemed to me to be anomalous behavior also “triggered” the line of thought that led to “Cultural Responses to Expressions of Envy in Tzintzuntzan” (Foster 1965b).  Over the years I had recorded odd bits of behavior: the universal rejection of compliments, the remojo gift given to friends by someone who acquires something new of value, the concealment of pregnancy, the bolo (copper coins thrown by the godfather to village children immediately after the baptism of an infant), and the like.  Then, on one occasion, fifty or more children came to Micaela’s house for a “school breakfast.” To my astonishment, they ate in absolute silence.  “They’re taught to eat in silence,” was Micaela’s response to my question as to why.  That children would eat noisily in a group was as astonishing to her as that they could eat quietly was to me.  Something whispered to me “envy!,” and these and other behavioral forms quickly rose to a conscious level in my mind.  I recalled how Micaela would become uneasy when, during mealtimes, we occasionally became animated in our discussion, raising our voices more than ordinarily.  “Quiet!,” Micaela would plead. “They will know on the street that we are eating.” Once, daughter Lola was dispatched outdoors to check noise levels.  Micaela breathed a sigh of relief when she returned with the report that our boisterousness could not be noted by passersby.

These forms of behavior quickly fell into what now seem like predestined places, and within an hour the paper was blocked out.  Eating in silence, I realized, and many other seemingly unrelated forms of behavior, have one important thing in common: symbolically or in fact, they are devices useful in reducing the likelihood of envy from persons not fortunate enough to have sufficient food, a new possession of value, or a healthy new descendant.

3) “The Validating Role of Humoral Theory in Traditional Spanish-American Therapeutics” (Foster 1988b) is also the product of anomaly-cum-serendipity. In conventional accounts of humoral theory the “principle of opposites” model (a metaphorically Hot remedy for an illness believed to stem from cold, or to be cold, and a metaphorically Cold remedy for a hot illness) is viewed as prescriptive, as a guide to therapy.  With this paradigm accepted by all anthropologists researching humoral medicine, the task was seen to be to determine the basis for classification of foods and remedies, and to explain away the inconsistencies that were commonplace.  Eventually the paradigm came under such strain that it was, in Kuhn’s terms, “in crisis.”  No longer was it possible to force all of the contradictory data into the prevailing prescription model.

Meanwhile, I was increasingly puzzled by two anomalies in my data.  The first was the striking differential agreement and disagreement among informants about the humoral values of herbal and other remedies.  For many common remedies informants were in unanimous or near-unanimous agreement, while for other equally common remedies they were in wide disagreement. The second, and related, anomaly was the extent to which common therapies failed to conform to the principle-of-opposites prescription.  Often, I found, they did conform, but equally often they did not.  Theory that explains only part of the time is of dubious value; it cries out for a new paradigm.

I hit upon the new paradigm one afternoon while walking the streets of Pátzcuaro, pondering the problem.  By chance, I passed by the Farmacia Moderna, its name belied by the hundred or more 19th century porcelain pharmacy jars resting on wall shelves.  Several years earlier I had recorded the labels of all jars, so I knew they represented a time when humoral remedies were establishment medicine.  But this time the significance of these museum pieces dawned on me: when patients go to pharmacies, I mused, they complain of symptoms, asking the pharmacist for something to relieve these symptoms.  They don’t say, “I’m suffering from a hot illness, please give me something Cold for it.” In other words, pharmacists (and curanderos as well) prescribe commonly-accepted remedies for well-known symptoms, without thought of humoral consistency.  Knowing I had pushed the “principle of opposites” prescriptive paradigm to the breaking point, that the accumulated inconsistencies could no longer be accommodated by it, and thinking over my data, I recalled constant question-and-answer interchanges like the following: “What is the quality of salamander?”  “Cold.”  “How do you know?”  “Because it is given to children suffering from ético (hectice fever).”  In other words, a new paradigm – validation of empirical treatments – better accounts for the humorally-inconsistent data than the prescriptive paradigm, since the anomalies created by the latter simply disappear.

4) The model of Limited Good (Foster 1965a) represents a combination of a serendipitous “trigger” and a slowly growing awareness of how behavior conforms to a cognitive outlook.  From the time of my first Tzintzuntzan work, I had speculated that the economic world view of the villagers, and perhaps that of peasants in general, was marked by what I called the “Image of the Static Economy.” The “economic pie,” I argued, quite realistically was seen as constant in size and unexpandable.  Consequently, “If someone is seen to get ahead, logically it can only be at the expense of others in the village” (Foster 1960-1961:177; see also 1961b, 1964b).  I saw the problem, however, only in economic terms.  The integrating theme of “implicit premises,” central to the complete argument, developed in 1962 during a six-month community development assignment in Northern Rhodesia [now Zambia] (Foster 1987a).  There I was struck by how different were Britishers’ assumptions about people, character, and culture from my own, and how different both of our assumptions were from those of people in Tzintzuntzan.  I began thinking about the static economy in the wider context of implicit premises, but still I did not have the final key to Limited Good.  This came – the idea was “triggered” – when I chanced to read an article by John Honigmann about a village in West Pakistan.  Three sentences in a footnote caught my eye:

One dominant element in the character structure [of the villagers]. . . . is the implicit belief that good of all kinds is limited. There is only so much respect, influence, power, and love in the world.  If another has some, then somebody is certainly deprived of that measure (Honigmann 1960:287).

This serendipitous reading of Honigmann caused all of the elements in the model (including such diverse things as treasure tales and the non-regenerative quality of blood) to fall into place.  Limited Good thus owes its formulation to three major activities or events: the slow accumulation through field research and reading about peasant economic behavior; my exposure to a drastically different culture (British colonial society) that contributed an element critical to the model; and a “trigger,” a serendipitous event, the chance reading of the published observations of a colleague.  The lessons I draw from this is that anthropologists, however strongly committed to a single community or people, should actively seek out other cross-cultural experiences as a source of pertinent ideas and that general, as well as specialized, reading is essential for the widest exposure to potential stimuli.

In other instances, I have been unable to identify the precise moment and manner in which new hypotheses or models first occurred to me beyond recognizing that masses of data slowly acquired made them possible.  The “dyadic contract” articles (Foster 1961a, 1963) are illustrative.  The ideas in the first paper developed in an unplanned fashion, as I was drawn into village reciprocity networks.  Eventually, I realized that there was a significant pattern in exchange relationships.  Only after writing the first paper did it occur to me that people interact with patrons, including supernatural beings, in essentially the same manner as with fellow villagers.

If, in 1945, I had realized that my commitment to Tzintzuntzan was to be life-long, would I have done things differently?  Are there additional kinds of data, and other approaches to gathering data, that I would have sought or used?  In hindsight, I feel fortunate that I emphasized data rather than theory in the initial study.  My regrets have to do, not with hypotheses that I failed to develop or test, but with data I failed to gather.  Theories come and go but good data are timeless, grist for the anthropologist’s mill when least expected.  And, clearly, one of the advantages of repeated visits to a research site is that, as our data accumulate and we have time to ask questions about their meanings and their anomalies, we can write with confidence on theoretical matters, as I did in my second book on Tzintzuntzan (Foster 1967, and its two updates, 1979b, 1988a).

METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEMS: THE TIME FACTOR

In carrying out research in the same community for more than half a century, I have found that models that seemed appropriate at the time the data were gathered may require renewed scrutiny when, in later decades, conditions have changed.  A second problem arising from the passage of time is that research tasks that initially seemed straightforward have become increasingly problematic.  A third time-related problem is the question of anonymity.

The Limited Good model illustrates the first point. The model is accurate, I believe, for traditional Tzintzuntzan, perhaps to about 1965, although with a decreasingly good fit during the years immediately preceding that date.  But changes in behavior, in attitudes, and above all in relations with the outside world – due particularly to radio and television, education, and emigration – have significantly modified the traditional Limited Good outlook and masked many of its manifestations that still survive.  In other words, the kinds of evidence that led to my initial formulation of the model, while by no means gone, are much less obvious than they were two generations ago.  It is possible that, had I begun my research in Tzintzuntzan in 1970, the idea of Limited Good would never have occurred to me.  It would be entirely possible for young anthropologists to study Tzintzuntzan today, search for evidence of Limited Good and, on the basis of their findings, argue that the Limited Good hypothesis is inappropriate.  To a degree they would be correct: for contemporary Tzintzuntzan, it explains behavior much less satisfactorily than for traditional Tzintzuntzan.  But such an argument, because of its lack of time depth, in no way destroys the model.  It merely confirms what we already know: world views can and do change.  A model is a function of specified factors, and if these factors change with the passage of time, the fit of the model may become less and less good.

Census taking illustrates the second point: changed conditions create anomalies that complicate research techniques.  Colleagues and I have taken six 100% censuses of the village, in 1945, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000.  Although these censuses cover a great deal of personal information and data on standards of living, I am here concerned with the single question of population: who is to be counted?  In 1945 and 1960, and to a great extent 1970, there was little problem.  People either were at home, or they were away for a predictable period of time, and it was known that they would return, or that they had emigrated and were no longer considered to be residents.  I have no difficulty in saying what the population was in 1945, 1960, and 1970.

By 1980, it was impossible to report population figures in these simplistic terms.  More and more people with lifelong ties to the community were away for long periods, their ultimate return uncertain.  How does one treat men who may spend nine months a year working in the United States, returning once a year to be at home with their wives and children?  They remain taxpayers, voters, and recognized members of the community, yet their status is quite different from that of husbands who remain in the village the year around.  Again, a large number of schoolteachers, born and raised in the village, have jobs 50 to 100 miles from Tzintzuntzan.  Many of them have built homes in the village, to which they return, almost always for long vacations, often once a month, and sometimes for weekends.  Should they be counted?  A similar pattern holds for high school and university students studying in Morelia, an hour and a half away by bus.  They move from boarding house to boarding house, or stay with relatives, but often return home on weekends, and they remain dependent on their parents for support.  And, with substantially increased migration of Tzintzuntzeños to the United States, one can never be sure as to who will be present one day and gone the next, who should be counted as a permanent emigrant, and who is likely to return.

What all of these people have in common is that they are away from the village much more than they are in it, and their eventual relationship to the community is uncertain.  In preparing for the 1980 census, we decided to deal with this residential anomaly by making two counts: a “core” population which, apart from short trips, normally resides in Tzintzuntzan, and an “extended” population of commuters and those who travel even great distances to work or study but always with the expectation of coming home.  An important criterion in determining whether persons were counted as part of the “core” population or the “extended” population was the attitude of the affected individuals and their families toward their residential situation.  This long-term trend, and the different attitudes Tzintzuntzeños have toward emigration, means that it is no longer possible to give a straightforward answer to the question, “What is the population of Tzintzuntzan?”

In this context, Table 3 presents our best estimate of the core population residing in Tzintzuntzan plus the extended population who felt that they should be included in the village count for census purposes.  The great growth of Tzintzuntzeño migration to the U.S. in the 1990s created in its wake more than 200 “empty” or “abandoned” houses. Instead of leaving a spouse and some children at home as in previous decades, during the 1990s household heads often went to el norte with as many family members as they could arrange (and afford) to take along.  Consequently, the number of persons counted in 2000 as “extended” dropped dramatically compared to 1990, when the move of many Tzintzuntzeños to the U.S. was more tentative.  This long-term trend is visible only through regular monitoring over several decades (see Kemper, in this volume).

Table 3.  Tzintzuntzan Population: 1945-2000

na =  category “not applied” to the census data

The third problem – anonymity – reflects a changing norm in ethnographic writing.  In my anthropological training, before World War II, I was taught to identify carefully informants by name and to tell something about them so that readers could evaluate their statements.  Moreover, for North American Indian tribal research – the bulk of all research being carried out by United States anthropologists at that time – clear identification of places and people was an essential part of the record.  Moreover, it was assumed that few if any informants would see, or be able to read, ethnographic accounts in which they appeared.  During the intervening years anthropologists increasingly have studied literate groups, whose members increasingly are concerned to see what the field worker has written.  Consequently, the use of pseudonyms for community and informant, both within the United States and abroad, has become standard practice, a basic precaution to protect the people concerned.

When I first wrote about Tzintzuntzan in the late 1940s, this had not yet become common practice, and it never occurred to me to conceal the true name of Tzintzuntzan, nor to use other than the real names of informants.  By the time I realized the ethical implications of my policy, it was too late to turn back.  Calling Tzintzuntzan “Tarasca” (copying Oscar Lewis, who renamed Tepoztlán “Azteca” in his later works) would have fooled no one.  Also, the villagers would have been furious. They are delighted to see my publications about Tzintzuntzan, some of which have been translated into Spanish (e.g., Foster 1972; Foster and Ospina 2000), to see their photographs, and to see their names in print.  They would feel cheated if I had to tell them, “It says ‘Informant B’; that’s really you.”  Obviously I do not use real names in every case; for example, in discussing criminal matters I change names and disguise circumstances.  But my students have told me the principal criticism of those few villagers who have browsed through my works is that I have not given them and their families sufficient exposure.

METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEMS: THE ETHNOLOGIST’S AGE

In “Encounters with Tikopia over Sixty Years,” Raymond Firth succinctly stated the essence of long-term social anthropological research: “Anthropology has changed, I have changed, and the Tikopia have changed” (Firth 1990:241).  Anthropology, he noted, had become less descriptively ethnographic than in earlier times, but he also saw signs that the discipline might “return to the notion of seeking as objective and dispassionate accounts as is possible of social institutions of people” (1990:241).

Firth also spoke of his changing statuses over the years, from young bachelor to married man, father and grandfather, moving professionally from a junior position “to one of some seniority and then one of retirement and less responsibility” (1990:241).  The bulk of Firth’s article, however, deals with sixty years of change for Tikopians, living both on and off the island.  The magnitude of these changes, and the rapidity with which they came, was certainly impossible to predict when Firth began his research on this tiny, isolated island, but they are paralleled by the changes noted by all anthropologists engaged in long-term community-based field research.  For “change,” in the broadest sense of the word – social, cultural, economic and political – is the common denominator in all longitudinal anthropological studies.

In the more than a half century I have known Tzintzuntzan, the village has changed dramatically, and the changes it has experienced have had important impacts on the research enterprise.  I, also, have changed greatly, and these changes likewise have been reflected in the research I have carried out.  I was 32 years old and only three years out of graduate school when I arrived in Tzintzuntzan.  I was young, energetic, and gung-ho, like a puppy for whom all the world is an exciting new experience.  My most recent – and perhaps last – visits to the village were at Christmas 1999 and in July 2000 when, at 86 years of age, and suffering from a debilitating neurological disease that severely limits my mobility, I felt anything but energetic and gung-ho.  The village and its people, while still interesting, failed to excite me as in earlier years.

Little by little age takes its toll.  Beginning about the time of my 80^th birthday party in 1993 in the village, I recognized that I no longer had the physical stamina to be present at all of the events – fiestas, baptisms, burials, town meetings, and the like – that I routinely would have attended in an earlier period.  It had become more difficult, too, to strike up the kinds of new friendships with younger people – the bulk of the Tzintzuntzan population – that result in rich field data.  The “young” people with whom I have most contact are, I realize, better described as middle-aged.  They are the children and grandchildren of close friends from my early years in the village, and I have kept in touch with them because these early associations have made it easy.  My age mates, too – friends for half a century – are dropping off, so that the pool of informants to whom I can easily turn is diminishing.  Even those who survive are less good informants than in earlier years; their minds wander, they forget, and they are no longer central to the life of the community.

Again, in my last years in the village I have had fewer fresh ideas and insights than formerly; the point of diminishing returns has been reached, and the “trigger” seems rusty.  This is due to at least two factors.  The first is, as just noted, decreasing stamina, a lack of energy and drive, a reduced compulsion to make sure I am seeing everything that is going on.  And the second is familiarity with the community.  I have already identified and written about some of the most striking aspects of life in the village, such as the dyadic contract, Limited Good, manipulation of social distance, envy, the validating role of humoral theory, and the like.  Does that mean that there are now fewer new themes to be found?  Are theoretical ideas to be garnered from a single community themselves a limited good, their progressive identification gradually reducing the remaining pool?  I think not.  Brandes and Kemper, certainly, have not lacked for research topics.  And Peter Cahn’s recent doctoral research on Protestant conversions in the Tzintzuntzan region has opened a vast area crying out for attention (Cahn 2001).  But I suspect that, for a single researcher, the passage of time diminishes the frequency of serendipitous observations that lead to fresh theoretical formulations.

Yet recent years have not been without great research satisfaction.  During this time I have devoted much effort to recording health and illness beliefs and practices.  Thirty years ago I thought I knew all there was to know on the subject.  In reality I knew almost nothing.  Since 1978, I have published one book (1994) and a series of papers that collectively provide the most detailed picture to date of humoral medicine in Latin America (1978, 1979a, 1981, 1982, 1984a, 1984b, 1985, 1987b, 1988b). The last two – on the origin of humoral medicine in the Americas, and on the validating (rather than the prescriptive) role of humoral theory in therapy – I consider to be among my theoretically most important papers.  Old age is a time when one learns to count blessings, and I am grateful that I have been able to continue productive field research, even though at a reduced pace as compared to earlier years.

Advancing age presents still another problem for anthropologists who have amassed a sizable corpus of field notes: what provision should we make for these materials for the time when we are no longer around to take responsibility for their safekeeping and proper use?  I am fortunate that Stanley Brandes and Robert Kemper, both of whom first went to the field with me in 1967 as students, continue a lively interest in studying and publishing on the villagers, both in and away from the community (e.g., Brandes 1968, 1979a, 1979b, 1981a, 1981b, 1983, 1984, 1988; in press; Kemper 1974, 1977, 1979a, 1979b, 1981, 1994a, 1994b, 1995, 1996a, 1996b). They expect to continue monitoring developments during their active careers.  While all my field notes (as well as personal correspondence) will ultimately go to the University of California’s Bancroft Library, the Tzintzuntzan materials will do so only when Brandes and Kemper (and perhaps their students, such as Peter Cahn) feel they no longer have an active interest in them.  Until that time, they will care for the data files, continuing to make them available to other scholars interested in Tzintzuntzan.

INTEGRATING STUDENTS AND COLLEAGUES INTO THE PROJECT

The raison d’être for beginning fieldwork in Michoacán was, of course, to train students, and those students who were with me in Tzintzuntzan during the winter and spring of 1945 all completed M.A. degrees (the highest then offered) at the National School of Anthropology.  During the twenty-year period from 1959 until my retirement in 1979, a dozen Berkeley graduate students accompanied me to the field, some more than once.  I placed most of them in nearby communities where we had easy access to each other, but where they were largely on their own.  I favored this arrangement not only because I was apprehensive about cluttering up Tzintzuntzan with outsiders (I remembered how too many students had forced our departure from Ihuatzio fifteen years earlier), but also because students enjoy having a community to themselves.  Consequently, only five spent significant amounts of time in the village, and, as matters turned out, only Kemper (1971) completed a doctoral dissertation involving Tzintzuntzan.  Brandes’ pre-dissertation Tzintzuntzan experiences, he tells me, were very helpful in the Spanish research on which his dissertation was based.  He continues to visit and do research in Tzintzuntzan and has published a critically-acclaimed book on ritual life in the village (Brandes 1988). Five more of the dozen students completed dissertations on other nearby communities, while a sixth did so on a Greek island.

My students and I never really worked on joint projects in the field, so we had no problem with integration of, or rights to, field data.  The only joint publication is Kemper and Foster (1975) and that developed as an afterthought, when we found that our independently gathered data lent themselves to a specific problem.  With all students I had a formal, written agreement that spelled out our mutual rights and expectations.  All gave me copies of their field notes.  If dealing with comparative topics where their data were pertinent, I had permission to cite their findings, with appropriate credit.  The data, however, belonged to them, and could be used in any way they wished.  Students, in turn, had full access to my files with comparable reciprocal rights.  As matters worked out, we drew very little on each other’s materials.  In more recent years, however, Brandes and Kemper (former students now become long-term colleagues) and I have freely made use of each other’s materials and expertise.

The principal “colleague” (apart from Kemper and Brandes, whose roles changed following completion of their doctoral studies) integrated into research in Tzintzuntzan has been my wife, Mary, who has been with me most of the time in Tzintzuntzan since 1958.  We have lived the same life in Tzintzuntzan, attended the same fiestas, heard the same things, and observed the same behavior.  She has noted points that have escaped me and has had access to situations from which I, as a male, have been excluded.  The discussions we have had in the field, the speculations about the significance of this or that act or event, and her perceptions as a woman have played a major role in my research and writing.  While her interests have been primarily linguistic – her doctoral dissertation, a grammar, was based on data obtained in the nearby Tarascan-speaking village of Ichupio (M. L. Foster 1969) – she has also published significant ethnographic papers on the village (e.g., M. L. Foster 1983, 1985, 1989).

I have wondered why ethnologists – markedly individualistic in their behavior – would want to undertake research in communities already apparently well-researched.  The answer, I believe, lies in the fact that many specialized topics benefit from a pre-existing data base.  In archaeological research, even the backdirt of previous excavations can sometimes yield important results with new research procedures.  So, too, in ethnological fieldwork.  Building on existing work, new researchers can make significant contributions in previously neglected cultural domains or can use new research methods to resolve old problems.  For instance, Kemper’s dissertation (1971) focused on the adaptation of Tzintzuntzeños to life in Mexico City, while Cahn’s recent dissertation (2001) sheds new light on the convergence of Evangelical Protestants and traditional Catholics in Tzintzuntzan and its region.  Brandes’ symbolic interpretation (1988) of ritual behavior and his forthcoming study of Alcoholics Anonymous (in press) likewise reveal the rich texture possible when new research begins with a solid database.

PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS WITH THE VILLAGERS

There are moral and ethical questions surrounding the relationships between anthropologists and informants that must be addressed.  Clearly, I have profited greatly from this relationship.  In a considerable measure, my reputation as an anthropologist is due to the people of Tzintzuntzan.  If the village had the equivalent of a United Crusade, it would be easy to assign royalties from books to it.  But Tzintzuntzan has no mechanism whereby money can be given for the benefit of the community at large.  I contribute substantially to such things as public lighting and school funds, and my name routinely is found on the list of contributors to any village function for which individual citizens make donations.  Each year I leave with the village priest a substantial sum of money to be distributed at his discretion among the village needy.  Altogether, my continuing contributions have far exceeded any monetary profit to me from publications.  Some people obviously have benefited more than others; others, whom I feel have little real call on my resources, have also benefited.

In a wider sense, and for the village as a whole, I think our (Kemper, Brandes and Cahn included) major impact has been to give villagers a sense of esprit that otherwise would be lacking.  Traditionally they have looked upon themselves as humble people, undervalued and ignored by their own more elevated countrymen.  Prior to our arrival, no one had shown interest in their daily lives.  The fact that we return year after year and are obviously delighted to be there has led to a feeling that Tzintzuntzan must be something special.  After all, no other Michoacán village can boast several resident anthropologists.  “Qué bueno que no nos olviden” is the standard greeting of villagers each time we return, “How nice that you don’t forget us.”  And when we leave, it is always “¿Porqué se vayan tan pronto?” (“Why are you leaving so soon?”)  The phrases are ritual, but I believe they express the feeling that the presence of el doctor, Mariquita, Roberto (Kemper), Tani (Brandes) and Pedro (Cahn) is tangible evidence that Tzintzuntzan is not an ordinary village.

IMPACT ON THE PEOPLE STUDIED

Mary’s and my impact (and that of students and colleagues) on Tzintzuntzan has been varied and significant.  I believe no one is worse off for our presence, and I know that some are better off.  A few, without our monetary intervention in medical crises, would almost certainly have died.  Although we have hired local people to help in taking censuses, we have never directly paid informants for information.  There have, however, been important material advantages for those people with whom we have worked most closely, and to whom we have felt most indebted.  These material advantages have taken the form of gifts, educational support, and even help with medical care.

The members of Doña Micaela’s family are those to whom we have been most indebted, and in order to repay them in some small measure, we have brought them as tourists to the United States, in 1976, 1979, 1984, 1987, 1990, and 1993.  On one or more of these trips they have visited my sister in Washington, D.C., my brother in San Diego, my son in Colorado, and the Kempers in Dallas.  In turn, all of these people, and their families, have visited in Tzintzuntzan.  The reactions of these visitors to what they see in the United States is always fascinating: so many American flags flying on government buildings, so few people walking in residential areas, home delivery milk bottles and newspapers lying untended on doorsteps, long distance calls so easily made from airport telephones, and the like.  Daughter Virginia found our automatic garage door opener to be the most intriguing of all: “Es muy obediente,” she said, “It’s very obedient,” just as if it were a dog obeying its master’s command.

Just as living with the members of this family in Tzintzuntzan has provided rich insights into how villagers view the world and cope with life, so does having them as guests in our home add to our understanding of how their world, for all its similarities, differs from ours.  With English-speaking guests one assumes that both they and hosts will welcome an occasional quiet hour, to read the morning newspaper or to continue with an interesting book.  This is not the case, we learned, with all “literate” people.  One morning Mary and I awakened about six-thirty to find, to our astonishment, that Micaela and her daughters were busy weeding the garden.  An important truth dawned on us: to be literate, in the strict sense of the word of being able to read and comprehend legal and commercial documents, and to write simple letters, is quite distinct from using literacy for pleasurable activities.  Action, in the form of gardening, and not reading for pleasure, seemed to them to be the appropriate early morning activity.  Micaela and her daughters are fully literate in the narrow sense of the word, but apart from a fleeting glance at a newspaper it never occurs to them to read for the sheer joy of reading, or to fill an idle hour.  Light reading is not found on their bedside tables nor is it packed in their travel luggage.

It is gratifying to make life a bit easier and more interesting – as I think we have done – for small numbers of friends.  But there are also negative aspects to a policy of substantial help given to relatively few people.  This help has affected relationships for the worse between some of the families that have benefited most from our presence, and other families that likewise would have appreciated medical, educational, and other forms of aid.  We are, after all, a limited good and our largesse, although considerable, is not inexhaustible.  Just as village families traditionally see themselves in competition for scarce “good” of all kinds, so do those who benefit, or aspire to benefit, from us see themselves as competing for our favors.  The resulting envy and jealousy are fairly well suppressed during our stays, but in at least a few instances they have resulted in strained relationships among village families.

Micaela and her family are probably the most envied people in the village.  Their remarkable economic progress since we came to live with them is seen by fellow villagers as due almost entirely to our help, a perception wide of the mark.  Nonetheless, it can be argued that, had we not come to roost with Micaela, she and the other members of her family would have more intimate ties with villagers than is now the case.  It can also be argued that there would be little difference, for other families that have made major economic progress during the same period also find themselves increasingly distant from those who have progressed less.

CONCLUSIONS

In summary, I turn to the question of why long-term research?  What can anthropology learn from it that goes beyond the results of intensive studies of a year or two?  Should all anthropologists be encouraged to continue to monitor their field sites, or are the advantages of this type of research outweighed by the costs?  The answer, obviously, depends on the interests and temperament of the individual anthropologist – as well as, perhaps, the attractiveness of the people and the natural environment.  Scudder and Colson, for example, point out that although the Middle Zambezi Valley is beautiful, Gwembe settlements along the line of rail “are not places we would choose to vacation” (Scudder and Colson 1979:251).  In contrast, Lake Pátzcuaro does not suffer by comparison to the Vale of Kashmir.

Insofar as the contributions to anthropology are concerned, I find two basic reasons to encourage long-term research.  The first is the quantity and quality of the basic data that can be obtained, and the second is the dynamic view obtained of communities impacted by national and world trends and events.  In addition to these scientific justifications there is the personal satisfaction and emotional fulfillment that comes from the relationships formed with people in an exotic society who start out as informants and gradually are transformed into close personal friends.

As to quantity and quality of data, it should be apparent that there is a direct correlation between time spent in the field and the information gathered.  In theory, three or four years of research either in one block, or spread over twenty years, should produce comparable amounts of data.  I doubt that this is true.  After some months of steady research intellectual fatigue sets in; the researcher must get away to recharge the mind’s batteries.  In my case, I have found that, after my initial 1945-1946 session, relatively short repeat visits to the field – from one to four months – made possible highly efficient use of time.  I would arrive in the field, charged up with questions and ideas that I had formulated and mulled over since my preceding trip, with the energy to work intensively until time to return home.

As pointed out above, theoretical insights do not come to me in one massive package; they develop slowly, over time, often triggered by serendipitous observations, as I turn from one theme to another.  The pattern of relatively unhurried repeat visits that has characterized my Tzintzuntzan research has vastly widened the spectrum of serendipitous behavioral situations to which I have been exposed; consequently I have written about a much wider variety of topics than would have been possible had I limited myself to one, or a few widely separated, visits.  Examples of the varied topics I have dealt with may be encountered in Foster 1960, 1966a, 1966b, 1968, 1969, 1970, and 1989, as well as Maccoby and Foster 1970.

My data are “thick.”  The patient accumulation of masses of data, the lack of a sense of urgency, the luxury of being able to hold off on a “hot” idea, secure in the knowledge that another field season will permit gathering of additional critical data – all have been advantageous to me.  Moreover, repeat visits make it possible to correct errors, which are more common in all anthropological reports than we like to believe.  One of my most blatant early errors was to describe the Hot-Cold syndrome in Tzintzuntzan as Mexican Indian in origin (Foster and Ospina 1948:51).  But after discovering Hippocratic-Galenic humoral medicine, and realizing that I was dealing with a paradigm (in Kuhn’s terms) at least 2,500 years old, I was able on return visits to gather data to provide readers with an accurate and comprehensive account of this popular medical system and to place it in historical context (Foster 1994).

With respect to the second of the two major justifications for long-term research – the dynamic view obtained of a society or community – two themes are apparent.  The first is that simply observing the magnitude of change over the period a community has been under observation reminds the researcher of the inevitably static bias of even the best classic studies, studies that portray a slice in time of a year, or two, or three.

The second theme has to do with prediction.  The observation of the behavior of the members of a community over a number of years ought to provide the insights and hypotheses necessary to predict with a fair degree of accuracy future changes.  This is a hope as yet largely unrealized.  Perhaps with a growing number of long-term studies in hand, anthropologists will do better in the future, but certainly our record to date is not impressive.  In my case, after my 1945-1946 research in Tzintzuntzan I made only a few modest predictions.  In the 1940s, process was still a topic little understood by ethnographers; I was more concerned to reconstruct the past and record the present than to tinker with the future.

In retrospect, I am relieved that I paid little attention to the future, for my major predictions turned out to be largely wrong.  In 1948, I estimated that an annual family income of U.S. $400 - $500 at 1945 price levels should “provide a reasonable standard of living in terms of local and national levels” (Foster and Ospina 1948:289).  Few families enjoyed such income at the time, and I felt that existing techniques of production made such a goal for a majority of families extremely unlikely.  I pointed out that, although increased efficiency in farming and pottery-making and distribution were possible, the cost in labor redundancy would be high.  Growing demand for labor in cities, I felt, might for a time draw off surplus rural population – as it has, in fact, done.  But, in spite of the war-time bracero program whereby Mexican men came to the United States under contract for specific periods of time, I completely failed to foresee the role legal and illegal migration ultimately would play in providing work opportunities.

To compound my failure as a prophet, in 1967 I continued to emphasize “the fundamental factors which hold back the village” (Foster 1967:350) rather than the factors favoring progress.  With respect to migration to the United States, I wrote that the 1964 termination of the bracero program surely would have deleterious effect on the community:

The end of the bracero program is almost certain to cause a major economic (and perhaps social) crisis in Tzintzuntzan, and in the thousands of similar Mexican villages which, over a twenty-year period, have grown accustomed to this outside source of aid.  Standards of living will fall, people will eat less well, new clothing will appear more rarely, and home necessities and luxuries will become scarce (Foster 1967:287-288).

All this on the eve of  Tzintzuntzan’s most dramatic rise in standards of living!

My most accurate prediction had to do with health care seeking.  In 1948 I believed that curanderos already were on their way out and that modern biomedicine would be adopted increasingly by Tzintzuntzeños.  On this point I was correct; for many years, people have preferred to consult medical doctors for illnesses deemed to be in any way serious.  Traditional curers, while still present in small numbers, play a decidedly secondary role in meeting the health needs of most people.

What conclusions about prediction can be drawn from more than fifty years of contact with Tzintzuntzan?  The most important, I believe, is that change in a twentieth-century village is intimately tied to the political, economic, and social events that occur in the country of which it is a part.  When the country prospers, the developing infrastructure provides support for local progress.  A high degree of Tzintzuntzan’s relative well-being today has depended on state and national programs: a hard-surfaced road, electricity, potable water, a sewer system, primary and secondary schools and their teachers, a health center, and much more.  The accident of geographical proximity to the United States also makes Mexico a special case in development.  Recognizing the negative as well as positive aspects of this fact, there is no doubt that legal (and illegal) employment in the United States has acted as a social and economic safety valve, relieving the pressure of a burgeoning population, and raising standards of living from remittances sent back from el norte.

Obviously, ethnologists must know a great deal more than the local picture to comprehend changes that occur in communities under their observation. What is not obvious from the macro-perspective is the behavior of individuals which, en masse, add up to change.  The reason for the shift from curanderos to physicians, for example, becomes clear only when informants tell us that they find more satisfactory results when they consult the latter.  And the patient accumulation of case studies gives insight as to why some people chose to emigrate, tentatively or permanently, and why others do not.

In the first version of this paper, I commented on the personal satisfaction and sense of fulfillment that resulted from a long-term commitment to Tzintzuntzan and its people (Foster 1979:182-183). This sense of familiarity (literally, feeling part of a family) has only grown over the passing years.  Not only did the extended Foster family come to Tzintzuntzan to celebrate my 80th birthday in 1993, we also gathered on January 5, 1995, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of my arrival in the community.  Then, on June 28, 2000, we assembled once again, this time to celebrate the long-awaited translation into Spanish of Empire’s Children: The People of Tzintzuntzan (Foster and Ospina 1948).  At an academic ceremony held at the Colegio de Michoacán in Zamora, a two-hour drive from Tzintzuntzan, the biggest round of applause came for Doña Micaela González, the 94-year-old matriarch of our Tzintzuntzan family.

The next day, many long-time Tzintzuntzan friends came to her home for a second celebration. We ate the traditional fiesta fare of pork carnitas, rice, and beans; drank our beers and soft drinks; and danced to the music of Pedro Dimas. We told stories about the people (many long deceased) staring out at us from the black-and-white photographs that grace the pages of the handsome new edition of Los Hijos del Imperio (Foster and Ospina 2000), and recalled the good times and difficult days shared throughout more than half a century.

Little did we suspect that, the very day we returned home to Berkeley, Micaela would die (of heart failure) in a Morelia hospital.  For me, the coincidence of the book publication and Micaela’s death marks the end of a long and very special era.  With the ethnological mantle passed to Kemper, Brandes, and Cahn, research in Tzintzuntzan surely will go on for decades to come, but for all those who ever knew Doña Mica it can never be quite the same.

NOTES

1.  In the first edition of this volume, under the title “Fieldwork in Tzintzuntzan: the First Thirty Years” (1979c), I related my experiences up to 1975.

2.  Were I beginning my writing on Tzintzuntzan today, I would use the word Purépecha rather than Tarascan, for that is the term the indigenous population of Michoacán uses to identify itself.  This is also the official designation employed by Mexican government agencies.  However, since the term Tarascan is much better known among historians, anthropologists, and the public at large, it seems appropriate to continue its use here.

3.  Brand settled in Quiroga with José Corona Núñez, who became a distinguished Mexican specialist on Tarascan culture and history, while the sixth student, Angélica Castro (also Mexican) elected to work in a small settlement across the northeast arm of the lake opposite Tzintzuntzan.

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