ANTH 3311 Mexico: From Conquest to Cancun

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The Compadrazgo in Urban Mexico

(Published 1982 in Anthropological Quarterly 55(1):17-30.)

Robert V. Kemper

Southern Methodist University

ABSTRACT:  This paper examines the institution of compadrazgo (co-godparenthood) in urban Mexico.  A comparative analysis of twenty-one case studies, ranging from Mexico City to such small towns as Tonalá (Jalisco), provides information on the types of (or occasions for) compadrazgo, the choice of compadres, the relative status of compadres, and the quality of inter-personal relations among compadres.  On the basis of quantitative and qualititative data derived from this comparative analysis, the author concludes that the compadrazgo flourishes in Mexican towns and cities.  Therefore, this institution should not be perceived by anthropologists as primarily associated with rural peasant communities, for it permeates all levels of Mexican society.  Moreover, the flexibility of the compadrazgo is especially compatible with the diversity of contemporary Mexican urbanization.  This article complements an earlier survey of the compadrazgo, written by Manuel Carlos, that appeared in the Anthropological Quarterly in 1973.

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As the “first distinctive aspect of Latin American social structure to be discovered by anthropologists” (Foster 1969:263), the compadrazgo¹ long has been an important topic of ethnographic research.  Until recently, however, nearly all of our knowledge about this widespread form of fictive kinship² has come from studies of small rural communities.  Indeed, as Thompson (1970:288) has suggested, the assumed relative unimportance of compadrazgo in urban settings is in some degree a consequence of the discipline’s traditional emphasis on fieldwork in villages, hamlets, and dispersed rural populations.

As more research on the compadrazgo has been done, and more urban groups studied, anthropologists have revised the initial hypothesis (Redfield 1934:65) that urbanization operates to simplify and disorganize fictive kinship relationships.  For example, rather than arguing for a degeneration of the compadrazgo in urban settings, Ravicz (1967:251) observes that it “may withstand the onslaught of modern market and secular conditions, its form signaling the absence of other systems to satisfy needs created by such conditions, as well as mirroring the nature of the needs.”  Similar views on the compadrazgo’s viability and flexibility are expressed by other recent commentators (Berruecos 1976; Carlos and Sellers 1972; Foster and Azer 1970; Nutini and Bell 1980; Thompson 1973; Wilson 1969).  Thus, although its structure, functions, and symbolism may be modified from that in the rural settings in which it was first described by anthropologists, the compadrazgo has proven to be a durable and pervasive social, economic, and religious institution.

For anthropologists interested in the social organization of Latin American cities, the compadrazgo raises two main questions: what is it like among different urban sectors and in different kinds of cities?  how does its range and variation in urban settings compare with that in rural places?

In this paper, I shall deal with these questions through a comparative analysis of twenty-one case studies which cover a broad range of Mexican cities, from the capital to small towns in Yucatán, Hidalgo, and Jalisco.  The analysis will focus on the following key characteristics of the compadrazgo: the occasions on which compadres are selected; the choice of relatives versus friends as compadres; the relative status of compadres, including the selection of neighbors or fellow workers as compadres; and the quality of interpersonal relations among compadres.

On the basis of the comparative analysis, it will be possible to develop a set of propositions regarding the characteristics of the compadrazgo in Mexican cities and to suggest how these might be tested through additional field research in other Latin American countries.

The Compadrazgo in Mexican Cities: A Comparative Analysis

The available ethnographic literature on the compadrazgo in Latin American cities is still conceptually fragmentary and geographically uneven (see Nutini and Bell 1980:405-428 for a critical survey of the largely rural compadrazgo literature).  Nevertheless, the appearance of several recent studies of social organization in Mexican cities makes it possible to assemble a set of comparative, fieldwork-based data covering large metropolitan areas, middle-sized cities, and small towns spread throughout the nation.  Mexico is an appropriate choice for such an analysis because it has been the scene of more urban studies than any other Latin American country and because it has a reasonably well developed hierarchy of urban places.  Moreover, since Mexico’s rapid urbanization has been due in considerable measure to cityward migration, its cities contain a broad range of social, economic, and ethnic groups from diverse backgrounds.

The data for the comparative analysis are derived from twenty-one ethnographic case studies of urban populations.  Eight of these groups are located in Mexico City, three in the city of Oaxaca, and rest distributed among the following cities and towns:  Monterrey (Nuevo León), Ciudad Juarez (Chihuahua), the conurbanización Coatzacoalcos-Minatitlán-Cosoleacaque (Veracruz), Uruapan (Michoacán), Querétaro (Querétaro), San Cristobal de las Casas (Chiapas), Juchitán (Oaxaca), Ticul (Yucatán), “Ciudad Industrial” (Hidalgo), and Tonalá (Jalisco).  The places range in size from Mexico City, whose population in 1980 was about 15,000,000 to Tonalá, whose population in 1960 was about 5,000.  The communities are geographically dispersed throughout Mexico and include both mestizo and indio populations.

The case studies emphasize working-class groups, but several sources also mention middle- and upper-class populations as well.  Most of the studies use neighborhoods as the unit of analysis, some deal with entire communities, still others examine migrant populations dispersed throughout a metropolitan area.  The size of the populations studied ranges from 14 families to 475 households; the number of cases of compadrazgo reported ranges from an unspecified small sample to a sample of 1,291 cases.  Appendix 1 provides detailed information on the 21 sources used in the comparative analysis.

Types of Compadrazgo in Mexican Cities

TABLE 1

TYPES OF COMPADRAZGO IN URBAN MEXICO

Urban communities studied