[Aztlan] Race and ethnicity in the past

Wed Jan 14 21:42:16 CST 2009

Just published is:

Ethnic Identity in Nahua Mesoamerica.  The View from Archaeology, Art
History, Ethnohistory, and Contemporary Ethnography.  University of Utah
Press.  $50.00

Has anyone read this?  It seems pretty topical to me and now I am going to
have to buy it and find the time to read it.  "Let's all meet back in 30
days for full reports and comments."  

Michael Smith wants to re-engage the list with substance, a good idea,
specifically this time with the matters of ethnic groups and urbanism.

About 25 years ago, in Law and Politics in Aztec Texcoco, I pointed out
that the Texcocan response to governance of multiple ethnic groups within
their domain, certainly celebrated and not hidden in pictorial documents,
was one of "legalism."  The Texcocan pictorial sources carefully record the
arrival of 15 different groups and their incorporation into the Texcocan
realm.  Attracting such groups (not just deigning to allow them entry) was
an important part of state-building.  Fifteen is a special number for the
Texcocans for ideological reasons, so there were probably actually more
than fifteen groups in that city, perhaps the second largest Aztec city,
although probably "urban" in some different ways from the exceptional case
of Tenochtitlan.  

Legalism is a very rare approach to running a legal system in terms of
worldwide comparative jurisprudence, although it is a characteristic of the
polyglot Roman Empire (and hence much of continental Europe today) and one
brief difficult period in China's history.   With legalism, legal rules are
constructed and administered so that they are applied strictly based on the
facts of the case at hand.  Precedent is of less importance, unless the
rules don't fit the facts of the case. The missionaries Motolinia and
Duran, the best ethnographers on the ground at the time, held the Texcocan
legal system in high regard and said it continued to function well for
years after the Conquest.  (Here it is important to remember that a legal
system is not just a list of rules written or copied down one time, but an
entire administrative apparatus and process, in the Texcocan case already
well over a century old, needing expert design, oversight and management. 
Also, we have very few legal cases from pre-Conquest times, so we have to
rely greatly on the reported rules, although the best evidence would be the
flow of legal cases and decisions of the time, almost certainly forever
lost.  We have to work with what we've got but it is important not to
confuse a mere list of rules with the wisdom contained in an Aztec legal
system as some have done recently in discussing Texcocan law).  

This jurisprudential approach of legalism, having defined rules and a
process known to all, seems to have been a successful way to keep order
among a variety of ethnic groups in Texcoco--and not necessarily with hard
power only, but as part of a more subtle approach similar to the soft power
or smart power now coming into use in the US dialogue on international
relations. I left some provocative challenges (or so I hoped) in my book
back then by suggesting the Texcocan legal system was more "sophisticated"
than the one in Tenochtitlan--with sophistication being a very double edged
sword.  Is sophistication just complication?  Is a sophisticated legal
system "better" than a less sophisticated one?  Is it more just?  Or just a
better means of control?  Or worse?  And from whose point of view? And in
what circumstances or in what city?  This gets into discussions and
perceptions of justice which are culturally diverse.  Yet, the Texcocoan
system was admired by the peoples of Texcoco, and that tells us something
about ethnic relations there as well as something about the statecraft of
Nezahualcoyotl who designed and set in motion the legal system--a bit more
than just writing a list of legal rules.  But my deliberate provocation has
generated no worthwhile response, other than one book reviewer long ago who
thought it important to say that the Tenochtitlan system was just as
sophisticated--missing the whole point.   The workings of the legal system
in Tenochtitlan remain frustratingly vague but legalism for social control
offenses at least (adultery, theft, drunkenness, etc) might have been a
feature of Tenochtitlan's legal system.  If everyone expects the same
treatment and if corruption is kept in check, ethnic groups could and did
live together under a single legal framework, although we have only hints
of the everyday struggles and cooperation involving them in other areas. 
Ethnic differences were not delineated in the law, nor did they show up in
political administration.  Nahuatl was the language of government and
administration but beyond that, we know little of the languages on the
streets and in other areas of life.  Its for this reason that I chose to
and continue to spell Texcoco as I do (rather than Tetzcoco)--it was a
multi-ethnic effort, not just a Nahua "thing".  The early Texcocans rulers
did not even speak Nahuatl. The roots of Texcocan jurisprudence are unknown
with the best evidence being in the Codex Xolotl and pointing to Huexotla,
Coatlinchan or Azcapotzalco.  One wonders if it goes back through one of
those cities, especially Azcapotzalco, to the wisdom and statecraft of some
of the ruling apparatus of classic period Teotihuacan.  That city certainly
seems to have been a successful, long-term joint ethnic effort.  

There are plenty of comments in Sahagun and in other sources and plenty of
depictions of non-Nahua in pictorial sources regarding ethnic differences
but working through the maze of how one group saw another and vice versa
and how we are perceiving and mis-perceiving the situation now is a real
challenge.  We know that ethnic groups got along and we know that ethnic
groups warred against each other, often literally decapitating the leaders
of other ethnic groups and replacing them.  We know that entire groups fled
to avoid conquest and subjection by other groups.  We know of at least one
group that was wiped out by other groups in a short period in a town in the
Puebla region.  This is all pretty standard stuff in world history, but the
multi-ethnic cities are a little more distinctive and in need of
investigation as was suggested.  

(I sure hope that book shown above made some progress on all this).  

As for people being interested in race and ethnicity in the past--people
have children; people have hopes for them, work hard for them and enjoy
nothing more than seeing increasing competence and ability in them.  They
project these concerns into the past, knowing that people did this also for
them.  Discussions with non-specialists and everyday people about these
matters constitute central "teachable moments" where a few patient and
well-rehearsed questions here and a little humor there can engage them in
the complexities of the past, for which, after all, all ethnic groups and
everyone's ancestors are responsible.  It is just as Nick mentioned--in a
passage in Torquemada, the Totonacs in about 1600 told him they had built
the great pyramids at Teotihuacan--they probably did, "with a little help
from their friends" from plenty of other ethnic groups--and some enemies
too.  

Jerry Offner

> [Original Message]
> From: Michael Smith <Michael.E.Smith.2 at asu.edu>
> To: <aztlan at lists.famsi.org>
> Date: 1/14/2009 02:35:13 PM
> Subject: [Aztlan] Race and ethnicity in the past
>
> Just a few comments on some of the posts:
>
> Nick Hopkins, Jerry Offner (and others) - Please don't confuse a post to
> Aztlan with a scholarly statement. Historical linguistics is fantastic.
> If I learned anything from 15 years as a colleague of John Justeson at
> Albany, it was the value of historical linguistics for archaeology and
> for any kind of well-rounded interpretation of the past. Perhaps my Teo
> example was too hastily stated. My gentle criticism was that many people
> today get too hung up on ethnic and racial issues (I didn't accuse
> anyone on Aztlan of this, my post came from looking at some of the press
> items that are posted--very usefully--on Aztlan). I mentioned the Teo
> case as just one example of this tendency. Perhaps rather than saying
> that I don't care what language was spoken at Teo (I forget exactly what
> I said), I should have said that the ethnic identity of the people of
> Teo is not the most important thing to know about them.
>
> Jerry Ek - thanks for clarifying what I said. I admit that I fire these
> things off quickly and may not always express myself in the clearest
> fashion.
>
>
> Just to extend the discussion a bit further, there is some interesting
> comparative research about ethnic and cultural diversity in cities.
> Ethnologist Ralph Grillo suggests that in most preindustrial cities,
> rulers didn't care much about ethnic diversity. Urban enclaves organized
> their own affairs. Race was recognized, but was not particularly
> important as a basis for inequality. In Colonial cities, rulers became
> obsessed with ethnicity because elites needed to keep the natives
> separate from the colonizers in order to extract work and resources and
> protect privileges. Race became an important identifier, associated with
> class position. In industrial cities, racial divisions (claims Grillo,
> citing Southall) were promoted in order to prevent the formation of
> class identities that could more easily challenge the economic and
> political order.
>
> The implication of this (and other research) is that racial and ethnic
> and linguistic identities and differences have always been around, but
> they have taken on a different role in modern society (as everyone is
> clearly aware). I don't think its an exaggeration to claim that
> contemporary society (in the US and Europe at least) is obsessed with
> race. But this was probably not the case in the past. It is interesting
> to learn about ethnic or linguistic affiliations of past populations,
> but this is just one aspect among many factors in ancient life and
> society.
>
> A similar point is made by Xavier de Souza Briggs (MIT urban scholar,
> part of Obama's transition team) in a comparison of three multicultural
> cities: imperial Rome, medieval Islamic Cordoba, and modern Los Angeles.
> Briggs shows that Rome and Cordoba handled diverse urban populations
> very well, without violence, strife, or excessive inequality. He wonders
> whether these cases could hold lessons for modern urban diversity. One
> of his findings, however, is that Rome and Cordoba used very strong
> governmental power to keep their ethnic diversity under control. Since
> we don't have that level of state power today (hooray!), we need to find
> other ways to make people get along in our cities. This is part of an
> ongoing comparative project by Briggs, who is someone with very good
> things to say about modern cities and society.
>
> I haven't tried applying these ideas to ancient Mesoamerica. Teo and
> Tenochtitlan seem fertile case studies for applying the ideas of Grillo
> and Briggs. Maybe an enterprising student out there will take an
> interest......
>
>
> Briggs, Xavier de Souza
> 2004	Civilization in Color: The Multicultural City in Three
> Millennia. City and Community 3:311-342.
>
> Grillo, Ralph D.
> 2000	Plural Cities in Comparative Perspective. Ethnic and Racial
> Studies 23:957-981.
>
> Southall, Aidan W.
> 1998	The City in Time and Space. Cambridge University Press, New
> York.
>
> One final point - I get Aztlan in digest format, and I find that the
> messages seem out of order and its difficult to follow the thread of an
> argument. Also, I don't think I got Nick's post except at the bottom of
> Jerry Ek's.
>
> Dr. Michael E. Smith
> Professor of Anthropology
> School of Human Evolution & Social Change
> Arizona State University
> www.public.asu.edu/~mesmith9/
>
>
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