In the Name of El Pueblo: Place Community and the Politics of History in Yucatn

About this book

The term el pueblo is used throughout Latin America referring alternately to small towns to community or to the people as a political entity. In this vivid anthropological and historical analysis of Mexicos Yucatn peninsula Paul K. Eiss explores the multiple meanings of el pueblo and the power of the concept to unite the diverse claims made in its name. Eiss focuses on working-class indigenous and mestizo populations examining how those groups negotiated the meaning of el pueblo among themselves and in their interactions with outsiders including landowners activists and government officials. Combining extensive archival and ethnographic research he describes how residents of the region have laid claim to el pueblo in varied ways as exemplified in communal narratives recorded in archival documents in the performance of plays and religious processions and in struggles over land politics and the built environment. Eiss demonstrates that while el pueblo is used throughout the hemisphere the term is given meaning and power through the ways it is imagined and constructed in local contexts. Moreover he reveals el pueblo to be a concept that is as historical as it is political. It is in the name of el pueblorather than class race or nationthat inhabitants of northwestern Yucatn stake their deepest claims not only to social or political rights but over history itself.