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Nationalist archaeology and foreign oil exploration in El Tajín, Mexico, 1935–1940

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2020

Sam Holley-Kline
Sam Holley-Kline*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, USA
*
Email: s.holleykline@gmail.com
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Abstract

This article discusses the American Compañía Stanford’s efforts to drill an oil well on the outskirts of the archaeological site of El Tajín, Mexico, during the 1930s. Drawing on recent scholarly efforts to think beyond archaeology and the nation state, this article problematizes the notion of a unitary state behind the concept of nationalist archaeology, the constitution of archaeology and extractive industry as separate spheres, and their apparent mutual exclusivity. Exploring the negotiations between site guards, archaeologists, inspectors, oil company officials and labourers shows that different state actors worked at cross-purposes, and that the nominally separate spheres of nationalist archaeology and foreign oil extraction were in fact characterized by the sharing of infrastructure, equipment, expertise and labour. Consequently, this article advocates for close attention to the administration and management of archaeology in specific historical contexts, demonstrating that it is more reasonable to assume archaeology’s imbrications with the nation state and extractive industries.

Keywords

Archaeologyheritagehistory of archaeologyextractive industryhistory of science
Type
Articles
Information
Archaeological Dialogues , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , June 2020 , pp. 79 - 93
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Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

References

Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH)Google Scholar
Archivo de la Dirección del Departamento de Monumentos Prehispánicos (ADDMP)Google Scholar
Archivo Técnico del Departamento de Monumentos Prehispánicos (AT-DMP)Google Scholar
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Archivo Histórico de Petróleos Mexicanos (AHP)Google Scholar
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Anderson, B., 2006: Imagined communities. Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism, New York.Google Scholar
Ardren, T., 2002: Conversations about the production of archaeological knowledge and community museums at Chunchucmil and Kochol, Yucatán, México, World archaeology 34 (2), 379–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baird, M.F., 2017: Extractive industries, corporate discourse and indigenous heritage, in Hillerdal, C., Karlström, A. and Ojala, C.-G. (eds), Archaeologies of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Debating history, heritage and indigeneity, London, 53–63.Google Scholar
Breglia, L., 2006: Monumental ambivalence. The politics of heritage, Austin.Google Scholar
Brizuela Abasalón, Á., n.d.: Las compañías petroleras extranjeras en Ojital y Potrero, technical report, Museo de Antropología de Xalapa.Google Scholar
Brueggemann, J.K., 1991: ¡Otra vez la cuestión totonaca!, Antropología. Boletín oficial del INAH 34, 84–85.Google Scholar
Brueggemann, J.K., 1992: Introducción, in Brueggemann, J.K. (ed.), Tajín, Xalapa, 3–19.Google Scholar
Brueggemann, J.K., 1993: El problema cronológica del Tajín. Arqueología 9–10, 61–72.Google Scholar
Bueno, C., 2016: The pursuit of ruins. Archaeology, history, and the making of modern Mexico, Albuquerque.Google Scholar
Capitanachi Luna, S., 1983: Furbero, Palma Sola y Poza Rica. Historia del petróleo y memorias de un trabajador jubilado en la industria petrolera, 2 vols, Xalapa.Google Scholar
Castillo Peña, P. (ed.), 2011: Culturas del Golfo. Salvamento arqueológico y nuevas téchnicas, México, D.F.Google Scholar
Chirikure, S., 2014: ‘Where angels fear to tread’. Ethics, commercial archaeology, and extractive industries in southern Africa, Azania. Archaeological research in Africa 49 (2), 218–231.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coombe, R., and Baird, M.F., 2016: The limits of heritage. Corporate interests and cultural rights on resource frontiers, in Logan, W., Craith, M.N. and Kockel, U. (eds), A companion to heritage studies, London, 337–354.Google Scholar
Díaz-Andreu, M., 2007: A world history of nineteenth-century archaeology. Nationalism, colonialism, and the past, Oxford.Google Scholar
Galindo y Villa, J., 1912: Las ruinas de Cempoala y del Templo del Tajín (Estado de Veracruz) exploradas por el Director del Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Historia y Etnología, in Misión en Europa, Don Francisco del Paso y Troncoso, Mexico, D.F.Google Scholar
Gándara, M., 1992: La arqueología oficial mexicana. Causas y efectos, Mexico, D.F.Google Scholar
García Payón, J., 1955: Exploraciones en El Tajín. Temporadas 1953 y 1954, Mexico, D.F.Google Scholar
García Payón, J., and Ruiz Gordillo, J.O., 1993: José García Payón en Tajín, Arqueología Mexicana 1 (5), 55–56.Google Scholar
García Vega, A., 1939: Exploraciones en El Tajín. Temporadas 1934 a 1938, in INAH (ed.), Vigesimoseptimo Congreso Internacional de Americanistas. Actas de la primera sesión, celebrada en la ciudad de México en 1939, Mexico, 78–87.Google Scholar
Gerali, F., and Riguzzi, P., 2013: Los inicios de la actividad petrolera en México, 1863–1874. Una nueva cronología y elementos de balance, Boletín del Archivo Histórico de Petróleos Mexicanos 13, 63–88.Google Scholar
Gnecco, C., and Hernández, C., 2008: History and its discontents. Stone statues, native histories, and archaeologists, Current anthropology 49 (3), 439–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gobierno del México, 1940: El petróleo de México, Mexico, D.F.Google Scholar
Holley-Kline, S., 2019: Entangled archaeology, labor, and industry in El Tajín, Mexico, 1880–2018, Ph.D. thesis, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Jofré, I.C., 2015: Mega-mining, contract archaeology, and local responses to the global order in Argentina, International journal of historical archaeology 19 (4), 764–774.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Joyce, R.A., 2008: Critical histories of archaeological practice. Latin American and North American interpretations in a Honduran context, in Habu, J., Fawcett, C. and Matsunaga, J.M. (eds), Evaluating multiple narratives. Beyond nationalist, colonialist, imperialist archaeologies, New York, 56–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kasburg, C., 1992: Die Totonaken von El Tajín. Beharrung und Wandel über vier Jahzehnte, Münster.Google Scholar
Kelly, I., and Palerm, A., 1952: The Tajín Totonac, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Kelly, L., 2011: Waking the gods. Archaeology and state power in Porfirian Mexico, Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Knight, A., 1992: The politics of the expropriation, in Brown, J.C. and Knight, A., The Mexican petroleum industry in the twentieth century, Austin, 90–128.Google Scholar
Koontz, R., 2009: Lightning gods and feathered serpents. The public sculpture of El Tajín, Austin.Google Scholar
Ladrón de Guevara, S., 1999: Imagen y pensamiento en El Tajín, Xalapa.Google Scholar
Latour, B., 1987: Science in action. How to follow scientists and engineers through society, Cambridge.Google Scholar
López Luján, L., 2008: El Tajín en el siglo XVIII. Dos exploraciones pioneras en Veracruz, Arqueología Mexicana 15 (89), 74–81.Google Scholar
Lorenzo, J.L., 1981: Archaeology south of the Rio Grande, World archaeology 13 (2), 190–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luke, C., 2019: A pearl in peril. Heritage and diplomacy in Turkey, New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacEachern, S., 2010: Seeing like an oil company’s CHM programme. Exxon and archaeology on the Chad Export Project, Journal of social archaeology 10 (3), 347–366.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meskell, L., 2005: Archaeological ethnography. Conversations around Kruger National Park, Archaeologies 1 (1), 81–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meskell, L., 2016: Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape. Extractive economies and endangerment on South Africa’s borders, in Brumann, C. and Berliner, D. (eds), World heritage on the ground. Ethnographic perspectives, New York, 273–293.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moro Abadía, O., 2010: Beyond externalism. Exploring new directions in the history of archaeology, Archaeological dialogues 17 (2), 215–236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oyuela-Caycedo, A., 1994: Nationalism and archaeology. A theoretical perspective, in Oyuela-Caycedo, A., History of Latin American archaeology, Aldershot, 3–21.Google Scholar
Pascual Soto, A., 2009: El Tajín. Arte y poder, Mexico, D.F.Google Scholar
Plets, G., 2016a: Heritage bureaucracies and the modern nation state. Towards an ethnography of archaeological systems of government, Archaeological dialogues 23 (2), 193–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plets, G., 2016b: Heritage statecraft. When archaeological heritage meets neoliberalism in Gazprom’s resource colonies, Russia, Journal of field archaeology 41 (3), 368–383.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quintal Avilés, E.F., 1981: Industria petrolera, migración y movilidad social en la zona Poza Rica-Coatzintla, Veracruz, licenciatura thesis, Universidad de Yucatán.Google Scholar
Rodríguez García, I., 2016: La arqueología en México. Cultura y privatización, Mexico, D.F.Google Scholar
Rozental, S., 2012: Mobilizing the monolith. Patrimonio and the production of Mexico through its fragments, Ph.D. thesis, New York University.Google Scholar
Ruiz, A., 2016: Género, ciencia y política. Voces, vidas y miradas de la arqueología mexicana, Mexico, D.F.Google Scholar
Ruíz Gordillo, J.O., 2002: Remembranzas. Análisis de la obra del arqueólogo José García Payón, Mexico, D.F.Google Scholar
Rutsch, M., 2007: Entre el campo y el gabinete. Nacionales y extranjeros en la profesionalización de la antropología mexicana (1877–1920), Mexico, D.F.Google Scholar
Salas Landa, M., 2015: Living among a field of ruins. (In)visible residues of violence and revolution in the northern lowlands of Veracruz, Mexico, Ph.D. thesis, Cornell University.Google Scholar
Salas Landa, M., 2016: Crude residues. The workings of failing oil infrastructure in Poza Rica, Veracruz, Mexico, Environment and planning A 48 (4), 718–735.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salas Landa, M., 2018: (In)visible ruins. The politics of monumental reconstruction in postrevolutionary Mexico, Hispanic American historical review 97 (1), 43–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Santiago, M., 2009: The ecology of oil. Environment, labor, and the Mexican revolution, 1900–1938, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Trigger, B.G., 2006: A history of archaeological thought, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valiant, S., 2017: Ornamental nationalism. Archaeology and antiquities in Mexico, 1876–1911, Leiden.Google Scholar
Vásquez León, L., 2003: El Leviatán arqueológico. Antropología de una tradición cientifica en México, Mexico, D.F.Google Scholar
Wilkerson, S.J.K., 1979: Huastec presence and cultural chronology in north-central Veracruz, Mexico, in Actas du XLII Congrès International Des Amèricanistes, IX-B, Paris, 31–47.Google Scholar
Wilkerson, S.J.K., 1999: Classic Veracruz architecture. Cultural symbolism in time and space, in Kowalski, J.K. (ed.), Mesoamerican architecture as a cultural symbol, New York, 110–139.Google Scholar
Yergin, D., 1990: The prize. The epic quest for oil, money, and power, New York.Google Scholar
Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH)Google Scholar
Archivo de la Dirección del Departamento de Monumentos Prehispánicos (ADDMP)Google Scholar
Archivo Técnico del Departamento de Monumentos Prehispánicos (AT-DMP)Google Scholar
Archivo Histórico Institucional (AHI-INAH)Google Scholar
Archivo Histórico de Petróleos Mexicanos (AHP)Google Scholar
Archivo General de la Nación (AGN)Google Scholar
Abrams, P., 1988 (1977): Notes on the difficulty of studying the state, Journal of historical sociology 1 (1), 58–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Achim, M., 2017: From idols to antiquity. Forging the National Museum of Mexico, Lincoln.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, B., 2006: Imagined communities. Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism, New York.Google Scholar
Ardren, T., 2002: Conversations about the production of archaeological knowledge and community museums at Chunchucmil and Kochol, Yucatán, México, World archaeology 34 (2), 379–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baird, M.F., 2017: Extractive industries, corporate discourse and indigenous heritage, in Hillerdal, C., Karlström, A. and Ojala, C.-G. (eds), Archaeologies of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Debating history, heritage and indigeneity, London, 53–63.Google Scholar
Breglia, L., 2006: Monumental ambivalence. The politics of heritage, Austin.Google Scholar
Brizuela Abasalón, Á., n.d.: Las compañías petroleras extranjeras en Ojital y Potrero, technical report, Museo de Antropología de Xalapa.Google Scholar
Brueggemann, J.K., 1991: ¡Otra vez la cuestión totonaca!, Antropología. Boletín oficial del INAH 34, 84–85.Google Scholar
Brueggemann, J.K., 1992: Introducción, in Brueggemann, J.K. (ed.), Tajín, Xalapa, 3–19.Google Scholar
Brueggemann, J.K., 1993: El problema cronológica del Tajín. Arqueología 9–10, 61–72.Google Scholar
Bueno, C., 2016: The pursuit of ruins. Archaeology, history, and the making of modern Mexico, Albuquerque.Google Scholar
Capitanachi Luna, S., 1983: Furbero, Palma Sola y Poza Rica. Historia del petróleo y memorias de un trabajador jubilado en la industria petrolera, 2 vols, Xalapa.Google Scholar
Castillo Peña, P. (ed.), 2011: Culturas del Golfo. Salvamento arqueológico y nuevas téchnicas, México, D.F.Google Scholar
Chirikure, S., 2014: ‘Where angels fear to tread’. Ethics, commercial archaeology, and extractive industries in southern Africa, Azania. Archaeological research in Africa 49 (2), 218–231.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coombe, R., and Baird, M.F., 2016: The limits of heritage. Corporate interests and cultural rights on resource frontiers, in Logan, W., Craith, M.N. and Kockel, U. (eds), A companion to heritage studies, London, 337–354.Google Scholar
Díaz-Andreu, M., 2007: A world history of nineteenth-century archaeology. Nationalism, colonialism, and the past, Oxford.Google Scholar
Galindo y Villa, J., 1912: Las ruinas de Cempoala y del Templo del Tajín (Estado de Veracruz) exploradas por el Director del Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Historia y Etnología, in Misión en Europa, Don Francisco del Paso y Troncoso, Mexico, D.F.Google Scholar
Gándara, M., 1992: La arqueología oficial mexicana. Causas y efectos, Mexico, D.F.Google Scholar
García Payón, J., 1955: Exploraciones en El Tajín. Temporadas 1953 y 1954, Mexico, D.F.Google Scholar
García Payón, J., and Ruiz Gordillo, J.O., 1993: José García Payón en Tajín, Arqueología Mexicana 1 (5), 55–56.Google Scholar
García Vega, A., 1939: Exploraciones en El Tajín. Temporadas 1934 a 1938, in INAH (ed.), Vigesimoseptimo Congreso Internacional de Americanistas. Actas de la primera sesión, celebrada en la ciudad de México en 1939, Mexico, 78–87.Google Scholar
Gerali, F., and Riguzzi, P., 2013: Los inicios de la actividad petrolera en México, 1863–1874. Una nueva cronología y elementos de balance, Boletín del Archivo Histórico de Petróleos Mexicanos 13, 63–88.Google Scholar
Gnecco, C., and Hernández, C., 2008: History and its discontents. Stone statues, native histories, and archaeologists, Current anthropology 49 (3), 439–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gobierno del México, 1940: El petróleo de México, Mexico, D.F.Google Scholar
Holley-Kline, S., 2019: Entangled archaeology, labor, and industry in El Tajín, Mexico, 1880–2018, Ph.D. thesis, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Jofré, I.C., 2015: Mega-mining, contract archaeology, and local responses to the global order in Argentina, International journal of historical archaeology 19 (4), 764–774.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Joyce, R.A., 2008: Critical histories of archaeological practice. Latin American and North American interpretations in a Honduran context, in Habu, J., Fawcett, C. and Matsunaga, J.M. (eds), Evaluating multiple narratives. Beyond nationalist, colonialist, imperialist archaeologies, New York, 56–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kasburg, C., 1992: Die Totonaken von El Tajín. Beharrung und Wandel über vier Jahzehnte, Münster.Google Scholar
Kelly, I., and Palerm, A., 1952: The Tajín Totonac, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Kelly, L., 2011: Waking the gods. Archaeology and state power in Porfirian Mexico, Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Knight, A., 1992: The politics of the expropriation, in Brown, J.C. and Knight, A., The Mexican petroleum industry in the twentieth century, Austin, 90–128.Google Scholar
Koontz, R., 2009: Lightning gods and feathered serpents. The public sculpture of El Tajín, Austin.Google Scholar
Ladrón de Guevara, S., 1999: Imagen y pensamiento en El Tajín, Xalapa.Google Scholar
Latour, B., 1987: Science in action. How to follow scientists and engineers through society, Cambridge.Google Scholar
López Luján, L., 2008: El Tajín en el siglo XVIII. Dos exploraciones pioneras en Veracruz, Arqueología Mexicana 15 (89), 74–81.Google Scholar
Lorenzo, J.L., 1981: Archaeology south of the Rio Grande, World archaeology 13 (2), 190–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luke, C., 2019: A pearl in peril. Heritage and diplomacy in Turkey, New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacEachern, S., 2010: Seeing like an oil company’s CHM programme. Exxon and archaeology on the Chad Export Project, Journal of social archaeology 10 (3), 347–366.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meskell, L., 2005: Archaeological ethnography. Conversations around Kruger National Park, Archaeologies 1 (1), 81–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meskell, L., 2016: Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape. Extractive economies and endangerment on South Africa’s borders, in Brumann, C. and Berliner, D. (eds), World heritage on the ground. Ethnographic perspectives, New York, 273–293.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moro Abadía, O., 2010: Beyond externalism. Exploring new directions in the history of archaeology, Archaeological dialogues 17 (2), 215–236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oyuela-Caycedo, A., 1994: Nationalism and archaeology. A theoretical perspective, in Oyuela-Caycedo, A., History of Latin American archaeology, Aldershot, 3–21.Google Scholar
Pascual Soto, A., 2009: El Tajín. Arte y poder, Mexico, D.F.Google Scholar
Plets, G., 2016a: Heritage bureaucracies and the modern nation state. Towards an ethnography of archaeological systems of government, Archaeological dialogues 23 (2), 193–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plets, G., 2016b: Heritage statecraft. When archaeological heritage meets neoliberalism in Gazprom’s resource colonies, Russia, Journal of field archaeology 41 (3), 368–383.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quintal Avilés, E.F., 1981: Industria petrolera, migración y movilidad social en la zona Poza Rica-Coatzintla, Veracruz, licenciatura thesis, Universidad de Yucatán.Google Scholar
Rodríguez García, I., 2016: La arqueología en México. Cultura y privatización, Mexico, D.F.Google Scholar
Rozental, S., 2012: Mobilizing the monolith. Patrimonio and the production of Mexico through its fragments, Ph.D. thesis, New York University.Google Scholar
Ruiz, A., 2016: Género, ciencia y política. Voces, vidas y miradas de la arqueología mexicana, Mexico, D.F.Google Scholar
Ruíz Gordillo, J.O., 2002: Remembranzas. Análisis de la obra del arqueólogo José García Payón, Mexico, D.F.Google Scholar
Rutsch, M., 2007: Entre el campo y el gabinete. Nacionales y extranjeros en la profesionalización de la antropología mexicana (1877–1920), Mexico, D.F.Google Scholar
Salas Landa, M., 2015: Living among a field of ruins. (In)visible residues of violence and revolution in the northern lowlands of Veracruz, Mexico, Ph.D. thesis, Cornell University.Google Scholar
Salas Landa, M., 2016: Crude residues. The workings of failing oil infrastructure in Poza Rica, Veracruz, Mexico, Environment and planning A 48 (4), 718–735.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salas Landa, M., 2018: (In)visible ruins. The politics of monumental reconstruction in postrevolutionary Mexico, Hispanic American historical review 97 (1), 43–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Santiago, M., 2009: The ecology of oil. Environment, labor, and the Mexican revolution, 1900–1938, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Trigger, B.G., 2006: A history of archaeological thought, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valiant, S., 2017: Ornamental nationalism. Archaeology and antiquities in Mexico, 1876–1911, Leiden.Google Scholar
Vásquez León, L., 2003: El Leviatán arqueológico. Antropología de una tradición cientifica en México, Mexico, D.F.Google Scholar
Wilkerson, S.J.K., 1979: Huastec presence and cultural chronology in north-central Veracruz, Mexico, in Actas du XLII Congrès International Des Amèricanistes, IX-B, Paris, 31–47.Google Scholar
Wilkerson, S.J.K., 1999: Classic Veracruz architecture. Cultural symbolism in time and space, in Kowalski, J.K. (ed.), Mesoamerican architecture as a cultural symbol, New York, 110–139.Google Scholar
Yergin, D., 1990: The prize. The epic quest for oil, money, and power, New York.Google Scholar