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The Economic Renaissance of the Indian Communities of Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 July 2024

Alfonso Caso

Extract

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Although the problems of the Indian communities of Mexico are not identical with those of other Latin American countries, they are nevertheless similar, and I am sure that the solutions that have been tried in Mexico can also be used in other countries on that continent.

The present territory of the Republic of Mexico was divided, in the period prior to the Spanish conquest, into two great cultural provinces: There was on the one hand the Northern region which was generally inhabited by nomadic tribes—hunters and gatherers whom the Mexicans used to call by the name of chichimecas—and on the other hand the central region of the country which extended towards the North-West as far as Sinaloa along the Western Sierra Madre and towards the North-East as far as Soto la Marina along the Eastern Sierra—a province which is now called Mesoamerica—and which then comprised various native peoples with a plurality of languages and characteristic cultural features, whose manner of life was based essentially on the cultivation of corn, beans and other edible plants and who lived without exception in cities organized already according to a political system which was essentially monarchical and theocratic.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 11 , Issue 43 , September 1963 , pp. 63 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © 1963 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1 Caso, Alfonso, "La tenencia de la tierra entre los antiguos mexicanos," Me morias del Colegio Nacional, vol. IV-2, Mexico, 1959.

2 Zavala, Silvio, La encomienda indiana, Madrid, 1935.

3 Benitez, Fernando, La vita criolla en el siglo XVI, Colegio de México, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico, 1953.

4 Zavala, Silvio, and Miranda, José, "Instituciones indígenas en la Colonia," Métodos y resultados de la politica indigenista en Mexico, Memorias del Instituto Nacional Indigenista, vol. VI, p. 39 ff., Mexico, 1954.

5 Zorita, Alonso de, "Breve y Sumaria Relación…" in J. García Icazbalceta, Nueva Colección de Documentos, vol. III, p. 95, Mexico, 1891.

6 Chevalier, François, La formation des grands domaines au Mexique, Institut d'Ethnologie, Paris, 1952.

7 Aguirre Beltrán, Gonzalo, "La Reforma Agraria," in Métodos y resultados de la política indigenista en México, Memorias del Instituto Nacional Indigenista, vol. VI, p. 199, Mexico, 1954.

8 Caso, Alfonso, "Indigenismo," Colección Culturas Indígenas, no. I, Instituto Nacional Indigenista, p. 7 ff., Mexico, 1958.