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Central America in the 1980s: Political Crisis and the Social Responsibility of Anthropologists

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2022

Tracy Bachrach Ehlers
Tracy Bachrach Ehlers*
Affiliation:
University of Denver
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For most of the past decade, Central America has been wracked by revolution, counterrevolution, military repression, and massive dislocation that have affected the lives of millions of people. Yet despite these dramatic events, little anthropological research has been directed toward Central America in the 1980s. Analysis of the contents of seven major cultural anthropology journals from 1980 to 1986 shows no increased attention to the area over a previous period, 1970 to 1976. Research published in the 1980s has been emphatically non-policy-based, even when fieldwork was conducted in the midst of crisis. This research report will analyze the underrepresentation of Central America in anthropology journals and possible reasons for it. I will suggest that the reticence of anthropology as a discipline to legitimate policy-based research in Central America stems from a tendency that has characterized the field since its beginnings: studying communities as isolated, timeless cultures that are unaffected by regional, national, and international events taking place outside their borders. This bias causes practitioners who wish to advance their careers to turn their backs on what may be considered controversial policy analysis and write instead about subjects endorsed by the discipline.

Type
Research Reports and Notes
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , 1990 , pp. 141 - 155
Copyright
Copyright © 1990 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

An abbreviated version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Boston in 1987. The author to wishes express her appreciation for the insightful criticisms and suggestions of Richard Clemmer, Duncan Earle, Michael C. Ehlers, June Nash, Sarah Nelson, Michael Painter, and especially Paul Shankman, all of whom read earlier versions. Anonymous LAR reviewers also made helpful recommendations, many of which were incorporated.

References

Notes

1. See, for example, Carmen Diana Deere and Peter Marchetti, “The Worker-Peasant Alliance in the First Year of the Nicaraguan Agrarian Reform,” Latin American Perspectives 8, no. 2 (1981):40–73. See also I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala, edited by E. Burgos-Debray (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984); Thomas W. Walker, Nicaragua: The Land of Sandino (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1981); Guatemala in Rebellion: Unfinished History, edited by Jonathan Fried et al., (New York: Grove Press, 1983); Chris Krueger and Kjell Enge, Security and Development Conditions in the Guatemalan Highlands (Washington, D.C.: Washington Office on Latin America, 1985); J. Pearce, Under the Eagle: U.S. Intervention in Central America and the Caribbean (Boston, Mass.: South End Press, 1982); R. A. White, The Morass: United States Intervention in Central America (New York: Harper and Row, 1984).

2. Carol A. Smith and Jeff Boyer, “Central America since 1979: Part 1.” Annual Review of Anthropology 16 (1987): 197–221.

3. Anne Ferguson, “Marketing Medicines: Pharmaceutical Servicers in a Salvadoran Community,” Latin American Perspectives 10, no. 4 (1983):40-58; Shelton Davis and Julie Hodson, Witness to Political Violence in Guatemala (Boston, Mass.: Oxfam America, 1982); Chris Krueger, The Guatemalan Highlands: Democratic Transition or the Continuation of War (Washington, D.C.: Washington Office on Latin America, 1987); Trouble in Our Backyard: Central America and the United States in the Eighties, edited by Martin Diskin (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983); Harvest of Violence: The Maya Indians and the Guatemalan Crisis, edited by Robert Carmack (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988); Shelton Davis, “The Social Consequences of ‘Development’ Aid in Guatemala,” Cultural Survival Quarterly 7 (1983):4-11; W. George Lovell, “From Conquest to Counter-Insurgency,” Cultural Survival Quarterly 9 (1985):46-49; and David Stoll, “Guatemala, The New Jerusalem of the Americas,” Cultural Survival Quarterly 7 (1983):28–31.

4. Diana Crane, “The Gatekeeper of Science,” American Sociologist 2, no. 4 (1967): 195–201.

5. G. A. Donahue, Philip J. Tichenor, and Clarice N. Olien, “Gatekeeping: Mass Media Systems and Information Control,” in Current Perspectives in Mass Communication Research, edited by F. G. Kline and P. J. Tichenor (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1972), 41–59.

6. Determination of the seven most significant cultural anthropology journals was based on Eugene Garfield's assessment of the influence and readership of each journal in “Anthropology Journals: What They Cite and What Cites Them,” Current Anthropology 25, no. 4 (1984):514–28.

7. Mina Caulfield, “Culture and Imperialism: Proposing a New Dialectic,” in Reinventing Anthropology, edited by Dell Hymes (New York: Vintage Press, 1974), 182–212.

8. Richard N. Adams, “The Dynamics of Societal Diversity: Notes from Nicaragua for a Sociology of Survival,” American Ethnologist 8, no. 1 (1981):1-20; Laurel Bossen, “Plantations and Labor Force Discrimination in Guatemala,” Current Anthropology 23, no. 2 (1982):263-68; Douglas E. Brintnall, “A Model of Changing Group Relations in the Mayan Highlands of Guatemala,” Journal of Anthropological Research 36, no. 3 (1980): 294–315; Philip A. Dennis and Michael D. Olien, “Kingship among the Miskito,” American Ethnologist 11, no. 4 (1984):718-37; John M. Donahue, “The Profession and the People: Primary Health Care in Nicaragua,” Human Organization 45, no. 2 (1986): 96–103; John D. Early, “Ethnography as an Interpreter of National Censuses: The Guatemalan Case,” Journal of Anthropological Research 36, no. 1 (1980):71-86; Nancie Louden Gonzalez, “Rethinking the Consanguineal Household and Matrifocality,” Ethnology 23 (1984):1-12; Sara E. Green, Thomas A. Rich, and Edgar G. Nesman, “Beyond Individual Literacy: The Role of Shared Literacy for Innovation in Guatemala,” Human Organization 44, no. 4 (1985):313-21; Mary W. Helms, “Miskito Slaving and Culture Contact: Ethnicity and Opportunity in an Expanding Population,” Journal of Anthropological Research 19, no. 2 (1983): 179–97; Mary W. Helms, “Of Kings and Contexts: Ethnohistorical Interpretations of Miskito Political Structure and Function,” American Ethnologist 13, no. 3 (1986):506-23; Jeffrey C. Jacob, “Urban Poverty, Children, and the Consumption of Popular Culture: A Perspective on Marginality; Theses from a Latin America Squatter Settlement,” Human Organization 39 (1980):233-41; Michael D. Olien, “The Miskito Kings and the Line of Succession,” Journal of Anthropological Research 39 (1983): 179–97; Miles Richardson, “Being-in-the-Market versus Being-in-the-Plaza: Material Culture and the Construction of Social Reality in Spanish America,” American Ethnologist 9 (1982):421-36; John J. Swetnam, “Disguised Employment and Development Policy in Peasant Economies,” Human Organization 39, no. 1 (1980):32-39; Barbara Tedlock, “Sound Texture and Metaphor in Quiché Maya Ritual Language,” Current Anthropology 23, no. 3 (1982):269-72; Barbara Tedlock and Dennis Tedlock, “Text and Textile: Language and Technology in the Arts of the Quiché Maya,” Journal of Anthropological Research 41, no. 2 (1985):121-46; and John M. Watanabe, “In the World of the Sun: A Cognitive Model of Mayan Cosmology,” Man 18 (1983):710–28.

9. American Ethnologist did not begin publication until 1974.

10. Dennis and Olien, “Kingship among the Miskito”; Olien, “Miskito Kings”; and Helms, “Miskito Slaving” and “Kings and Contexts.”

11. Tedlock, “Sound Texture and Metaphor”; Tedlock and Tedlock, “Text and Textile”; and Watanabe, “World of the Sun.”

12. Richardson, “Being-in-the-Market”; and González, “Rethinking the Consanguineal Household.”

13. Bossen, “Plantations and Discrimination”; Brintnall, “Changing Group Relations”; Jacob, “Urban Poverty, Children, and Popular Culture”; Green, Rich, and Nesman, “Beyond Individual Literacy”; and Early, “Ethnography as Interpreter of National Censuses.”

14. My analysis is based on Krueger and Enge's 1985 report, Security and Development Conditions in the Guatemalan Highlands, which examined the impact of political violence on towns and villages in the western highlands. It should be noted that although the researchers mentioned in this paragraph were not necessarily eyewitnesses to the violence and social disruption described by Krueger and Enge, they certainly were familiar with its consequences in and around their research sites and throughout the country.

15. For a similar criticism of Barbara Tedlock's work, see Benjamin Colby's review of Time and the Highland Maya in American Anthropologist 85, no. 1 (1983):210–11.

16. Smith and Boyer, “Central America since 1979: Part 1.”

17. Jacob does mention the worsening highland situation in a footnote to his article in Human Organization: “Approaching the summer of 1980, Guatemala faces increasing violence and even the possibility of civil war as the forces of repression attempt to control the country's increasing wealth in spite of an active opposition.” See Jacob, “Urban Poverty, Children, and Popular Culture,” 241.

18. Richard N. Adams, “Brokers and Career Mobility Systems in the Structure of Complex Societies,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 26, no. 4 (1970):315-27; Peggy F. Barlett, “Labor Efficiency and the Mechanism of Agricultural Evolution,” Journal of Anthropological Research 32, no. 3 (1976): 124–40; Laurel Bossen, “Women in Modernizing Societies,” American Ethnologist 2 (1975):587-601; John D. Early, “Education via Radio among Guatemalan Highland Maya,” Human Organization 34, no. 3 (1973): 275–87; John D. Early, “Population Increase and Family Planning in Guatemala,” Human Organization 32, no. 3 (1975):221-28; John D. Early, “The Changing Proportion of Maya Indian and Ladino in the Population of Guatemala, 1945–1969,” American Ethnologist 2, no. 2 (1975):261-69; Robert Hinshaw, Patrick Pyeatt, and Jean-Pierre Habicht, “Environmental Effects on Child-Spacing and Population Increase in Highland Guatemala,” Current Anthropology 13, no. 2 (1972):216-30; Michael H. Logan, “Humoral Medicine in Guatemala and Peasant Acceptance of Modern Medicine,” Human Organization 32, no. 4 (1973):385-95; Alfredo Méndez-Domínguez, “Big and Little Traditions in Guatemalan Anthropology,” Current Anthropology 16, no. 4 (1975): 541–52; Paul McDowell, “Guatemalan Stratification and Peasant Marketing Arrangements: A Different View,” Man 2, no. 2 (1976):273-81; Benjamin D. Paul, “The Maya Bonesetter as Sacred Specialist,” Ethnology 15 (1976):77-81; Lois Paul and Benjamin D. Paul, “The Maya Midwife as Sacred Specialist: A Guatemalan Case,” American Ethnologist 2, no. 4 (1975):707-26; Ruben E. Reina and Norman B. Schwartz, “The Structural Context of Religious Conversion in Petén, Guatemala: Status, Community, and Multicommunity,” American Ethnologist 1, no. 1 (1974): 157–91; Bryan Roberts, “Urban Poverty and Political Behavior in Guatemala,” Human Organization 29, no. 1 (1970):20-28; Norman B. Schwartz, “Assimilation and Acculturation: Aspects of Ethnicity in a Guatemalan Town,” Ethnology 10, no. 3 (1971):291-310; Carol A. Smith, “Examining Stratification Systems through Peasant Marketing Arrangements: An Application of Some Models from Economic Geography,” Man 10 (1975):95-122; Waldemar R. Smith, “Beyond the Plural Society: Economics and Ethnicity in Middle American Towns,” Ethnology 14, no. 3 (1975):225-43; Berkeley A. Spencer, “Community Differentiation and the Fallacy of Intersectorial Causation,” Human Organization 32, no. 1 (1973):59-71; and John J. Swetnam, “Oligopolistic Prices in a Free Market: Antigua, Guatemala,” American Anthropologist 75, no. 5 (1973):1504–10.

19. W. Smith, “Beyond the Plural Society”; Reina and Schwartz, “Structural Context of Religious Conversion”; Schwartz, “Assimilation and Acculturation”; and Spencer, “Community Differentiation.”

20. Hinshaw, Pyeatt, and Habicht, “Environmental Effects on Child-Spacing”; and Early, “Changing Proportion of Maya Indian and Ladino” and “Population Increase and Family Planning.”

21. Swetnam, “Oligopolistic Prices in a Free Market.”

22. Logan, “Humoral Medicine in Guatemala”; Paul, “Maya Bonesetter as Sacred Specialist”; and Paul and Paul, “Maya Midwife as Sacred Specialist.”

23. Roberts, “Urban Poverty and Political Behavior in Guatemala.”

24. Early, “Education via Radio.”

25. Méndez-Domínguez, “Big and Little Traditions.”

26. Barlett, “Labor Efficiency and Agricultural Evolution.”

27. Adams, “Brokers and Career Mobility Systems” and “Dynamics of Societal Diversity.”

28. See Eva Hunt's review of “San Bernardino Contla: Marriage and Family Structure in a Tlaxcala Municipio,” American Anthropologist 72, no. 5 (1970): 1135–38. My separation of Mexican scholarship from Guatemalan scholarship is a political device, of course. One cannot ignore the fact that Mesoamericanists specialize in the Maya and other indigenous peoples of both Mexico and Guatemala. The problems associated with fieldwork in Mexico, however, differ considerably and are not addressed in this research report.

29. Erve J. Chambers and Philip D. Young, “Mesoamerican Community Studies: The Past Decade,” Annual Review of Anthropology 8 (1967): 45–69.

30. American Anthropological Association, 1986 Survey of Anthropology Ph.D.s (Washington, D.C.: AAA, 1987).

31. Ethnographic articles from Central America and the rest of the world were tabulated if they analyzed data from only one geographic region. Discussions comparing two or more countries from different parts of the world were not counted.

32. See S. J. Cardenal, Fernando Miller, and Valerie Miller, “Nicaragua 1980: The Battle of the ABC's,” in Revolution in Central America, edited by Stanford Central America Action Network (Boulder, Colo.: Westview), 447–58.

33. Thomas Weaver, “Toward an Anthropological Statement of Relevance,” in To See Ourselves: Anthropology and Modern Social Issues, edited by Thomas Weaver (Glenview, Ill.: Scott, Foresman), 1–4.

34. Telephone conversation with an official of the National Science Foundation who preferred to remain anonymous, 1988.

35. The discipline's failure to encourage research on Central America does not imply that anthropologists are not interested in events in the region. Several interdisciplinary organizations like the Central America Resource Center in Austin, Texas, coordinate scholarly efforts and facilitate research. In 1980, when two hundred persons attended a session of the AAA meetings in Los Angeles entitled “Fire in the Lake, Part II,” anthropologists formed the Guatemala Scholars Network. Since that time, this national organization has provided materials, networks, and timely information. In 1985 and 1986, I served as the national coordinator of the Guatemala Scholars Network.

36. See, for example, the many fine articles in Robert Carmack's Harvest of Violence: The Maya Indians and the Guatemalan Crisis (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988). See also Krueger and Enge, Security and Development Conditions in the Guatemalan Highlands, and Davis and Hodson, Witness to Political Violence in Guatemala.

37. See Beatriz Manz, “Guatemalan Refugees: Violence, Displacement, and Survival,” Cultural Survival 7 (1983):38–42.

38. Telephone conversation with Mike Conroy, LASA Task Force on Nicaragua, Winter 1988.

39. American Anthropological Association, 1986 Survey of Anthropology Ph.D.s.

40. Patricia J. Higgins, “Anthropologists and Issues of Public Concern: The Iran Crisis,” Human Organization 43, no. 2 (1984): 132–45.

41. For additional discussion, see Barry L. Isaac, “The Mesoamerican Context of Ritual Kinship,” Man 17, no. 3 (1982):555-57; Jan Rus and Robert Wasserstrom, “Civil-Religious Hierarchies in Central Chiapas: A Critical Perspective,” American Ethnologist 7 (1980):466-79; and Waldemar R. Smith, The Fiesta System and Economic Change (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977).

42. See, for example, Evon Z. Vogt, Tortillas for the Gods: A Symbolic Analysis of Zinacanteco Rituals (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976); Gary Gossen, Chamulas and the World of the Sun (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974); R. M. Laughlin, Of Cabbages and Kings: Tales from Zinacantan (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1977); and Victoria R. Bricker, Ritual Humor in Highland Chiapas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973).

43. Mina Caulfield, “Culture and Imperialism”; and Omer C. Stewart, “The Need to Popularize Basic Concepts,” Current Anthropology 5, no. 5 (1964):431–32.

44. June Nash, “Anthropological Research in Latin America in the 1980s,” in Directions in the Anthropological Study of Latin America: A Reassessment, edited by Jack R. Rollwagen (Brockport, N.Y.: Institute for the Study of Man), 79–96.

45. Thomas Weaver, “Anthropology as a Policy Science: Part I, A Critique,” Current Anthropology 44, no. 2 (1985):97–105.

46. As part of this study, I wrote to the editors of all seven journals asking if they could explain the absence of papers on Central America in their journal literature. Only two wrote back, both sending form letters that did not address my query. One editor telephoned and said in response to my question, “I'm not in the business of publishing diatribe.”

47. This statement is not meant to imply that Central Americanists who do publish nonpolicy articles in the major journals are committing some egregious ethical breach. Many researchers mentioned in this article are both politically active and intellectually astute. Most likely, they recognize that their analyses of politically sensitive issues will not be published in standard journals and choose to submit them elsewhere.

A correction has been issued for this article:

Erratum