Based on the number of people speaking an Indian language, census authorities reported that the Indian population increased from 2.5 million in 1940 to 3.1 million in 1970. In 1970, the Indian language with the greatest number of speakers was Nahuatl, with 799,394 speakers, and the state with the most Indians was Oaxaca, with 677,347. Calculating the number of Indians by counting the number of people speaking an indigenous language was notoriously subjective. Guidelines for deciding if an individual spoke an Indian language were in constant flux. Non-linguistic methods were also used to determine Indian identity. Sociologist Pablo Gonzalez Casanova defined an Indian as an individual with an “awareness of belonging to a community which is different and isolated from the national culture. . .” By applying that definition, he calculated that in 1960 the number of Indians was between 6 million and 7.5 million, or 20 to 25 percent of the national population.184
From the end of Cardenas’s term until 1988, the Indian faded from official discourse and party platforms. Intellectual discourse concerning the Indian increasingly focused on how the poverty of the Indian community resulted not from Indians’ biological endowments or their social organization, as had been often argued in the past, but from mistreatment and neglect by the rest of Mexican society. Closer integration to the Mexican nation was viewed as the solution to the Indian problem. In 1967, influential anthropologist Gonzalo Aguirre Beltran voiced this view of indigenismo, the term used to describe the government’s Indian policy:
The ultimate goal of indigenismo is not to capture the attention of the Indians and improve their lot, but to achieve a much loftier goal: the integration of the Indian, under socially just conditions, so that Indian and non-Indian are really free and equal citizens.185
Government programs dealing with the Indian were coordinated by the National Indigenous Institute (INI), which was founded in 1948. In regions with a high indigenous population, the INI established “coordinating centers.” These centers drew on the services of physicians, agronomists, veterinarians, engineers, and lawyers. Complementing the efforts of the non-Indian professional was the bilingual teacher, or “promotor.” The promotor was a member of the indigenous community who could speak the local Indian language as well as Spanish and who was trained as a bilingual teacher.
In 1951, the first coordinating center was established in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas. By 1970, there were eleven such centers. They took a gradual approach and did not seek to overturn either local Indian governments or the inegalitarian land tenure system. Rather, they provided roads, schools, health care, legal assistance, drinking-water systems, and other services. They also sought to stimulate handicraft production.186
While these efforts were a well-meaning attempt to end the poverty in which most Indians found themselves, they never addressed the question of whether Indian cultures could be preserved while at the same time being integrated more closely to the national culture. It also remained unclear just who received the most benefits from the increased integration of the Indian with the national economy. As anthropologist Cynthia Hewitt de Alcantara noted:
Rural roads ran in two directions, and the greater experience and economic power of many
Inhabitants of the urban terminal gave the latter a definitive advantage over the peasantry in
Putting the new means of communication to profitable use.
Indians did not have a role in the design of INI programs at the national level or even in managing the coordinating centers, which implemented INI policy at the regional level.187
Literary critic Anne Doremus commented on the Indians’ lot in 1940: “Most lived in abject poverty, isolated from the rest of Mexican society and lacking any sense of citizenship.” The efforts of the INI did little to change that reality since in 1970 the INI budget only totaled $2.2 million. Assuming there were 3 million Indians at the time, this was less than one dollar per Indian per year. The INI spent much of that budget to hire its non-Indian professional staff, to maintain a headquarters in Mexico City, and to acquire vehicles and supplies.188
Between 1940 and 1970, Indian communities throughout Mexico were remarkably quiescent, given not only their poverty but also ethnic discrimination and their often criminal treatment by outsiders, which included robbery, murder, and usurpation of their lands.189
World History
