SOME ASPECTS OF PEASANT SOCIETY

IN MIDDLE AMERICA AND INDIA

Pedro Carrasco

Middle America is one of the areas of the world in which the

greatest effort has been devoted by anthropologists to the study of

peasant communities. A number of community and regional studies are
already available providing the basis for comparative studies both
within the area and with other major areas of peasant society.

Amon  other areas, India has recently received a good deal of atten-
tion l). The first anthropological community study, dealing with a
Telugu village in Hyderabad, has recently been published by Dube (2)

and a comparative study of peasant society in India and in Mexico has
been made by 0. Levis in which a highly hispanized Nauatl village of

Central Mexico (Tepoztlan) is compared with a Jat village of Northern
India (Rani Khera) (3).

This paper simply presents some ideas suggested by the contribu-
tions of Dube and Lewis, considered from the point of view of the

native peasant groups of Middle America. Tepoztlan, which was Lewist
Mexican unit of comparison, having been subject to strong accultura-
tive influences, is no longer a good example of some aspects of

economic and social organization typical of native Middle American

village communities. I have especially in mind the politico-ceremonial
organization that aligns positions of the political and ceremonial

hierarchies into a single scale of offices through which all men are

given a chance to pass. This type of organization offers a number of
interesting points of comparison with India that I intend to discuss

in this paper. My unit of comparison, then, as far as Middle America
is concerned, will be a generalized picture of the conservative native
communities of Southern Mexico and Guatemala (4). It does not apply

to the same extent to the Gulf Coast areas of Veracruz and Yucatan nor
to highly acculturated or urbanized communities. The pointu of Indian
village organization to be discussed are apparently general in the

traditional villages, although I will refer specifically to the vil-
lage studied by Dube.

In making this comparison, emphasis will be placed on the economic
aspect of social relations. Both in India and Middle America we deal
with peasant societies and peasant economies  that is, economies that
are to some extent part of a wider economic system but which are also

to some extent closed subsistence economies in which primitive or non-
market economic mechanisms play an important role. Economic relations
are established which are not the result of the free play of the

17

market but take place along lines defined by the social structure of

the commnity.   In any such case we should ask 1) how is this peasant
economy related to the wider economic system, and 2) what aspects of
the peasant economy form a closed system and which are the lines

defined by the social structure of the peasant comity along which
economic relations take place. I will consider the latter question
first and then touch briefly on the other.

For the purpose of our comparison, economic relations outside the
market system can be classified into three levels:  1) relations with-
in the family; 2) relations involving a number of families but without
including the whole community; and 3) relations involving all the fam
ilies :in the comunity.

At the family level we find production for consumption within the

household, especially in agriculture, and the exchage of services con-
nected with the division of labor according to sex and age within the
household. Although important differences can be drawn between Middle
America and India because of the greater prevalence of the extended

family in India, this type of economic relationship is one of nearly
universal characteristics and will not be discussed.

In Middle America economic relations between different families
outside the market system are found in the form of exchange of labor
in agriculture or housebuilding, but these exchanges are limited in
importance and distribution. Whether by farmers or craftsmen, we

usually find in Middle America independent household production, either
for home consumption or for the market, and outside help when employed
is usually on a wage basin.

More important are exchanges of goods between families related by
ties of blood or fictive kinship. These usually take place at the

time of life cycle celebrations or upon the assumption of office. In
the case of some gifts of food or in rendering services such as cook-
ing or building a.shed for a celebration, the givers participate as
producers, but a great many of these exchanges consist of gifts of

things such as cash, liquor or clothes, not produced by the givers but
obtained in the market.

At the community level we find in Middle America productive activ-
ities, outside the market system, in the form of communal labor for the
upkeep of roads and in the building or repair of community houses

(town hall, school and church). Every man is obliged to share in this
work and the obligation can be relieved only by sending a substitute
or paying a fee.

18

But more important than the productive activities are non-market
economic relations of distribution and consumption connected with the

political and ceremonial organization. All the political and ceremon-
ial offices in the community are combined into a single scale of

offices, hierarchically graded, in which every man is expected to

enter and will have a chance to reach the top positions. Although

the scale varies in details from town to town, the pattern generally
will start with the position of errand boy for either the church or
the townhall, followed by that of policeman, sponsor of a religious
festival, councilman, sponsor of some other religious function, and
finally judge or other high position in the political hierarchy. At

the end of the scale a man attains the rank of elder and is free from
rendering further service to the community. Each office lasts only
one year, and usually carries no remuneration, but on the contrary

involves expenses. Between any two offices a man takes a rest during
which he does not participate in the political and ceremonial organi-
zation of the community.

This organization has a numler of economic aspects. Because of
the yearly rotation of offices among all the men in the community,

there is in the division of labor within the political and ceremonial
organization, no hereditary or even life-long position. We find in

Middle America no hereditary village headmen, priests, village watch-
man, etc. Positions are open for everyone to achieve. Only to the
point that certain positions are occupied by all men at a certain

point of their lifetime can we say that there are ascribed statuses,
but then they are ascribed on the basis of age among a uniform popu-
lation. (5).  Only exceptionally are there positions occupied for a
long period of time, for instance those of sexton or scribe.

Another feature of the scale of offices is that the expenses of
the political and ceremonial organization are met by assigning vari-
ous responsibilities by turns to the members of the community. Since
no position ordinarily carries a salary, a man while serving must be
supported by his family (a youth serving as policeman for example),

or must have himself accumulated enough; property to be able for a year
to neglect his usual activities and devote much of his energies to
the responsibilities of office.

Most offices, furthermore, imply expenditures, such as financing
religious festivals, as well as banqueting one's fellow officials and
sometimes even the townspeople at large. These are occasions in

which an official must have accumulated property to pay for the cere-
mony or the feasting. Much of the economic surplus in the community

is spent in this way and transformed into prestige for the feast giver.

All this constitutes, then, a complex system of economic obliga-
tions connected with the various statuses in the political-ceremonial
organization, and. involving exchanges of goods and services rendered
along different lines and in which several types of reciprocity are
present.

19

There are balanced exchanges of the same type of goods, as when
fellow officials feast each other.

There are one-sided renderings of services or goods, as when an
errand boy serves the councillors or when officials feast the elders.
The givers in these cases will receive similar treatment when they
reach the higher grades.

There are exchanges of goods and services between officials and
their relatives and friends who help them and are feasted by them.

The goods and services will be reciprocated when it is the helpers'
turn to assume office.

Finally, there is the reciprocity involved in the case of the

officials who contribute their services and wealth to the community
in supporting the political and ceremonial organization. When they

are inactive they will benefit as commity members from similar ser-
vices performed then by others whose turn has come to serve. This
last aspect is usually the one emphasized by the people themselves

when they describe the taking of office as doing their share for the
coinunity, as a duty required in return for the privilege of member-
ship in the community.

In India, economic relations other than those in a free market

revolve around the divisidn of labor according to caste and the cus-
tomary exchanges of the jajmani system, that is, exchanges of goods
and services between members of different castes who stand in the

relation of hereditary patron and servant, or servants of the same

patron.  The central figure in the relationship is usually the patron
belonging to an agricultural caste, who pays his servants in grain at
harvest time or with small grants of land. In the village studied by
Dube, the jajmani system relates in this way farmers, carpenters,

barbers, washermen, potters, weavers, priests, shepherds, blacksmiths,
and leatherworker-laborers (6).

The exchanges of the jajmani system which take place between
individual families might be compared with the kind of exchanges

between related families that take place in Middle America, mostly
at the occasion of life cycle celebrations. This latter kind of

exchange, however, also exists in India between families of a came

caste; the jajmani exchanges take place between nonrelated, even if

hereditarily connected families of different caste, and are additional
to the type of exchanges existing in Middle America. It will be

instructive to see how the exchanges that in India are usually part
of the jajaani system are carried out In Middle America.

Some of the services rendered by specialists, in the jajuani sys-
tem of India, do not call for specialists in Middle America and are

performed as part of the division of labor within the household. For
instance, laundering, tailoring, or sweeping. Services performed in

20

India by servants such as barbers or leatherworkers at a marriage
celebration in their patron's family will be performed in Middle
America by relatives of the bride and groom.

Other goods and services obtained in India from a hereditary
servant will always be obtained in Middle America in the market.

Such is the case with the services or wares of the barber, carpen-
ter, blacksmith, potter, or midwife.

In comparison with India, the Middle American ceremonial organ-
ization is marked by the lesser importance of family celebrations

and the greater importance of communal celebrations in which a body

of officials perform for the co mmnity as a whole.   In Middle America
there are no hereditary family priests, and the services of a priest,
native or Catholic, will usually be paid for in an isolated market-
type transaction.

The specialists forming part of the jajmani system are often
craftsmen whose wares are produced for a specific consumer, their

patron. Their occupations, determined by caste, are life-long and
hereditary.  In Middle America, craftsmen produce only for the free
market and the most important customary exchanges take place among

the temporary part-time officials of the politico-ceremonial organi-
zation.

The social stratification of the Indian caste system is also

related to land tenure. There is always a sharp difference between
landowning castes and landless castes of artisans and laborers. By
comparison, although inequalities do often exist, individually owned
land is much more evenly distributed in Middle American villages, and
the commons are always available equally to all villagers irrespec-
tive of the amount of land they own as individuals.

The hereditary division of labor according to caste also enters
into the political and ceremonial organization of the Indian village,
and it therefore presents a striking contrast to the Middle American
system. In the village described by Dube, there is a village head-

man and a number of caste headmen, as well as fourteen village menials
selected mainly according to caste and performing for the village

some of the traditional services of their castes. The offices tend to
be hereditary. The headman, some other officials and the village

menials are paid in grants of land, shares of land revenue or, in the
case of some menials, in dues collected from the farmers at harvest

time. They thus constitute a set of relationships closely similar to
the jajmani system (7). In the ceremonial organization we find
hereditary priests, and members of different castes are assigned
specific duties during the celebration of village festivals t8).

The division of labor and the financing of the political and
ceremonial organization follow entirely different principles in

21

Middle America and in India. In India we find life-long hereditary

positions ascribed to specialists on the basis of caste. The services
of the village officials and menials are rewarded. The "feast of

erit" aspect of the Middle American officials' duties seems to be

lacking in peasant India. In Middle America we have instead unpaid

officials who are not specialists, occupying temporary positions along
successive steps in a scale of offices. Some of the services performed
in an Indian village by a caste menial will be performed in Middle

America by the messengers and policemen who are in the first steps in
the scale of offices and who will all have a chance to reach the posi-
tions of councilman, village headman and elder.

The Indian and the Middle American villages have been compared as
if they were closed economic systems; their relation to the national
economy should now be compared.

One point to consider is the participation of the village in the
national market. The importance of trade and regional markets in the

economy of the native communities of Middle America has been very much
emphasized in the literature. Especially important is the prevalence

of village specialization in crafts and the system of regional periodi-

cal markets where people from different villages meet and exchange their
goods. In spite of the large number of different kinds of specialists

found in a single village, the outstanding fact when seen on a regional
basis is the village specialization in trades. Since villages are

practically endogamous, intervillage relations are usually impersonal

market relations and only an occasional marriage or ritual kin relation-
ship (compadrazgo) will add a personal element to the interaction of

members of different communities. It is this prevalence of market rel-
ationships among individual producers that has led Tax to define native
Guatemala as a special type of economy that he labeled penny capitalism
(9).                                                                 p

The literature about peasant India has not emphasized the impor-
tance of village specialization in different trades or the existence

of regional market systems. Both undoubtedly exist but detailed stud-
ies are needed. It would be interesting, for instance, to compare the
relative importance in India and Middle America of rural vs. urban

artisans. Since the jajaani system has been described in communities

where farmers are the dominant caste it would also be important to know
what form the jajmi system takes in communities of craftsmen.

In any case the importance of jajmani relations in India and the
lack of anything similar in Middle America points to the possibly

greater relative importance of impersonal trade relations in peasant

Middle America than in peasant India. This supports from the economic
point of view Oscar Lewis' impression that India looks "primitive"

while Mexico is "western," even though we have considered here a part
of Middle America more primitive than Tepoztlan.

22

Another way to assess the place of the peasant within the

national economy is to consider the total land system and see what,
in the form of rent or taxes, does the peasant contribute to the

support of a non-peasant landowner class or to the support of the
State.

Although both India and Middle America show significant variations
in their many subareas and historical periods, some striking differ-
ences generally characterize the two areas.

Perhaps the most important difference lies in the different rela-
tion of the peasant towards the State as regards the taxation of land
(10) .

Any discussion of the land system of India invariably turns on
questions of land revenue. Different methods of assessment and col-
lection; the existence or absence of intermediaries between the cul-
tivator and the State; the security of tenure against seizure by the
State or its representative; the farming out of taxes; the granting
of land by the State, including the power of taxation over the peas-
ants;4the relation and transitional forms between landowner, tax-

farmer, land-grantee and petty chief; are all basic questions in any
discussion of the Indian land system, and the basis for the usual

distinctions made between different regions and historical periods.

According to th* Hindu political treatises the peasant had to
turn over one-sixth of his crop to the State. This proportion,

especially during the Muslim period, was usually much higher (11).

The British made significant changes by giving security of tenure as
against the former arbitrary power of native rulers, and by reducing
tax rates, but the importance of the peasant for the State as a payer
of revenue has been maintained to this day. Detailed records of

landholdings are kept in every village and the village revenue officer
is always one of the main officials in the village (12).

In Middle America taxation of peasant land is of little signifi-
cance. The rates are low and In native communities land records are

usually inaccurate. Native peasants thus fit into the national econ-
omy mainly through their participation in the national market and as
a labor supply. Only during the Colonial period when natives were

subject to the payment of tribute was theirs an important contribu-

tion to the exchequer, although the tribute was not a land tax but a
head tax assessed on the community as a whole,   The development of
large estates, mining and trade, however, gradually relegated the
native communities to a less significant position in the national

economy; their numerical strength relative to the total population
diminished-constantly, and the tribute was abolished upon attaining

Independence. All discussions of the land systems of Middle America
deal with the growth of large estates at the--expense of the native

village communities.  land revenue ques-tions-ar-e of little importance

23

and a survey book such as Whetten's Rural Mexico does not even discuss
the taxation of land (13).

The different types of economic organization prevailing in each of
the two areas under comparison is of course closely related to the
nature of the existing social segmentation.

Everything in Middle America seems to deepen the main lines of
social cleavage between different villages and to make for internal

solidarity within the village. The cleavages between village and vil-
lage also separate the peasant comnities from all other segments of
society.

The existence of communal lands equally accessible to all villa-

gers, the relatively even distribution of landholdings, the specializa-
tion of villages in different crafts, all add to the uniformity and

community of interests within each village and to its differentiation

from other villages. The absence of hereditary division of labor with-
in the village and the assignment of various communal duties in turn
to all the villagers maintain social equality within the village and

also serve as an economic equalizer by consuming the wealth of the rich.
As an organizational principle this rotation of duties and the concomi-
tant division of labor according to age, have the obvious limitations
of the skills that an individual can master and the size of a group

within which responsibilities can be effectively distributed among all.
Only a simple society, or one segment with limited functions within a
larger society, can be organized along those principles. And that is

the way it occurs in the politico-ceremonial organization of individual
Middle American villages without connecting different villages among
themselves or the villages with the non-peasant segments of society.

Unlike the Middle American rotation of functions and division of
labor by age, the diyision of labor based on inheritance, as in the

Indian caste system, has unlimited possibilities for development into
complex societies. The same principles of caste organization preval-
ent in the village apply to the wider Indian society. A counterpart

to the sharp social stratification within the village is the existence
of regional caste groups cutting across different villages. The

Indian village would then be much less of an isolate than the Middle

American village and the same factors of caste that make for differen-
tiation within the village tie different village groups with other
groups outside.

The traits of village organization in Middle America that have

been discussed are better ~iderstood as the result of what happened to
the complex native socistie* as a consequence of Spanish conquest.

The native societies were reduced to the peasant level of organization,

24

the upper class being eliminated, and became subject to the strong
influence of a mercantile economy, even though the technology
remained at a simple level.

The pre-Spanish or even the early Colonial periods in Middle

America would not offer the same contrast with India that has been
drawn in this paper. During those early periods the importance of
the natives' tribute offers a parallel to the Indian land revenue,

and the landholdings of native chiefs or the Spaniards' encomiendas
are comparable to the Indian jagirs. During the native period most
communities included subdivisions related by ethnic or kinship ties
to similar subdivisions in other communities. Many high positions
were hereditary, and even during Colonial times hereditary chiefs

survived.  The modern village community is largely the result of the
Spaniards organization of the natives into reservation-like commun-
ities which held land in common and were collectively responsible for
the payment of tribute. The suppression of hereditary positions and,
in recent times, the loss of communal property for the support of the
community organization, led to greater reliance upon the scale of
offices and the rotation of economic responsibilities among office
holders. The strong mercantile influence upon the village economy
has resulted in the predominance of individual household production

for the market, when not for home consumption, and primitive economic
mechanisms are mostly limited to the field of distribution and to
conspicuous consumption.

It would appear that, comparatively speaking, large sectors of
the Indian peasantry have been much less changed by the impact of
the West. Caste is taking on new functions; the jajmani system is

breaking down; the division of labor is more free; land reforms are

being carried out; and plantations and modern industry have developed.
Nevertheless, the conservative Indian village which #as here been
considered is still largely organized along the old principles of

division of labor by caste and customary economic exchanges of the
jajmani system. The Indian village is still integrated into wider
social units along many of the traditional lines. This of course

reflects the fact that, unlike the natives of Middle America, India
was not reduced by conquest to a mere mass of peasant communities

but survived as a whole to assimilate Western influence and reassert
its independence.

Oscar Levis ends his comparative analysis of peasant culture in
India and Mexico by remarking how Tepoztlan and Rani Khera are simi-

lar in terms of economics but very different in tepms of social.' organ-
ization. This paper has pointed out some differences in the economy
of peasant India and Middle America which refer both to the local

village economy and to the integration of the village into a larger
economic system. Although, in spite of important differences, the
Middle American and the Indian peasantry can be said to be at a

25

roughly similar technological level, important differences exist in the
economic organization, which are an important part of the differences
between the social systems of the two areas under comparison.

26

NOTES

(1) McKim Marriott, ed. Village India. Chicago University Press,

1955.

(2)  S. C. Dube.  Indian Village.   Cornell University Press, 1955.

(3)  Oscar Lewis.  Peasant Culture in India and Mexico:   A Compara-

tive Analysis. In Marriott, opo cit., pp. 145-170.

(4)  See the bibliography in Sol Tax, ed. Heritage of Conquest:    The

Ethnology of Middle America. Glencoe, 1952. I also draw from
my own field experience in Michoacan, Oaxaca and Chiapas.

(5)  In some communities the working of the scale of offices results

in groups similar to age-sets although promotions from one grade
to the other are individual and not based mechanically on age
but on achievement in the scale of offices. See Roberto J.

Weitlaner and Carlo Antonio Castro. Papeles de la Chinantla.
Mexico 1954, pp. 160-176.

(6) Dube, op. cit. pp. 57-69. The classical description of the

jajmani system is X0 H. Wiser.   The Jaj    ni System.  Lucknow,
1936.

(7) Dube, op. cit., pp. 45-53.
(8)  Ibid. pp. 111-116.

(9)  Tax, op. cit. pp. 43-65; Sol Tax, Penny Capitalism:   A Guatemalan

Indian Economy. Smithsonian Institution. Institute of Social
Anthropology, Publ. 16.   WashingtoAd 1953.

(10)  Absentee ownership of land is of much greater importance in India

than in the native villages of Middle America where it is of very
slight importance.

(11)  W. H. Moreland.  The Agrarian System of Moslem India.    Cambridge,

1929.

(12)  Dube, op. cit., p. 51.

(13)  Nathan L. Whetten.  Rural Mexicoo   University of Chicago Press,

1948. Tax, 1953 gives the most detailed economic study of any
Middle American village.   All it says about land taxation is,

"The real estate tax is popularly called the three-per-thousand0
I am not sure, but I believe the rate is actually higher. Most

landholders do not pay this tax because their land titles are not
legally registered with the higher authorities." (p. 182).

27